Category: Rant

One thing I hear regularly is when someone says, “I would love to use a phone on platform ‘X’, but I am tied to the apps and ecosystem on platform ‘Y'”.  It is kind of a shame too because if the phone that person really wants is on platform ‘X’, they are missing out, and they don’t need too.

Most people use about five third party apps daily and of those they probably only paid for three, meaning the apps that are tying them to their phone are worth probably less than five dollars.  Now I know at this point a lot of you are saying “I have way more than five apps!”, and you probably do, but how many could you live without?  And how many could you get for free on your new platform?  If you had to get different ones that did the same thing would that be okay?

I think the biggest thing that bugs me about people thinking they are tied to an old platform, if that if that is the case the company that makes that platform now owns them, and can control their buying habits, and the companies that make phones are huge, and do not necessarily want what is best for you, they just want your cash.  Don’t let Microsoft, Google, or Apple think they have got you for life.

If you are happy with phone you have, and platform it is on, then I am happy for you!  I don’t care what kind of phone you want or have, as long as it is what you want.  I just don’t like the fact that people think they are tied down to something that they may not like.  You can switch whenever you want, and if you ever want to go back the apps you have will be waiting for you.

Yesterday the internet scored a major victory: It caused so much of a ruckus that it made Microsoft repeal its all digital game management system.  I however am not celebrating, no I am mourning the loss of the future.

Once people heard that the Xbox One would have to check in with its central servers every twenty-four hours in order to play their games they went ballistic.  They cried about how Microsoft was changing ownership, and how that they only ever went on the internet to complain on forums and other than that they were always in their internetless mountain hideaways.  How Microsoft was punching the poor in the face and spitting on our service members, but they forgot to stop and think about what they were gaining.

We were so close to being able to throw disks away, and not only that but than be able to trade in and share our digital content with our friends.  Once we bought a game from a store we would have installed it and activated it with our accounts, and at that point if we ever lost the disk or scratched it we could just download it again, or with my favorite ten friends and family members I could digitally loan my games to them, or if I decided I didn’t want the game anymore I could give it to one of them, or go to the store and have them remove it from my account and than have them give me money for it, but to insure that you uninstalled it Microsoft would have to check once every twenty-four hours to see that you deleted it.

But “No!” the internet said, “Microsoft is going to use the Kinect to spy on you, and every twenty-four hours they are going to watch me playing video games, and yelling at my Kinect to pause.”  Microsoft explained that the update would only include bytes of data, just an encrypted list of your game licenses and you can turn your Kinect off, but the internet wouldn’t listen, and now we are going to have to buy and manage our games the old fashioned way, and I am sad that we never made it to the future.

True Microsoft should have included an offline mode that let you disconnect and not share or add games to your account for like two weeks or something, and if you never connect to the internet than this wasn’t console for you. I wanted the future.  But thanks to raging nerds, we can’t have nice things.