To here:
RSS feeds now served from here:
http://www.blitterandtwisted.com/feed/rss
Monday, 28 March 2011
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Changes afoot - blog migration to WordPress
Over the next week I'm going to migrate this blog over to a WordPress site. Blogger has been perfect for getting up and running quickly but it's starting to look limited. Getting something simple like a tag cloud working was a faff but a bigger issue is not being able to do something fairly straightforward like related posts - important for when there's a series of items on the same topic. Blogger doesn't support this directly so JavaScript hacks are required.
WordPress is going to be running on Windows rather than the usual Linux, which has thrown up a few pemissions problems and URL rewriting was a bit tricky to get working. This is mostly solved so all that remains is to get all my Blogger content across. The WordPress import tool does a great job and gets you most of the way there in a few minutes, but unfortunately it doesn't bring images across so a bit more work will be required. There is an image importer plugin available which will hopefully so that might do the trick.
When the WordPress site is up and running I'll switch DNS over and fingers crossed all will be well.
Apologies for the hassle but if you wouldn't mind re-following the new blog I'd really appreciate it. RSS feed URL's will probably need updating too.
See you on the other side!
WordPress is going to be running on Windows rather than the usual Linux, which has thrown up a few pemissions problems and URL rewriting was a bit tricky to get working. This is mostly solved so all that remains is to get all my Blogger content across. The WordPress import tool does a great job and gets you most of the way there in a few minutes, but unfortunately it doesn't bring images across so a bit more work will be required. There is an image importer plugin available which will hopefully so that might do the trick.
When the WordPress site is up and running I'll switch DNS over and fingers crossed all will be well.
Apologies for the hassle but if you wouldn't mind re-following the new blog I'd really appreciate it. RSS feed URL's will probably need updating too.
See you on the other side!
Friday, 18 March 2011
Windows Phone 7 problems: account management and music playback
Microsoft's account management hell
When I first set my phone up I let it create a new Windows Live ID for me. I had a long-dead Hotmail email account, and an Xbox Live ID I use on my 360 linked to an old Yahoo email address, but as I was choosing to invest in a new platform I thought it best to start over with a nice new live.co.uk identity.
What a mistake that turned out to be. A new Xbox Live account was automatically created for me and linked to my new Windows Live ID. This meant my real avatar and achievements off my Xbox Live account wouldn't appear on the phone, and there was no option to switch gamer tags as you get with the Xbox 360 itself.
Over the next few weeks I researched numerous discussion areas on the web to find a way to sort this mess out, but it is presently unfixable. The only option is to reset the phone and set it up again using the Xbox Live account, but doing this completely wipes the phone including any purchased media and apps. I'd been putting this off as it sounded like torture but earlier this week I took the plunge. Fortunately, with almost all my personal information being stored in the cloud I didn't have any issues with reloading data, and the music I'd purchased was non-DRM'd so that could be copied back across from the synced copy on my PC. But paid-for apps are a different story.
When I completed setting up my phone it the Marketplace wanted me to pay again for apps I'd already purchased. I phoned Zune support (0203 450 5855) and asked nicely that they transfer two key purchases across for me - Wonder Reader and Rise of Glory. My other purchases turned out to be apps I didn't really use so wasn't that bothered about them. Zune declined my polite request and refused to offer me any help at all. They said that it was not possible to transfer purchases between accounts - but they also declined to credit me for the apps so I could download them again.
To be fair, the representative I spoke to did apologise for the less-than-ideal situation, but it rings hollow when they won't do anything to resolve it. Zune's response is that I do have access to them if I re-wipe my phone and use the other account - but of course then I'd lose my Xbox live integration again.
Microsoft does not provide any tools for managing/merging accounts and I had no choice but to switch my phone over to the Xbox Live account - this is actually their recommendation although they skirt around the fact that users will have items they've paid for taken away from them.
Once more we get screwed over despite choosing to pay for goods rather than pirate them for free. If I'd jailbroken my phone using the Chevron unlock tool it would allow me to install any app I could get hold of for free.
Microsoft desperately need to provide a web-based tool to handle the tangled account structure across their messed-up ecosystem. They should also credit me the £4.48 that I've spent on apps I can no longer access - fuckers!!!
Zune music player
Firstly some good news to report - the sound quality of music via my htc HD7 and Sennheiser CX-300 earphones is excellent. It blows my iPod Classic 120Gb and iPhone 3G out of the water - mainly due to the worsening sound quality of Apple products in recent years - the first generation Nano sounded much better than my current devices.
The hub interface of the media player is a different story though. As with other WP7 apps it makes use of the panorama control to show a six-screen wide application surface. The problem is that what the panorama shows is almost entirely rubbish.
The first screen is just a history page with an oversized icon of the last item played. The next screen is more history. Then you get two pages of "new" items which is really pointless. The fifth screen is an oddly-titled marquee which shows links to other media items you can play from other installed apps. Finally the sixth screen shows the menu of music, videos and podcasts you wanted in the first place. Eventually you learn to work around this by scrolling left rather than right when the app loads up.
Things also start to go wrong when you browse music. In general I like the cut-off text used across the Windows Phone interface - it's a clever indication that there's more content off the screen. But when it's a track title and you have no way of reading the hidden part it's just dumb. The Marketplace displays track titles in exactly the same way so in some situations it can be a pain to work out whether the songs you're looking at are the ones you actually want to buy.
To make matters worse, track lengths are not displayed anywhere within the player or the Marketplace. I wanted to buy a movie soundtrack the other day but was wary of ending up with a bunch of 30-second long ditties, so I had to resort to viewing the album on Amazon to see the track lengths. An essential requirement of the Marketplace (or indeed any e-commerce site/app) is to not make it difficult to spend the money I want to spend.
Overall, the Zune music player needs to be more application-like rather than the content-optimised interface it currently uses. Although it flies in the face of the Windows Phone user interface guidelines there desparetely needs to be some more navigation options like a breadcrumb to help with moving easily through the hierarchy of artists and albums.
Maybe if the hardware back button worked on an application level rather than wreaking confusion by trying to function globally it wouldn't be as bad. When task switching back to the music player from another app it can be bewildering to work out how to move upwards from a song to pick a different album or artist.
A contradiction with the Zune player is that many of it's problems stem from the stylistic use of over-large text - yet when a track is playing the list of other tracks in the album is pitifully small and easily missed - and once again there's no track lengths.
A very nice part of the aesthetics of the player are the background images that are automatically displayed for artists. This is a great idea but is hopelessly unreliable - only one song in my collection has this content working and it seems impossible to figure out what is wrong (see nine page XDA discussion thread).
On a brighter note...
Now that my Xbox Live integration is working properly it's a treat to see my real avatar and achievements displayed in the phone, plus gamer points on phone games now count towards my total. If only the thousands of gamer points from my offline Xbox account could be merged into my online account - but that's yet another account management gotcha I've fallen foul of.
It's possible the music player issues can be worked around with an third party player if any arrive in the Marketplace - either that or we'll have to hope that Microsoft rewrites the built-in player in a future release, because it needs more than just a few simple tweaks. It's just doesn't do the basics of music playback well enough.
Monday, 14 March 2011
In the D part three: decline of the American auto industry
In this post I'll be looking at the declining fortunes of the American auto industry brought about by a combination of external factors and an inability to move with the times.
When the best is too good - advanced technology in the US motor industry
One of the most successful engines in the history of the British motor industry was the Rover V8. It entered service in 1967 and added some power to the stylish looks of the Rover P5B coupe and the newer, technologically advanced P6. Perhaps more importantly, it was the high performance engine of choice for a variety of small sports car manufacturers, as well as being used by many enthusiasts to upgrade the power-plants of project cars.
For it's time the Rover V8 was an advanced design - a very compact unit with all-aluminium construction making it one of the most lightweight V8's ever made. If you're familiar with the Rover K-Series engine, this sounds exactly like the kind of engine that Rover would have designed, however it was actually an American design that Rover bought the rights to. Buick had introduced the engine in 1963 but was finding it expensive to produce and it was suffering from reliability issues due to bad maintenance from customers and mechanics who weren't used to dealing with all-aluminium engines. The US steel industry was also unhappy about the use of aluminium for engine production and had considerable political and economic influence at the time.
Buick reverted back to older cast-iron engines and sold the engine design to Rover, where it remained in production for over 35 years. When production finally ended, it had become so iconic that the BBC's Top Gear filmed a tribute to the engine and showed all the cars that it had powered over the years.
The story of the Buick/Rover V8 is one example of how the American auto industry was unquestionably capable of producing advanced technology, but other factors held back this ability and the cars that entered production often played it safe compared to their European and Asian competitors.
In a similar vein, Ralph Nader wrote a groundbreaking book in 1965 called Unsafe at Any Speed that detailed how US manufacturers paid little attention to safety factors and preferred to spend money on annual restyling of their model range to maintain sales. Many of the improvements in standard safety equipment and fuel efficiency that were implemented over the last 50 years only arrived after US Government legislation mandated it.
It's often the case that to stay in business you need to make competitive products, while investing in R&D to make sure those products are still competitive in the future. If that process is constrained, it will almost inevitably cause problems somewhere down the line...
Energy crisis hits
The first oil crisis of the 1970's began in October 1973 and lasted until March of the following year, resulting in fuel rationing across the USA. At it's worst period in February, 20% of petrol stations were empty. Attempts were made to distribute fuel across the states based on estimated requirements, but this wasn't completely successful and long queues at petrol stations were commonplace.
The bigger they are...
The oil crisis arrived at a time when the cars being built in Detroit were monsters of the road. As an example, the 1971 Cadillac Eldorado was 5.7 metres long. To put this into perspective, even a modern BMW 7-series is only around 5 metres in length. The Caddy weighed 2.5 tonnes and was powered by an 8.2 litre V8. Exact fuel economy figures are unavailable but are estimated at between 6 and 8 miles per gallon.
Despite its big block V8 the performance of the Eldorado was seriously impacted by its weight – 0-60 in just under 12 seconds and a top speed of around 120mph. Although the Eldorado is an extreme example, cars of lower US size classifications like mid-size and even compacts were far bigger than their European and Asian equivalents.
Prior to the oil crisis US manufacturers had an 80% share of the home market and GM alone owned half of that share, but the American public’s new-found concerns over fuel economy had a dramatic effect on sales as they looked at European and Japanese imports. In 1975, US production fell 24.5% on the previous year while the market share of imports started to build quickly.
The scramble to respond
American manufacturers rushed to downsize their models in response to changing consumer tastes, but this proved difficult. It was a massively expensive process to redesign the entire model range, and almost all engines available were of the large, torquey, low-revving variety – the kind that are very heavy on fuel. Some progress was made though - by the end of the decade the big Cadillac Eldorado above was 70cm shorter and had shed half a tonne in weight, but attempts to produce a genuinely small car were still somewhat at odds with the rest of the world. The AMC Pacer is a well known example from this era and was still 4.3 metres long and powered by a 3.8 litre V6!
The US auto manufacturers had been completely blindsided by the oil crisis and the dramatic effect it had on the priorities of its customers. As demand and production fell, huge job losses and plant closures took place across the industry throughout the 1970’s. Detroit was heavily dependent on the car plants for jobs and tax revenues so was particularly hard-hit by the decline.
A second oil crisis
Problems in Iran led to another oil crisis in 1979 and again the price of a barrel of crude oil increased massively, this time from $15 to $40. By this time imported cars were starting to use fuel-saving technology such as four valves per cylinder and multi-point fuel injection, in contrast to the pushrod valves and carburettors still used by large-capacity US engines. The downsized full-size models being sold by Chrysler, Ford and GM were proving unpopular with domestic customers, and Japanese and European brands continued to gain acceptance with the American public.
Auto design - what the hell went wrong?
Rising fuel costs ended the era of stunning muscle cars, and the revised smaller models just didn't hit the mark. There appeared to be a major loss of optimism and confidence across the industry. It wasn't just weight and engine power that these new models lost, it was the entire sense of purpose, attitude and style. What is most surprising is how similar different makes and models ended up looking throughout the 1980's, considering the very strong individual identities of earlier models.
Bland and indifferent American car design lasted throughout the 1980's (with a few exceptions) and still continues today to some extent. It's only very recently that the Mustang has regained it's identity and road presence, with others like the Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger following suit - but this has been achieved by harking back to the classic designs of the 70's muscle-cars.
Fighting back against the unions
As well as falling demand, job losses were also caused by the historical bad deals made by the manufacturers and unions back when times were good and there was no end in sight for the motor city heyday. Under Walter Reuther, unions were spectaculary successful in negotiating employer-paid pensions, medical insurance and generous unemployment benefits. Agreements made on pensions in particular were short-sighted because they were a concession that could be made without affecting current profits - it was a deferred benefit - but eventually these concessions would become due and the industry could no longer afford it. The end result was the strategic migration of manufacturing from the US to countries like Mexico with non-unionised workforces that would accept less pay and benefits.
Manufacturers also aimed to mitigate their expensive labour costs via investment in automated production facilities, with robots eventually reducing human involvement in car assembly by more than half. As migrant workers arrived in Detroit in the late 1950's expectant of well-paid manufacturing jobs, the entry level posts they were seeking were already starting to disappear due to outsourcing and automation.
Rounding it all up
The sledgehammer blows of falling sales, international competition, uncompetitive product ranges and an expensive workforce made life very difficult for the US auto industry, but what were the direct effects on Detroit and the surrounding area?
Well, the Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck once employed 30,000 people but was shut down in 1980 - 18 months ahead of schedule due to disastrous sales. Ford's River Rouge plant in Dearborn was so large it once had 90,000 workers but continued heavy job losses have reduced the workforce to only a few thousand today.
Despite being the birthplace of the factory assembly line when Henry Ford moved Model T production there in 1910, Ford's Highland Park is now just another of the many shuttered and decaying manufacturing plants that occupy the city. The building is now recognised as historically important and there is a campaign to turn it into a museum to commemorate it's unique contribution, but funds have yet to be made available.
60 miles away from Detroit, down the Telegraph Road (yes, the Telegraph Road as made famous by the Dire Straits song) is the city of Flint where 30,000 jobs were lost in a series of GM plant closures in the late 1980's. In a city of 150,000 residents this was a huge blow and happened at a time when General Motors were announcing record profits. This apparent contradiction made headlines around the world and was the subject of Michael Moore's début documentary - Roger and Me. Since 1989 many more auto industry jobs have been lost in Flint, bringing the total to 80,000.
It wasn't just the big three manufacturers who closed up shop - component suppliers like Fisher Body and AC Spark were also forced to cease production.
The effects on Detroit have been devastating. Hospitals, schools, cinemas, theatres, train stations and thousands of residential properties all lie empty within the city, just like the car plants the city once thrived on.
In my next post in this series I'll cover the present-day state of the city in more detail, and look at whether there may be any reason for optimism amongst the urban decay.
When the best is too good - advanced technology in the US motor industry
 |
| Rover's P5B Coupe - British style with American V8 power |
For it's time the Rover V8 was an advanced design - a very compact unit with all-aluminium construction making it one of the most lightweight V8's ever made. If you're familiar with the Rover K-Series engine, this sounds exactly like the kind of engine that Rover would have designed, however it was actually an American design that Rover bought the rights to. Buick had introduced the engine in 1963 but was finding it expensive to produce and it was suffering from reliability issues due to bad maintenance from customers and mechanics who weren't used to dealing with all-aluminium engines. The US steel industry was also unhappy about the use of aluminium for engine production and had considerable political and economic influence at the time.
Buick reverted back to older cast-iron engines and sold the engine design to Rover, where it remained in production for over 35 years. When production finally ended, it had become so iconic that the BBC's Top Gear filmed a tribute to the engine and showed all the cars that it had powered over the years.
The story of the Buick/Rover V8 is one example of how the American auto industry was unquestionably capable of producing advanced technology, but other factors held back this ability and the cars that entered production often played it safe compared to their European and Asian competitors.
In a similar vein, Ralph Nader wrote a groundbreaking book in 1965 called Unsafe at Any Speed that detailed how US manufacturers paid little attention to safety factors and preferred to spend money on annual restyling of their model range to maintain sales. Many of the improvements in standard safety equipment and fuel efficiency that were implemented over the last 50 years only arrived after US Government legislation mandated it.
It's often the case that to stay in business you need to make competitive products, while investing in R&D to make sure those products are still competitive in the future. If that process is constrained, it will almost inevitably cause problems somewhere down the line...
Energy crisis hits
The first oil crisis of the 1970's began in October 1973 and lasted until March of the following year, resulting in fuel rationing across the USA. At it's worst period in February, 20% of petrol stations were empty. Attempts were made to distribute fuel across the states based on estimated requirements, but this wasn't completely successful and long queues at petrol stations were commonplace.
The shortages brought the heavy fuel consumption of American cars into stark reality - the average fuel economy for an American-made car of this era was about 13.5mpg, and the price of crude oil had increased fourfold to $12 a barrel. Highway speed limits were lowered to 55mph to try and reduce fuel usage but it was only a small step in the right direction - it was estimated that Americans were wasting 150,000 barrels of oil a day idling their engines while queuing for hours at petrol stations.
The bigger they are...
The oil crisis arrived at a time when the cars being built in Detroit were monsters of the road. As an example, the 1971 Cadillac Eldorado was 5.7 metres long. To put this into perspective, even a modern BMW 7-series is only around 5 metres in length. The Caddy weighed 2.5 tonnes and was powered by an 8.2 litre V8. Exact fuel economy figures are unavailable but are estimated at between 6 and 8 miles per gallon.
Despite its big block V8 the performance of the Eldorado was seriously impacted by its weight – 0-60 in just under 12 seconds and a top speed of around 120mph. Although the Eldorado is an extreme example, cars of lower US size classifications like mid-size and even compacts were far bigger than their European and Asian equivalents.
 |
| Cadillac Eldorado convertible |
Prior to the oil crisis US manufacturers had an 80% share of the home market and GM alone owned half of that share, but the American public’s new-found concerns over fuel economy had a dramatic effect on sales as they looked at European and Japanese imports. In 1975, US production fell 24.5% on the previous year while the market share of imports started to build quickly.
The scramble to respond
 |
| The AMC Pacer - not as small as it might look, it had a 3.8 V6 under the bonnet |
The US auto manufacturers had been completely blindsided by the oil crisis and the dramatic effect it had on the priorities of its customers. As demand and production fell, huge job losses and plant closures took place across the industry throughout the 1970’s. Detroit was heavily dependent on the car plants for jobs and tax revenues so was particularly hard-hit by the decline.
A second oil crisis
Problems in Iran led to another oil crisis in 1979 and again the price of a barrel of crude oil increased massively, this time from $15 to $40. By this time imported cars were starting to use fuel-saving technology such as four valves per cylinder and multi-point fuel injection, in contrast to the pushrod valves and carburettors still used by large-capacity US engines. The downsized full-size models being sold by Chrysler, Ford and GM were proving unpopular with domestic customers, and Japanese and European brands continued to gain acceptance with the American public.
Auto design - what the hell went wrong?
Rising fuel costs ended the era of stunning muscle cars, and the revised smaller models just didn't hit the mark. There appeared to be a major loss of optimism and confidence across the industry. It wasn't just weight and engine power that these new models lost, it was the entire sense of purpose, attitude and style. What is most surprising is how similar different makes and models ended up looking throughout the 1980's, considering the very strong individual identities of earlier models.
Bland and indifferent American car design lasted throughout the 1980's (with a few exceptions) and still continues today to some extent. It's only very recently that the Mustang has regained it's identity and road presence, with others like the Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger following suit - but this has been achieved by harking back to the classic designs of the 70's muscle-cars.
Fighting back against the unions
As well as falling demand, job losses were also caused by the historical bad deals made by the manufacturers and unions back when times were good and there was no end in sight for the motor city heyday. Under Walter Reuther, unions were spectaculary successful in negotiating employer-paid pensions, medical insurance and generous unemployment benefits. Agreements made on pensions in particular were short-sighted because they were a concession that could be made without affecting current profits - it was a deferred benefit - but eventually these concessions would become due and the industry could no longer afford it. The end result was the strategic migration of manufacturing from the US to countries like Mexico with non-unionised workforces that would accept less pay and benefits.
Manufacturers also aimed to mitigate their expensive labour costs via investment in automated production facilities, with robots eventually reducing human involvement in car assembly by more than half. As migrant workers arrived in Detroit in the late 1950's expectant of well-paid manufacturing jobs, the entry level posts they were seeking were already starting to disappear due to outsourcing and automation.
Rounding it all up
 |
| Packard plant, Detroit (closed since 1958) |
Well, the Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck once employed 30,000 people but was shut down in 1980 - 18 months ahead of schedule due to disastrous sales. Ford's River Rouge plant in Dearborn was so large it once had 90,000 workers but continued heavy job losses have reduced the workforce to only a few thousand today.
Despite being the birthplace of the factory assembly line when Henry Ford moved Model T production there in 1910, Ford's Highland Park is now just another of the many shuttered and decaying manufacturing plants that occupy the city. The building is now recognised as historically important and there is a campaign to turn it into a museum to commemorate it's unique contribution, but funds have yet to be made available.
60 miles away from Detroit, down the Telegraph Road (yes, the Telegraph Road as made famous by the Dire Straits song) is the city of Flint where 30,000 jobs were lost in a series of GM plant closures in the late 1980's. In a city of 150,000 residents this was a huge blow and happened at a time when General Motors were announcing record profits. This apparent contradiction made headlines around the world and was the subject of Michael Moore's début documentary - Roger and Me. Since 1989 many more auto industry jobs have been lost in Flint, bringing the total to 80,000.
It wasn't just the big three manufacturers who closed up shop - component suppliers like Fisher Body and AC Spark were also forced to cease production.
The effects on Detroit have been devastating. Hospitals, schools, cinemas, theatres, train stations and thousands of residential properties all lie empty within the city, just like the car plants the city once thrived on.
In my next post in this series I'll cover the present-day state of the city in more detail, and look at whether there may be any reason for optimism amongst the urban decay.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Space Shuttle Discovery completes final mission
Yesterday the Space Shuttle Discovery touched down at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and completed it's final mission. It brings to a close an amazing record of service which began with it's delivery to NASA in October 1983 in an era where home computers were still 8-bit, the UK only had four TV channels, and Vauxhall were still building the Chevette in Ellesmere Port!
Discovery made 38 trips into space in all, deploying over 30 satellites (often two per mission), the Hubble Space Telescope as well docking with both Mir and the ISS to deliver and pick up astronauts. Nearly 250 crew rode aboard the shuttle over it's 27 year history and the spaceship spent a total of 365 days in space. It was the first shuttle to fly again after the shuttle programme was threatened by the Challenger disaster of 1986 and Columbia in 2003. The total distance it flew is equivalent to 288 round trips to the moon.
With the shuttle programme drawing to a close and no direct replacement available it will be interesting to see what direction the US space programme will go in next - private startups like Elon Musk's Space-X are one interesting option now that Obama has scrapped Constellation.
The space shuttles are amazing and iconic spacecraft and were a groundbreaking example of a reusable space plane. Time is running out to get over to Florida and see a launch - the final shuttle mission to deliver parts to the ISS is scheduled for June. The Discovery itself is now headed for the Smithsonian in Washington - somewhere very high on my list of places to visit.
Discovery made 38 trips into space in all, deploying over 30 satellites (often two per mission), the Hubble Space Telescope as well docking with both Mir and the ISS to deliver and pick up astronauts. Nearly 250 crew rode aboard the shuttle over it's 27 year history and the spaceship spent a total of 365 days in space. It was the first shuttle to fly again after the shuttle programme was threatened by the Challenger disaster of 1986 and Columbia in 2003. The total distance it flew is equivalent to 288 round trips to the moon.
 |
| On approach to the International Space Station (click for high resolution version) |
The space shuttles are amazing and iconic spacecraft and were a groundbreaking example of a reusable space plane. Time is running out to get over to Florida and see a launch - the final shuttle mission to deliver parts to the ISS is scheduled for June. The Discovery itself is now headed for the Smithsonian in Washington - somewhere very high on my list of places to visit.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Angry birds on Windows Phone 7
In promotional material for the WP7 launch Microsoft used the Angry Birds logo and upset developers Rovio - who had not committed to releasing their ubiquitous mobile game on the new platform. They spat out a few angry tweets and things were looking gloomy for those of us looking for an Angry Birds fix on our Windows Phones. Microsoft later admitted they had made a 'mistake' in the promo materials.
Fast forward a few months and two things have happened. Firstly, Rovio has now cheered up and confirmed Angry Birds for Windows Phone will now be released some time this year, and secondly, an unofficial clone called Chicks'n'Vixens has been released by independent developer Jabberworx. He was frustrated by Rovio's slowness at porting the game across to his favourite mobile platform and wrote his own version. Of this he said:
“If I were Rovio and had access to the art and knew about the 2D physics engines settings for the various objects (mass, physics, restitution, etc) I could get Angry Birds running on Windows Phone 7 in under a week.” JabberworxOuch. Jabberworx must be a hell of a coder.
So why are people so bothered about being able to play Angry Birds on their Windows Phones? Surely there are better games out there? The thing is - it's turned into a status symbol for mobile platforms - any mobile ecosystem wanting to be a major player has to have it.
How well will the Windows Phone version run?
All current Windows Phone devices have good hardware specifications featuring a 1Ghz processor and decent graphics hardware sporting 2D and 3D acceleration. Exact comparisons with the iPhone are difficult but the hardware specification indicates that WP7 devices are in the same class performance-wise as the iPhone 4 except for slightly less powerful 3D graphics, but they should definitely be a step above the older 3GS model.
Angry Birds running on the original iPhone 3G with it's 400Mhz processor is a little slow to load with some stuttering sound on the menu pages but the game itself runs very well - sideways scrolling is fairly smooth although not as fluid as you'd see on a real gaming device like a 1980's Amiga! Play the game on the 3GS and the extra power of the device translates into a higher frame rate and the game really starts to look great with super-smooth scrolling. This is even more so on the iPhone 4.
So you'd expect the Windows Phone version of the game to work very nicely but there is a potential problem. Microsoft designed the XNA gaming framework to lock games into rendering at an upper limit of 30 frames per second, which was apparently done to preserve battery life. This seems like a sensible compromise especially for graphically intensive 3D games but there is of course a trade-off in the ultimate smoothness of motion, which will negatively affect 2D games that make heavy use of full-screen scrolling. Results will quite likely be sub-par compared to current-model iOS devices which are probably pushing 60 frames per second. It could well be the case that Angry Birds on Windows Phone performs about the same as the iPhone 3G despite the superior hardware.
 |
| Only 30 fps on an otherwise top-notch smartphone - surely not? |
Will Microsoft make changes to address this? They should definitely consider removing the frame limit for 2D games but the problem with that approach could be the difficulty of classifying games as many use a hybrid approach. But the question is - can the hardware do more than 30fps? John Carmack has proved the iPhone can with Rage - a full 3D game running at 60fps which looks stunning. Does the Windows Phone hardware support such a high refresh rate? There's conflicting information out there, some say the hardware cannot support it while other developers are saying it's purely an XNA framework limitation and the phone's main user interface and Silverlight apps can run at 60fps.
It will be interesting to find out how Angry Birds actually performs when it ships. Chicks'n'Vixens has a nice smooth screen update but it doesn't scroll around quite as energetically as Angry Birds. With the games I've tried so far, it seems a rule of thumb that 3D titles such as The Harvest and Rise of Glory can look very nice on Windows Phone 7 but 2D titles like Tiki Towers are disappointingly jerky.
Let's also hope that the Windows Phone version of Angry Birds is priced keenly, unlike some of the other titles in the Marketplace. The iPhone version was only £0.59p.
Monday, 7 March 2011
Windows Phone 7 one month on - followup review
Highlights
The phone is still fresh, fun and very cool to use - my previous review already described how clean, modern and original the user interface is and everyone who's seen the phone in action has been impressed - including long-time iPhone fans. When the OS was launched in November and screen shots appeared everywhere I must admit I didn't really 'get' it - the system looks so different from any other platform and very minimalist. It was only when I had a play with a demo unit that suddenly it started to look very interesting. Animation and navigation are such an important part of the experience. Even Microsoft's marketing department seemed to struggle to figure it out and sold it on the ridiculous premise that the slickness of Windows Phone 7 would get your tasks done quicker so you'd use your phone less and get on with your life. Selling a product by describing it as something you wouldn't want or need to use very much seems a bit stupid. It's taken a fan called Brandon Foy to show them how it's done - watch this Youtube clip.
Early adopter smugness - when the original iPhone launched I thought it was a spectacular piece of technology but for various reasons I didn't buy one, and later lived to regret it. With WP7 the timing was perfect - my contract ended and the OS had been on the market less than three months. 2011 is looking full of promise with the Microsoft presentations at MWC in Barcelona featuring live demonstrations of upcoming features - no vapour-ware here. By the end of the year copy/paste and well-designed multitasking will be delivered making the platform fully competitive in all areas.
Shiny new applications - WP7 benefits from having fresh new versions of mobile applications like Facebook, IMDB, Amazon and Shazam. They usually have more sophisticated and modern interfaces than the iOS and Android equivalents which in many cases haven't seen any real development in a few years. It sounds bizarre to say that applications on a Microsoft platform do a better job of getting out the way and presenting the actual content than their Apple equivalents, but in a lot of cases it's true.
Zune desktop software - this is excellent to use and works very well. As with the phone itself the user interface is very stylish and clear, and the basic operations work well. Microsoft seem to have tried very hard to out-do the much-criticised iTunes and visually I think they've succeeded although feature-wise it's hard to find much in the way of differentiation, apart from Zune's wireless sync ability.
Social networking integration - the phone has actually got me using Facebook again, although I feel like I've been coerced! I am not a lover of Facebook, mainly due to privacy concerns and a mistrust of the company itself. But when Facebook is so well integrated into the phone it's a much more tempting proposition. You can post on someone's Facebook wall directly from their contact page, and status updates are easily done from the "Me" tile on the home page. I've recently added a tile for my wife to the home page and that works a treat as well, allowing me to quickly access all her contact details without having to go and find her in the people hub. Twitter integration is now confirmed for the major "Mango" update later this year which is a very exciting prospect.
Criticisms
Reliability - the core OS seems very stable but there have been a few glitches. The Marketplace application is my biggest annoyance because it's very prone to crashing and when it does fall over it manages it in a way that prevents it from working again until the phone is rebooted. This is not the kind of experience you expect especially when trying to buy stuff. Also, I have seen occasional nasty screen corruption on my device forcing a reboot. This looks like a firmware issue and I suspect it's specific to the HD7 because it's not been widely reported elsewhere.
Back button navigation - to ensure the user interface remains clear and uncluttered there is no onscreen back button in any apps - they rely on the hardware button. This is fine except when the button tries to fulfil the dual roles of moving back through phone application screens and also acting as a browser back button in the web browser. Imagine you're in an app with an embedded browser and you navigate a few links then hit the Start button to return to the home screen. Then hit the back button to return to the app. You can't then use the back button to go back in the history of the embedded browser window, because the back button will take you back to the Start page. This has caught me out a couple of times and there appears to be no easy solution, except to say that browser-type applications (including Internet Explorer) should really be given their own software navigation buttons, and the phone's hardware back button should be reserved for navigating between application screens. The problem is that a precedent has already been set and I doubt Microsoft will be willing to change it.
Super secret hidden menus - on a few occasions I've been frustrated by being unable to find an option only to find out it's hidden behind a press-and-hold menu. A classic example was when the pictures hub on the home screen was showing a picture I didn't like. I assumed it was random and would change eventually but it didn't. I looked everywhere to find an option to change it but couldn't figure it out. Eventually after searching on the web I realised you can press-and-hold the background of the picture hub (not the tile itself!) and a 'Change Background' option appears. I'm not convinced by these menus because in many situations you just don't know they're there. In some of the messaging applications common commands that should be on the application bar are also hidden in these menus.
Third party application performance - a few marketplace apps I've tried can be sluggish and have a choppy user interface. Twitter clients in particular seem to cause issues for developers, including in the official app. Interestingly the phone's default built-in apps like the People hub have no such issues which raises a question of whether Microsoft have developed them natively rather than in Silverlight and .NET like the Marketplace apps. Either that or only Microsoft has the knowledge and skills to make applications smooth and fluid at the moment.
Gaming performance - the hardware itself has more than enough power to run current mobile games well and 3D games can look very impressive, but 2D games I've tried have been less smooth than expected. It appears that Microsoft has limited games to running at 30 frames per second to preserve battery life. A well intentioned move and sensible for 3D titles but 2D games don't look as smooth as they do on recent iOS devices that can push closer to 60fps. This is something that Microsoft need to look into, preferably before Angry Birds is released.
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| The Harvest, one of the best looking Windows Phone games |
Marketplace app pricing - as an iPhone user I was used to being pleasantly surprised by the price of applications but this is rarely the case on WP7. Hopefully it's a reflection of the smaller market and range of applications rather than greed, eventually greater competition should bring prices down if the forces of capitalism do their job properly. There's far less really great free stuff for WP7 at the moment and non-free apps are often more expensive than I would expect. Developers should think about pricing cheaply and going for market share while it's early days - a great app at a great price could easily become the platform standard at this stage in the game.
Summary
The only frustration is having the patience to wait for the OS updates to roll in, and for developers to release some really compelling games. But it's important to remember how great the base platform is, and that even though WP7's market share is small at the moment, Microsoft is really working hard on this product and is in it for the long run.
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