whichalso

I don't usually take pictures at all, of anything, let alone blog about it.  But hey, it's a lovely day and I wanted to see how bad my phone's non-zooming camera was.  As it turns out, not as poor as I expected, at least not until you view the pictures at full size!

All these are dumped straight off the SD card: couldn't be arsed to tidy them up or anything.  I have beer to drink.

















So yeah, that was fun.  Not fun enough to convince me I need a proper camera at some point in the future, but still.

I suppose if you were to sit down and consider the evolution of the human species, although evolution seems far too grand a word to describe it, you would easily see that most of the changes in lifestyles are related to technology.

What counts as technology?  Almost everything, really.  The invention of the plough in order for farmers to more accurately and quickly churn their soil ready for seed sowing counts.  Stephen Fry chose the lighter as his favourite piece of technology in his "Stephen Fry's 100 Greatest Gadgets" television program, which is a very intelligent choice when you consider it.  Both of these things demonstrate the ability of humans to control their environment by mastering the elements: in this case earth and fire.  Even now, we work on sea farms which aim to harness the power of wind currents to generate electricity via big white metal windmill type things (that is, I believe, the technical term), as we have so many piece of technology we consider intrinsic to life and they need the tasty voltages and amperes of electricity to fuel them.

So then, control of our environment via technology.  Fantastic, right?  Kettle in the morning to get your caffeine injection without boiling water over a naked flame for ten minutes.  Washing machine to leave your clothes smelling of dew and roses rather than dunking them in a river and using lye soap.  A television to watch recorded theatre-style presentations (or more commonly now, trashy reality TV) after a hard day's work.  Laptops and smartphones that move us away from pen and paper, from typewriters and separate cameras, from books even.  Technology to improve our life experience, to make it tidy and convenient.  Technology that builds on the advances of other technology, converges and refines.  So much to love.  And there are so many pieces to choose from!  You're spoilt for choice.

Now we reach the part in the text where I reveal I was playing devil's advocate, in order to make my analysis look fair when I step onto my anti-tech soapbox (do we even use soapboxes any more?!)  We're so spoilt for choice in terms of technology, in fact, that it becomes confusing and exhausting.  Fashion comes into play too: you're nobody unless you buy X, Y and Z pieces of tech.  They will change your life, they will make things wonderful and golden.  They are The Way Forward™.  As a nervous consumer, what do you do?

Well, if you're anything like me you're already having so many problems getting one piece of tech working harmoniously with another that buying more of it is actually unappealing.  Technology is making things too complicated, you might say.  Case in point: I want to talk to a few old friends.  They're not picking up their phone for whatever reason, so what do I do next?  Do I leave voicemails, send texts, try them on Google Talk or other instant messaging service, drop them all emails, poke them on Facebook?!  Dammit, all I want to do is communicate with these people, why is it suddenly so difficult?

Heaven help me if I want to start integrating my home entertainment kit.  How do I connect the PS3, the Wii, the TiVo, the Mac Mini, the HTPC and everything else to the TV?  How do I wire those same devices to the 5.1 audio system?  Even when I've done that, how do I go about calibrating the TV so the picture looks consistent across those devices?  Each input has four different adjustable visual preset modes!  When I do finally manage it, I find I have a dozen different remotes sitting on the coffee table, there are wires all over the place and my missus is screaming at me that she's missing Eastenders.

"Ah, but you're not.  TiVo has you covered!" I exclaim with some pride, still playing with this or that piece of technology, looking for the best settings.

"What the hell is TiVo and how does it work?!" she hollers back.

"Well, it's simple.  First you turn the TV to HDMI 1 input using this remote.  Then you turn the 5.1 audio system to STB mode using this second remote.  Then this third remote runs the TiVo.  You pick it up and press the Home menu button, then you wait a few seconds..."

"All I want is to watch TV, now!"  Already she's clearly had enough, and technology is now driving a wedge between us.  A shiny, dual-core, Bluetooth-enabled wedge no doubt.

I sigh, put down whatever remote I had in my hand, look at her and concede she's right.  What used to be flicking a switch and twisting a dial to choose a channel (I had a TV like this when I was a kid) has now become some multi-device high definition surround sound behemoth that only the most ardent geek can drive properly.

Let's say she bears with it, learns her way around all these bits and pieces and knows which handful of remotes she needs for which job.  Then what do I do?  I spring on her a brand new remote which turns twelve remotes into one!  Fantastic, right?  Yeah, it would be, except for the fact we both need to learn the entirely different button layout for each device, and then we find that functions from the original remote aren't on this new universal remote, so I need to plug it back into the laptop, run the setup software again, teach it the new IR codes from the original remotes...

Anyone else got a headache at this point?  I know I have.  I love a challenge, but at some point it starts getting so elaborate that I can't keep track.  I pulled my media centre cupboard forward yesterday to run yet more wires in and out of it, and I was shocked at how many wires were already there, hidden behind the back panels.  More than a dozen ethernet cables, at least half a dozen speaker cables, HDMI/Component/SCART/optical leads; if they all got disconnected I think I'd have a breakdown trying to put them all back in the correct place.

In the meantime the missus has packed her bags and shacked up with that gym instructor who I was suspicious about.  And just when I thought everything was working harmoniously with everything else, guess what?  My laptop won't boot and the HTPC with all the harddrives in it won't stream to anything else in the house, so I've got to fiddle with the SMB sharing options which got broken during one of the Windows Updates.  And I need to get that spreadsheet off the iPad to send to my boss, which without an inbuilt SD card slot or even a regular USB port is going to require yet another cable and yet another tutorial.

And by the time I've fixed all that not only is the missus gone for good, I've lost most of my friends and most of my hair, the dog and cat have both died from malnutrition and there are crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers everywhere. Plus, my mother rings me on a daily basis to check I'm alright, having convinced herself I'm about two more gadget problems away from being locked in a white padded room to bounce around in and decorate liberally with my own poo.

---

I'm exaggerating of course, with many of the details here being hypothetical.  But honestly, when did technology move from "making a man a master of his environment" to "making slaves of us all"?

Charlie Brooker has made many anti-tech rants that demonstrate this point and some of them are actually pretty thought-provoking.  We're so plugged into the virtual world we're absent from the real one, more and more.  I'm guilty of it, and if you own a smartphone which you regularly tap away on, you are too.  Even now, I'm not just writing this, I'm trying to make an image of a Windows 7 Install DVD so I can burn it, and then a friend of mine can send that freshly burnt DVD to his brother in Switzerland so he can fix half a dozen Windows computers that don't have backups... it just never ends!

It can be fun.  When everything works and you remember which button does what, hey, it's great.  But even as a nerd, I'd say it's getting far too complicated, with no chance of slowing down on the horizon.  Heaven help those of advanced years for whom merely logging into one of many operating systems brings on a migraine; these people are getting left behind.  And the ones that aren't seemed to be swamped in tech - not immersed, swamped.  As in, there's a deluge and even a gold-medal swimming champion couldn't push against it.

I think the moral of the story is, we need to start working out some kind of "balanced diet" for technology use.  Because as it stands, shit is gettin' outta control, dawg, and dat needs a fix 'fore we is all screwed.  Or, y'know, something not written in mock gangster speak.

Maybe a quote from an iconic 1980s film will say it best:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
 - Ferris Bueller

The original telephone never really replaced proper social interaction, did it?

It's more svelte and capable facelift, the SmartPhone™, hasn't really done that either - and nor should it.  To use what in a decade's time will read like hopelessly dated modern business speak, it augmented the core telephone experience with elements of a new socially-linked paradigm.  But that social element didn't replace the basic telephone for most people, just as that "core telephone experience" didn't replace face to face (no, video conferencing or any of that uncomfortable toiletry doesn't count) socialisation for most people.  For those it did replace it for, it was often the case that their ability to function well in a face-to-face social environment was less than ideal in the first place.

Looking at it that way is fine with me: it generalises somewhat in order to keep the idea short and managable, but hopefully not to the point of becoming a straw-man.  Let's be honest: seeking to replace something as simple but intrinsically human and vital as sitting around a table with friends, talking about everything and anything, is ass-about-head stupid.  The numerous communication methods we have now, old and new - emails, faxes, tweets, timelines, blogs, instant messages, telephones, video conferencing, meme sharing (usually cat pictures, amirite?) and the rest - are best viewed as little additions to being an actively social person.  You should know what they do, know how to use them well ("ZOMG!/!?!?!!?!?! I AMZ BELIEBER" stuff doesn't count as using them well, sorry) but don't view them as important as the good/old-fashioned/real face-to-face stuff, because they're not.

I love computers and gadgets based around them, always have.  I'm not seeking to denigrate them or paint them as evil, because like any medium it's how they are used by the people that defines them.  But it helps to have some perspective, doesn't it?  So here's my perspective, and who knows, maybe it is similar enough to yours that you can see what I'm getting at.

For years I was a very secluded little nerd at all times, rather than just some of the time as it is today.  So much immersion in the world of computing (that includes gaming) left me socially stunted; I could blame my high-functioning autism for that all day long, but it was only one part of the situation.  In my early twenties I started to move away from that, for the better, yet what did I see?  People moving in the opposite direction as me, biased towards co-dependency with their first generation attempts at smartphones.  And now those smartphones have evolved somewhat, the problem has been exacerbated.

To demonstrate the point with an identifiable, practical example I had an interesting and revealing conversation (yes, a real face-to-face one) with a friend of mine a few days ago.  To whittle twenty minutes of impassioned dialogue down to the pertinent issue, his argument was that smartphone usage can be as addictive as anything else, based on his girlfriend's three or more times an hour checking of Facebook - both web and mobile app versions, texting close friends while they were trying to have some quality time together and other various bad habits facilitated by a smartphone.  When it reached the point that she was regularly prioritising this over their time together, he had to give her some advice on why she should put the phone down and step away more often.  It isn't the first story I've read or been told, nor will it be the last, but like all of them it still widened my eyes (sometimes I rolled 'em too; eyes, and cigarettes).

These things we are indulging in now, often to excess, are still very much in the "new and exciting" part of the popular culture zeitgeist.  In their way, they are just as revolutionary and intriguing as the original telephone and television sets.  And just like back then, you will have half-assed social commentators like myself weighing up the gains and losses, or the well-intentioned extremists who think we should heed the Amish and get back to our agricultural roots - not necessary a bad argument in and of itself, but it can come across like that if it is argued in a bad way.  Actually, as with most arguments composed of two diametrical opposites, the sane and just answer lies somewhere in the middle.

My personal opinion, from years of experience both as a reclusive/shy nerd and extroverted/outspoken socialiser is that we need to take a step back, re-evaluate.  It's hardly the first time I've argued this, but as with most points you must revise and repeat in order to get it across.  And my point is pretty straightforward, when you remove all the pre-emptive waffle: if you put something in the way of proper social interaction, you always lose something in translation, even with the best of intentions.  You want an example?  In this piece alone, the third and sixth paragraphs mention that an idea or conversation has been trimmed.  Certainly this means I get to the point with greater swiftness, but when "twenty minutes of impassioned dialogue" which becomes a mere paragraph, the memorable edge which comes from enjoyable, informal banter is lost or at least diluted.

The kind of person who casually checks This Year's Most Popular Social Network (currently Facebook, obviously) a couple of times a week and does a few status updates, fine, hardly a problem child.  The other kind who is signed up to dozens of them and uses them all to painstakingly chronicle and catagorise their lives in any way possible - even the parts they should be concentrating for instead of trying to multitask "live it and chronicle it" - bear watching, as do a significant portion of the in-between percentage.

I worry that the amount of supposedly "social" junk we're all collectively spewing out in exabytes is causing us to lose ourselves in the shallow and meaningless, when we could be losing ourselves in the exquisite company and conversation of good friends instead. But then, I also hope that within a decade or two that these newer methods of communication will be further towards the background.  Keeping in touch by proxy - which is, after all what online social networking is - might be all well and good, or harmless fun at least, but I would argue that the aim should be to get that proxy out of the way as quickly as possible.  Then we can all get to the life-affirming proper social interaction which takes place with people in the same room with no walls literal, analogue or digital to get in our way much more quickly.

Think about that the next time you reach for your smartphone and tear yourself away from quality face-to-face social time.

I'm going to do this from a second-person perspective so the reader might better understand the plight.

It seems logical to start this by clearing up the old "if you hate it, why do you do it?" question.

A little extra money, and a slightly increased chance of getting laid without having to use aforementioned money. (Not necessarily talking about whores either; you ever bought a drink for a person you later had sex with, you paid for that sex, buddy.)

You're a musician, a pretty good one.  What you do currently is cover obvious, mostly overplayed pop songs that you hate or are indifferent to, to earn in two hours what you'd normally have to work eight hours for in a regular job.  This bothers you a little, but is hardly the sort of thing you could rant about.

No, what bothers you is the money spent on rehearsals, which cuts into your profit.  Having to figure out all the guitar parts and lead vocals because you're the only one in the band with a good ear - double or triple the workload, sometimes, yet you're still paid the same as everyone else despite the extra effort.  Loading, unloading, setting things up and packing them down; shared between the band, but still cumbersome.

Most of all - those pinnacles of annoyance - the clueless people who hang on what you do.

At first it seemed great, but now it actually pains you to be praised for playing other peoples songs, even if you're happy with your performance and that of the band.  Especially the trite songs that are only there for the audience's edification and enjoyment.  It stuns you that you can write a pop-rock masterpiece that no-one applauds for, but pull out some shitty Top 40 tune that might well have been written by a robot or other form of automaton and you receive ovations and cheers.  You might as well be an automaton yourself, because you're basically little more than a live-action jukebox or music video.

As with the "you're covering songs you hate for money" complaint, it's not so bad a thing that you'd get pissy about it.  Well, not REALLY pissy, anyway.  That audience of yours can be forgiven for enjoying an above-average cover version that you've put some passion into: they weren't to know you were faking it for pay, like a whore.  It's the ones who have to come up and chew your fucking ear off about it, those that make a big deal out of it, just because you moved them.

You understand why.  You do - it's why you became a musician in the first place.  It's not the standard white-collar nine to five where you turn up and play with spreadsheets, laptops and phones in some sterile minimally furnished office.  It's a job where you're looking to evoke emotions of all kinds just with a flick of the wrist and howl of the voice, you get it.  But now you also get the jaded cynicism of the pro musicians you've met along the way, over the past few decades while you were trying to hone your craft.

You don't care for the attention; in fact since you hate most of the setlist, eventually you come to abhor it and want to be left alone.  You're better than the songs you're covering, so you'd like to think.  You can deal with the slog it takes to put a gig together, you can make it look like you give a damn, you can scream and shout and sweat and make it look easy, even fun.  But when it's finished the only thing you want is to walk away, have a drink, and forget you're turning something you love into a menial job, no more exciting or gratifying than sending a business email or taking part in a conference call to one of your clients in Japan.

So when you're drawn into conversation about it, you might find yourself trying desperately not to roll your eyes or say something that'll reflect negatively on you or your bands reputation, because you want the money from the next gigs you have lined up.  You know you're pretty good, that you can cover a song worth a damn.  You don't need the validation of some drunken asshole who couldn't sing in key even after a dozen lessons with a professional vocal coach.  You don't want to sit there and talk about what pickups are in your fucking guitar, what brand of tobacco you fucking smoke to get your voice to rasp and growl just so.

Because honestly, you don't give a shit.  You're forever inches away from throwing down the guitar and the mic, calling it a day - and for good this time.  If the money dried up, you wouldn't hesitate to put your gear on the market to make the rent and buy half a dozen bottles of the good whiskey.  It's just stuff, after all.  There's no luck or charm in the equipment with which you've been cranking out the riffs and howling blues standards through for years - some players might claim there is, but in the end it's all just plastic, metal, glass and wood.  Inanimate objects which rely on your passion to seem special.  And if you have no passion, what's the point?

But you don't want to let that slip, no matter how drunken the person chewing your ear off happens to be.  Not an inch of it - not a single fucking word.  Because regular people can't understand how you can look so enthusiastic one minute, strutting about like you own the place and jumping off the furniture, then be morose as hell when you step off the stage.  There's truth behind that saying "it's all just an act", but you're not about to lecture them about it.  Who are you to assume you speak for entertainers worldwide when your average audience is 200 people or less, twice or thrice a month if you're lucky?

So what do you do?  You keep your mouth shut and bite that tongue, maybe simmer with a quiet rage.  You have a goddamned cigarette and a drink to distract yourself.  The minutes tick down and you get back on stage to play the second half, so you can get your money, pack up and fuck off, until you have to get it up for the next one, if you still can.

So it goes.

I'm a pretty logical person.

I like logic, it's useful in preserving the illusion of control a person has over their life.  With some semblance of order and sense it's easier to forget that the amount of control over circumstance you have is actually quite small.

Natural selection hardwires basic survival responses into the human mind at a very primal/primative level.  You can almost feel the back brain throttling the smarter front/top part as it kicks in and drives you.  This is what logic seeks to control - to stop the primitive survivalist mechanisms kicking in and preventing higher reasoning from functioning.  Or at least, that's what I have found in my observations.

Approaching life from a position of logic can be frustrating though.  When you become more and more logical it's inevitable that you will start looking beyond yourself.  Then you see the logic of other people, or most likely, the lack thereof.  Seeing other people's complete lack of logic, the haphazard method in which their life is thrown together like a last minute outfit, makes me glad of my own, almost but not quite proud of it.  But I'm hardly immune, not at all suggesting that being more considered makes me a better person, because it comes with drawbacks.  Primarily being too cool, too detached.  Having the problem of not being able to emote properly short of a pent-up outburst which with no context just confuses everyone around you.

This means when the logic takes a back seat (ironic seeing as it's further up the brain stem) retaining emotional control can be more difficult.  But I compensated for this by channeling the more unrestrained and emotive side back into something that is inherently not logical, governed by passion rather than sense, as a coping mechanism.

Art.  In my case, specifically music.

It's been a great outlet for a number of things.  I've discussed this in other entries which I won't pothole to.  But if I stick at it long enough, it chafes just like anything else that isn't really logical.

It's senseless.  It draws out thoughts and feelings I'd prefer stay buried.  Other people you're working with seem even less in control.  It's a bloody mess.  It's the untidy room you can't straighten, the loose thread you pull to reveal other loose threads.

Yet every now and then you get lucky, dust turns to diamonds.  There's this brief pause where time seems to stand still, where your mind is clear and distraction-free.  All the ballache, bellyache and heartache being some kind of artist causes seems worth the trouble.  You have this pure moment of expression, and you feel free of everything.  There are no distractions and you are caught up in a way that just feels right.  (That is the best I've ever done in explaining the satisfaction sometimes obtainable via an artistic medium without sounding like a hemp-tied old hippy.)

As I get older though, those brief moments becomes less and less of a lure.  As I become better as a musician, more focused, more able to complete an album's worth of songs in my mind without ever singing or picking up an instrument (I'm not boasting; I've done this twice over at this point) I want to say fuck it all, throw it away, this isn't a good use of my time.  The life-affirming moments are just too fleeting to get caught up in logistics and band politics.  Worse than that, flipping constantly between love and hate so much is quite painful.  I struggle to keep my bipolar nature under control as it is, and this duality just aggravates it.

The better I get, the more of a chore it is to continue.  The lack of logic and the pain in the asses of a thousand disappointing experiences stockpile themselves, then someone plays a bum note or drops a stick and the illusion is completely broken.  Reality creeps back in: you hear the sound mix is off, the vocals aren't loud enough.  It dawns on you that this isn't special: it's just killing time in a way that is less exhilarating than reading a book, running a few miles or watching television, for fucks sake.  You can keep chasing that moment where everything slips away and there is nothing but ears full of sound and mind/heart full of passion, but it becomes harder.  You want to throw your best instrument out of a window, douse the remains in lighter fluid and laugh as you drop a match to create a little funeral pyre.  Or at least, I do.

I'm writing this because I'm in a covers band, and it could easily be the best covers band I've been in.  Gigs are lining up in haste, our roster of musicians is respectable, could be a good project.  But the smallest problem or mistake and I want to run for the hills, pawn my guitar and never play or sing another note.  Because I have an artistic temperament, despite myself, and it isn't fucking logical.

So here I am.  Rock.  Me.  Hard place.  (And yes, I noticed that weak pun.  Left it in.  Kinda like it.)  Emotions up and down, trying not to make any rash decisions even though they might feel right in the moment.  Feels like the sharp end of being in love, exactly like it in fact.  I suppose because that's exactly what it is.

This entry is a repost of a comment inspired by a great blog post, probably best to read that first to establish context.  The majority of this is identical to what I wrote there: some typos are corrected, slight rewording has been used, I've elaborated on key points and potholed some URLs but the tone and content is much the same.

---

When it comes to UI design I'm often on the fence, mostly because those on either side are skewed at such a great distance from an acceptable middle ground.
 
My personal preference for UI design is, by all means sprinkle it with showy but ultimately pointless wipes, twists, fades and textures that make it look like a stereotypical representation of the old-fashioned counterpart.  I don't mind that, as long as there exists the ability to switch all of that off in Settings menus.  Having to manually re-edit textures and such on iCal, as a link a few comments above mine explains, takes Apple more in the Microsoft/Linux direction, where things aren't perfect straight away and need hacks and tweaks to meet user specifications.  Having faux-leather as a default option would be acceptable to me if the option to switch to other forms of Apple app skin were available, either as part of the package or perhaps downloadable content.  Looking at it from the stance of a less technically competent person there are neither, which is odd because Apple prize a "one size fits all" approach for their devices (hardware and software) above all else, so we see a contradiction.
 
On the other hand, I don't agree with those praising Metro as a great step in the right direction, because it isn't.  I'm running Windows 8 Developer Edition, and only because I could disable the Metro UI to find a faster if unfinished "Windows 7 Plus" underneath.  The tile system is hardly new, and most of the miniaturised versions of apps (e.g. RSS or Twitter) were so limited in functionality you essentially ended up with a screen filled with apps that did very little, all vying for your attention in a distracting way.  To me, Metro looks dated, something that would have been passable five or six years ago that has now deprecated, which leads me to believe that the idea is one Microsoft has had for longer than they are letting on.
 
To go back to my original point, I prefer a UI which is fast and mostly without frills.  I think fast, I type fast and I don't want to be slowed down or put off by pointless comfort-value features.  I understand why they exist and that some people enjoy them, but I'm hardly impressed because when I think back to my Amiga days I remember Digita Organiser, a filofax-style app which had folded page edges and an early attempt at "page turning" animation.  I didn't like it then and even with improved presentation don't like it now.
 
It seems to me there is a fine line between making a device user-friendly, and going too far resulting in one that endlessly mollycoddles and rewards even the simplest actions with some kind of carefully chosen sound or animation.  You know what the latter reminds me of?  A children's activity centre, glowing and chiming when the child performs a set series of tasks in the correct order in order to aid early cognitive learning skills.
 
Are we so infantile as a culture that we need this much instant gratification from our technology, devices which after all are often used to accomplish more mundane productivity tasks?  I would say no, but we're fast moving towards that under the guise of usability.  Psychological analysts have long known that people are more easy to manipulate/sell to when placed in a more childlike state of mind, and I don't think Apple are that devious, but then again perhaps they are.  Some of their competitors certainly are.

Perhaps this use of a more infantile, tactile approach is the reason even highly-intelligent people who work with computers regularly will giggle and coo over the iPhone 4S, which other than incremental upgrades to screen and processor quality and Siri (which the Apple faithful won't shut up about, at least not until a few more months have passed and the pointless novelty of the feature wears off.  By the way, Siri actually dates back to early 2010 and the iPhone 3GS) offers absolutely no improvements over the previous model but has already shifted in great numbers.

Maybe it's an overstatement, but it seems to me that a majority of people are hopelessly inured to the fashion of Apple culture - and believe me it is a fashion, a sign of conspicious consumption if you will - with Apple's marketing department doing an excellent job of creating false need and pseudo-individuation.  After all, the best business practice is to sell people the same product over and over again - maximum returns for reuse of the same design over and over, like the fad of remastering old movies and records.  The most recent iterations of the iPod Nano, iPhone and iPad fit this perfectly - great products (well, I dislike the iPad but enjoy the other two) which are nearly identical.  Be individual as part of a crowd, it's a great trick if you can pull it off not only with your customers, but in your product range as well.  It seems like they're confusing iconic with monotonous (any design as long as it's the same just bigger or smaller, any colour as long as it's black or white, any software as long as the majority of it is bundled), but then I'm buried in the minority with that observation.

This is not meant as a direct criticism of Apple because they're hardly the only ones to use these practices (maybe it's a chicken and egg scenario, with other companies getting in on that style more now than ever before), more what they have done to UI design by being so influential. Most companies shamelessly pillage that approach, and those that don’t can’t seem to innovate much at all, at least not in any way that would be useful to the masses. I like some elements of Apple design (and Microsoft too) and a few of their products, but I dislike the dumbing down/window dressing of modern interfaces and the blind faith demonstrated by fans of any company who adhere to those aesthetics.  I've discussed this trend at great length, but whenever people start whipping themselves into a fervour following release of a new product by a respected tech brand whether that be Samsung, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, LG or anyone else I sometimes find new points to make, or a way express old points in a different style.  Be transparent, be easy to use, but don't insult the end user's intelligence with too much handholding and/or making all their decisions for them.  Assuming they have any intelligence and dicision-making abilities in the first place of course (see what I did there, hypocritical joke).

To put things back into context though, when looked at logically and without bias or emotion it’s all just technology.  No one item or group of items should be viewed as a life-affirming must-have kit like everything else in the consumer realm is, because I'd venture to say that technology should be somewhat above mere items of consumption.  With that in mind I’d say first world cultures need to step back and re-evaluate their relationship with products as a whole, and not just technology, but I’m starting to overreach and stray from topic so I’ll end it here.

Remember, they might well be pretty tools for a job, but they're still just tools, not toys.  Let's all remember that before we all get bowled over by the latest version of Android, iOS, Windows or whatever.

"I tend to find those who claim to have a profound understanding of the cosmos are just as clueless about it as the rest of us, and in fact are worse off for the burden of their delusion."
 
Let's face it, the galaxy is far beyond the understanding of one man.  Our thousands of years of existence have proven one thing: we can slowly chip away at the elemental mysteries of nature and the universe at large, only to be presented with a torrent of even more confusing questions, like a never-ending version of Lost.  (That is why I hated Lost; there are enough things in life which beguile humanity, so having fiction imitate life in that way is irritating.  If you can't resolve, don't start the arc.  Fiction should be satisfying not endlessly frustrating.)
 
Why am I sitting here contemplating my navel?  I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I'm a bit sick, in terms of physical health at least.  I don't tend to get coughs and colds, but when I do I get the more severe ones, so right now food tastes like cardboard and there are more unwanted bodily fluids than usual, married to the kind of bone-shaking cough more befitting an old man on his death bed.  It's definitely the most disgusting part of being human, this shedding of cells and mucus, being bacteria’s bitch.  Fortunately many of my critical faculties are intact, and the sickness itself produces a detached calm and/or mild delirium which lacks most types of nausea a person can suffer.
 
Lack of wellness aside I should be happy, and in some ways I am.  Things are looking up here and there: a new band for the first time in three years, one that has all the signs of going the distance and providing both fun times and semi-reliable sources of income, plus the sort of local notoriety that often leads to free alcoholic beverages.  The imminent loss of an unwelcome house guest; I won’t go into detail as it’s a tale both long and tedious, but there’s a time-frame for the whole situation dissolving.  Reuniting with an old friend and sharing stories of potential brushes with death, discovering that my local town isn’t quite as dull as I thought.  All of this within a few weeks.
 
Typically the sickness hits now rather than back when I had much more free time to waste.  Of course.
 
I would attribute it in part to my increased use of tobacco, mostly out of boredom, partly out of trying to stick to my New Year’s Resolution.  Only one, but it’s a big ‘un: every third month there must be no alcohol consumption whatsoever.  I have managed this when most failed theirs before we got out of the first quarter, I would imagine.
 
 I completed March, June and September with the September being the more difficult and June being quite easy.  I began smoking more about six weeks ago as a way to cope, which has weakened my immune system and ruined my stamina so I puff and pant like Gazza on the way to the off-license when moving anything heavy, like musical equipment.  It would need to be cut back to preserve my singing voice as my priorities have changed, so these other hints are more motivation to cut right down.  I’m doing fairly well: the average was 5-10 per day only a week ago, now it’s more like 1-3.  Last two days, just one.  I’ve used the cold turkey method for the booze and now a gradual reduction method for the tobacco, and both work for me.
 
So that describes how I got here (in medias res), but not what I’m thinking.
 
I was musing on The Big Questions Of Life again because of my interest in fiction construction.  I spend a lot of hours immersed in various different kinds of work (i.e. novel, film or album) and often attempt to create my own, so it is a common topic.
 
In many ways I believe learning so much about how to craft a world which consists of both rules and irregularities which cannot always be quantified helps in understanding our seemingly less logical universe, but only to an extent.  As I mentioned, those who think they have it all figured out do themselves not only the disservice of self-delusion, but the foolishness of closing the mind to future possibilities.  I like to know there are things which have made sense, which will always make sense and other things which probably won’t within my lifetime or those of a dozen future generations.  Not everything can be controlled and understood despite our best efforts… chaos theory at work, I guess.
 
I have always found this the antithesis of not just creativity, but life in general.  As soon as you close your mind completely, delude yourself into thinking everything is well in hand, it begins to atrophy which will harm you in the long term.  A life free of challenge is barely lived at all.  Other such well-worn idioms occur to me but it is not necessary to list them, as banality often follows.
 
Keeping a piece of that same childlike naivety and wonderment has been a conscious choice I have made all my life, because this ability to learn and to be influenced to the core is key to both my enjoyment of arts and my own small contribution to them whenever I compose a song or write a short story.  If my mind was closed and I just relied on previous experiences, I wouldn’t only fail to grow, I’d begin to turn stale too.  I’d say think of the difference between a flowing river and a stagnant pond for analogies sake, but that seems too trite.
 
I feel fortunate that in terms of sickness I’m not really that far down and I still have enough time to kick back, recover and think “what does it all mean?” while waiting to perk up again.  As many a good doctor will tell you, positive mental outlook is more important  than most people think, being somewhat symbiotic to physical health.
 
Contemplation and rumination are important parts of humanity that have often led to our greatest achievements, the sources of our driving ambitions.  A great idea can come from that, an object or outcome that leads to something which changes the day-to-day life of many, even if eventually it becomes part of the background banality us mollycoddled, over-privileged firstworlders take for granted.  A well-constructed joke or anecdote that provokes laughter from thousands, allowing them to forget themselves and live vicariously in the moment rather than worrying about all that could go wrong.  A compelling piece of drama that outlines both the joys and tragedies of the human experience… it’s a rich tapestry, all resulting from having a good think and being inspired to act on some facet of it.
 
I’d go further though, straight into personal opinion based on experience: sitting back just thinking about things is one of the few great remaining refuges in the modern world.  (In fact, I had to pause after that sentence to think about what to type next.  Best part of the writing process for this entry, no question.)  Advertisements scream “BUY ME, YOU NEED IT!” loud and rude – witness how ridiculously elaborate and irrelevant commercials for selling cars are these days, for just one notable example.  The common man is so concerned about staying in touch and daily digital dalliances that he may own a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a netbook computer, a tablet computer and a phone which is pretty much an ultra-portable pocket computer which also does calls now and then.  Too many trappings and toys, far too little enjoyment of anything, no chance to gather thoughts and recollections in a meaningful way.  That’s just a condensed version of what I see, though.
 
I tend to form better opinions when they’ve been mused upon at length and considered from various different viewpoints too – this is objectivity, the ability to visualise things from outside the self to an extent, a quality so often lacking in people I encounter.  Rather than getting caught up in the maelstrom of information available from hundreds of channels and millions of websites, blindly following one side or the other (as most debates only have the two, don’t they) it becomes easier to spot holes in both sides and realise that in most cases there can be no absolutes, and arguing about semantics is time better spent dedicated to a hobby, assuming that hobby isn’t arguing about semantics.
 
I’m not a great philosopher, I know that.  Most of what I’ve remarked upon is reimagining or accidental plagiarism of previous works and ideas far superior to my own - look at the title, it's clearly a reference to The Importance Of Being Earnest/Idle.  But thankfully sitting and thinking about things isn’t a competition so it’s irrelevant.  And besides, a lot of creativity is compositing previous things the creator has been exposed to in a seemingly original way.  No shame in that.
 
This is all starting to sound a bit like meandering empty-headed self-help bullshit, especially considering that I’m just discussing sitting around in various degrees of introspection, contemplating everything and nothing.  But then, I wouldn’t have come to that conclusion if I hadn’t – you guessed it – sat back thinking about it, being objective enough to point out flaws and deciding I liked it enough to post, anyway.

PREAMBLE

Windows 8 Developer Preview was released on 15th September 2011.

I downloaded it on the day but hadn't gotten round to tinkering with it because I wanted to do a clean install from a separate harddrive using my laptop: I thought I’d lost my spare 2.5” IDE caddy adapter, but I found it.  It was a waste of time doing it that way though and I need not have waited: as I found out, due to Windows 8 being unfinished and missing some features, I was unable to get my graphics card (a ATI Mobility Radeon X600) to install using various different driver packages, something that’ll be covered later.

After I backed up my Windows 7 install (a build I’ve customised with various third-party apps and registry tweaks since I installed it in November 2010 when I got the laptop) I tried an upgrade using a Windows 8 USB stick install I made using the old Windows 7 ISO builder dev tool.  I’ve never upgraded from one version of Windows to another before – I’ve never expected Microsoft to be able to get it right – but this time it went well and was mostly hands-free.  It took around 45 minutes, which isn’t too bad considering it has to wade through a 10GB Windows folder from the previous install and transfer the various DLLs and user files to the new version.  (It uses around the same amount of space on the C:\ drive now I’ve removed the Windows.old folder.)

Now, after a weekend playing about with it I’d say it’s a big improvement even in a clearly unfinished state, and I’m genuinely impressed with what the software engineers have done to make it notably better than Windows 7, which has been a solid and dependable OS.

I’ll do the usual pros/cons list followed by a few paragraphs of summary.


CONS

Metro UI.

I’ve bitched about tablet PCs before, and in my Amazon iPad review I went into extensive detail.  I consider them passive, unproductive halfway points between smartphones and netbook/notebook computers.  The lack of a keyboard really ticks me off, so booting Windows 8 Dev for the first time to find an even more unpleasant version of the crappy tile world they tout on Windows 7 Phone, or Windows Phone 7 whatever the fuck it is, was irritating.

The problem with Metro UI is, I’m sure I wouldn’t want to use it even if I was on a touchscreen device: it’s peppered with pointless games and other stuff I can get elsewhere, like a rudimentary Twitter client and integrated RSS newsfeeds.  Hardly revolutionary, and as much as I bashed the iPad in my review it’s far better at being a passive tablet device than Metro UI is or ever will be.

More annoying is what it does to the desktop (aka “Real Windows”) part of the OS.  It adds stupid ribbons to top of Explorer windows, like those in Office 2007 onwards.  I don’t mind them in Office because it’s easier than digging through menus, but in Explorer most of the features on the ribbon can be reached with a right click dialogue menu or two!  Explorer ribbons waste valuable screen spac, reminding me of those “helper object” toolbars that clog up browsers when installed by unscrupulous and unaware luddites.  To put it simply, Metro UI is complete rubbish if you’re a desktop user, and still fairly useless even if not.

Losing the Start Menu – a key feature since Windows ’95 – is unforgivable.  With Metro UI the Start Menu button merely toggles back to Metro, but thankfully with this little app or a quick registry tweak most of the damage Metro UI does to Windows can be repaired.  Unfortunately you lose a few things after disabling Metro: the improved Task Manager reverts to the Windows 7 one and you lose the ability to mount ISOs without third-party software, but at least those ribbons are gone.


Missing features.

An unavoidable consequence of releasing a product that hasn’t even made it to alpha/beta stage perhaps, but for example it’s disappointing that when bringing up the desktop Personalise -> Window Color & Appearance to find that the option to change border/font/button sizes is missing.  Sadly this means I’m unable to correct a problem with selected window titles being gray when selected even though the theme is blue.  I keep clicking on windows to focus them when they’re already focused, which is an annoyance.

Still, fortunately just like Windows 7 going to Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance Settings all of the pointless time/CPU wasting animations I hate can be turned off.  I take it that OS X Lion can’t do that, so as long as even an unfinished version of Windows 8 can the odd missing feature is forgivable at this stage.


Driver problems.

This is probably another result of being an unfinished product.  When doing a clean install, just like Windows 7 both my graphics card and sound card didn’t install at all, leaving me to use it in 1024x768 which looks great when stretched to 1280x800 on a 15.4” laptop LCD, trust me!

Unlike Windows 7 I couldn’t solve the graphics card problem despite trying many different drivers and various little tricks.  Upgrading from Windows 7 allows you to use all your existing drivers and most programs without issue, so as long as you’ve got a full system image to restore should Windows 8 not work out that’s the best solution for now.

To be fair, part of the reason there is a developer version is for this very reason: getting old hardware and applications working in the slightly modified Windows 7 environment.  Hopefully that’s what developers will be doing, rather than wasting time learning and coding for Metro.  (Perhaps the new WinRT programming model will be usable outside of Metro because it appears to my relatively untrained eye a much improved way of making applications for Windows.)


Miscellaneous bugs.

Nothing too bad, just compatibility problems with software made for Windows 7 and in some cases Vista/XP.  The oddest one I got was losing use of the C and V keys on my keyboard when writing up this entry, funnily enough, but that was easily fixed.

It looks like some of the existing GUI bugs of Windows 7 haven’t been touched, like thumbnails not caching properly on Start Menu folders, and sadly the newer-style Start Menu which opens over the frequently-used programs list is still in full effect.  Fortunately there’s a good registry hack for that which still works.


PROS

MUCH faster.

Windows 8 Dev feels like a streamlined version of Windows 7, which itself was a streamlined version of Vista.  All of them are technically versions of NT (Vista = NT 6.0, Windows 7 = NT 6.1, Windows 8 Dev = NT 6.2) so I look at it like Microsoft taking a pre-existing engine and tweaking it closer to perfection, similar to what the Rockstar Games stable did when using the GTA III engine for Vice City, then San Andreas.  Each version improves performance while adding new features, resulting in a more satisfying experience for the end user.

Presumably the reason the code base has been de-bloated further is because Windows 8 will need to run on ARM processors and/or other embedded devices with limited amounts of RAM.  The reduced battery life and fewer hardware resources available on today’s smart devices are always an issue, but as Microsoft learned from Vista people won’t put up with sluggish performance.

With that in mind, on my six year old Dell D810 laptop with a 100GB 7200RPM 2.5” IDE drive - which ran Windows 7 SP1 very well - performing a migration resulted in the appreciable speed boost of every part of the OS.  My failed clean install with few applications had faster performance still, even with a slower, smaller 5400RPM harddrive, so if you have a newer multi-core machine with more than 2GB of RAM it could be lightning fast even without an SSD.  (As a side note, my boot time is now 30 seconds shorter… about a minute and a half from cold to logging in and then another few seconds to see/use the desktop environment.)

These performance gains are exactly the reason I decided to try the upgrade, and so far my effort has been rewarded.  Improved software multithreading allows smooth UI interaction even when the CPU is brickwalled at 100%, something even Windows 7 struggled with.  Whereas before every app could grind to a halt when the CPU was so heavily loaded, in Windows 8 speed remained almost identical to Windows XP, an OS my laptop was designed for.

Assuming you can turn off Metro in the finished version and functionality is a bit closer to Windows 7 when in desktop mode, it’d be worth upgrading for this reason alone.  Quicker to resume from Sleep or to Hibernate, your regular applications, games too I’d imagine – everything makes better use of your hardware.  Less harddrive grinding, lower CPU use when idle, programs and windows springing up near-instantaneously… THIS is what a good operating system is all about.


Better font rendering.

I’ll be frank: one thing that Apple has long had over Microsoft or anyone else is beautiful typography and wonderful design/presentation overall.  Every designer alive seems to copy or be influenced by those signature rounded edges, two-tone gradient fade tiles and transparent anti-aliasing, even Microsoft themselves.

I don’t really care for all that, to be honest: an OS is a platform to run apps for productivity, not a set of graphic and design tricks to gawp at, but I will admit I appreciated Microsoft trying to keep everyone happy by moving on from the square/gray look everything before Vista seemed to have, and when I go from Windows 7 to XP now I’m amused by how primitive it looks.

With Windows 7, I don’t mind the default Segoe UI at larger sizes, but for my laptop where everything was at eight or nine point it doesn’t look as sharp.  I had to tediously re-theme the default Aero scheme with ClearType-enabled Tahoma in Windows 7 for readability.  But with Windows 8, they’ve either modified Segoe UI, the way it’s rendered or both – it actually looks quite good to me at any size, beautifully sans-serif and clear, useful both as an OS app and within Firefox 6.0.2 for most web pages (I still refuse to use Internet Explorer for any reason: bonus points to Windows 8 for keeping it disabled when I upgraded from Windows 7.)

It’s not quite up to Apple levels of presentation, but Windows 8 nudges Microsoft a step closer in the right direction with subtle tweaks and improvements like these.


Excellent backward-compatibility.

Once upon a time, Windows XP had a complete joke feature called backward-compatibility.  It rarely worked correctly, but it has improved with newer versions of the OS.  So the trend continues with Windows 8 Dev, as it’s just as powerful and useful as the one in Windows 7, with the benefit of being a scaled back a bit in terms of options.

It’s the reason a majority of my previous programs worked straight away after the upgrade, I would wager.  Two required a reinstall (Breakaway, a real-time audio post-processor and MagicISO, to mount image files when Metro is switched off) but worked perfectly after that.  One wouldn’t work at all – ZoneAlarm, arguably the best free firewall available – but the upgraded Windows Firewall and the hardware ones on good routers should be secure enough in the meantime.

There is a performance hit as a result of Windows 8 providing older programs with compatibility modes – I noticed a lot of svchost.exe processes still loose in the Task Manager, which may or may not be related to legacy software support for those programs which run on multiple versions of Windows - but it’s nowhere near as noticeable as it was with Windows 7.


SUMMARY

I’ve tried to remain fairly unbiased throughout this assessment, but now I’m going right into opinionated territory for this summary.

Beyond Metro UI, Windows 8 isn’t a giant leap forward.  Microsoft and many other manufacturers need to give up and admit that Apple have the tablet device market sewn up, and the industry as a whole needs to get out of the “tablet computing is the future!” mentality, because strictly speaking it isn’t.  Even casual users need a keyboard regularly enough to warrant one, and once the infatuation with tablets has worn off everyone will realise this, not just conceited nerds like myself.  It’s the reason Metro UI exists at all, but as usual with new Microsoft features it’s a half-assed and mostly pointless attempt.  They’re not a company to get things right first time, are they?

However, Windows 8 doesn’t need to be a giant leap forward because its predecessor was a great achievement.  I’ve had Windows 7 running smoothly on machines dating from 2004, things with single core 1.5Ghz processors, 512MB RAM and integrated graphics and still found it usable when tweaked a little.  Microsoft stepping back from the edge of extreme bloatware and combining the looks of Vista with the speed of XP worked and gleaned grunts of approval from even the staunch Linux/OS X crowds in many cases, and perhaps the new version can continue that.

In non-Metro Desktop mode, Windows 8 is further refinement of what made Windows 7 a great OS.  It runs even more smoothly on underpowered hardware, uses less RAM in many situations and is generally as transparent as possible.  I’ve read reports of it being unstable, but even this early Developer version has been fast, flawless and free of major problems for me since the upgrade, so much so that I plan to keep on using it indefinitely.  No blue death screens in sight yet!

With some of the Mac crowd insisting that OS X Lion requires 4GB or ideally 8GB of RAM to run briskly and users writing of glaring bugs in the latest versions of Safari and iTunes, in an ironic turn it seems OS X has begun to change places with Windows when it comes to errors and bloat.  I’m not an extensive Mac user (I have a Snow Leopard Hackintosh project scheduled in for next week though), but it seems Apple are undoing the good they did with Snow Leopard while Microsoft are building on the good they did with Windows 7.

It’s starting to feel like the tides are turning back in Microsoft’s favour, and why not?  If this developer version of Windows 8 is anything to go by, whether or not Metro takes off as long as the core functionality of the desktop continues to be this strong they are going to have a very happy set of users, maybe even enough to sway some of the less techie Linux and OS X devotees to the fray.  

Don’t be surprised if Windows 8 works on iPad 2, as well.  Now that I would like to see.

---

FIN

I wrote this little ranty think piece about six weeks ago.  I now disagree with about half of it, but I like the way it looks on the page so here it is.  Despite the title it's not particularly anti-Apple, that's more of an attention grabbing mislead.  I think the bit about Steve Jobs is a little harsh in light of his poor health (I respect the guy even if I don't care for over half his work) but left it in regardless.

---

So there it is.  I start thinking maybe I'm going too far with the venomous hatred of Apple, but then something happened to make me think maybe I hadn't been hating them enough.

This has nothing to do with O2 fucking me around with their iPhone contract.  That's O2 being clownpunchers, not Apple's fault in the slightest.  I actually quite like the iPhone even if the battery life is a bit of a joke.  I tend to hate smartphones in general so I suppose the fact I enjoy an iDevice that is one is quite remarkable.  Good job Apple?  Yeah, I guess.

What it has to do with is that goddamn Spinnaker Tower that Portsmouth has.  I hate that thing.  It was late, over-budget and makes the city skyline look stupid because there are no other skyscrapers to make it scale correctly.  It's a sore thumb, pure style over substance.

Then it hit me: the Spinnaker Tower is like Apple made a skyscraper.  It has a lot of the same failings, and the shape itself is reminiscent of something they'd come up with.

Fair enough, it's a good observation and I had fun with the Eureka moment.  But then I realised something else: people actually like this thing.  It's fatally flawed and already has health and safety problems (the steelwork is cracking, one of the lifts doesn't work) yet it's considered a great achievement, a thing of beauty.

That's not right, is it?  Because you can then make another connection, and this one is worst of all.  It's okay to be shit at what you do as long as you look good.  Make mistakes, fuck things up, doesn't matter.  As long as the aesthetics are correct it's a success, whatever.

Sound familiar?  Celebrity culture, anyone?  One of the underlying problems with the "Western" world, anyone else?  I couldn't make this picture any clearer if it were dot-to-fucking-dot.

We've been conditioned to accept this, I suppose.  But it really isn't good enough.

I'll take the high functionality, low aesthetic device EVERY FUCKING TIME.  It's not enough that an object - or person - look good.  In fact in many cases I'd consider that ancillary.  I'm not preaching, I'm not being self-righteous and asserting "I'm better than anyone for being this way" it's just who I am.  Functionality is everything.  Make your product work wonderfully, and if there's time at the end make it look good too as long as that doesn't drive the price up.

Consider what might happen if style over substance continues to permeate to a greater and greater degree.  I'll dip into the drawer marked "idle speculation" so you don't have to.  One hundred years from now (hello near-future science-fiction) people live in a world where style IS substance, and regular substance as we know it (hello Spock) doesn't count for squat.  Buildings are poorly constructed, computers barely work at all, but that's alright because everything looks good.  It's a world where everything looks like ice-cream in an advert: delicious to look at, poison to eat (they often use synthetic compounds, you see).

You'd think the people of this world would be happy with this outcome, but as it turns out they're jaded and apathetic.  Even the most beautiful of objects bores them, is mundane, is every day.  They are the modern day version of the 21st century art snobs, who would turn their noses up at even the most lovingly crafted portrait or wonderfully realised piece of Cubism.  There is art everywhere, but it's all surface beauty.  Nothing works properly in this world, but it looks good failing.  Perhaps some smartalec individual sits at the modern equivalent of a laptop, and yammers on about things his grandpa foretold and how he knew this was what would happen, and yearns for a future like the past: where shit was ugly, but got shit done.

But I digress.  It was starting to go too meta, too farce.  I'd like to think even with the rampant stupidity displayed by the human race on a daily basis we'd have moved to avoid such facepalm-inducing flabbergasting asshattery (try saying that last part out loud five times; bet you can't).  But who knows?  Maybe statues of the late great Steve Jobs are just around the corner.  I needn't worry though: the 1G version will need to be replaced by the Jobs Memorial 2G soon enough.  Apparently it's even more lifelike, and the viewing angle is better (I'm assuming hologram you see).

---

DECONSTRUCTION: I love those brackety humorisms, eh?  They're a nice device for putting in jokes or self-deprecations.  I'd say they're a part of my style.  Whether my style has substance is really up to you, and by you I mean me, because I'm probably the only one reading this.

(Yes, that deconstruction part was in the original draft.)

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday I received a 500GB TiVo unit from Virgin Media, after having negotiated a "no install/HD activation charge" waiver from a fine gentleman who works in the CEO's office.  I was on the waiting list for a month which I was willing to accept, especially since monthly rental for the device is a mere £3.

Sadly I have not found it to be all that they promise in the admittedly very impressive ad campaigns they have been running, but despite some irritating flaws there is potential here for a Sky+ HD killer, if Virgin Media are smart enough to get it together and fix the firmware sooner rather than later of course.



In my opinion it's hideously ugly, but I haven't factored that into the list of things to love and shove because I really don't care.  I'm about functionality over style in my technology, especially in cases where it makes a product cheaper than the leading competitor, and I'm not going to be staring directly at it for more than a few seconds at a time.  (If almost everything you own is made by Apple, it will probably make you throw up in your mouth a little bit though.)

The lack of an LCD could be a minus point for some, but personally I hate obnoxiously bright LCD info panels on set-top boxes (well, set-bottom boxes in this era of slim LCD/LED/plasma panels) that distract you from the TV screen so it's not an issue and doesn't count against the device at all.

On with the review, anyway.  I've stuck to a fairly standard good/bad list format here and decided to forego any attempts at humour.  Regardless, it does have my usual unwieldly length (Word clocks it in at a shade over 3,000 of them) so if going into almost excruciating levels of detail will bore you senseless, read the CNET review instead.  It's a shade less technical but still covers the important points well.

 
PROS

Most of this is standard TiVo stuff that’s been there since the beginning, but as I’ve never really used one (until the last few years, I’d guess they were too nerdy or esoteric even for those who didn’t mind the expense) I suppose I’m more impressed than someone who has had them before.

• Pause, rewind, fast forward live TV.  Yeah, let’s start with the most basic and obvious feature, the backbone of the TiVo device.  Still pretty neat though.  I like recording a show on a channel that has adverts then starting to watch it fifteen minutes later.  Then I can fast forward through the breaks and catch up with the live broadcast at the end, more or less, which solves one of my complaints with almost any non-BBC show: annoying, over-produced LOUD adverts.  I love this idea of having a “channel cache” as soon as you switch over: if you start watching something that you aren’t sure on and suddenly really like it, the TiVo will take the “channel cache” you already have and add to it, then store when the program has finished.  And when you have one of those “what the fuck did he just say?” moments you can use the BACK button to go back about five seconds – more than once – to decipher it.  People with noisy kids must LOVE this feature.
• Record three things at once while watching an on-demand/pre-recorded feature. On the first day I got it I decided to pick up some shows and movies I like, but not enough to stick on my NAS/HTPC (4.5TB at the time of writing, with only 300GB left).  So I had it record two TV shows (one with the lovely Summer Glau, The World’s Most Popular Nerd Crush™) and a movie while watching a documentary recorded earlier.  Not something I’d do all the time, but useful.  Oh, and MASSIVE bonus points for being able to change the end time while on each recording without stopping or causing errors… sometimes programs start late, or sporting events run long – good to be covered in those cases.
• Great handling of SD upscaling and HD in general.  Let’s be honest: even 720p is a massive improvement over the old 576i PAL standard.  Having content upscaled to 1080i or already in that format (deinterlaced so well on my particular LCD TV that it looks like 1080p) really helps the immersion, and looks sharp because I’m running in my panel’s native resolution.  For my money, the VM TiVo does a slightly better job of handling it than the previous V HD and V+ HD boxes: could well be my imagination though.
• The “finished” OSD HD parts.  Yes, this same praised feature will turn up in the “I don’t like this” column, but although those gripes centre around the interface the parts that appear complete are slick.  Let’s be fair – some might not like the very red colour scheme (I’d prefer blue, or perhaps a more muted dark grey) but overall I think the layout and typography makes up for it.  A little less of the VM logo in the foreground would be nice – for example, the use of it on the Info OSD on the left while watching something is unnecessary and could be used for the channel’s logo rather than it being smaller on the right – but this is a big step up from the clunky, poorly anti-aliased presentations seen on VM’s previous STBs.
• Fast EPG.  Apparently this has been a source of weakness in the past, but it’s also a massive strength.  Daily, the EPG is downloaded and cached on the TiVo itself, so rather than downloading the schedules each time you access the EPG - which is slow and puts a strain on VM’s network no doubt – it’s ready to go and is practically instantaneous.  A “mini EPG”, accessed by pressing OK while in full-screen TV mode, is a nice touch too.
• Better organisation of recorded content.  Normally being able to sort by name or date wouldn’t be seen as a big deal, but as the earlier versions of the VM TiVo firmware lacked this feature I’m happy to say it’s here now and makes organisation so much easier.  Even things still recording appear at their proper position on the list in alphabetised mode.
• “I like this guy/girl.  I want EVERYTHING they’re in recorded as it airs.”  Explore a show; see an actor/actress you like.  Now click on their thumbnail and observe all the things they’ve been in recently, organised by date and type (show/movie).  Why not record all of it or at least put it on the WishList for when it’s next on the broadcast schedule?  This feature is a standout, but isn’t at the top of the list because it’s probably only a stand out to me.  I regularly discover new shows or movies by keeping track of performers or directors whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past (for example, I got into Suits because it features Gina Torres from Firefly and the music is composed by Christopher Tyng who also scored Futurama.  Stop reading now and go watch the pilot for Suits because it’s a great comedy/drama) so to have this achievable with a few clicks is lovely, if not instantaneous… yet.
• Basic control of other devices.  My main audio output for anything connected to the TV is an old LG 5.1 surround system which I lost the remote for five years ago.  Even my newer universal remote used for controlling TV, Xbox and HiFi doesn't have the codes to control the volume, yet the newer VM TiVo remote does.  I had to search through the database to find it, but it's in there.  Not bad considering most universal remotes short of the Logitech Harmony don't even have listings for LG receivers.
• Near-silent running.  I'm nuts about having as little background noise as possible from various devices, so it's a pleasure to report you can't even hear the TiVo running until you're a foot or so away from it.  It appears they've used a heatsink and laptop HDD, rather than a small fan and 3.5" HDD.  Good move.

 
CONS

I’m sure a great deal of these wouldn’t bother a standard user, but I do like to nitpick.  Always bear in mind though, some of these mostly minor gripes pale in comparison to the fewer but more powerful positive points I’ve touched on.
 

• Key confusion.  Various different parts of the UI use different keymaps: there’s often little to no continuity between them.  For example, some menus or OSDs don’t respond to the BACK key, which should always take you back one level when pushed and all levels when held for a second.  Likewise, you can use SMS-style alphabet entry for searches on the iPlayer app, but not on the VM frontend of iPlayer which has a different UI.  Using the navigation keys to enter letters is VERY tedious.  There needs be a uniform keymap to streamline the process and prevent annoying slip-ups – so many times I’ve flicked from playing a recording back to live TV on a different channel because of the inconsistency.
• EPG bugs.  If you see a special © style icon beside certain shows, it means it is available as a “catchup” show from BBC iPlayer, itv Player, 4oD or Virgin’s proprietary streaming service.  Sadly, there’s no “press GREEN to watch this on catchup immediately” (or similar) option… you have to manually go to the Catchup menu and find that show all over again, which combined with the lack of SMS-style text entry and the overall sluggishness is irritating.  It’d be better not to have the © style icon if this is the case.  Also, whenever you open the EPG it starts at the top of the channel list.  Much more useful it if centred on the channel currently playing.  Annoyingly there is no basic option to hide ghosted (i.e. not in your package) channels by default.  This can be mitigated by making a favourites list which doesn’t include the channels not in your package: the TiVo helps you out here by not allowing you to add ghosted channels to the list, so it’s not all bad, but overall the partially broken functionality of the EPG detracts from the presentation.
• OSD performance issues.  Menus are sometimes lightning speed, sometimes sluggish.  For a device with three tuners this is disappointing… surely there’s enough power to keep the UI nice and quick?  Yeah, I know architecturally it probably doesn’t work that way, but if you can record three shows and watch a forth there must be enough CPU grunt to manage slick performance.  Also, going from Home to Guide or vice versa results in not a smooth transition, but a messy toggle back to full screen, then the other one loads.  Recording just ONE HD channel can make the UI even slower.  Some parts of the UI look more polished than others… for example the EPG/Home screen look HD, but the Recordings Scheduled menu looks blurry and is clearly presented in a poorly upscaled standard definition format with wrong aspect ratio when using a widescreen TV.  It looks like some bits are finished, full HD and some are earlier SD menus they didn’t have time to make HD versions of.  Maybe VM ran out of money to pay their developers?
• Twitter app (and presumably others) require a separate Web Apps account, and are useless anyway.  Load the Twitter app, watch the small top-right picture disappear.  No point using it if you can’t PiP, to be fair.  YouTube app is sluggish and annoying… it’s better on my Xbox running XBMC, and that thing has 64MB of RAM and 733mhz single core processor!  (No SMS-style text entry on YouTube too, really?!)  A laptop or tablet replacement this is not, especially since you can't add apps to your TiVo via some kind of store like you can on almost anything else that has apps these days.
• The “Peanut” Remote.  The up/down/left/right navigation buttons are above the play controls.  In my experience, this is plain wrong: play controls (less used) should be at the top above navigation, volume and channel controls (often used).  The back button is in the wrong place too: should be where the navigation is.  It’s unfortunate that the UI sometimes requires use of the thumbs up/down buttons and is programmed for separate play/pause, otherwise I’d use the one for the regular V HD Box (all Virgin STBs from past eight years or so use same remote codes).  The peanut shape is nice and ergonomic, but overall the remote is cluttered, partly because the play/pause/rewind/forward are disproportionately sized compared to the rest.
• Banner bar “RECOMMENDED BECAUSE…”. If you select TV show/movie items in the banner bar and see this sign under the description, you’ll probably also see “We love it, we hope you do too!” under every single one.  By all means keep the banner, but let the viewer decide for themselves why it has been recommended.  The point of TiVo is choice, so too much handholding looks conspicuous.  Bin it and instead make the plot description longer than two VERY short lines: don’t bring “VM’s professional opinion” into viewing selection.
• On Demand/Catchup can be inconsistent.  On VM’s banner bar there was a show called The Prisoner.  It has Ian McKellan, aka Gandalf from LOTR.  “He’s a fine actor and VM are pushing this show, so why not watch the first episode?” I thought.  Except I couldn’t.  I clicked through several menus and the only option I got was BACK; no way to play it whatsoever.  This happened on a show VM were making highly visible, for goodness sake.  It occurs more regularly than it should, it’s not just “settling in” jitters as I first thought.  Also, it’s not always clear that some On Demand content has a price.  I don’t like clicking through half a dozen menus to watch an SD movie from 2006 (in this case X-Men United) which appears to have no charge to then be told it’s £2.50 to rent for 2 days just before I click play.  Especially when it’s showing FREE in HD the next day on one of my pre-existing package channels.  Things like this really let the device down and make it frustrating.
• PiP fail.  I don’t know what’s going on, but some channels won’t display in the top-right when you’re in menus etc.  Other menus, VM put up an annoying TiVo promo.  Hey VM, I already have the TiVo; I don’t need to be told about it over again.  Also, when moving quickly between parts of the OSD, sometimes there are stutters (i.e. sound/picture pause for a second) for no good reason, even on SD channels.  I often think “you can make a device that records three shows at once, but it can’t display one thumbnail sized window consistently between menus even when nothing is recording?!”  Maybe it’s a case of giving the PiP window a higher priority and not using it for promos on certain menus.
• No true 1080p mode usable at all times.  Now I can forgive my ten year old games consoles  - the Xbox 1 and PS2 – for not managing better than 1080i.  It’s amazing they can run at that resolution at all.  A newish device like this not giving 1080p at all times though?  Very disappointing.  Additionally the auto-detect thought my TV wasn’t capable of 720x576i.  No of course, my British bought Samsung LCD TV made in 2010 can’t display a PAL format that’s been a broadcast standard for more than fifty years and is still used on the integrated Freeview DVB tuner.  That must be it.
• Recording problems.  Click on a show you already have scheduled to record within the EPG and which options do you get?  “Record as planned” and “Series Link & other options”.  WHERE THE HELL IS THE “DO NOT RECORD” SELECTION?  There isn’t one.  You have to go into Home then My Recordings then another two menus to delete the thing, which is often cumbersome.  There is a specific recording problem that is severe enough to require it's own point, which is...
• “This channel is not authorised.  Contact Virgin Media for more information.”  While recording a HD channel movie (The Departed on 4HD) there was a problem: I decided to watch some of the start of the movie just for test purposes, and as it turns out the tuner handling the channel had got stuck, throwing up the aforementioned error.  So the recording was b0rked, and tuner remained completely stuck even after stopping it.  Yet when consulting the recording submenu of the Info OSD on a different channel it had registered as recording correctly (channel/time info), but when on the channel it was recording from it registered as something completely different and random.  Playing back the incomplete file led to some MPEG-2 glitching and a hang of the file.  Now this could undermine the whole point of having a PVR: if you’re not sure your selected content is going to be correctly stored, why not just download it instead?  Or don’t miss it at broadcast time.  Clearly this needs to be fixed, and soon.
• Seek functions aren't precise enough.  On XBMC you have many options when skipping or seeking through a streamed file: locally stored (i.e. internal HDD), on the LAN or across the WAN.  One of the nicest features is being able to skip up/down by ten minutes and to use the keyboard numpad (or numbers on the remote) to input a precise time to jump to.  Having three levels of rew/ff on the TiVo is not enough: even going from minute one to minute fifty of a one hour show is slow as it seeks through rather than jumping to a set point.  Jumping to a set point in a media file is much easier on a harddrive than having it constantly access data at faster-than-playback speeds, too.  The BBC iPlayer app can do it, but not the standard TiVo interface.
• Lack of a programme reminder feature.  Just because TiVo can record a trio of things at once, that doesn’t mean I don’t want reminders to watch things live rather than silently recording them (other than the “channel cache” feature I already discussed, of course).  In fact, being reminded something is going to broadcast live might stop me wasting HDD space recording it because I’m not being told it’s starting.  Perhaps have a reminder with options – “yes, switch tv channel and watch”, “both record and watch” and “don’t watch, just record” – obviously with the option to toggle this on an overall or show-by-show basis.  Seems pretty logical and clear cut to me, especially when you bear in mind that every other VM cable TV box currently in use - even the gray Samsung one from a decade ago – has a basic programme reminder.  (Note to device/game developers: NEVER remove old features because you assume users don’t need them.  Leave them in – no exceptions.)
• No UPnP support for streaming TiVo content to LAN devices or vice versa.  This is really a minor thing overall, due to copyright issues and such, but being able to stream from the TiVo HDD to other devices via UPnP, SMB or even FTP would be a great feature, as would using the 1080p-capable TiVo hardware to stream your own HD collection - assuming it has MPEG-4 H.264 support of course.  More realistically and uncopyright-violatingy, being able to stream from the TiVo to regular V HD or V+ HD boxes (or indeed other TiVos) would be an excellent feature which is apparently in the pipeline.  When streaming from the TiVo I mean completed programs of course: it’s unreasonable to expect to stream unfinished recordings.

 
CONCLUSION

The Virgin Media TiVo shows enormous potential, and already has a plethora of useful features that can transform your viewing habits and minimise the annoyances of having to catch a program at a certain day and time, which certain people (myself included) are now loathe to do as we have better options available.  Unfortunately, as good as the Cisco-provided hardware obviously is, clear deficiencies, inconsistencies, oversights, errors and so forth in the firmware lead to a product that veers dangerously between “polished, professional and fun to use” and “slapdash, amateurish and rage-inducing”.
 
Sadly it seems that VM haven’t learned lessons from their bug-ridden, practically crippled Super Hub product and are still releasing devices with customised UIs that are not beta-tested properly so suffer horribly when rolled out to customers.  As a beta-tester for the Super Hub I can say with some authority the testing is neglected and leads to expensive headaches later (everything I reported on the device was ignored).
 
Fortunately though, the TiVo is nowhere near as bad and is usable on a day-to-day basis, even in light of VM’s advice to reboot it every three days or so.  It’s just hard to escape the feeling that you’re stuck with a product that’s merely good, when it could be great, but that is somehow acceptable because the rental charge for one or more TiVos in a house is merely £3/month and the feeling that within six months most of the problems will be solved or mitigated.

Would I recommend one to you?  Yes... just barely.

Rating: 69%

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Regularly updated VM TiVo blog
CNET review (again)
Another VM TiVo blog
Standard "off you go to Wikipedia" link

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ADDENDUM: If you're wondering why I was able to dissect this device in just over 24-hours of ownership, bear in mind it was a rainy weekend, lots of programs I wanted to watch were on, I'm a fast typist and quite honestly I didn't have anything better to do.  As a technology enthusiast (yes, that is a euphemism for nerd) I make it my business to know the workings of anything vaguely technical as quickly as possible, so that probably factored in too.

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FIN