iPhone 6 (128GB AT&T): Bigger is Buggier?

- OK that title is a bit misleading because it's more directed to iOS 8 than iPhone 6
- We upgrade our phones every 2 years so we skip the s models.
- The 4.7" felt big at first but after about an hour of use it felt normal and my old iPhone 5 looked and felt tiny.  It's still very easy to operate.  Reachability felt pretty gimicky.  I'm not sure how usefult it is on the plus but on the regular 6 I never use it.  You can disable it in the settings if you want to.
- Build quality are excellent.
- No, it doesn't bend unless you are a moron:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/09/consumer-reports-tests-iphone-6-bendgate/index.htm
- I picked up this case from amazon for $2 shipped when it was on sale.  It's not half bad.  It's one of those new hybrid cases: the sides are grippy but the back is a hard plastic.  It's very minimalist.  Just keep in mind it doesn't have much of a lip on the front but I don't go laying my phone face down  anyways so that part doesn't bother me.
- I'm going to give this tempered glass screen protector a try.  It hasn't arrived yet.
- The 240 fps slow mo video shooting is neat.  I tested it on our finches.
- I'm using the tunebelt armband for running.  It fits well  just note you have to remove the phone from the above case before it will fit.
- I'm using another Ibera bike mount.  This one fits the iPhone 6 pretty well and you can even leave it in the case.  Here is a write-up I did on reddit on some other options I was considering.
- I tried a few keyboards but settled on swype for now.  I like swiftkey and used it on android but it seems to take a split second longer to load than swype.  That bit of load lag time is annoying.  I'm not overly concerned with privacy at least with these two companies.  I like swype type typing  for the most part except in cases where your finger doesn't glide smoothly over the glass (after a hard run, or your fingers just aren't very clean).  In those cases the hunt and peck on these alternative keyboards never seem as good as the default one.
- 1 password + touchID is wonderful when it works.   TouchID is such a nice everyday game changer IMO.
- More apps need to support extensions in general.  I'm sure there will be more as more get updated.
- Widgets are nice but I still don't use them much.
- I love having the 128GB options.  I'm always running out of space.

iOS 8/iPhone6/App specific bugs:
- iOS 8 is pretty buggy.  Even after 8.0.2 this feels to be one of the most buggiest iOS releases ever
- 3rd party keyboards still don't show up as default all the time.  UPDATE: Still an issue in 8.1.
- 1password doesn't always allow me to use touchID.  I have everything setup properly: keychain, 30 days for master password, etc and it is still hit or miss.  UPDATE: 8.1 seems to have fixed this for the most part.
- Bluetooth issues.  Lots of reports of having issues pairing with your car. It worked fine with my 2007 Acura TL Type-S but it's having some issues with my MIO Link Heartrate monitor.  It constantly connects and disconnects over and over so I get sporadic readings in my apps.  I tried pairing it with my iPhone 5 and it worked flawlessly so I know this is an iPhone 6 specific issue.  iPhone 6 pairs fine with my wahoo bike and cadence sensor though.  MIO is aware of the issue (I emailed support) and they are working on a solution.  UPDATE:  I exchanged the mio link with another one and this new one seems to work fine.  So I guess I just got a bad one.
- None of these are deal breakers but added up it's a constant annoyance and reminder how buggy this release was.

Highly recommended.  I love the new size though it's really thin and rounded so I would recommend a case just so it's easier to hold.  Also, I don't like how the camera sticks out so a case helps there too so you can lie it down flat.  It's very fast,  twice the storage, and a bigger screen.  I just want these bugs to be worked out sooner than later and maybe they could have tossed in a bit more RAM too.  Other than that I'm quite happy with the phone.

Asus Chromebox

Asus Chromebook

 So I had about $40 in best buy bucks that I had to spend before they expired.  They had the asus chromebox for $167 so that brought my price down to $127.  I noticed amazon has it for a little cheaper and had a $10 rebate that I might give a try.  So yeah it's a really cheap little box.  I already fell in love with the celeron 2955u based acer c720 chromebook that I got at the beginning of the year and this basically has the same exact guts.  So I picked one up for two purposes: wife wanted a premium browsing experience on the 55" hdtv in the family room, and two I wanted to see how good of an xbmc machine it was.

I decided to do a dual boot setup with chromeos and openelec.  I skipped installing coreboot firmware because I wanted to continue running chromeos.  On the chromeos side I installed crouton.  I also disabled the firmware write protect to reduce the time to get past the white developer mode screen.

I just basically followed the instructions here:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=ASUS_Chromebox
Just a few notes on step 1.3.  I used the chromeboook recovery utility to prepare the recovery usb flash drive.

Installing openelec I just followed the instructions here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=194362
Everything went smoothly.  The only thing I might have done differently is to use a 1GB partition for openelec instead of 2GB.  If you are going to stream everything 2GB is a bit overkill, and I would have rather used that space with crouton.  I wish there was a way to reduce the boot time to 5 sec instead of 1 or 30 sec.  Having chromeos boot quickly while in dev mode is nice and is especially important when using a wireless keyboard/mouse combo like the logitech k400.  They don't work during that dev white screen.  So you need a regular wired usb keyboard to be able to hit ctrl-D or ctrl-L.  Being able to shorten that to 1 sec makes a big difference.  Openelec runs fantastic as a media streamer.  CPU utilization never went past 55% even under the most demanding mkv 1080p high bitrate videos.  Dolby digital true HD and dts master audio both bitstream pass through just fine over hdmi.  Just make sure you use the recommended openelec settings listed in that first wiki link.  For remote control I used a Flirc along with my harmony remote.  Harmony has a default profile for flirc under media pc.  It worked with flirc without even having to learn anything and works right out of the box.  Everything is smooth and responsive.  It plays everything great except for one thing: frame packed MVC 3D video files.  It plays them just fine but only shows the left frame so it's 2D only.  FFMPEG doesn't even support MVC yet so don't hold your breath on xbmc supporting it anytime soon.  SBS and OU mkv 3d files work just fine though.  So if you don't care about MVC and only stream local media (no netflix, hulu, etc. though you can get all that and more on the chromeos side or through some xbmc addons/hacks) this thing is better than the wd tv live and comes close to the med600x3d but doesn't quite surpass it.

Over on the chromeos/crouton side it was very similar to the acer c720p.  Setup was pretty much identical so you can read that article for all the gory details.  I installed the ubuntu software center, all of libreoffice, steam, vlc, and minecraft.  I did run into one small issue when trying to install steam.  I had to install this first:
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

I installed xbmc gotham under crouton just for the heck of it.  After all this I had about 3.5GB free left.

It uses only .6w while sleeping, 7w while idle, and about 12w under heavy media playback load.

The asus chromebox was surprisingly a slightly different experience than the acer c720p.  Having a full 1080p screen to use the hardware on is refreshing.  You can even have dual monitors (there is also a display port).  It's just as fast and responsive as ever and looks great at 1080p.  For the price again the value is unbeatable.  You get so much flexibility and performance between chromeos, crouton, and openelec.  For less than the price of a med600x3d you get the same great performance, nearly as good media support, and pretty high WAF (with flirc and harmony) plus the great desktop chrome browsing experience and the utility of linux under crouton.  Having an intel based soc I think is kind of critical though for this flexibility and utility.  Some of the newer chromebooks like the new acer 13" is switching to tegra K1.  I think the trade off is pretty poor.  You gain even more battery life (but battery life doesn't mean much once it lasts all day) and a very nice GPU, but you lose x86.  This means linux compatibility is greatly reduced.  Many linux applications only work on x86 including steam and most linux native games.  So say goodbye to steam streaming.  IMO, you should skip the K1 ARM based chromebooks and wait for broadwell.

The chromebox is a pretty great desktop and htpc experience at a great price.  Highly recommended.

HooToo TripMate Elite

HooToo TripMate Elite is $60 at amazon though I picked it up while it was on sale at newegg for $46.

Personal cloud storage devices have recently become more popular lately which usually let you provide your own usb storage and share it among your mobile devices over wifi.  I picked up one of the first on the market called cloudftp (it's now called iUSBPort) through kickstarter.  It's served me well on many trips over the years.  I also find it handy to bring a travel router like my TP-LINK TL-WR702N.  It was getting a bit of a hassle having to bring 2 devices + power adapters + having to switch between wifi networks to have either personal cloud access or internet access (setting up cloudftp in infrastructure mode is a bit of a pain), and the relatively short battery life of cloudftp.  In comes this new device that pretty much does everything above for less in a much more compact and portable form factor.

The HooToo Covers all these functions:
- Personal cloud usb storage (worked fine with ntfs usb 3.0 flash drive and a 1TB exFAT 2.5" external hard drive)
- Travel Router, 150mbps b/g/n, AP/Router/Bridge
- 6000mah battery that powers itself or can charge other devices.
- Dual USB wall charger when plugged in with the handy built in ac plug that folds down.
- Works while charging either while plugged in or over the micro usb port.  So say if you wanted to use it on a long trip you could plug the HooToo into a car power adapter or another external battery (like this RAVPower one that I really like) and run the personal cloud all day.
- the HooToo app is ok (and free) but nPlayer is the absolute best for streaming/playing back media supporting a ton of codecs and protocols and works great with the HooToo.

Out of the box it was already flashed to the latest firmware.  Setup was pretty easy.  I tried it out in router and bridge modes and both worked fine.  What was nice was the mobile apps found the hootoo just fine even when I was connected to my home router vs the hootoo directly.  It's good then that any access to the device/personal cloud requires the web login.

ip: 10.10.10.254
default wifi pw: 11111111 (8 x 1)
default web login/app login/samba share: admin/no pw

Performance seemed fine for a travel router in an environment where I'm already running two powerful routers with transmit power jacked up.  It's good enough for streaming media.  I tried out the iOS (on iPhone and iPad), android (nexus 7 2013), and my acer c720 chromebook (crouton, xbmc, streamed over samba shares).  All seemed to work pretty well and I had 3 streams going at once.  The mobile apps worked just fine.

Highly Recommended.  It's a great value for all the functionality it provides.  It has a very small and light weight travel friendly form factor.  It seems pretty stable overall in my limited testing so far.  Each function might not be quite as feature rich as the devices I'm replacing but it hits pretty much every use case I care about.

Google Nexus 7 (2013) 2nd Gen

Nexus 7

I've had some exposure to android over the years through my mk808 and my hp touchpad (kitkat 4.4.2) but I've been itching to give pure vanilla Android a try with modern fast hardware to see how the experience is like.  We have 3 iPads and 4 iPhones in the family so we are pretty firmly iOS as far as mobile devices go.  My wife doesn't have her own tablet and she always complained that the iPad was too heavy and big so I figure why not give the Nexus 7 a try.  I picked up a refurb 16GB for only $130 off of ebay (shopdivvy).  It's a fraction of the price of an iPad mini plus it was an excuse for me to pick up a nexus device.

- First off the device I received looked brand new and has worked flawlessly these last few months.  Battery life is good too.  Performance was very good and stability was much better than the hacked rooted devices I've been using.  It's still no iPad Air but it's definitely good enough especially at this price point.
- Battery life seems pretty good though I would say the iPad still seems better. This could also be because this is a refurb. I think I got about 6 hrs out of it when I was basically non stop installing and setting up apps.
- What is with the incremental updates? I have to install 4.4.2, reboot, 4.4.3, reboot, 4.4.4, reboot
- Pretty much every app I use on iOS is here on android except a few notable missing ones like: amazon instant video and air video.
- Games have gotten a lot better.  I tried out minecraft, edge of tomorrow, sonic 2, sky force, ravensword 2 and they all ran and looked good.  But android is still missing a few like my current addiction: FTL.
- Mirroring with chromecast worked well.
- I really like swiftkey and can't wait for iOS 8 which will also support 3rd party keyboards.
- Plex is still no air video especially the horrible tablet version which has NO LIST VIEW.  They still make it incredibly hard if all you want to do is browse a large list of files.
- Installed flash with firefox because I could but I wouldn't call it a great experience.
- I love the multiple user support. This is one thing iOS really needs. Though the way to share play app store purchases is a bit clunky having to add my google account under my wife's user profile. I wish you could just specify the google account to use for the app store and not have to add it at the OS level because then my account shows up as a selection for several apps. This confused my wife a bit.
- For some reason gmail default notification sound was some endlessly looping chime. It took a while but I finally tracked down the setting and changed it to a nice short sound. Overall, I think settings are a bit of a mess on android and harder to track down. It definitely feels less consolidated and logically laid out as compared to iOS. It's just a learning curve I guess. But it's another one of those quirks.
- I'm using this moko case and this screen protector.  It adds a bit more weight than I wanted but overall not bad for the price. It has the magnets on the cover so it turns the device on/off.
- I picked up this OTG to USB Adapter.  I picked up both the dongle and the adapter though I think the adapter is a bit more convenient especially if you are using it with a usb flash drive.  Install MX Player and custom codec (for dts support), buy Nexus Media Importer ($4) and stream media off any usb storage device.  1080p mkv works just fine.
- XBMC arm android works well.  All my local media played smoothly.  My wife likes this interface much better than plex and is great for streaming local media.
- Subsonic app works pretty well.
- I just noticed 1password now has a full complete app and not just a viewer.
- For epub I still like Marvin better on ios than say aldiko.
- Remote control stuff like Jump for RDP, citrix receiver, and splashtop seem to work ok.
- Bluetooth worked fine with a pair of sony headphones and a logitech keyboard that I tested it with.
- I have nothing to test NFC with. Maybe I'll buy some tags just to mess with.
- iUSBPort app was a bit buggy and a bit crash prone.  I have to hold down on a file and select mx player every time I launch a video.
- 16GB was enough for me to install all the apps I wanted and the games listed above for 2 users and I still have 5.6GB free.  Just move all your media off onto usb flash drives if you need local media storage and use that OTG adapter.
- Mobile chrome browser is absolute garbage.  Desktop chrome is my main everyday browser but I really hate mobile chrome.  There is no home button, no bookmark bar, the context sensitive zoom when you tap on links is wonky and unpredictable.  I pretty much hate everything about it.  Mobile safari on iPad just bows this crap away.  I'm still trying other alternative browser but I haven't been too happy with any of them.

Overall, I'm very impressed.  I still think iOS is a more premium experience and you definitely pay a premium price..  UI still scrolls smoother and is more responsive on iOS but on this nexus 7 hardware it's gotten pretty close.  You can't dispute the value though.  At $130 you are getting a ton of performance and functionality (much better expandability and media support).  A refurb iPad retina mini is $339 so a $209 price difference is pretty hard to swallow.  I just wish android came with a better default browser.  It's probably the single most important app and it's a shame it's so poor on android.  Games are closer now but still lag behind iOS.  If I could only have one tablet then I would still go with an iPad.  But as a cheap 2nd, 3rd, or 4th in my case tablet the nexus 7 is a great option.  Highly recommended.

Watch Dogs (PS4)

I recently finished the main story.  Here are some impressions:

Near the beginning of act 2 on ps4:
- Ludonarrative Dissonance is about the worst in this game. I can't tell if I'm suppose to be sympathetic to this ass hole I'm playing.
Spoiler: act 1 spoilers
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I'm not really connecting with the whole guilt ridden angsty thing going on over the death of his niece. If it was his own kid I think it would have more impact. But I guess that's been done too much? And where the heck is the farther of these kids? Did I miss a story bit at the beginning or is that explained later?

So the last mission in act 1 basically had me scratching my head. I get my self caught and processed by the police so now my picture is on record including prints and whatever else. Sure, I hack in and change my name but that's it? I go through all this trouble to get to a witness to "threaten" him to stay quiet and not reveal my identity. I don't just kill him because....I'm all moral and a good guy? OK, so the very next minute I go out and murder a F*CK TON of innocent police just doing their job. WTF? Is the story telling and mission design and character morality really this sloppy and half assed? I mean GTA V did this aspect SOOOO MUCH better with characters that more or less fit the actions and missions they were doing.

- So far the story and a lot of the campaign missions designed around the plot seem completely phoned in. Nothing so far has come close to GTA V. The main character is getting into 24 levels of what stupid characters will do. I expect a cougar attack before the end of the game.
- The single slot auto save system totally sucks. Why can't I save when I want? Why can't I have multiple save slots which would have made the current save game bug not as bad as it is now. One of the things I like to do in open world games is occasionally take a break from playing the game "the right way" and just go all nuts and test some of the limits of the open world. I like to just create as much mayhem as possible and see the different ways on how that plays out. Then, I would restore a previous save game and pick back up where I left off. Here, I have no idea when it's going to save and I guess the only way I could do this is backup the save to usb or cloud and then restore after a mess around and experiment. That sounds like way too much trouble.
- The reputation system is retarded. So I usually try and play the good guy in these types of games. So I'm slowly building up my meter to the right. Then, during a escape in a campaign mission I accidentally run over 2 civilians. There goes all of my rep that I had so far. It's like being the terminator and being told not to kill anybody. It feels so limiting and restrictive. I'm about to go all bad and say screw it and kill anybody that gets in my way. I'm just not sure of the consequences, and if it will make finishing the game that much harder.
- The combat, car stuff (after you upgrade some hacks, steam ftw) feel ok. The game started pretty slow IMO with too much stealth stuff.
- I kind of like the hacking mini game.
- The hacking/climbing puzzles for the towers are kind of interesting with an urban far cry 3 feel.
- I've pretty much stuck to campaign missions and have only done a couple of side missions.
- I hate the title screen. Wooo next gen game with macro blocking done on purpose!!!! Ugggg. Just a personal aesthetics thing.

I don't know. Maybe I just need to give it more time but so far GTA V and second son seem both to be MUCH better games. GTA V would be incredible with a next gen engine. Second son while a little less ambitious and a more narrow but well focused scope was just so much fun and overall a really well designed and put together game. So far watch dogs feels way over hyped and the developers being maybe too close to the project and not being able to step back and see all the issues and design decisions objectively.

My favorite way to approach a restricted area is to use the cameras and disable all the guards with reinforcement abilities while blowing up a few for good measure. After that I just go in guns blazing to mop up.

I also just unlocked the auto blue targeting for hacking money. The range is pretty darn good on the thing. Your income will shoot way up. I seem to be spending most of my skill points in hacking. It does make the game more interesting and unique.

Buy the cheap grenade launcher ASAP. It's so handy. Also, make sure you max out your ammo before missions. Ammo is dirt cheap. Does carry more explosives skill increase max grenade launcher ammo or does it only affect frag grenades? Are there any silenced sniper rifles in the game?

I'm about 1/3 through act 2 and unlocked a bunch of towers. This game is growing on me. There were some neat physics based puzzles. The missions are also getting better at least from a gameplay perspective. The story and characters are still very meh. This game has some very satisfying explosions.


What is with all these forced stealth instant fail missions? I guess I'm getting toward the end of act 2 but man these missions are annoying and just make me want to murder everyone. Yup, still about as much fun as it was 14 years ago in NOLF 2. At least the guard chit chat was about 1000X better in that game.

Well, I finished the story and boy was that some of the worst writing and plot I've seen in a game in a long time. It's just so disappointing that so much effort went into the technology, the world building, and all these side activities yet the main narrative and some of the missions designed around it are just so weak, sloppy, lazy, and phoned in.

- I hate all the instant failure forced stealth missions in all it's varieties: sneak to somewhere unnoticed, lead somebody to a waypoint, and tail somebody.
- Gang hideouts. Seriously, why can't I just murder everybody?
- Missions with unavoidable cop escapes which aren't too bad except if you kill a cop it drops your rep meter.
- AI is pretty dumb so it makes the combat pretty easy but still satisfying.
- I eventually got sick of the hacking mini game but overall it wasn't too bad.

Spoiler: other unfun things. warning plot spoilers
Show/Hide

- taking away a lot of your hacking powers in some of the missions near the end.
- making you chase that tv van around for days downloading data. Really??? There are people who thought this was a fun activity?
- Could Clara's death be handled any worse than they did? It seemed completely pointless, with no user involvement, and the cheesy she dies right as you get there.

It's a beautiful open world filled with restrictions and contradictions in design that punish experimentation and creative solutions. For every combat heavy mission that makes me smile there is a stealth or some other frustrating mission that pisses me off. I've still got a lot of side and online stuff to do. I might have to step back for a bit though.

Update: 7/12/2014
- Finished a bunch of side stuff.  Pretty much tried at least one of everything including all the online stuff, a few of each of the fixer contracts, completed all gang hideouts, all but the last convoy b/c it won't show up for some annoying reason.
- Online hacking is pretty fun and challenging.
- Racing is OK but at least the hacks makes things more interesting.
- I liked the spider tank digital trip
- Mobile challenge is ok.
- Online decryption is pretty fun but seems kind of lame that even if I did the majority of the decryption only the final person that finishes it wins.
- Did the series of ps4 exclusive missions.  They were pretty good.

I think I'm pretty much done with this game until the season pass DLC hits.