Wocol Charge Booster

Main post on the iHustler, listing all such products

I couldn't find the iHustler again, but I found a similar product for $5 on Qoo10.

It registers as DCP on my PortPilot Pro, but I'm not sure if it changes according to the device because the back says, "Designed with Auto Detect Technology that helps to identify the connected device providing the optimal and fastest charging power". Personally this sounds a bit advanced for such a simple & cheap device and I expect it to be DCP all the way, which is good enough for my iPhone.

iPhone 6 Plus

I didn't get one at launch and it's always been out of stock, even now. But one weekend I managed to snag one. They didn't have any 64 GB white (sorry, silver) so I had to join the dark side with black (sorry, space grey).

First, wow, that's one UGLY box. I somehow still have all my iPhone boxes, so I was able to compare them. When I first saw the box I thought the phone came with a free screen protector, because it had the screen shape sticking out. Then I realised that's just the way the box is. It seems like the 6 has a "normal" box, only the 6 Plus has this ridiculously minimalist hieroglyph. Some people say it's to save money (unlikely, since embossing costs more than printing and money isn't really an issue for Apple), some say it's to highlight the curves. The speaker and Home button are glossy (spot UV?)

Phone-wise, it's pretty much the same as previous iPhones. Yes, it's the biggest iPhone yet, but it's fit in every pocket I've tried so far. I wonder if (men's) pockets are mostly the same size, since phones top out at 5.5-5.7" (Note 4) and I don't think it's a coincidence. No, you can't fully use it with one hand. You can reach the entire screen with some maneuvering, if you support it against your body or don't mind just resting it on your hand (as opposed to gripping it, i.e. you can't hold it upside down).

Edges of screen are curved, so screen protectors have to stop short. You can see the edge of the screen protector in the picture. Camera lens sticks out, necessitating a case more than ever. I'd rather make the whole phone thicker and increase the battery life. True Tone Flash seems to help, I haven't really tried slow motion or time lapse (who can dedicate their phone for time lapse?). Touch ID works, but because the sensor is smaller than your finger, you have to register the same part of your finger you use.

There are some things they overlooked. Like the 6 Plus supports 6+1 rows of apps, but still only displays 9 apps in every folder:

It's as though they just stuck a bigger screen on an iPhone instead of designing one from the ground up... Also, apps that aren't updated for the iPhone 6 Plus just stretch to fill the screen, making everything larger.

There are some disappointing bugs:

• The first picture you take in a while doesn't make any sound. No shutter sound after updating ios 8.1 on iphone 5s No camera shutter sound on first shot. As I said, bookmarking threads in Apple help is frustratingly difficult and finding your bookmarks is mind-bogglingly harder. It's so ridiculously difficult it must have been done on purpose.
• Brightness control: opening Control Centre dims the screen, making accurately adjusting brightness impossible. They fixed this by un-dimming the screen when you touch the brightness slider. Sort of, it usually doesn't work on the first try. Another bug: sometimes, after adjusting brightness, when you release the slider, it jumps to another position.
• Some I've mentioned, mainly tapping on SMS notifications doesn't bring you to the SMS app. Sometimes.
• It was stuck on Continue Restoring. Fortunately I was able to cancel and didn't lose any data. On the bright side, most apps now restore data seamlessly, an improvement from 2 years ago.

• Echo/dual email notification sounds (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6561027) (http://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/2igk9w/ios_802_email_sound_notifications_echodouble/) 
• You know if you hold the back button in Safari it opens a list of previously visited sites (works in every browser I've seen)? Sometimes it misses out the most recent and only starts with sites from a certain time ago. 
• Can we fix the "This message has no content." bug in Mail already?

I made this list of specific bugs, because there are lots of articles claiming "latest iPhone is the buggiest ever!" every time an iPhone comes out, but none actually state the bugs. They usually say something like "50% more app crashes!" with no details at all.

The Screen
Apple makes a big deal of their screen, and it certainly has improved a lot. Off the top of my head, these are the improvements: IPS, Retina resolution, gluing the touch sensor layer to the screen, now they say the iPhone 6 has UV photo alignment, dual-domain pixels, and an improved polariser. There are some independent measurements of the display tracking the improvements. But the touchscreen aspect seems oddly ignored. Surely it has changed from the first iPhone until now? One thing I'm wondering is, what's the touchscreen resolution? Surely not as high as the display. This is actually very important for things like the keyboard.

To be continued...

Misnomers

Ok, I couldn't find a word for what I'm talking about here and was going to call them "false descriptive names", then I found out they're called "misnomers". Knowing the correct term makes searching for more and being found much easier.
Plants And Animals

• Seedless watermelon (they aren't really seedless, they just have small seeds. Why can't they be truly seedless like grapes?)
• Peanuts are neither a pea nor a nut. 
• The tarantula hawk is neither a tarantula nor a hawk.  
• "Blue" and "yellow" when describing dogs.

Objects

• Stainless steel (not really stain-proof)
• Basically anything -proof. Waterproof, bulletproof, shockproof, etc.
• Also, any physical substance that claims to be pure. You can only really say contaminants are below the level of detection.
• Volkswagen's DQ200 Direct-Shift Gearbox, which is said to use "dry" clutches, which aren't really dry and still use oil, although less. 
• Dry and sweet when describing wines (not really dry or sweet in the conventional sense, although the words dry and sweet could have different meanings)
• Sandpaper contains neither sand nor paper.
• Lots of "dry" things - dry cleaning, dry cell batteries 
• Pencil leads aren't made of lead any more 
• Decaffeinated coffee isn't caffeine-free
• Free size / one-size-fits-all

Others

• Ironically, most countries with "democratic" in their name - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Picasa Web Albums Still Limited To 1000 Photos

If you insist on using the old PWA interface instead of Google+, you'll see that the album limit is supposed to be 2000 photos. And indeed, it is. You can upload 2000 photos. But you'll only be able to see the first 1000. So it's really 1000 photos per album. But you can see all the photos if you use Google+, or even my Best Album app on iOS (not by Google).

Some discussion here:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/picasa/U3GnPUrLY48
I'm putting a link here because bookmarking them with your account is mind-bogglingly difficult, and this is even more so for Apple. It's as though they don't want you to keep track of their problems!

Swype On iOS 8

I'll be frank - custom keyboards was the only thing I was looking forward to on iOS 8, and they botched this up. iOS 8 is a disappointment so far. I mean, these are the issues not relating to the custom keyboards:

1. Apple backpedaled and killed Photo Stream and Camera Roll, then they backpedaled again and restored Camera Roll in 8.1
2. Annoying reminders that mobile data is turned off for certain apps
3. App Store - STILL no sorting or filtering
4. For no reason, writing reviews in the App Store has a huge font
5. Only cursory, token support for adjusting text size, even in the built-in apps. http://lowvisionrants.com/2013/12/26/where-ios-7s-dynamic-type-works-and-where-it-fails/
6. SMS - swiping the notification from the Lock Screen or tapping it in Notification Center used to bring you to the Messages app, now this is hit-and-miss
7. Did they really create an unremovable app to show me 19 random tips? Apple products have never had good, thorough manuals. I suspect it's because they expect their products to be "intuitive". Seems very stupid to add features and not tell people about them, but whatever. Looks like too many of their features are going unnoticed, so they created the Tips app. But it's of no use and can't be removed.

Apple has lost their famous attention to detail, they can't get their basics right and they're losing ground.

Anyway, I was glad to have more choices for keyboards, because phones have come a long way, but text input is way waay behind. I thought Swype would be much much better, but there are some caveats:

• You can only use one hand.
• You have to get the word right in one try. You can't break up long words. This is especially a problem if you're having sensitivity issues or accidentally move out of the keyboard area.
• You can't use the iOS shortcuts. You can't use any custom shortcuts whatsoever.
• Punctuation is a pain
• The first version had some really really stupid things, like asking me to add single numbers to my dictionary. I know this is their first time on iOS, but they've been on Android for years now, so I expect more than a beta-level development.

The net result is that Swype's benefit is minimal to nonexistent. Limiting yourself to only one hand already cuts speed by about 50%, and Swype definitely isn't 200% as fast as the iOS keyboard.

Since it looks like they still have no idea how to make a user-friendly keyboard, I'm putting this here for them:

1. Always have an undo option
2. TELL PEOPLE WHEN YOU'RE GOING TO REPLACE WHAT THEY TYPE. It's really obvious that there are 2 distinct situations 1) the keyboard suggests a word, but leaves what you type 2) the keyboard will replace what you type with their suggestion. I don't know why they don't make this clear.
3. BE CONSISTENT - if I type some letters and it suggests a word, if I type more letters of that word, THE SUGGESTION SHOULD NOT CHANGE. If I type other letters then remove them, THE SUGGESTION SHOULD COME BACK.
4. I'm looking at you iOS - if you have a space above the keyboard for suggestions, STICK TO IT. Don't suggest words at the cursor anymore. Don't have suggestions all over the page.

I typed "leave early" and iOS suggested "peace early". This is some rage-inducing programming right here. Seriously? Are they even trying?

PayPal Address History

When buying things and paying with PayPal, most commonly on eBay but also used by small-time sellers, PayPal presents you with a list of your recently-used addresses. It's meant for convenience, but mine became annoying when the list grew longer and longer, with repeated entries. There's no way to clear this list. Examples of people asking this:

• https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Settings-Archive/Delivery-Address-History/td-p/718771
• https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Adding-and-updating-info/How-do-I-remove-very-old-postal-addresses/td-p/76413

I must emphasise that these addresses are NOT in my address book. They're just addresses I've used God knows how long ago, that PayPal still keeps. They're a problem because:

1. Security issue if someone gains access to your account
2. High chance of sending things to the wrong address
3. Many repeated entries

It's puzzling why PP decides to keep these forever. Not expecting much, I sent PayPal a message. If enough people make a fuss, maybe they'll change this odd decision. I was also considering opening a new PP account just because of this. They auto-replied with an email:

Below this section, it says "If these do not answer your question, please reply to this email with as much information as possible." So I replied and expected more generic replies from PP.

Then, a few days later, I got a call from a +60 phone number. I didn't want to answer it at first. When they said they were from PayPal, I was suspicious, because this is a common tactic by scams. I was careful not to reveal any more personal information. They only asked for my email address and real name. Amazingly, they understood my problem! More amazingly, they said they would delete the old addresses (and read a few of them to verify)! I got this email from them:

During the call, they said they would also give me $10 credit!! I received 2 follow-up emails from them, the one above and this one:

I have since spent the credit so I can confirm this is for real. However, I haven't checked to see if the addresses are really gone.

Now, I had a slightly bad opinion of PayPal at first, and this experience gave me more confidence in them. Not only were they able to fix my problem without me having to explain it repeatedly, they even gave me credit! I'm not saying they'll do this for everyone (they probably saw how much I spent on PayPal), but if you have lots of old addresses you want to get rid of, you could try emailing them.

Ace Of Base

I heard this song on the radio. The chorus went something like "don't turn around". Hmm, that sounds a lot like another song, I think it goes "all that she wants". Searched for the second song. Yup, "All That She Wants" is a 1993 song by Ace Of Base. So did don't turn around copy / was inspired by / is a tribute to All That She Wants? Searched for it, turns out Don't Turn Around came out first, in 1992, also by Ace Of Base! I prefer All That She Wants. Hmm do all their songs sound like that? I know there's a band whose songs all start with a long, drawn-out female voice: "hooooowwww caaaaann yoooooouuuu sseeeeee....."

New songs inspired by old:
"Pump It", Black Eyed Peas - Misirlou
"On The Floor", Jennifer Lopez - Stereo Love (this was the song I was actually thinking about when I wrote this, but I couldn't remember either of their names. And this isn't simply sounding similar - they straight off ripped the tune from the other song. It's not only my opinion, either: J-Lo’s "On the Floor": Plagiarizing a plagiarized song?)
"Feel This Moment", Christina Aguilera - Take On Me (what is it with Pitbull and using melodies from old songs?)
Ice Ice Baby and Under Pressure – I don't know who copied whom.