Tumblr site for Douglas Johnston, marketing professional living in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Avid Sherlockian, DIYPlanner.com founder, outdoor enthusiast, and longbow archer.

  1.  

    Playing with iOS5, Lion and iCloud

    Upgraded both my iPhone and my iPad2 to iOS5 yesterday, and my MacBook Pro to Lion. Aside from the infuriating reverse-direction scrolling in Lion (push up to go down and vice-versa — I’m too hardwired), I have to admit that I like the whole experience. I’m assuming that I’ll have to await more iOS apps’ use of the notification system —the only thing appearing there so far with mine is Apple Mail— but it’s a far cry better than the pop-up alerts from before. (Tap tap tap tap —what was that? Oh, dammit — tap tap tap….)

    Not fond of the app switching yet in iOS5, although it’s still better than iOS4: use all the fingers of your hand to swipe the app “off” one side or the other. It reminds me of a poor man’s webOS card system, the biggest differences being that you don’t actually flip between all the cards in a nice visual manner, and there’s no stacking of related/conjoined cards in a deck (e.g., the PDF viewer that you called up from the email app). Better than Android Gingerbread’s standard icon-based view, but nowhere near as nice as Honeycomb’s thumbnail views. Plus, I can’t seem to do much in the background yet, like how in Android I can download torrents, suck down podcast files, run installs, and put almost any app in the background and it still carries on, pushing out a notification when its job is done.

    Still wrapping my head around the tacky faux-leather-with-stitching interface of some of the apps. Really, Apple? You don’t think that’s a wee bit tacky? Like, 6 years ago, tacky?

    I haven’t played with the magazine/press shelf or the iBooks yet, since I already use platform-agnostic Zinio and Amazon for that. I don’t want to be tied into only one hardware platform.

    iCloud has a streamlined web interface of mail that’s nice and clean, very Apple-like and an improvement over the last time I used Apple dotMac Mail some 3 years ago. The calendar and contacts web apps look very much like the iPad versions, and I must admit that I don’t have Pages, Keynote or Numbers on my iPad yet, so the documents online sync is rather useless for me at the moment. (Again, I like the platform-agnostic Google Apps that allows other programs, such as Docs to Go, to synchronize with it.)

    One inevitable conclusion: you really have to want to invest in this ecosystem if you want to make the most of it. Unless you’re running a Mac full time on the desktop (me, I use Linux 80% of the time), have purchased and used mostly iWork (which isn’t available outside a Mac), and only use iOS devices (me, I use Android phones and tablets most of the time, with an occasional foray into my iPhone, iPad2 or HP webOS TouchPad), you’re not going to get the full benefit of this holy Apple Trinity of iOS5, Lion and iCloud.

    More thoughts later as I dive in.

  2.  

    Hot on the heels of Job’s curt response regarding censorship in the Apple App Store, let’s imagine an interruption tomorrow during the iPhone 4G launch….

  3.  

    Dipping into Android with the Samsung Galaxy

    Not that long ago I graduated from the Blackberry Storm to the JesusPhone, the iPhone 3GS. But I must admit that Apple is turning into a Leviathan worse that Microsoft or IBM, using the dangling carrot of elite uber-cool products as a way of distracting us from what’s going on behind the scenes: suing guys trying to get an iPhone to work with Linux clean-room (legally); arbitrarily imposing restrictions in the App Store in an inconsistent fashion (independent apps can’t show scantily clad models, but we still have Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps); torpedoing Adobe and other developers through licensing changes at the last moment; allegedly instigating a police raid on a journalist who outed the new iPhone; threatening open standards and formats (e.g., Ogg Theora video) with patent pools; and countless other workings that the public rarely hears about.

    Nowadays I almost feel dirty using Apple products. Keep in mind that I’ve been a fanboy for well over a decade, the purchaser of more pieces of Apple hardware than I can realistically count. My collection of antique Newtons alone would fill out a large museum display quite nicely.

    Sure, I love my iPhone. Who doesn’t? But ideology is powerful force that slowly spreads its passion and outrage through a person’s lifestyle, influencing world-views and self-perceptions. I really can’t give up the iPhone —my job requires staying on top of mobile developments— but perhaps I can somehow distill the effect it’s having on me by also pursuing other options. Given my Open Source and Linux leanings, it’s only natural I take a dive into Android.

    Where I live in Northern Canada, there’s only one Android option being offered by the sole operator, Bell Mobility, and that’s the Samsung Galaxy i7500. On first glance, it’s a decent proposition. Fairly positive reviews, 3G GSM usage, Android OS, beautiful OLED touch-screen, and thin profile. 

    Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Most things aren’t that big a problem, including design quirks that the press hated, such as the strangely-behaving lock button. The media players are adequate, but nothing special, the calling system works as expected, and the camera is decent enough. The Google integration (Gmail, search, Maps, Voice, Calendar) is as good as one would expect from a Google operating system. My first foray into the Android Marketplace yielded a few gems, and I’m eagerly trying them out.

    No, the biggest problems are:

    • A terrible battery life, something like 5-10 hours with average usage (browsing, music, minor downloads)
    • Android OS 1.5, which is comparatively ancient in the face of today’s 2.1 OS, and which can only run a subset of the applications that 2.1 can
    • Strange “ghost clicks”, such as icons and keyboard items chosen some distance away of where I’m about to click (especially frustrating when typing)
    • A considerable lag when scrolling through lists of any type, and often (as aforementioned) randomly choosing an item while I’m actually scrolling

    It would appear as though most of the above is a result of the older OS on it. 1.6 and the 2.x series have apparently done wonders for some devices formally funning 1.5. Unfortunately, it appears that Samsung is in not hurry to upgrade the year-old OS. Forums are filled with frustrated users who have talked to Samsung and been told that we’ll never get 2.x, and perhaps not even 1.6. Boo, Samsung.

    Other frustrations are software based, which one can only blame on the fledgeling but rapidly growing marketplace. There’s now over 50,000 apps, but we’re still waiting on certainly key ones from major industry players. For example, Blackberry has an Audible audiobook player that can play and download books, iPhone can play Audible books downloaded and added to iTunes on the desktop, and Android is currently out of luck. (Rumours persist on a summer release.) In the meantime, I’ll see if I can’t get the Galaxy to play non-DRM books of my making.

    There’s still a lot to like about this smart phone. Seesmic (Twitter), Facebook, MySpace and the other social networks are well represented. Like the Blackberry, multi-tasking means that things can still happen in the background (like downloads and streaming). And Android’s open source nature means that some of my favourite geek applications, like IRC and SSH clients, are there and ready to use.

    Well, let’s try it for a few weeks. At worst, I’ll have a much better appreciation for Google’s Nexus One (and offspring, like the HTC Desire) when I get my hands on one.