278 karma · joined September 11, 2009
My big take away after two weeks, though? Android Market apps have a long way to go to catch up to iPhone apps in terms of polish. Even some of the stuff Google supplies just isn't as nice to use. That makes me sad, since I'd like to see a little more competition.
Unfortunately, I'm starting to think the only thing that's going to get consistent CC support in online video is a mandate from the federal government -- that was what it took in the early 90s to get caption decoders included in every TV 13" or larger.
There are. I'm actually a customer of Sprint IP Relay and have a personal number set up with them that's linked to my Google Talk account. However, making a relay call is generally massively frustrating for the parties on both sides of the line, so I tend to avoid it.
Seriously, I do understand the point you're making, but keep in mind that not everyone is interested in the phone portion of their smartphone, or able to make effective use of it. :)
I may have to install the beta and test before I sell my MacBook...
That, and I love the multitasking, and that the notifications are (in my opinion) much more useful since I can see that I have new emails or texts without having to actually unlock the phone.
I'm also very impressed with the navigation feature. The interface on it pretty much destroys that of every other GPS I've used, whether it was a stand-alone device or an iPhone app. Quick to load, extremely accurate, and surprisingly quick to notice and reroute if you don't take a turn.
I know a lot of people like the iPhone, and it's still a nice device, but I think this is a much better choice for me; I'm a heavy Google user (and have more loyalty to Google than I do to Apple) and I wanted fewer limitations.
I do realize that there's always BeeJive for the IM portion of my requirements, but I always thought that keeping your connection alive through a proxy server was an ugly hack that was only necessary due to the limitations in iPhone OS. That and I dislike sharing my login credentials with a third party server.
I also have to say (as an iPhone owner) that I really kind of hate the app switching experience as it stands now. I want an instantaneous switch -- more or less like alt-tab on Linux or Windows -- and waiting for the springboard to reappear and then for whatever new app to load kind of gets on my nerves, especially if I'm trying to bounce between reading an e-book in Stanza or reading a web page and a slow-moving IM conversation. This is one reason why I'm ditching my iPhone 3G for a Nexus One as soon as they're available on Verizon. It's also why I find the Android tablets that are in development, like the MSI Harmony, much more appealing than the iPad: Android multitasks.
But I do also recognize I'm not the iPad's target market.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I suspect a lot of the iPad hate, particularly regarding no multitasking, isn't so much the idea of making a device that normal people can use so much as it is the idea that this is the sum total of the future of computing: specialized devices that uni-task, attempt to lock us into specific content providers, lock up our data in apps rather than letting us have free access to the file system, and so on. In other words -- it's not so much about what it currently is, but rather the potential future it represents. I think those fears are a bit overblown, but I definitely empathize with them. I'd hate having a computer that (for example) forced me to use iPhoto or Aperture or Lightroom or Picasa to manage my photos rather than just keeping them in a nicely organized file structure that I created.
But at any rate, I think there's room enough in computing for both approaches and I don't understand why various groups on both sides seem so anxious to strip those choices away from everyone else. Which is to say: I don't think anyone who is confused by a file system or windowed multitasking is a drooling idiot who shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet, but I also don't appreciate the simplicity advocates telling me that I should get over it because I don't need the ability to multi-task or be able to see multiple programs at once anyway. There's room for both approaches and I suspect there'll always be a need for both.
I'm definitely going to be watching that. I have an iPhone 3G right now and am fairly happy with it -- but I would really like to take advantage of Google Voice's voicemail transcription, as I'm deaf and if works even halfway decently it would be a huge thing for me.
That, and I do think Android does notifications (the drag-down notification panel) far better than the iPhone does. The potential sticking point for me is that for work, I need Exchange support that's at least as good as the iPhone's.