David J. Rysz Talks Tech

Thursday
Jun242010

iOS4 + iPhone3G = Slow

I was not going to upgrade my iPhone 3G to IOS4 because of the limited features it offers the 3G as well as my concern for installing a new version of an OS. The last major upgrade broke functionality with many of my apps. In the end I decided to be an early adopter and took the plunge. Luckily I read on a blog that they recommended performing a manual backup of the phone before upgrading otherwise I would have lost my data. I started the upgrade but the backup was taking much longer than expected and i needed to run some errands so I cancelled it . Later that night I started the upgrade again which took about 30 minutes to complete. When it was done I saw the phone was completely wiped. I felt sick when I saw my data was gone. I restored using the backup I made and luckily after over an hour my phone was back.
All of my applications seem to work but I have run into issues such as:
* Battery doesn't last as long
* iPod stutters while playing
* Navigating in the iPod player is slower
* Settings take longer to load
* Camera is slower to start
* Finger swipe to unlock not always recognized
* Some Apps seem to run slower

So what did I gain that I care about?
* Folder support
* Unified Inbox
* geo location on photos (kind of cool)
* Custom play lists

Wow ok I seemed to have lost more than I gained. Well I just need to hold on until the fall to get my new phone.

Monday
Jun072010

iPhone 4 announced!

*DROOL*
The new iPhone 4 was announced today with great fanfare. I am impressed with the new features and will be getting one sometime in November I hope.

Wednesday
Jun022010

The Commodore Amiga

It cost me half my salary for a few months but I had finally gotten my dream computer. No not my Alienware PC, my Amiga 2000 with Bridgeboard! That was a sweet machine when I was finally done putting it together. Here are the specs as I remember them:

Amiga 2000


  • 8MB Fast Ram

  • 2MB Chip Ram (Fat Agnes)

  • Commodore Flicker Fixer card

  • Commodore AT Bridgeboard

  • DCTV

  • GVP 68030 Accelerator card

  • Syquest 44MB removable hard drive

  • Quantum 105MB SCSI hard drive

 

I will always remember the first day the computer arrived. I unboxed it and before I even got to play with it I decided I wanted to put a power splitter cable inside even though I didn't have another hard drive to put in. The amiga power connector was not keyed so I ended up plugging the Y splitter cable backwards. I switched the computer on and I heard a sizzling noise and a pop and part of one of the chips from the hard drive came flying out of the machine. I was devasted. I waited months to get the machine and I destroyed it in minutes. I had to wait about a month before I got the computer back again. After that experience I was much more careful about plugging things in.
   I was really into graphics and doing 3D rendering using the Imagine software. It would take days to create a 3D animation that only lasted a few seconds but for the time it was amazing. Microsoft Windows could not compare to running the Amiga OS on a hard drive with a decent amount of ram.

 

 

Thursday
Mar182010

Why multitasking on the iPhone is a bad idea

People keep complaining that one of the deficiencies of the iPhone Operating system is Apple's restriction on running multiple processes simultaneously.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Mar032010

iPhone / iTunes bug

I rarely sync my iPhone to my computer. I prefer to download new podcasts over wifi. There seems to be a bug with multiple versions of the iPhone OS where during the download of several podcasts, something happens and you end up losing all of your music. The symptom is the iTunes application may crash and when ou restart you see "please wait updating iTunes library". After that message goes away you still have your podcasts but any songs you had are now missing. They still exist because they are taking up space still but the index seems to have gotten corrupted and as a result the music is inacessible. The only solution I have found is to sync with my computer to put all my music back on. I have seen in the Apple forums other people complaining of the same issue. Until Apple fixes this problem I am Going to download one podcast at a time and don't try and play any music or podcasts until the download completes.