Personal rumblings on tech and stuff
Just to show you how problematic Android maps and geolocation can often be, I’ve tested the Google Maps app in the iPhone 5s and LG G2 using the same wifi network. And here’s the result.
This is what Android makes out of my current location: Continue reading
Often you hear or read comments from bashers and non-bashers alike about how expensive Apple products are especially when there are new products released, just like the recent iPhone 5s. So the question is, does Apple really employ premium materials to their products that they’re worth that much?
I have a 3-year old, network-locked, 32GB (base model) iPhone 4 and a 2-year old unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2). Both were selling at the same price level when they came out (~PHP32K). If you look closely at the spec sheets of both, SGS2 is the clear winner being a more recent smartphone and with a dual-core processor (see the comparison at the GSMArena). But today I can easily sell the iPhone 4 for PHP10,000 (~US$240) while the SGS2 for only PHP5,000 (~US$120). There goes your premium, ladies and gentlemen!
iPhone 5S officially announced!
Everytime there’s a new Apple product announcement, I can’t wait to read all the Apple-bashing comments by haters and trolls alike. It’s becoming a habit of mine. After all, you can’t read them at other new product announcements, right?
There are a lot of metrics to measure smartphone dominion among different smartphone brands and operating systems. Survey organizations use sales figures, net profit, internet traffic, apps ecosystem, etc., even broken down into different demographics and/or geography, to demonstrate the different systems’ leadership above the rest.
But, really, if you are going to be realistic about it, try going to restaurants, malls, and/or coffee shops around the metro, and observe which smartphones are predominantly in the hands of other people around you, you’ll find that these statistics are not quite accurate.
When you’re ready to defend Apple even on a field you’re not particularly familiar with, then that what makes you a fanboy.
So, then, why don’t we just keep buying and enjoying Apple products that we learned to love and leave Apple shareholders’ wealth to the Wall Street analysts?
I am a big fan of Tweetbot for iPhone. There’s no denying I would recommend this app to any iPhone user who wants a more robust Twitter client for their smartphone. A price tag is attached to the app in the iTunes App Store, but the price is well worth it. This app is probably the best Twitter client-app out there available to any platform. Unfortunately, Tweetbot is an iOS-only app, which makes it one of the selling points why I choose the iPhone. Continue reading
The Hiarcs team recently posted two videos (one for Mac and another for Windows) to give a quick tour of their products. The Hiarcs Chess Explorer applications for both platforms virtually look the same and share the same functionalities.
I have a Mac and purchased the Mac version, and here’s the quick tour:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtBdRjtrBDU&w=480]
Yet, I have to reiterate my feature requests I hope we get in the next version:
See also Hiarcs Chess Explorer for PC video tour.
So I finally took the plunge and purchased my own copy of Hiarcs Chess Explorer for Mac, because no one wants to sponsor one for me.
And here are my first impressions: Continue reading
Fritz 12 is a great chess product that unfortunately has no Mac version. I’ve installed it on a Bootcamp partition, and it works great. But I hate rebooting to Windows everytime I need it. Besides, all my files are in the OS X partition.
I also tried running Fritz 12 in a Parallels Desktop. It works fine as well, but then I have to boot Windows on top of OS X, which in the process they’re sharing the same computer’s resources, which proves to be an inefficient environment to run a resource hungry application like Fritz 12. I was only able to assign 3GB of RAM out of the total installed 8GB, and the application can only utilize 1 CPU out of the total 4.
So what about Codeweaver’s Crossover? Well, this is how it looks like: Continue reading
Got a message today that Hiarcs’ Mac Chess Explorer is finally available:
At last, after a very long wait, it has finally come for us to check out.
It comes bundled with Hiarcs 14 and costs US$59.95 for the single-core version, and US$99.95 for the Deep Hiarcs (multi-core/multi-processor version).
By the way, there’s also the PC Chess Explorer. But what the heck, we’re only interested in Mac here, right? Continue reading