I’m John C Bland II

Husband, Father, Tech Author, Deacon.
Founder of Katapult Media, and full-stack polyglot developer.
Political Free Agents Podcast Host.

I create. I launch.

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I post regular fun on YouTube like me playing the bass and anything else I find fun. 

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Most Ridiculous Article Award: Apple’s Relentless Push Forward

@daringfireball quoted this:

At a time when most current Android devices — even the ones that will be sold over the holiday shopping season — wont ever have the option to install Android 4.0, Apple is specifically pushing the iOS install base forward. Apple wants all iOS users on iOS 5, not just the ones who buy a brand new device.

I find this post utterly ridiculous. First, he’s speculating and seriously putting himself on a ledge with such a large accusation regarding which devices will get Ice Cream Sandwich [Android 4.0]. Then he goes on to say “Apple wants all iOS users on iOS 5, not just the ones who buy a brand new device.” This is where my ridiculous meter goes off the charts.

There are five versions of the iPhone. Two of those five are getting iOS 5. Now I’m not arguing whether a 3Gs or 3G should get iOS 5 but clearly he’s under a fruit flavored, Kool-aid induced high. Apple in no way wants all iOS users on iOS 5 without them buying an iPhone 4 or 4s [ie – latest hardware]. Furthermore, iOS 5 isn’t the exact same on the 4 and 4s, namely regarding Siri [which could be any number of reasons why it isn’t on the 4]. Let’s return to the article.

iOS 5 is a major turning point for the entire iOS ecosystem. Although Apple has always made it relatively easy — and most often free — to upgrade iOS, users will now be notified of available upgrades and be able to quickly install them right on the device. The 25 million downloads of iOS 5 in the first week of its release will pale in comparison to future upgrades when users won’t even have to plug their device into a computer.

If this is the case, Android has been on this focus for years. Tit-for-tat isn’t my goal in this post but this paragraph seems to be the crux of his statement: OTA updates are the measuring stick of Apple’s relentless focus.

From the sidelines it may look like Android and Windows Phone 7 are quickly catching up — and they are making tremendous strides in the right direction — but the iOS platform is much further ahead than most people realize, and iOS 5 shows that Apple is pushing faster and looking further into the future than ever before.

Catching up? Wow. Even the passionate comments on @tipb aren’t that blind, well…at least not all of them. I’d love to see him break this paragraph down in a separate post showing where Android, specifically, is behind iOS. Each have different features but Android is absolutely not behind iOS, considering this post is about Android 4 [Ice Cream Sandwich].

Recent iPhone commercials have touted; “If you don’t have an iPhone… well, you don’t have an iPhone”. That’s been true since the iPhone was first launched in 2007 and here we are in 2011 with all other mobile platforms still playing from behind. The speed, efficiency, and innovation iOS 5 enables for developers — both 3rd party and Apple’s own software teams — will only widen the gap in 2012.

So the leading smartphone operating system, Android, is playing from behind? Speed [assuming he means hardware] is a win for iOS. It is definitely smooth but it bogs down just like Android. Efficiency is a major win for Android: widgets, quick access to settings, etc. iOS takes more clicks to do similar tasks Android can do in a widget or a with a quick setting. Innovation is subjective. It depends on who you’re asking but I’d give it to Android w/ NFC, cloud features from jump, and the numerous upgrades just announced.

Overall, I utterly disagree with this post. I don’t care to rant too often but this one deserved it. I do my best to call it like I see it and am not blinded by my choice of Android as my mobile OS but enough is enough from Camp Apple. Let’s get real and be objective with our views here people! [I say that after a rant; lol]

HTC, I want a divorce!

[fair warning, this is a rant]

Since Summer 2010 I have been rocking an HTC Evo after leaving my iPhone 4 upgrade with AT&T. I went with the Evo 4G and loved it, even bought my brother, wife, and employee one. Sense is an excellent “overlay” for Android and I missed a ton of the issues many people talked about with Android looking ugly, not being smooth, etc. It is a really nice addition but I do have issues with it. My main issue is the battery and it has moving away from the Evo product line but let’s start with a lighter topic first: updates.

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Flex Mobile: StageWebView Removal

I’m working on a simple Flex mobile app to test out the viability of it as a cross-platform mobile development environment/sdk. This app is a simple master/detail view-based application [based on s:ViewNavigatorApplication]: show a list of items, select an item, see details. That’s it. On the details view there was an issue with displaying the item content so I just used HTML [since that’s what the source data is on occasions]. This was easy enough, after a lil’ googling, with the StageWebView but there were some gotchas.

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