adamburtle: “The first iPhone captivated the world because the interface was so well done, so snappy, so interactive; it was like nothing before it. Of course it was, it was an Apple product. That, right there, is why I buy Apple products. And I didn’t even mind that it was missing “copy and paste,” MMS, ringtones, etc — because I knew Apple would eventually get to these through software updates. And eventually they did. Unfortunately they kept coming out with new phones. With faster processors. And they wrote all their software updates for these phones, with little attention to deprecated models. I don’t really use third party software on my phones, I honestly don’t even use ringtones. I just my phone for SMS, web, maps, and occasionally as an actual phone, so the 3G model was more than I ever needed.
“Except over time, it’s fulfilled my needs less and less. And it’s not because my needs have grown. It’s not because I’ve installed a bunch of laggy software. It’s because Apple’s firmware has become bloated, with respect to the processing power of the 3G iPhone. I just installed iOS 4 two weeks ago, and at this point, I’d be happy to roll back to the first firmware I ever had, just to have that original speed again; forget about the copy and paste, I don’t need it that badly. “
H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the most graphical example of why you don’t always want to be the first one to install new software.
In the ongoing slow drip of information about Guild Wars 2, today’s revelation is another profession to join the Elementalist and Warrior — the Ranger:
The ranger is a jack-of-all-trades and a master of them all as well, relying on his keen eye, steady hand, or the power of nature itself. A master of ranged combat, the ranger is capable of striking unwitting foes from a distance with his bow. With a stable of pets at his command, a ranger can adapt to his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.
A ranger is accompanied by his pet, a loyal animal companion. Rangers charm pets and then bond with them. A ranger can have up to three pets at his call, but generally speaking, only one pet can be active at any time. Pets’ base health, armor, and damage are based on the level of the player that owns them.
My very first Guild Wars character was a ranger (Raphia Naon), so I’m happy to see his “descendents” will still be around in the 250-years-later continent of Tyria.
The Ranger is nature based, primarily a ranged attacker. Rangers are special because all Rangers have a pet. In your biography you will get to choose between three different pets that you can start with, and that varies between race. Then you can have up to three pets, and you go to a pet management screen to pull out any of the three that you want – provided that you’re not in combat. And so what we wanted to do is encourage Rangers to have up to three pets that they nurture and adventure with, and those three pets can be very different, purpose-wise.
So I can have maybe a bear who is good at tanking, or a snow leopard who’s a good damage pet, and then maybe a Moa bird who’s a good support pet, depending on the situation I’m in. So say I’m grouped with a bunch of Warriors and I really don’t need a bear to tank, I can pull out my snow leopard. If I wanted some support I could pull out the Moa. And so Rangers are designed to have those choices with their pets, where the pets fulfill very specific roles.
The pets automatically level to the level of the Ranger, so you don’t actually have to level pets. So if you get to level 50 and you want to go get a new type of pet, you don’t have to spend a bunch of time levelling that pet. The pet’s going to basically be effective.
And also, in that last paragraph, we learn that the level cap has been raised from 20 to (at least) 50. Also, unlike the trap mechanics in GW, traps have changed in that a Ranger can only have one trap active, and must be in the vicinity to keep it working (but it will continue to work as long as the Ranger stays in range). Spirits are also a larger part of the Ranger’s abilities, but still limited to a single spirit at a time.
Update the second: Rubi Bayer also reports on the Ranger’s abilities:
Let’s begin with what sort of pets are obtainable. “ A ranger has three active pet slots. Outside of combat, or through the use of utility skills, the ranger can swap their active pet. There are 12 different types of pets, including some terrestrial (spiders), some amphibious (lizards), and some aquatic (sharks).” Since pets from Elona and Cantha won’t be an option. ArenaNet has beefed up the selection in Tyria. “Within each type there are subtypes that can influence pets’ abilities. For example, a polar bear might have an Icy Roar, while a brown bear might have a Fearsome Roar.“
Yes. Sharks. You can tame a shark. While the idea of having a shark pet is awesome just on its own, the implications are even more exciting. First of all, you’ve got a pet that can accompany you in underwater combat. But since your faithful aquatic pet can’t go traipsing through the woods with you (sadly, it is not a landshark), rangers need a bit more variety available to them. This limitation is removed through the ability mentioned above, allowing rangers to have up to three pets “on call.” You can switch between your pets to adapt to your enemies or your surroundings as needed.
These changes should work to make playing the Ranger a better-balanced experience: over the last year or two, Rangers seem to have been trapped (sorry) into a few specialized functions, but generally aren’t as useful on mission and quest teams as other professions. Certainly they aren’t as welcome in pick-up groups as monks, elementalists or ritualists are.
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With the reminder yesterday that Microsoft has ended support for Windows XP Service Pack 2, I figured it was time to look at upgrading my computers to Windows 7. I’m not a “bleeding edge” kind of guy: I figure it’s safer to let other folks be the quality assurance department and I usually wait until the cries of pain and anguish from the first bunch of upgraders dies down before trying it myself.
I looked at the array of options (remember the days when there were only one or two flavours of operating system to worry about?) I was going to upgrade my laptop first, as it’s already been blighted with Vista, which is supposed to mean that the upgrade preserves all your installed programs and settings. I have a variety of programs I need to run, some of which are getting a bit long in the tooth, so I thought it safer to get a version of Windows 7 that offers the “Windows XP Mode” just in case some of them won’t play nice in the new OS natively. That meant I needed to buy Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate. The differences between those two versions was price: Ultimate offers BitLockerTM and the option of working in 35 languages, neither of which is important to me. So I picked up a copy of Windows 7 Professional.
This morning, when I tried to run the upgrade, having backed up my laptop’s hard drive, I discover that I should have bought the Ultimate version instead — because the laptop was shipped with Vista Home Premium installed, I can’t upgrade directly to Windows 7 Professional using the “preserve files and settings” option, but instead would have to re-install everything.
Well, I guess I can use this copy to upgrade the desktop, since it’ll need the full re-install everything option anyway. Drat.
Update, 15 July: Well, the actual updating part went pretty smoothly (unlike the last few times I’ve installed OSes from Microsoft), so now it’s find the programs, download updates and drivers, and get back into a working state. The longest part so far has been using the Microsoft “Windows Easy Transfer” wizard: both saving the files off the original and re-installing them on the new OS is a multi-hour exercise.
Update, 20 July: It took time, but unlike previous OS-upgrade tales of woe, this was merely time-consuming. The last of the programs I was having issues with has started to behave (although in one case it was an extremely good idea that I got the version of Windows 7 that included Windows XP Mode: my backup program hiccoughs under native Windows 7).
I can comfortably recommend the Windows 7 Easy Transfer tool: it even eased the pain of updating iTunes. I can see why some folks don’t feel the urge to move on from Vista: it “feels” very similar to Vista so far.
