Skip to main content

I Hate Bastadroids.

Should have listened to the wife. "Buy an iPad" she says. "No", says I, "Androids are more popular so why spend £600 on an iJobs that's incompatible with the rest of the world when I can spend £150 on a tablet that's faster and does everything any iJobs can do - and it's part of Google not Jobble".

Big mistake! (But don't tell her)

We'd already experimented with a Samsung Galaxy Android phone and gave up trying to sync it with Outlook (let alone get it to dial a phone number). Everything seemed deliberately hidden behind fiddly little pictures and horrible little icons that suggested nothing. Swiping and clicking and dragging and tossing in the air and shaking it and using a combination of feet, hands and shouting at it to see if there was some hidden control to make it do things I thought it might, drove us mad. We sent it back to Vodafone and paid over the top, again, for another iJobs.

But I wasn't going to be sucked into an iPad. Oh no, I was going to wait for an Ice-cream Sandwich or Fruit Salad or whatever the latest Android bollocks was called, on a Nexus, Fire HD, or perhaps something called an Ainol from Amazon - The fastest, cheapest and best reviewed 7" tablet!

You guessed. I had to own a tablet called an Ainol. It arrived yesterday. It only took 24 hours for me to hate it with all my heart and soul. Here are a few of the reasons it is so loathsome:

  • Unlike an iJobs, nothing is obvious. Stuff just disappears and then re-appears for no apparent reason. Finding your way around it is like trying to remove your own appendix in the dark using a spoon and an axe - only more painful.
  • I downloaded Kindle for Android. It worked! I can see most of the books I 'rent' from Amabezos. I bought a copy of The Week (my favourite mag). I can see it on my iPhone, but it doesn't appear on my Bastadroid. Message to Kindle Support: "Why...". Instant (!) reply telling me that not everything on Kindle works on Androids. It's down to each publisher to decide which device to support. They don't tell you this when you buy, sorry rent, the item.
  • I download Google Movie Player. I buy a movie from Google Play Store. See, Google, Google, Google on a Google powered device. I try to play said movie. "Can't fetch license (error 43)". What fucking license?? I GOOGLE the error message to discover I'm "rooting", whatever the fuck that is, and Google now prevent movies you buy on their store from being played on devices that "root". I don't want to fucking "root" (well not with my Bastadroid, anyway). So I send a "help" email from the Bastadroid... and then tried to see my email from the thing...
  • Only to discover that it doesn't want to connect to my email Exchange server and gives me some other fucking unintelligible error message about something to do with certificates.
Given up. Off to Gatwick for half-term. Going to buy an iJobs at the airport. Bet it goes horribly right.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking an interest.

Popular posts from this blog

To kill or not to kill.

Had an interesting discussion with a Muslim friend today about the ethics of killing. Could it ever be morally justifiable? Abrahamic scriptures, especially the old testament, are awash with murders and killings, some sanctioned by the prophets and assorted mouthpieces for god. Some killing is even mandatory. For example all Jews are instructed in the old Testament to kill everyone belonging to the 7 Canaanite tribes for example - Deut 20:17 , or to slaughter Amaleks, especially their children - Deut 25:19 . So accepting for a moment that these draconian instructions were written in times when tribal leaders had fewer options available to them with respect to managing miscreants and maintaining some sort of law and order, I suspect that most people today would agree that killing people is a bad thing and should not be condoned except under extraordinary circumstances. My friend and I then proceeded to try to list those circumstances. We started with self-defence or perhaps protecti...
1 comment
Read more

Phillips screws - yes I'm angry about them too

Don't get me wrong. They're a brilliant invention to assist automation and prevent screwdrivers from slipping off screw heads - damaging furniture, paintwork and fingers in the process. Interestingly they weren't invented by Mr Phillips at all, but by a John P Thompson who sold Mr P the idea after failing to commercialise it. Mr P, on the otherhand, quickly succeeded where Mr T had failed. Incredible isn't it. You don't just need a good idea, you need a great salesman and, more importantly, perfect timing to make a success out of something new. Actually, it would seem, he did two clever things (apart from buying the rights). He gave the invention to GM to trial. No-brainer #1. After it was adopted by the great GM, instead of trying to become their sole supplier of Phillips screws, he sold licenses to every other screw manufacturer in the world. A little of a lot is worth a great deal more than a lot of a little + vulnerability (watch out Apple!). My gromble is abo...
7 comments
Read more

Successful Entrepreneurs Don't Aim to Make Money

Of course all entrepreneurs want to make lots of money. Who doesn't? But the difference between entrepreneurs who do make money and those who don't, is that successful ones don't focus on making money. They focus on building their businesses. And that relies on having an attitude of pouring any money their businesses do make, back into them, rather than rubbing their hands and taking it out as soon as they can. True entrepreneurs are gamblers and thrifty by nature. Given the choice of a holiday of a lifetime versus the chance to create a great business, they'll always choose the business - and take it for granted that if the business does eventually make surplus money, they can have that holiday - although entrepreneurs can become so hooked, holidays become a guilty wrench away from the businesses they need to protect. I didn't have a single days holiday, or off sick, for 10 years after I started my first business. I probably could have afforded it (in fact my wif...
1 comment
Read more