Tag Archives: Technology

Dear Blackberry people

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It’s coming up to two years now since I craved for and got the new Blackberry Q10.

I was so happy. My old Blackberry had become a little beaten and, actually, started to break up but I’d had it for over 4 years and it had been through the mill a bit.

But now you had a shiny new black object, still with the keyboard (because I’m old-fashioned like that) so it seemed perfect.

I was so happy with it. OK, so I couldn’t play Ruzzle with F (us Blackberry users were charged for it whereas he got it free) but it had the keyboard AND a touch screen, was brilliant at the emails stuff and now had almost all I wanted in terms of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Then, just as the guarantee ran out at the end of the first year, the keyboard started playing up. Keys were sticking. I would press an “i” and on the screen would come “oooOOiooo”. This was a little annoying. It got worse. I googled it and learnt, to my horror that this was a common problem. As mine was just out of warranty, I was fucked …… for another couple of years, to be precise, as I have it on contract!

I looked at videos on how to replace the keyboard but could see that the problem would continue. So I found how to partially clean under the keyboard and I get by. In fact, I’m almost used to it now.

Every so often you gave me software updates which gave me new features and things. It was OK. I realised that, given that the keyboard was crap and you were in the shit as a company, my next phone would, probably, be something else, like a Samsung or whatever is popular in another 18 months time.

Still, you had a chance that I would consider another Blackberry.

That is, until a few days ago.

A few days ago, you gave me another software update. Obligingly I updated and, suddenly, some things started to go horribly wrong. My main problem was that my appointments in my calendar, although still there, stopped giving me reminders. Before, you would set an “reminder” and, up to 2 weeks before, you would get a sound (as you set) to inform you and you could then edit and change this at will. I rely on those reminders.

With my busy schedule, this was, probably, the most used thing for my phone, after the email.

But now, after the software update, although everything “appeared” to be the same, there was no sound or flashing screen with the reminder. Oh, yes, when you “opened” the phone, there was the reminder with the chance to modify – but if you didn’t look at the phone, I would never know.

I googled the problem and found that it was a “known” problem in that a lot of other people had found the same and it wasn’t that I needed to change any settings – it just didn’t work as it should any more.

But, not one to sit back, I had a look around and found that I could now set multiple alarms. Well, that would be good, except that you can only set alarms up to 24 hours in advance!

So, now, I have to keep checking my calendar entries, setting up alarms for that particular day.

I’ve looked but am unable to find anything from Blackberry that says “sorry” or, “we’re going to fix it real soon”. Or, preferably both!

So thank you, Blackberry, for ensuring that a once loyal customer will be looking for an alternative for the next phone. Fucking useless piece of shit.

Update May 2015: The last update partially fixed the problem. Now, however, the long “sound” I have for texts cuts short. Your update to fix the reminders came far too late and with no apology for the considerable inconvenience. Congratulations on royally pissing me off.

iTunes is crap!

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OK, so that’s not entirely true.

Actually, iTunes is a wonderful program. It does the things you want. It keeps all your music in one place, you can create playlists as you want, you can play songs in shuffle mode – and you can make CDs for people (apparently).

I don’t really use it much. I have moved all of my CDs onto iTunes and find it great to be able to play a certain album or track – easy to find, etc. The quality is quite good and, I suppose, if I could be half-arsed, I could set up my stereo to play the music through – except music is nice but not that important to me.

To F it is. F creates CDs for people. He used to DJ on a local radio station (local to where he came from) for a number of years and likes to create CDs where the music follows correctly. It is beyond my understanding, to be honest, but just because I don’t understand (why, even, one song follows another and another song cannot follow) doesn’t mean I don’t like the result. F has something over 2000 CDs and buys individual songs as well so has a collection of something like 15,000 songs on iTunes. He has given me an appreciation of Italian music that a) I never knew existed and b) I would never have had without him.

Since he’s always used iTunes (or, rather, used it for years), he loves it.

But ………

He wanted to download a special playlist to a USB key instead of burning a number of CDs.

And you can’t. Well, you can but you lose the playlist order.

He’s spent days doing this special playlist for someone and now he can’t give it to them. Worse still, whilst he was trying to do this thing, he nearly, but oh so nearly, lost all his songs – and, in the process, lost all his playlists – including the one that he had specially prepared.

And I have trawled the internet looking for a solution and can’t find anything that seems to do the job properly.

I had heard/read that iTunes could just wipe your music (if you were used to synchronising with your iPod) but since I don’t own an iPod (I know, you can hardly believe it,I know) I just thought ‘oh well’. Now, however, I feel bad for F who only wants to do something so simple and yet Apple won’t let you do it.

And so, my conclusion is that iTunes is great – as long as you just want to do everything within iTunes.

Whereas, if you want to do something a little bit ‘out of’ iTunes, it is crap with a huge dose of crapness on top.

I’m learning a new language

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Well, you might say “of course you are” but it’s not quite what you think.

I’m having various conversations with a girl who’s about 14.  Don’t get the wrong idea here – it’s not a bad thing.  She is the daughter of Best Mate.  And the conversation is the sort of general conversation that one would have with the teenage daughter of your Best Mate – except for one thing – it’s via Facebook and so is more like texting or chatting online.

And, as she’s 14, although she uses English it’s not quite the English that I write here.  And on more than one occasion I have had to ask Best Mate what a certain word or acronym means.

Because, let’s face it, I am old.  I remember mobile phones when they first came in and were almost as big as a small briefcase.  And the first portable computer was like a laptop – but the screen was a normal screen that you had to carry separately.  So, texting and chatting online requires that I learn a different language.

Some examples would be soz.  This is short for sorry.  Said is written sed.  How gets the ‘h’ dropped off the front.

All these things make remarkable sense.  However, I do find it difficult to do this.  I’ve just about mastered using ‘u’ instead of ‘you’ and ‘r’ instead of ‘are’ but I don’t even do that all the time, so writing ‘i sed i wuz soz’ I would still be writing as ‘I said I was sorry’ – even in text form, even going to the trouble of making the ‘i’ a capital.

And, in addition, I text Italians.  For me it is almost unthinkable as an ex English Teacher to write the short form.  The best I can do with F is to write ‘cos’ instead of ‘because’ (and even with that, the first time I did, he asked what it meant).

English is a wonderful, rich language (although the Italians always think theirs is better and richer – and, being a guest in their country I would not disagree – at least in front of them) but having been with V’s family (many of whom are first-generation from Jamaica), I became very aware of the the fact that there is no really ‘pure’ English.  It’s all bastardised all over the world.  Even here they take words and give them slightly different meanings (e.g. relax, which they don’t use verb even when it should be in the context in which they use it).

And so, this new form of English, widely used (I guess) by most English people (maybe even English-speaking people) under the age of, let’s say, 30 – where will it end up?  In 20 years will the common spelling of ‘said’ be ‘sed’ and ‘sorry’ be ‘soz’ – at least in the UK?

Every language changes over time but I suspect new technology and the need to type words on keyboards, touch pads and keypads could accelerate the changes to the language.  And since I know the same thing happens here (‘che’ becomes ‘k’, ‘per’ becomes ‘x’), I wonder if all languages are now under some pressure to change to meet the growing need of the younger generations to be able to communicate in ways that we never even imagined when we were at school.

Just a thought.