It wasn’t that long ago when it was hard just to get 2 pc’s to communicate on a local network. Tonight I’m sitting in bed watching a movie on my iPad, and thinking how well things work together these days. Because the video file I’m watching is stored on a drive on my Drobo that’s connected via FireWire to my Mac Mini, which is connected via cat5 to my iMac, which is running AIr Video software that live converts the .avi file into an h.264 stream and wirelessly streams it to the iPad, which displays it live without requiring any local storage. And it all works really well.
The HTC EVO 4G is the latest Android ’superphone’, launching on Spring in 2 weeks. Google gave everyone at Google I/O one for free, and I’m fortunate that my friend Frankie G sold it to me (he wasn’t ready to switch to Sprint).
Here are some impressions after using it the past few days. Keep in mind that I’ve used iPhones for the past 3 yrs and this is my first real use of Android.
First, the good:
- The screen is huge and bright
- Integration with Google services is great. Love Google Voice and Gmail.
- Mobile hotspot is great (and just what I need for my wifi iPad)
- Sprint 3G is fast, and calls have been been loud and clear
- The one app I’ve found that beautifies things is Slide Screen…but I hear it’s not compatible with Froyo.
- Playing Pandora in the background while doing other things is great. But iPhone OS 4 will have this, too.
Now, the longer list of not-so-good:
- Unlocking the phone is not easy. On iPhone, it’s thumb-press + thumb-swipe. Very quick. On the Evo, you use your index finger to press power (on the top right) then swipe down at the bottom of the screen with your thumb. And because the phone is so long, you can’t do it in a smooth motion.
- Multi-touch is not nearly as smooth as on iPhone
- The battery is bad – usually 1/3 sapped by noon, on life support by early evening. I ordered extra charging cables for cheap on ebay.
- The user experience is jarring. When apps launch they pop open instantly, whereas on iPhone they animate and open towards you, creating a smoother transition. Also when you rotate the phone it switches instantly rather than smoothly.
- The fonts, icons and widgets are all butt-ugly.
- The camcorder takes 720p video, but the quality is really grainy. Classic case of adding a feature just to one-up the competition.
- Android Market is pretty barren, and the games are also lame. There are SO many great iPhone apps that simply don’t exist for Android.
- Typing is difficult. Sometimes when I type fast, the cursor gets moved to the middle of the word so I end up typing over myself – a major bug.
- There’s a giant void in figuring out how to get my content sync’d from my computer (yeah I know about doubletwist). With iTunes it’s so much easier.
- Lots of duplication of effort: you can use either the HTC home screen or the Android one. There’s a Sprint Navigation app and a Google one. There’s a Gmail client and a regular Mail app.
- It feels like using Windows CE back in the day: managing your data on external storage, navigating folder hierarchies with file managers, killing tasks with task managers, managing ‘default applications’ to launch.
- Don’t click “manage applications” in settings unless you have 5 minutes to wait.
- Like with CE phones, you’re dealing with 3 companies (Google, HTC and Sprint) trying to do different parts of the user experience, a recipe for disaster.
- There’s a bunch of pre-installed Sprint crapware, like a NASCAR and football app. Sprint TV is horrible, and Sprint Zone is just pointless. Basically, Sprint needs to just sell the phone and service and stay out of the user experience. They suck at it.
- The integration of Facebook and Twitter is confusing. You give the phone your credentials, but it doesn’t tell you when/where the integration happens.
Granted, Froyo (2.2) is coming soon and I should reserve my final judgement til then. But I’m pretty sure that I’ll either end up with the iPhone 4G or going the cheapo route with a basic prepaid phone + iPad + Mifi.
here’s a quick tip if you’re like me and:
- you love audio & video podcasts
- you find it annoying/ineffecient to subscribe to download all the episodes, and then have to sync via cable
- you’re usually using wifi when consuming podcasts
for example: I like the ABC/NBC news video podcasts. but I only watch them every few days. I don’t want to subscribe and download an episode every day. also, when I feel like watching, I may not have sync’d my iphone/ipad.
so here’s the tip:
1. using your favorite notes app (one that syncs from desktop to device), copy and paste the iTunes URLs into a document. i use SimpleNote. after it syncs, it looks like this:
2. click the URLs to open iTunes on the device. touch the episode name to stream the episode directly. don’t click the “FREE” button – that’ll just download it for later.
there you go – listen/watch on demand without having to subscribe.
- had a Skype conversation with the ‘rents in shanghai. Call quality was great.
- blown away by the speed, quality of screen, and battery life.
- keyboard is a little hard to type on, but faster than iPhone keyboard. Able to touch type in landscape mode, but the portrait keyboard is hunting and pecking. Typing this on my iPad now, in fact, on the Wordpress app.
- even the pixel doubled classic mode apps and games are more fun to use on the bigger screen.
Can’t help thinking that, like the iPhone, the competition is a good few years behind Apple…even though they now have the opportunity to copy everything.
with the iPad announcement, the whole debate about Apple’s lack of support for Flash is ignited again.
unfortunately, some of the public seems believe be that the reason Apple doesn’t support Flash is to sell more games via the App Store. not true. Apple makes money selling devices, not apps. so Apple would actually make a lot more money by supporting Flash in the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad – because they’d sell more devices.
Flash (and Silverlight) is bad for the web: it’s the only ‘de facto’ web standard (for delivering video) that’s proprietary and controlled by a single company. That’s bad for the web. “How you get video on the web” shouldn’t be something owned by a single company. Fortunately, HTML5 is well supported and on it’s way to obviating the need for Flash for video.
Flash is bad for the Mac: Gruber gets it: customers can send their Mac crash reports to Apple, and it turns out the #1 reason they crash is because of Flash. Flash is written well for Windows, but not for Mac/Linux. It uses a lot of CPU and it’s buggy. So the main reason Apple computers crash is because of this buggy app that Apple can’t fix for it’s customers. Clearly, it doesn’t make sense to perpetuate the situation with it’s new mobile devices.
At first glance, the $15/mo 250mb AT&T plan for iPad seems laughable in this day and age. But I think it might actually be perfect for me, and as Steve said, “most people”.
I’m mostly at home and work, both of which have wifi. When I go out to do work, it’s often in an Internet cafe or Starbucks (which has AT&T wifi, included for free in the plan). Wifi is nearly ubiquitous at places where you’d stop for a while. And I’d sync all my big iTunes content (music, video, podcasts) directly over the USB cable.
And if I’m out and about (truly mobile) out of wifi range, chances are I’ll be using the unlimited data on my iPhone. And *finally*, if I really need mobile data to my iPad, then I’d start tapping into that 250mb plan. I think I could totally stay under that limit.
exactly:
Today Apple finally unveiled its tablet computer, the iPad. Thus concludes Phase 1 of the standard Apple new-category roll-out: months of feverish speculation and hype online, without any official indication by Apple that the product even exists.
Now Phase 2 can begin: the bashing by the bloggers who’ve never even tried it: “No physical keyboard!” “No removable battery!” “Way too expensive!” “Doesn’t multitask!” “No memory-card slot!”
That will last until the iPad actually goes on sale in April. Then, if history is any guide, Phase 3 will begin: positive reviews, people lining up to buy the thing, and the mysterious disappearance of the basher-bloggers.
[From The Apple iPad: First Impressions - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com]
