Hudson’s Rather Random Homepage

This is a love hate sort of relationship. I love my brand spanking new tricked out Samnsung Blackjack! I love unlimited data plans that arn’t *too* pricey, maybe not cheap, but it could be a lot worse. I love the look, the feel, hell, shames me to say, I even love the OS. And its windows for gods sake.

Now hang on there cowboy, put down the penguin cannon before you loose a limb or loved one. I have two Linux PDA’s i flashed myself and i love them too, but for different reasons. The windows mobile 5 OS on this thing is respectable, fast, and fairly easy to dick around with and toy with its guts. Unlike, say, VERIZON phones with their asstactular customized roms programmed and designed out of raw purified elephant dung, which by the way are so crippled its not even funny. 200 dollar phone for 50 dollar phone features. But its in a REAL pretty case and it LOOKS like a real pretty phone.

The blackjack? It’s just real pretty. Sleek, handy, well featured, and thank god cingular is one of the providers that typically dicks with their phones *the least* of most other providers when it comes to ‘adjusting’ features or nerfing programs on their devices.

And this is where the rub comes in..

Like any smartphone/PDA, the blackjack has the sun Java VM installed, to you non-geeks out there that means, on most phones like this, you can go to places like www.getjar.com and with a little poking around, load up on tons of freeware and shareware apps, like the good old days, and most of these apps are by budding programmers or open source related projects or just free offerings from company’s who want to break in on the mobile movement. Translating even further: LOTS of cool fucking toys and useful fucking programs.

Now, cingular, being one company like those mentioned above, did the dumbest, most idiotic thing I think they could have possibly managed to pull off. The java MV, the little program system that lets your blackjack run these freaking awsome apps? It’s had its balls cut off and its been given a inflamed case of FUCK YOU to boot.

Bottom line, the java MV is custom built, not by much, but just enough. What did they do? They configured it to /require/ that java apps be signed with a ssl certificate issued by them (at a charge to the developer, and extra hassle because nobody else requires this like this, mind you) that if this app does NOT have the signed cert they specify.. guess what?

The fucking device *nags every non-cingular-signed program to death*, you think windows is bad with the ‘allow or deny?’ firewall shit? This makes it look like a cake walk.

Allow me to shower you with an example. Check out www.mgmaps.com, it is a very freaking cool java app, a must have and it has been given plenty of rewards by plenty of publishers to tell it so! Alot like google maps, but with the features you wish google maps had already, like live GPs tracking which can be sent online, customizable maps, navpoints, etc. It’s like a bastard child between tomtom, streets and googlemaps.

Obviously, this app has to use the internet to get its data and talk to the outside world. The moment it does this, any time, you are prompted with a familiar window saying ‘The application blahblah is attempting to use data service’, followed by three, (3) choices. Allow this time. Deny this time. and always Deny.

Wait! Did you catch it? Did you see something missing there? Where the hell is ‘always allow’ or at least ‘allow for this session’?? If you check the java programs properties, thinking ‘oh i just have to set it manualy! clever, protects the stupid people from themselves!’..WRONG. the only choice you have is ‘one shot’ allow.

so.. every, fawking, time, any, app, does, anything, it pops this nag up. Now, this particular program downloads map images in tiles, much like google maps.

IT WILL NAG YOU FOR EACH, DAMN, TILE, SEVERAL TIMES. God forbid you try any of the java based IM clients, or games, or webapps like fliker or anything else. Just say a great big fuck you to your ability to do anything java related. If it does anything useful aside from just make pretty colors on the screen, its going to get nagged. And you can’t make it go away.

You starting to feel the hate in this relationship yet? Now, of course, some of you out there are saying ‘Stoopid, just use native mobile apps, n00b!’. Hey, fuckhead. Java, crossplatform, compatible on multiple systems. Vs. a one or two platform binary. Where do you think most developers are going to go to get the most exposure? Yeah, thought so, shut up and sit back down, I got shit to write and a phone to hack up.

Ahem..

Most of the hubub over this was rolling around when google maps and gmail apps and such were only java based, now its died down some due to gmaps going native mobile 5 format. Not so for their other offerings. And the native app is still pretty damn glitchy..

And one final rub, since cingular has obviously crippled the ability to run third party java apps, this is the final punchline. They did really no such thing for native WM apps at all. If you need to unlock the restrictions there, a very simple registry tweak can software unlock your Os and let you tweak all sorts of things. Which by the way you can install just like a normal app and the thing never even bats an eye.

So they of course offer ‘cingular signed’ apps on their media net. All at 5 bucks a pop or higher, or several bucks a month. And MOST of them are cheap ass knockoffs of stuff that is already out there for free and better than what they are offering. Oh, and lets not forget, there is no sign of anything usefull, like..remote desktop,SSH, terminal emulation, streaming players, text editors, browsers, email clients, multi IM clients that dont use SMS as a cheap ass workaround attempt to charge you more..

Nope, you have some cheapass fugly games, some retarded useless apps, and nothing really that appealing to the guy or gal on the go. It’s ike they think their target market is a bunch og smacktards with 800 dollars to burn a week downloading a crapload of apps they may or may not like and will probably never use more than a few times before they tire of its shitty quality.

If this is how they plan on breaking ground in the mobile movment when it comes to multiplatforms with java, this is NOT a step in the right direction. They try and deny they did it, or try and claim its to protect the users, they have claimed, in emails, that i’m too lazy to google back up and quote, that such features have been enabled because java was ‘abused’ by people and they ahve to potect their customers, etc etc blah blah..so..why did they leave windows mobile based apps alone then?

Sounds like lame corporate crap to me. some monkey in a chair got a wild hair up his backhole about java apps and ran some halfassed missive down the tree and made sure the turd hit every head on the way down.
Fine, so have it nag the noobs to death about running oh-so-dangerous apps, and let the advanced users make a easy tweak to turn it the fuckoff, its not like the guru’s bring their phones in for a reflash anyways, they do it themselves you grabasses. Sigh..

See? This is why you don’t let the executives make choices like this, and you hire tech consultants who doesn’t wear a tie and know a shitload about the mkind of people who will probably buy products.
But hey, fear not, I’m not beat yet. I still have some sneaky tricks up my sleeve on how to possibly solve this problem. And I’ll be posting some things I try and the results, and offering the results and instructions to the public at large because If i go through hell to get my phone my way, I might as well save all the other blackjack junkies out there the trouble.

I’ll make a follow up post later today or tomorrow after some more searching around, adding in some of the hard to find but useful tidbits about these wonderful phones that help unlock a bit more of their potential. I have the software unlock installer, and some tips on how to get your phone unlocked, without even having to be a geek or pay a fee, this post is more to get people who might not be too familiar with the situation up to speed. :)