iPhone OS 4 Rant

  Although by the time that I post this, I will have already been there, a 4 hour bus ride to a career fair in NYC seems the perfect time to blog about the new Apple iPhone OS 4 which was revealed at the live event yesterday. The iPhone OS 4 SDK was released to developers yesterday and will be released to the public this summer.

The new iPhone OS to me is both exciting and not exciting at the same time. I've been a longtime fan-boy of Apple products; therefore, I’m always excited when new technology or firmware is released. This new firmware brings many things to the iPhone that I had been wanting, which I had to jailbreak my iPhone to currently achieve the same features. The first thing that everyone is excited about; unless you don’t have an iPhone 3GS is the multi-tasking feature. This is one of the biggest announcements because never before could you run more than one application. If you wanted to run Pandora Radio and browse the web at the same time, you couldn’t do it. Now you will be able to run multiple apps at the same time and can switch back and forth at will. This is one feature that I had unofficially though for some months now.

The newest features that I am most excited for though is the new folders, which allows you to group your apps into folders to make it easier to find them, the ability to change the background on the home screen (one of the reasons I originally jailbroke my iPhone), the new social gaming network (it’s a bit like Xbox Live and PSN, with leader boards, etc.), playlist creation on the phone and also a digital zoom for the camera. All of these features are making the iPhone into the phone I wanted it to be, but it took Apple way too long to get here.

In the time it took them to bring these features, I already purchased an Android phone, which gave me these right off the bat. It seems like Apple is finally catching up to Android in these aspects and I’m grateful for this, but I think I’m sold on Google’s Android. My biggest complaint with Apple is they always take too long to release new features and new firmware for their hardware. Look how long it took for the iPhone to be able to record video, it wasn’t until the iPhone 3GS could it do it and I bought mine when it was released in summer 2009. I understand that Apple wants to perfect features and that this is their marketing strategy, but in the world we’re living in today, speed and time is everything. If you can’t quickly meet the demand of your customers, you’re going to lose some. I haven’t been completely lost since I still use both of my phones, switching back and forth from Nexus One to iPhone every so often, but Android bought me almost from the get go. Take notes Apple!

P.S. Were it not for my iPhone being jailbroken, I wouldn't be able to tether the internet to my netbook on the bus right now to post this rant. Tethering is another feature Apple should have included! Some food for thought.

Sorry Steve... I'm not impressed...

I'm sitting here in the HUB on campus, waiting for my girlfriend to get done work, so I figured to kill the time for the next hour, I'd write a little blog entry. Being that I'm madly in love with tech and love blogging about it, I feel that I have to get in my two cents about the recently unveiled Apple "iPad".

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdorobek/ / CC BY 2.0

Being the huge Apple "fanboy" that I am, you can imagine how excited I was for this thing to be unveiled. I've been following the rumors of this thing for months now and just like everyone else I had my expectations for the product. The last time that I was really "wowed" was back in 2007 when the iPhone was unveiled. I just remember watching the Keynote and being like "I need to have this" and sure enough I got it. I paid $500 for an iPhone the month of release. I had the same excitement as I was watching this year, but in the end, I wasn't impressed.

What we were all expecting (well, what I was expecting) was a product that would be Apple's answer to the netbook and an ereader. I wasn't expecting a giant iPod touch though. While I was impressed with some of the features like with Mail and especially iWork, there were many things that I was expecting to be there that weren't. These things were flash, USB ports, expandable memory (SD/MicroSD) and a camera. I would have also liked for it to run a variation of OSX, not the iPhone OS. Look at the HP Slate, it's going to be running Windows 7 which makes it much more netbook-like than the iPad. With all of these things missing, the iPad seems to fall short to me.

Don't get me wrong though, it is very cool. There are lots of things I do love about it, one other thing being the ereader part. I would love to have this for books and to automatically get all of the newspapers I read. It would make that so much easier, also since I don't like e-ink, which devices like the Nook and Kindle have. I can't see myself spending $850 on this thing for using mostly those functions, although the screen seems beautiful. Maybe in the future, with the second or third generation, I'll consider investing in an iPad. I think I'll stick to my controversial hackintosh netbook for the moment though. It's much more practical.

While I still love Apple computers, I feel I'm starting to stray away with their other products. I think my next phone may be an Android phone, for I'm falling in love with that OS. I love the openness and I'll admit it, the little Android logo is awesome! I also like how other products like Nexus One have expandable memory so you can just switch out MicroSD cards. One last thing, why can't iPhone have a camera flash by now? It would make it so much better. This is what the 4th generation iPhone already and only has a 3-megapixel camera with no flash. All this being said, I'm looking more forward to the possibilities of Android tablets for the time being. I'm interested to see more with what the Dell Streak will have to offer in the near future and the dozens of other Android tablets being developed.

In conclusion... iPad=Fail!
Sorry Steve...

Year of the Android!

I'm finally starting my last semester here at Penn State and it's time to start seriously looking for a job. No matter what, I still have the hopes and dreams of becoming a tech writer working for either a place like Gizmodo or Engadget, no matter how long it takes me to attain this goal.

I want to dedicate this blog entry to a little experience that I had yesterday. I was hanging out at my girlfriend's apartment and I had the chance to play around with her roommate's T-mobile myTouch 3G. It was actually my first experience using a phone with an Android OS and I have to admit, I'm quite impressed. It pretty much sold me. If you don't know, I've been an Apple "fanboy" for the longest time and have been up to date with my iPhone, I currently have a white 3GS. While I wouldn't get this specific model Android phone, I want a Nexus One, I think my next phone will have to be running Android.

I noticed that Google lets you do all of the features that I can do on my iPhone, but I had to jailbreak my iPhone to be able to achieve this. Some of the things I noticed, that sold me, was that it let you customize the icons and download apps like an NES emulator, both of which I could only achieve through "jailbreaking". The phone that I tested wasn't perfect, the virtual keyboard took some getting used to and there was no multi-touch, but those can be improved with future firmware updates.

One last thing that I think sold me was how easily you can sync it with all of your Google apps and how you can easily get Google apps on your phone to easily use GTalk and GMail on the go. Being that I use GMail, GTalk, Google Docs and Google Calendar everyday, it would make my life all they while easier to be able to sync it with my phone that simply.

I like that the Android phones are more open source and you aren't tied down as much as you are with Apple. I highly recommend checking them out, I've only heard good things.


Photo from laihiu on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laihiu/4256841882/