Aidan Williams - High Acuity

It’s flattering when someone completely rips off your XHTML & CSS for a major international brand’s website. Then it’s saddening when you discover they’ve completely messed it up because they don’t understand the fundamentals. Then it’s funny when you discover that they delivered the website six months past the original deadline.

Virtually every agency we’ve worked with has ripped off my XHTML & CSS to use on other projects, because I’ve been unavailable. I’ve even started putting one element into my CSS which really obviously cancels itself out, just to see if they’d keep it in – and they do!! Haha. And a few have shamefully ripped off Sanj’s designs. Sometimes it’s the complete design, colour scheme and all, and sometimes it’s just elements like the nav, header, buttons, layout, etc.

But that’s fine. We’re happy and busy, so they can make money from us on projects they’re not paying us for. The only thing I do slightly object to is when front-end developers from those agencies come to me and ask me how to do a particular piece of work while keeping it cross-browser compatible, semantically correct, valid and accessible. Largely because if I try to teach them how it all works, they’re not interested and just want me to do it for them. I’m happy to help people I’ve worked with before in that way, like ex-colleagues, but for anyone ripping off my code in its entirety for one of your projects and not paying me anything for it, I might be less inclined to give you my time and help for free.  

And ultimately, if you place our work directly next to theirs, it’s glaringly clear to everyone how much better the website we’ve produced is to theirs.

I just so happen to be one of the only white guys working in my office. Kashif, one of the directors of the law firm downstairs, knocks on our door and enters…

Kashif: “Hi guys. Just to let you know, we’re having a camera crew come round the offices to take video and pictures for a TV and print campaign we’re getting done, so no funny business okay?”
Me: “Wait, why did you look at me when you said that?”
Kashif: * starts laughing and then looks at Sanj * “Come on, man, keep the ethnic minority under control alright?”
Sanj: * crying with laughter * “I will do, don’t worry!”

WTF is this!?!?!? It’s usually me making these jokes towards others, not the other way around!

Quite frankly the whole thing is disgusting. I’ll sue!

Yes, that’s what I’ll do… I’ll sue the law firm…

Two weeks ago I got a call from my brother:

Angus: “Hi bro, the new iPhone is out.”
Me: ”Really? Great! I’ll check the site.”
Angus: “… Oh and they updated the Macbook Pros.”
Me: “What!? Nooooo!”
Angus: * starts crying with laughter *

So two weeks after we bought our new 17” Macbook Pros, Apple update them. Hahaha!

Luckily the updates were just a 0.1GHz increase in processor speed, but we decided to get in touch with Apple anyway. We were within the time period where we could return them and get them replaced with latest ones, but we decided we were too busy with work to accommodate the disruption.

Instead we asked if there was anything else they could do and they refunded us both £100! Not bad at all, Apple. Thank you very much!

On Friday, I upgraded from my first generation iPhone 2G to an iPhone 3G S. I know I could have upgraded to the 3G for free last year, but I didn’t feel the need to do so and the 2G has served me well. In fact I wasn’t even sure I really needed to upgrade to the 3G S (sorry Apple). What are we really getting here? Faster processor, slightly improved camera, video recording, a voice-recording app, voice control, compass functionality, spotlight. And most of these will be free when anyone upgrades to the 3.0 update on the older generation iPhones, so that really just leaves just a few reasons to upgrade.

These are all things we may want but certainly not things we need. This isn’t a dig at Apple though, it’s really a testament to just how well the first iPhone was built.

I decided to buy the 16GB White version, purely to have something different to all my friends. Why not 32GB? Virtually everyone in the store was buying the 32GB version and on every tariff available from O2, the 32GB version cost one hundred pounds more than the 16GB model. £100 for an extra 16GB of memory? You can find countless 32GB USB flash drives on the net for around £35, and 16GB USB flash drives for £20. So I thought Apple’s price hike was a little steep and was their way of saying to customers “If you want the best, you’ll pay a premium!”.

Well, I really don’t need the extra 16GB. I saved £100 and I have an identical iPhone to the 32GB owners with more than enough space to accommodate my iTunes library.

Having used the new iPhone 3G S over the weekend, I have to admit I was surprised with how much faster both the 3G connection is than the 2G model, and the general speed of applications. The performance of games has especially improved on the 3G S, some of which chugged on the iPhone 2G model. The camera also seems a lot higher quality, producing sharper photos with better colour depth and the video is also surprisingly sharp too.

My favourite improvement is the compass functionality though. I’ve used Google maps on the iPhone to get to meetings a lot in the past, and generally find directions to places to visit all around London. I’m shocked my iPhone-owning friends don’t use this more just to open, type ‘bar’, ‘restaurant’, ‘café’ and find a place close to their current location. Now that Google Maps has had the compass functionality integrated, I don’t have to look at the street names so find out which direction I’m facing relative to the map, I just click the compass icon and the map will turn to face the direction I’m walking. Simply point and walk – perfect!

None of the improvements to the iPhone 3G S are life-changing when compared to previous generations, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend people upgrade to it especially if you have the 3G version. Unless the iPhone is the only camera you use and you really crave the improvements and video options. And in reality all these changes really mean is that I’ll be able to find places with a little less fuss in Google maps, apps will run smoother, and maybe I’ll be posting more pictures taken with my iPhone.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy with my purchase though…. Apple has made some very nice improvements to an already brilliant product. Just don’t buy a white iPhone – it looks nice at first, but it gets dusty very quickly. I think Apple will probably do something quite special with the next iteration, like a complete overhaul of the design, greatly improved camera with a flash, much higher storage capacity as flash drives become more common and cheaper, etc.