I recently bought an iPad Pro. I’m not new to iOS since I’ve used an iPhone and owned an iPod touch at one point, but it’s been a really long time since I’ve used this ecosystem after being a long-time Android/MacOS/Linux user.
I just wanted a place to rant about the various annoyances I’ve experienced since buying the device.
The annoyances
(Spotlight Search) I use this the same way I use Alfred on the Mac – Cmd+Space –> then launch whatever icon pops up. The annoying bit? It takes a second for autocomplete suggestions to show up, and when it does it shifts down the app icons and it makes me misclick the icons to a search instead.
(YouTube) I have Premium, and it annoys me that I can’t use PiP on it, even though it works perfectly fine on Android. I used to joke around how Netflix refused to do that on older versions on Android when YouTube can, but now Netflix works and YouTube doesn’t.
(Split-screen) Hey, Google. Why can’t I use split-screen view on this app? Multitasking with email is a no-brainer. Completely forbidding its use on an iPad is unacceptable!
(Split-screen, 2) Same goes to Facebook. Messenger can do it, I think Facebook should too.
I love your service. It does everything I need for a minimal blog, except for one thing:
Let me use links.
Using a single link doesn’t mean I’m automagically a spambot. Links are necessary if I want to refer to an article or a page that I want to comment on or for further reading.
But nope, I’m a spambot apparently for doing that.
Microsoft Teams overtakes Slack with 13 million daily users
Goddamn. My thoughts kinda exploded on this.
Is Microsoft counting O365 users in general? It's an easy way to spike usage. It's like saying Hangouts has more users than Slack and Teams because every phone starts with a Google account and pretty much has Hangouts preinstalled.
Not gonna lie, Microsoft is doing a killing on productivity tools. GitHub acquisition aside, they have VSCode's rapid development, Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS), their usual Office stuff and the obscure but unique stuff, like OneNote (not-obscure, lol), Planner, Bookings, Flow (IFTTT but more!), PowerApp (Google App Maker counterpart, a-la low-code platform like Outsystems) and of course, Teams (Slack counterpart).
I wish Google took GSuite more seriously; expand beyond the usual suite and pursue product development that can actually compete against Apple or MSFT's level of support and reliability. Stuff like Hangouts Chat is difficult to recommend because they keep axing their products.
Yeah, I see Microsoft Azure as a bigger competitor to Amazon Web Services to be honest. Funny how Google Cloud Platform is there, but somewhat “less” threatening. Microsoft's game is in its network of businesses and their ability to sell their stuff.
If I owned a company and wanted to push a productivity suite, I would say Notion > O365 > GSuite. For a cloud platform, it's AWS > GCP = Azure.
Nintendo (in particular, Banjo-Kazooie, BOTW Sequel)
FF7 (Tifa's reveal, obviously)
The Worst
Bethesda (literally everyone but Bethesda Game Studios has something worthwhile to say on their own conference)
The Crowd (basically Bethesda again)
E3 itself? Not gonna lie, the event has gone mostly stale and nothing's really worth watching live because of how the conferences are presented and how the crowd is so fake and the games lacking in actual gameplay and isn't plastered with filters and lies.
After all,
No gameplay, no hype.
No gameplay, no game.
(On the other side of things, Nintendo Direct is the right way of doing these things nowadays. Nearly every Direct I've watched has always been exciting and it's actually respecting enough of my time to watch it)
It should be obvious at this point — this post spoils the entire movie and expects you to at least watch most of the movies before it.
That said, I wrote this while I also forgot to watch certain movies; particularly the Ant-Man and Captain Marvel ones. Keep that disclaimer in mind, I guess?
Avengers Endgame Complaints
This is actually a list of complaints, not a proper review or anything of the sort.
Personally, I think Infinity War is significantly better compared to Endgame, and most of the reasons are listed below.
Captain Marvel
Why is she so underutilized in this movie? Her absence in many pivotal parts in this story are so bad, it's like she's a DLC character in a game that's already done.
They effing managed to travel back through time and they couldn't get her to help on this one? Because she has other priorities on other worlds? Really? And why wasn't that brought up again?
They were about to wield the Infinity Gauntlet and its stones they've gotten from the time heist, so uh… why didn't anyone bother informing her about things…?
Timetravel and the Quantum Tunnel
Oh nice, Thanos is defeated and now they have to restore the stones to where they were in order to bring continuity to the timeline. So uh, Cap, how exactly are you going to return the Soul Stone? Just getting there is one thing, returning the stone? What.
On that note, if he lived his life normally in the distant past after returning said stones, that's basically saying he's essentially lived through all of that, along with all of the movies that have happened so far. That's impressive, how the heck did he manage to keep such a low profile all the way; especially in a universe with crazy amounts of surveillance and intelligence tech.
To travel across time they needed Pym particles, their suits and at least a quantum tunnel to start the process. Past Nebula impersonated the present one and went back so she could open said tunnel to bring Thano—wait, so uh, how on earth did they manage to bring an ENTIRE ship and Thanos from the past to the present?
Oh and for the above, really? They didn't bother securing the damn tunnel? That's some really shitty operational security.
Powerlevel Mismatch and Thanos
Okay, you're telling me that a battle-hardened Iron Man, Captain America (now with the frigging Mjollnir) and Stormbreaker-wielding Thor are having difficulties against a past Thanos that didn't even have any of the stones. Really? Yes, the intensity of the fight is enough to break parts of the vibranium shield, but surely you can't say the same to past-Thanos.
Okay, we have Captain Marvel now. I haven't watched her movie, but from what I can tell, she's immensely powerful—she could single-handedly bring the stranded ship where Tony was and bring it back to Earth, and she can willy-nilly go into planets and lasers and shit. Really? She still can't beat Thanos?
Hell, add everyone up above, along with the Scarlet Witch and Strange and oh god, why is everyone having a hard time with this? Infinity War did this better since they were kept separate across many locations for good reasons. Now? Aww hell. wtf.
Infinity Gauntlet
The original gauntlet? Yeah, dwarven craftsmanship and magic and godly metal on their forge that can harness the power of a sun. Oh, Stark nanotechnology bullshit can do it anyway, can withstand two snaps and adjusts on the wearer's size? Yeah.
Oh and five years later and people are still playing Fortnite. Yikes.
Ugh, so it turns out that Psyonix has sold itself out to Epic Games. After being in Steam for a really long time with a thriving community, Epic bought them and now they want to cut themselves off from Steam.
I'm really seeing a grim pattern between:
streaming services' struggle with exclusive IPs (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Amazon, Apple, etc)
Epic's exclusivity bullshit to overcome Steam
Ecosystem lock-ins with Apple, along with their war with Spotify.
The Terrible
The distribution platforms for various media are becoming fragmented, intentionally, now that both the platform and the creators have realized the value of being exclusive hand-in-hand with each other.
The platform can choose to host the content with little regard to service quality because they know the customers will flock towards the content anyway, whereas creators will opt for platform exclusivity if it means a better cut at the share or added monetary benefits earned by the platform holder elsewhere (ehem, Fortnite money).
The unwanted side-effect of all this is making the experience terrible for the consumer — with consumers being forced to subscribe to multiple services simultaneously, or running multiple game clients with varying degrees of quality of service.
Having multiple competing platforms are meant to drive the quality of services that the consumers want, but that's not going to happen if they're making tiny monopolies out of the IPs that they exclusively distribute.
The Future
God forbid if this creeps to the music industry and YouTube.
Imagine your favorite creators being evenly split between YouTube and somewhere else. That would be fine if it's all free, but if it ever evolves to a paid subscription model, we're in for a bad time, just like...
Imagine your music tracks being split between Spotify, Apple, Google and wherever because artists have decided to “exclusively release” their stuff on a different platform. Enjoy your multiple subscriptions and fragmented playlists, because the platform and the creators have decided to make the best for them and not for us.
Only the big companies will win in the end. The best we have for this would be government regulation, but damn, I'm sure they also have that covered with bribes / lobbying too.
In the end, the consumers will lose if this keeps up.