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

Go to the site you RSS junkies. Look at the new theme – it’s Twenty Ten the default theme and I was relieved to find a minimalist theme which can showcase WP 3.0′s new features. Read my lame tagline at the top of the page and check out the new footer widgets. Nom.

Setting up simonw.org slowly. I will be migrating all posts which “make me seem like a smart and/or creative programmer and/or geek”. So will probably abandon ye olde Frost Nova once that is done. Will still keep it live for posterity (wow, I just googled that word and it turns out I didn’t pull it out of my arse).

Electronics retailers like JB Hi-Fi, Dick Smith, Harvey Norman, etc. are misleading you and will try to sell you HDMI cables for ridiculous prices – anywhere from $49 to $299!!!

YOU CAN BUY A PERFECTLY GOOD HDMI CABLE ON EBAY FOR UNDER TEN DOLLARS!!!

Only yesterday, I witnessed a clerk in JB Hi-Fi at Highpoint deceiving his customers saying “You need to spend money to get the best quality”.

OH MY GOD THIS IS A TOTAL MYTH!

HDMI is a DIGITAL signal and even the $8 cables on eBay have HIGH QUALITY SHIELDING. They just wouldn’t work without it. HDMI is not as affected by EM interference, like the “old” kinds of cables. If you are getting interference THE SIGNAL WILL CUT OUT IT WILL NOT GO FUZZY!

As for bandwidth, if you’re using 1080p, you should probably get a cable marked “high speed”.  STANDARD CABLES ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR 1080i AND BELOW! Anyway, this is not an issue because YOU CAN GET HIGH SPEED CERTIFIED CABLES OFF EBAY FOR EIGHT DOLLARS!

The ONLY thing you need to worry about with HDMI is cable length. As cables get longer, the signal gets weaker (attenuates). That said, UNLESS YOUR CABLE IS OVER 10 METRES LONG, LENGTH IS NOT AN ISSUE!

Please, Australia. Stop buying your HDMI cables in shops. Then, I will stop openly weeping every time I see a salesperson trying to flog a $79.95 cable to a poor defenseless customer.

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!

Got to the new place and hooked up my Billion 7404VGO-M on Internode ADSL2+ NakedExtreme plan. Only got 6 megabits per second! Removed all devices (isolation test), including my line filter/splitter – it’s Naked no need. Got minor speed improvements, but still around 6 mbps. Rang up Internode and found out about their “ADSL2+ Profiles” which you can change via web site. I was on the “Very High Reliability” profile. Switched to “High Speed” and now have 10 mbps. Profile may affect stability buy I’m willing to try out to see what happens.

I am glad I found out about this feature! I was at a loss as to how I was going to improve my setup to get more speed. They even have a “Low Latency” profile for gamers who need low pings. I wonder if other ISPs like iiNet have this feature. Here is a picture.

The solution? Well I believe the problem stems from AirTunes using A LOT of bandwidth; 160 kB/s in my experience. I suspect this is flooding the wireless network as it has to go in 2 “directions”, i.e. from the MacBook to the router, then from the router to the Airport Express. So the solution I found was to disable the Airport Express wireless altogether and plug into my router using the ethernet cable. This eliminates one of the “directions” and so alleviates the flooding. The only problem others may see with this solution is that you need to move your broadband router next to the stereo. This isn’t a problem for me as it’s already there for the Xbox 360.

Now I can use my Airport Express for what it was intended, and it totally kicks arse. It’s just a shame Apple didn’t spend the time to test thoroughly in node mode.

Then eventually it stopped charging all together. I tried resetting the SMC. After this, the battery charged once but when it discharged, would not charge again.

So I bought a new battery for $140 on eBay. I calibrated it straight away.

1. Charge to full
2. Wait 2 hours
3. Drain to empty
4. Wait 5 hours
5. Charge to full

It’s working fine now. Does anyone need a shiny aluminium paper weight?

What I used to do:

1. Copy .rec file from Toppy
2. Demultiplex .rec with MPEG Streamclip into separate video and audio streams (.m2v and .m1a)
3. Rename .m1a to .mpa so the next step would work
4. Remultiplex these 2 files to DVD (VIDEO_TS) format using ffmpegX
5. Burn with Roxio Toast

In what is simply a revelation, I just figured out that Roxio Toast can burn demultiplexed video files. O. M. G.

What I do now:

1. Copy .rec file from Toppy
2. Demultiplex with MPEG Streamclip
3. Burn with Roxio Toast

Before it was an utter chore to the point where I just didn’t bother. Now, I can simply drag the .m2v file into Roxio and if there’s a .m1a or .mpa file sitting there with the same name it just figures it out and remuxes both streams as part of the burn process! It also automatically adds chapter marks every 5 mins and this was something lacking in my previous burns. It’s also a lot easier to add multiple titles to a disc. And I could potentially add menus, something I’ve steered clear of until now because of the complexity involved.

I’m so impressed that I’m actually slightly embarrassed to admit that I used to do this in such an inefficient way.

And no, I don’t think a DVD recorder would be a better solution. Lets face it, I’m a bloody pedant when it comes to video trimming and ad-removal. The software solution allows frame precision. So it might take a little extra time but the end product is worth it. Plus I would miss my Toppy!