{"id":1500,"date":"2011-03-03T11:37:41","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T01:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/?p=1500"},"modified":"2011-03-03T11:37:41","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T01:37:41","slug":"what-do-you-need-from-a-torch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2011\/03\/03\/what-do-you-need-from-a-torch\/","title":{"rendered":"What do you need from a torch?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got one of those smartphone thingies a year or so ago, to replace my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/03\/30\/a-new-owners-review-of-the-samsung-d600-mobile-phone\/\">&#8220;much beloved&#8221; D600<\/a>. One of the applications I installed, in my initial flush of application installation was <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/app\/flashlight\/id285281827?mt=8\">Flashlight<\/a>. It&#8217;s a simple enough idea. If you are stuck in the dark, it turns the backlit LCD screen white so you can use the phone as a makeshift torch.<\/p>\n<p>Or at least, that was what it could do in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.johnhaney.com\/flashlight\/history\/\">Version 1.0<\/a>. Since then, I officially declare, it has become the most over-engineered software package I have ever seen.<\/p>\n<p>You can select from a range of colours, customise the selection of colours, customise the way to launch the customisation of colours, select from a range of strobes and disco lighting, have US-based holiday-themed screens, view ads, read the FAQ and view help. At least, apparently you could do all that. I tried to do some of these just a few seconds ago and failed to understand the customisation screens.<\/p>\n<p><em>But, Julian,<\/em> you sigh, <em>It is a free app. It doesn&#8217;t cost you anything. Why are you complaining?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Because, dear reader, it keeps pestering me to upgrade it.<\/p>\n<p>How many upgrades should you need for an app that emulates a couple of dollars worth of electronics?<\/p>\n<p>Well, with a bit of digging I confirmed that there were <em>at least<\/em> this many versions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1.0<\/li>\n<li>1.1<\/li>\n<li>1.2<\/li>\n<li>1.3<\/li>\n<li>1.4<\/li>\n<li>1.5<\/li>\n<li>1.5.1<\/li>\n<li>2.0<\/li>\n<li>2.0.1<\/li>\n<li>2.1.0<\/li>\n<li>2.1.1<\/li>\n<li>3.0<\/li>\n<li>3.0.1<\/li>\n<li>3.1<\/li>\n<li>3.2<\/li>\n<li>4.0<\/li>\n<li>4.0.1<\/li>\n<li>4.0.2<\/li>\n<li>4.1<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Asking users, who just want a white square to appear, to install 19 versions? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2005\/09\/15\/anti-plonk\/\">*Plonk*<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julian complains a phone app, designed to replicate a battery, a lightbulb and a switch, is over-engineered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insufficiently-advanced-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1505,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions\/1505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}