Download this package and run gditray.exe which will make all most of your Windows applications have sexy smooth fonts. The default setting is a bit “heavy” for my liking, so I scaled it back with the included gdixxTuner.exe.

For example, here is Word 2007 with ClearType

And the same screen with GDI++

Not much difference? Call me a pedant but it’s mostly about Arial. I really hate the way it looks on Windows at small sizes. I would love to see if anyone’s done any decent research into which is easier to read. Like when they said Serifs increase readability. Do they?

Why Choose Android?

Apple. I dunno they are so fucking evil lately. This is not the Google or Facebook “Oops! We’re idiots!” kind of evil. No, this is the Microsoft “Use us or die!” intentional monopoly kind of evil. Google probably also want a monopoly but they are a bit nicer about it. Apple appear way more evil because they are shoving their monopoly in everyone’s face, just like Microsoft did in the 90s. But I will defer the Who is Eviler? discussion for a future post.

Antenna. Real or not, the issues with the iPhone 4′s antenna are scary. I won’t choose a phone that might work some of the time. I am not enough of an Apple fanboy to accept poor reception or a $30 bumper because Apple’s shininess outweighs a serious design flaw. I am only interested in products that JustWork™. I’m sure the problems have been blown way out of proportion by the media. The software miscalculation excuse seems plausible; it would be a classic Apple thing to do: make their phones appear to get better reception to upstage competitors. If they have been doing this, they should pay. My theory on why Apple didn’t pick it up in testing? All the iPhone 4s sent out into the field were housed in stealthy plastic cases to disguise them as 3GS which also insulated the user’s hands from the antenna. Even if this issue is resolved completely, I cannot forgive Apple censoring discussion boards on the topic. See above image.

Development. The Android SDK is written in Java which is my strongest language. Basically I would have to do less work to break into App development on this platform, so would tend towards the path of least resistance. In comparison, the learning curve on Apple’s iOS would be steeply prohibitive for an endeavour that’s just an experiment, and not my day job.

Android is just way more open. Anyone can develop. I can download and install apps without going through the marketplace. This also removes the potential risk of developing for Apple’s platform only to have them reject your app on submission, or worse, at a random time in the future because they suddenly decide they don’t like it. In contrast, Google appears to value making developers’ lives easier, instead of forcing them into a corner. This is a smart move. It makes their SDK more accessible. This will let people with really good ideas but limited programming skills into the market, which is a good thing. I also totally respect the Google for opening up a public issue tracker for the OS. Where is Apple’s equivalent? Forums? Hardly organised enough to be useful.

Multitasking. iOS 4 lacks multitasking polish. Users are reporting frustration when swiping through a billion apps in the 1×4 real estate of the switcher (see image). What is the point of this bloody switcher anyway? It’s completely redundant. Apps which support multitasking should just be backgrounded instead of closed when Home is pressed. Then you have regular app screens, folders etc. to switch between apps. As users learn where their apps are, this will be instinctively quick compared to the random placement of apps in the switcher.

Services. I use more Google services than Apple services (Gmail, Reader, News, Talk, Docs, Code, Calendar). I would expect a Google OS to have better native support for its own services than an Apple OS. Currently, there is no native support for Google Docs, but that will come. However, Google have been polishing their mobile web offerings so may not spend as much time on their apps. We’ll see.

Phones. In phone land, six months is a long time. Now we are starting to see Android phones that Don’tTotallySuck™. See Samsung Galaxy S and a promising review by GSMArena. We’re also seeing innovations like Swype, which is basically “drawing between the letters” without lifting your finger (see image). In my opinion though, all mobile typing has gone speedily downhill since the efficiency of T9 predictive text. Qwerty has no place on devices this small.

The Verdict? iOS has pleased me as a user, but I’m over just being a user. I’m sick of submitting feedback which is dismissed by egotistical app developers because 100,000 idiots bought their app and gave it a positive review after first use. On Android I could just write my own damn apps.

Why Choose iPhone 4?

Accustomed. I am quite used to using an iPhone. When it’s not being slow as hell it is really fun and intuitive to use for most things. I would have to learn a new OS and it might not be as good as I’m used to. On the other hand, a new OS may not have many of the iOS annoyances, e.g. Safari purging background “tabs” from memory then reloading when refocused and losing my place in a LONG list of articles I was sifting through.

Hardware. The iPhone hardware looks sexyawesome (putting aside antenna issues). I guess the ideal device would be an iPhone 4 running Android but that’s a long way off. I still reserve judgment until I see this device.

Maturity. Android is quite immature in some respects (e.g. no proxy settings for WiFi connections). But these may not effect me so more research is needed before I can say “Android does 90% of what iOS can do” or whatever. It’s interesting to observe a power distribution in the graph of open Android issues, with respect to perceived importance by the community.

Note: “Number of Stars” above reflects how many users “care about” each issue. There over 5000 open issues but in a power distribution only the first few are interesting.

This graph illustrates two things:

• There are a few issues which many people care about
  
• There are many issues which only a few people care about
  

Sync. iTunes syncs everything beautifully, and I might miss this convenience and security. It warms my heart to know that if my phone dies because I dropped it while texting on the loo, I have a backup and won’t have to waste time setting the whole phone up again. It syncs, in order of importance:

• Settings (all customisations, esp. WiFi networks and mail accounts)
• Google Contacts (very handy but have noticed some duplication)
• All my apps and their settings
• My iTunes music library which is highly organised (not)
• Browser bookmarks
• Calendars (don’t really use)
• Photos (could live without sync)

Android syncs all the Google stuff out of the box (except Docs) but it’s up to third party vendors to provide their own apps for the rest. There are apps to sync iTunes with Android phones, which is nice. But what about the settings and other crap? A quick Google suggests “rooting” the phone and installing custom firmware is the current solution. Blegh.

What Android needs is universal (works on any Android device) automatic back up to “The Cloud” (FTP, dropbox, etc.). I would imagine this working something like: first take an initial snapshot of the phone state and store on cloud, then each time a user changes a setting, downloads a file, or takes a photo etc. add metadata for this “delta” to a local queue of “stuff that’s changed on my phone”. Then when the phone is idle, gradually push this queue up to the cloud backup service. But WAIT until I’m not browsing the web or streaming audio thankyouverymuch. And you can save large queue items like video for when I’m on WiFi. I can has. Someone write this and I’ll switch to Android today.

Music. It’s a really great iPod. I am not so sure about other Android phones. But the Samsung Galaxy S music player seems pretty good, and audio quality gets a big thumbs up. It also comes with ear sunctiony headphones out of the box, which is a step up from Apple’s default earphones which are only good for trussing your roast chicken.

Apps. I might miss some iPhone apps. Also, I feel like I’d be losing an investment on bought apps. But rather than trust my vague feeling I have collated a categorised breakdown of my frivolous app spending.

It’s also worth considering the free iPhone apps I use frequently and would miss dearly. More broadly, this could make Android the phone equivalent of Linux in that I have to do work to hunt down and install the things I want, rather than just have them. Thanks AppBrain for making this easy.

	iPhone	Android	Comments
	IMDB	Free Official	Looks good.
	Tram Tracker	Free 3rd Party	Impressive that a 3rd party would write this.
	Last.fm	Free Official	The iPhone app still streams radio despite them making it not free via the desktop client. I wonder if the Android app is the same.
	Scrobbled	Free 3rd Party	Jailbreak app, submits every track played in iPod to Last.fm. Android version dependent on support for specific music player app.
	Flickr	Nothing	The free official iPhone app is very basic so I bought Mobile Fotos which I only use when I’m really bored. I wouldn’t use their mobile web offering.
	iTunes Remote	$4.99 3rd Party	Don’t use enough to pay.
	IceTV	Web Official	Acceptable if it remembers my login
	Wikipanion	Web Official	Any Wikipedia app needs bookmarks and font size control and I’m sold.
	Facebook	Free Official	Looks like garbage compared to the iPhone version.

The verdict? If a suitably polished Android phone came along, I probably wouldn’t miss the iPhone. As I rant on in Part 2 Android’s openness would go a long way.

Continued in Part 2

I’ve always had trouble holding those paper books open while reading in bed. Now I can curl up with a nice warm slab of aluminium before bed and blind myself reading iBooks. That is of course after repurchasing every book I already own in digital format. Now I have no need for all those paper books given to me by friends and relatives. So I donated them all to a local charity which distributes books to needy children whose parents can’t afford an iPad, or can only afford a Kindle – it’s good to know I can make a difference.

I’ve always wanted an excuse to try out Apple’s sleek and super-comfortable keyboard and mouse peripherals. Now I can purchase these to go with my iPad because I am totally conditioned and cannot conceive of how a touchscreen would work.

I’m sick of my iPhone rattling around in the huge pockets of my homie cargo pants. Expecially when I’m jumping and dive-rolling all over buildings during my parkour practice sessions. I need something that’s a better fit and the iPad is the perfect size.

I’m always losing or tearing those pesky paper maps especially when I go on walkabout in remote parts of the Northern Territory. I can throw away my clunky compass which was always jamming up and getting me lost (it was embarrassing). With the iPad’s built in magnetometer, I’ll always be able to find myself.

I like to watch TV while I eat but I get a sore neck from constantly looking back and forth between the TV and my dinner. Finally, there’s a placemat that plays and streams high quality videos.

I used to need multiple calendars, spread throughout my house which was such a nuisance. Now, I’ve replaced them all with a single device. It’s such a breeze to load up the calendar app, navigate to the right day and type into each of the time, title and location fields so I don’t forget my next pilates appointment.

I was always spilling flour and milk and various sauces all over my recipe books, and later I lost one MacBook in a hideous tofu-making incident. Now, with the iPad, and a neat little stand I picked up for only $129, I can sit the iPad right next to my stove while trying out the latest recipe from my Planet Saver Organic Vegan recipe book I downloaded from the iBookstore. I don’t mind that I have to tap the screen every 60 seconds when the backlight dims to conserve battery life. The shiny toughened glass display means my greasy mince meat and oyster sauce fingerprints just wipe straight off.

I used to have hundreds of photo albums clogging up the bookshelves in my apartment. As soon as I got the iPad, I spent hours scanning in and captioning thousands of my photos. Now I can flick through each album one at a time using the iPad’s intuitive touch screen interface. When I’m not using it, I plug it into an outlet, disable the screen backlight timer and leave it sitting on the mantle as a sleek digital photo frame.

Finally — and this was the clincher — with the new Scrabble app, I can play my friends over WiFi when they bring their iPads over. We all sit hunched over, staring at our glowing slabs occasionally talking but mostly just secretly using the Scrabble suggest website. It’s much more fun and way shinier!

Firstly, the Nexus One has no multitouch, which is a deal breaker. Secondly, it’s not yet available in Australia (according to Google). However, I recently discovered that Apple has suckered me into being a permanent iPhone customer without me even realising it.

I’ve bought a few paid Apps for my iPhone. I can’t remember how much I’ve spent but it would be about $45. I was not conscious of it at the time but these apps I’ve paid for won’t work on any other phone. If I switch to an Android phone (or any other phone), I’ll be losing that investment. I guess I could buy an iPod Touch but what’s the point of carrying around two relatively bulky smart devices, and one where my apps only work over WiFi? I guess all I can hope for is that the iPhone hacking community figures out a way to run Android on the iPhone. Now that would be a “superphone”.

On a related note, do the Android apps have to be open source? Regardless, without an iTunes App Store equivalent, and hence the prospect of cashing in big time, devs won’t be as motivated to develop for Google’s platform if they don’t see a clear business model or way they can make money from it.

Today I received this email from Last.fm, whose personalised radio I’ve been enjoying FOR FREE since 2007.

Hi frostnova,

Your free trial to Last.fm Radio is about to end. If you’re enjoying it, why not
subscribe for only $3.00/month and continue listening to non-stop personalised
radio.

http://www.last.fm/subscribe

Best Regards,
The Last.fm Team

When I first joined, there was no mention of this “free trial” bollocks they’ve pulled completely out of thin air as if they are some kind of Ministry of Truth.

To be honest, I value Last.fm mostly for tracking my listening habits and haven’t used the streaming radio very much so I’m not ready to completely jump ship just yet.

What I’ve really been waiting for is for Apple to make “Genius Live” for iTunes, so you could listen to suggested tracks which aren’t in your library.

You can read about what other disgruntled users are saying, although I won’t be surprised if this thread gets censored.

After some furious Googling, this Australian has successfully purchased content from the US iTunes store. And without a credit card!

The biggest hurdle was getting a US iTunes account (trivial, now I know how).

1. Open iTunes and go to the Store.
2. Sign out of your “real” account.
3. Find any free iPhone application and Buy it.
4. When asked to sign in, Create An Account (make sure you select  US as country). Tip: if you use Gmail,  use username+us@gmail.com as your email address.
5. Fill in your fake US address details as generated.
6. When asked for a payment method, choose None.

If you just wanted a free app not available in your country, you can stop here.

If you want to buy MP3′s not available in your country, you need some US iTunes credit.

1. Find a store that sells online iTunes gift cards, such as OffGamer. Note, you can expect  to pay a premium for the online service. Some have  reported success with eBay but OffGamer were quite speedy.
2. Pay with your PayPal account. If you don’t have one… uh, why not?
3. When you get the gift card code (online), simply redeem it in iTunes.
4. Purchase your content!

I still have US$12 left in my fake iTunes accounts, which I’m sure will come in handy later. It’s not going anywhere.

Oh, and your US iTunes account can also be used to download iPhone apps that aren’t yet released in Australia, such as the Last.fm app. I can’t believe I didn’t realise this sooner!