Tag Archives: android

Nook HD: Built for Sluggish Annoyance

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47:366(Y2) - HungeringI really would like Apple to come out with a iPad Mini with Retina display. I’m quite tired of this Nook HD. It’s not very user-friendly and definitely not me-friendly. I don’t want to take a hammer to the device but when I use it, I sort of do.

So I was online to a site that lets you browse various fan-written fiction stories and they have a feature where you can download epub files, so I did so and saved it to my Dropbox. Then I went into Dropbox app on my Nook HD and went to go look for it. The Wifi on the Nook HD is a flaky pile of junk so that took way longer than it should have. Once I found the file I wanted I downloaded it to my Nook because the only other way to get it in there is to pop the MicroSD card, root around for a universal adapter and then put it in that way. That’s annoying, I’d much rather just be able to tap and download, like I would with an iPad Mini.

I downloaded it from my Dropbox and it ended up somewhere in my Nook’s own storage, which I hate to use, I much prefer my MicroSD plugged into the Nook instead, but there is no way to tell it where you want it to store the files. So I had to find another app called OpenExplorer which has an awful interface but lets you move files around the Nook.

Then the Nook library was confused about where I put that file. Every time I went to go look for it and tap on what it found, I’d be sent to the Wifi activation screen, where I would turn it on (why?) and then nothing. Nothing more than that. When I went back to the search and tapped on my file, it told me “File is not present.” and that was that.

I’ve never been happy with the Nook HD user interface. I bought it because it was cheap and supported Barnes & Nobles but really I think I would have been better off getting an iPad Mini. I regret this Nook HD. It could be so much better if only the B&N User Interface wasn’t so fascist. That’s what it really is. B&N doesn’t trust anyone with anything so they make it impossible to use beyond the B&N Book Experience. I don’t want all my ebooks at B&N, I’ve got thousands of ePub files all on my own – could I upload them and locker them at B&N? Of course not. That’s what the MicroSD card is for. So what value does the B&N store have for me? Little.

So is there any way I could get ePubs from Project Guternberg? Nope. I have to find some other way to get them, like on my iPad and then use Dropbox and OpenExplorer to… it’s way too much work. I’m tired even thinking about it.

So, if and when Apple decides to sell a iPad Mini Retina I’ll put all my Nook stuff on eBay and save up for the iPad Mini Retina. At least iOS respects me and I don’t feel like a criminal trying to cajole Android to give an inch.

I still don’t know why people think Android is any good. Wretched system.

photo by: Nomadic Lass

Barnes & Noble's Nook HD+ Is Clever

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Barnes & Noble just sent an email out announcing their two new tablets: The Nook HD and Nook HD+.

Previously to this release I was discussing with my partner, who works for Barnes & Noble ways that B&N could compete with Amazon and Apple in the tablet space. There was a concern that B&N had lost traction and that the company was going to spiral out of control and crash, eventually. These tablets have just eliminated a good portion of that worry.

For full disclosure, I came across a rather pleasant and unexpected windfall in regards to money and I’ve been kvetching about the poor performance of my 1st edition iPad and in a way, Apple has sent a clear message that they regard the device as dead because they are no longer writing software updates for it. I went ahead and purchased an iPad 3 and I’ve been enjoying it quite a lot.

This news from B&N is very interesting to me as this new device has several key areas that put up more bang-for-less-money. The first surprise is the processing speed of the Nook HD+ in comparison with the iPad 3. 1.5GHz dual-core versus 1GHz dual-core. Ever since 2003 when the world pretty much stopped worrying and loved the bomb that is processor speed ratings this distinction isn’t as compelling as it appears on paper. The two units have different core technologies, the iPad has an A5X processor and the Nook HD+ has an OMAP 4470 processor. We have seen from manufacturers like HTC and Samsung that even when you pour huge muscular processors into devices to compete, that if the experience of the user isn’t done correctly then all the computing horsepower in the world means very little. It’s not about the muscles, it’s about the refinement of the motor cortex. It isn’t how strong you are, it’s your dexterity – at least in the phone and tablet space. I do hand it to B&N when it comes to pumping numbers and keeping costs suppressed - that’s a win in their column.

The second surprise, and I’ve been half expecting someone to notice this glaring deficit in tablet OS design comes down to what I believe to be Barnes & Noble’s knife-held-confidently-behind-its-back killer feature. Barnes & Noble is going to bring profile control to the tablet space. This casts a huge pall over both Amazon and Apple devices and redefines a tablet to be a multiuser device. It is exceptionally clever for Barnes & Noble to do this because it draws a clear bead of connection from everyone’s computer experience (where you have an account and profile) off to your device. When it comes to Apple, they rejected this model and regard a device to be a one-person-only deal, which has been a weakness in the iOS OS design. Apple may be too far along to make such a fundamental change to iOS so we may see the creation of a new track of tablet technology. Is a tablet multiuser or single-user? By being multi-user, and if B&N does it elegantly, it can cast B&N in a family friendly light, more than an Amazon or Apple product because one relatively inexpensive device can serve an entire family. Instead of the onerous cost of a Kindle or iPad for each person, because each device is single-user, one Nook HD+ can be used by different members of a family without having to worry about security, privacy, preference or profile leakages between people. It’s a failure of the Apple iOS OS and here is why: When I come across another persons iOS device, I am utterly lost – I don’t know their preferences, their security settings, where they have placed icons, and I find myself having to relegate to the search screen to even find where they put the ubiquitous “Settings” icon. If B&N does profiles elegantly, this will be a non-issue. Rendered moot because each person has their own settings that they are used to, making the confusion evaporate.

I think that B&N will pursue a marketing strategy that elevates the personal touch and the family friendliness of their Nook HD and Nook HD+ devices. That will be key, with profiles, the ability to use LendMe to share books, and their admittedly well-done “Parent recording storybooks for their children” technology they will position themselves to be “The Booksellers who care about you and your family” and they will occupy a third niche in this space. The first niche is the deep-discount one, that’s occupied by Amazon. The second niche is the elegance-at-all-costs one, which is occupied by Apple – and then last but certainly not least, the third niche which is the Friends-Family-Kids one, which is going to be Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

This niche may be the best hope for Barnes & Noble to retain their 21st century relevance.  They should maintain their “Brick and Mortar” presence and cater their stores to being a place where you feel welcome, with friendly staff and a coffeehouse/library atmosphere. The elevator sales-pitch is that B&N is more personable and immediate than Amazon could ever hope of being – you don’t know Jack at Amazon, but you know Jack at B&N. B&N’s approach to kids and family with their very deep roots set throughout America means they have already beat Apple to the market in terms of the personal touch. Yes, Apple has the Genius Bar and yes they are friendly geeks, but you don’t go to a Genius Bar to find out about Apps and Woodworking! You can only do that at a Barnes & Noble!

The real competition isn’t between B&N and Apple anyhow, since Apple touches B&N only in this one market-space. The real competition here is between Amazon and B&N. It’ll be an interesting evolution to say the least – which do people prefer more? The cold, impersonal, sterile deep-discount algorithms of Amazon or the instant-gratification, warm, personal, and direct approach of Barnes & Noble Booksellers? It may simply come down to how people refer to these two competitors. You USE Amazon and you VISIT Barnes & Noble Booksellers. That right there is something that Jeff Bezos can never buy himself into, but B&N already exists to cater to. Which do you value, the impersonal or the personal?

Barnes & Noble Booksellers may have just secured their direct relevancy in the market for the next decade with these two new devices. The proof is in the pudding of course, these devices, once in the stores, will be the final arbiter on the survivability of B&N in the tablet market space.

 

Waiting is the hardest part

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Waiting for Verizon. It’s the hardest part of my February so far. For those who have been keeping track, the IRS came and tried to strangle our wireless infrastructure to death, but apparently failed. I’ve been on-again-off-again with Verizon but now we’re firmly on-again. I’ve sent neatly wrapped missives to management but have yet to hear any response.

All of this would be maddening if Verizon was ready. Thankfully it isn’t maddening because Verizon isn’t ready. In fact, from what I’ve seen from my local Verizon sales rep, they don’t even have a vocabulary yet, let alone any plans or packages for sale. So while I struggle with this nominal Blackberry, I watch the time tick away waiting for Verizon to get off their duff and give us details on plans. Then I can take that information to management and maybe goose them into action.

Last night was a problem because I couldn’t make an outbound call with my minimally acceptable Sprint service on my Blackberry. I had to turn off Automatic Roaming, go up to the upper level of my house where I could get the weakest of signals and make a call to order pizza for dinner. Sprint’s network is wretchedly bad, and it almost never was the case before.

I haven’t the heart to call Sprint and tell them what I’m planning. So far all they know is that the IRS is likely going to be the reason why we close our contract. It’s a total straw-man, and as far as today, a rather nifty fabrication. The last time I told them I was contemplating leaving Sprint for Verizon they sent my sales rep, a VP of sales, and a third fellow who had the word “synergy” in his title, or something to that effect. Truth to be told, I don’t have a problem with my Sprint sales rep, or the VP of sales that came to visit, but that third guy was aggressive, abrasive, and thoroughly an unpleasant human being. If Sprint ever gets around to thinking about why they lost my business they can look no further than this third-man they brought with them. Leaving him in his cubicle may be the best move for their future business, if they have any after Verizon poaches every single one of their customers.

I couldn’t properly express to Sprint exactly why the iPhone on Verizon was so compelling. They kept on pushing Android on their network — Are you serious? Verizon is a double-dunk. The device has pretty much already sold me. The Verizon network is the other half of the power-shot and the fact that Verizon is willing to drop the pretense and become a commodity wireless service vendor means the biggest fear I had about the iPhone on Verizon went up in smoke. They aren’t going to nail it down, cover it with obnoxious Verizon “VZ” bullshit, they are going to simply put the device on their network and let the chips fall where they may.

This is like a hat-trick from heaven. Sprint pre-occupied with an IRS straw-man, iPhone on Verizon, and Verizon keeping their ugly branding out of the pot. Bam Bam BAM! If anyone wants to know why, that’s why. A hat-trick.

Now if only Verizon would get back to me… tick tock tick tock gentlemen!

Droid vs. iPhone

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Yesterday I took in a meeting with three representatives from Sprint regarding some difficulties we’ve been having with getting the right kind of customer support from their company. While we hashed out the problems and they promised corrections we did get into an exchange that got my gears turning. One of the Sprint representatives asked what our mobile communications policy was. That caught me; We, as a University don’t really have a policy per-se, we have guidance that Blackberry devices, Droid devices and iPhones are perfectly acceptable to management and that we’re free to make our own minds up regarding fit and function.

The discussion began to acquire an adversarial tone from the Sprint Solutions Engineering representative, a kind of angry mocking mixed with a breathless rictus snarl. I quickly picked up on the tone and understood in a pleasant and courteously gracious way I had to defend my opinions to these people. It was mostly a kind of verbal fencing match, a parry, a thrust, a riposte. My argument was rather clear, I have professionally discounted the entire Droid line as unacceptable for our environment based on several key factors which include:

  • Operating System is too new. Too many massive changes and revisions as Google attempts to refine what Droid will become in the future.
  • Human interface is too rough, it lacks elegance and refinement present in other devices.
  • Application sphere is too open, and incorrectly regulated. There was covered a certain Droid application that uploaded data to a Chinese website and lead to billing issues and a loss of personal information. As for the regulation, I find it abhorrent that Google has an “Application Kill Switch” which can force the device to behave in such a fashion that lies outside the direct action of the primary user.
  • Manufacturer confusion and poor performance. There are simply too many players in the market pushing Droid and Droid’esque devices, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and HTC, and perhaps others. Amongst these, I have been a ringside witness to a HTC device that required 4 months of repairs before HTC would return the device to the customer. That’s unacceptable. Once bitten, twice shy.

And so I outlined these issues and the Sprint representatives responded as I assumed they would. There was no contest for the first few points I made, but then they declared that “those manufacturers don’t matter” – which of course left me gobsmacked. Are you kidding me? The manufacturers don’t matter? Oh, they do indeed! And for the remaining points it quickly devolved into an ‘iPhone has this problem and this and this’ almost as if Sprint was doing their plumb best to push Android as hard as they possibly could. The dedication to the Android line and their points of defense got me to wondering if there is more meat connecting Sprint and Google than simply a Carrier-and-Device relationship.

I informed them that if and when Verizon releases an iPhone from Apple that I will be making my professional recommendation based on that new information and that I will suggest a mass migration away from RIM’s Blackberry devices and toward Apple’s iPhone. In this case, as I elucidated to Sprint, it’s the device that is selling it, not their programs, company, or questionable customer service. Really it came down to “The carrier is irrelevant, each carrier in the United States does an equally poor job, it’s the device itself that’s doing all the heavy lifting.” The iPhone is of course available on AT&T, but as anyone knows, AT&T Wireless is really Cingular and Cingular was horrible before, during, and they will continue their horribleness into the future. I am waiting for the iPhone, the device I really want, on any carrier network that is not AT&T. In this regard I left a small crack in the door for Sprint, if Verizon brings a CDMA-class iPhone into the North American market, then these devices will most likely roam on Sprint’s network due to roam-peering agreements between Verizon and Sprint and if that is the case, why wouldn’t Sprint leap at offering the iPhone as well? I left that dangling for them to talk about later.

One point that the Sprint representatives did bring up which does bear some weight is that Verizon is well-known for being interface nazis when it comes to branding. Everything on a Verizon device is VZ-this and VZ-that. The interface is repellent and you cannot do much to change the device as the carrier enables certain controls on the devices they allow to run on their network. If Verizon perpetrates this nazi-like branding-and-corraling on their iPhone then it will simply invalidate the iPhone on the Verizon network for our purposes. I only want to see “VZ” in two places, one the signal indicator on the iPhones display and on my bill. Beyond that I want Verizon to play dead. There is another slight difference between the Verizon coverage map and the Sprint coverage map, but since all United States carriers are equally incompetent and embarrassingly bad I don’t think there is any difference amongst them, other than AT&T must be avoided at all costs. AT&T needs to be punished, constantly, and forever for their indelible crime against humanity. AT&T is actually worse than Microsoft in the “Despicable companies of horribleness” index. Some of us remember AT&T’s Monopoly and sweetheart, we never forget. That being said, Verizon is starting to take on that particular monopolistic shine as well, which is why I probably would not opt to pull my Verizon salesman from a burning vehicle. Lets hope he avoids them.

So it comes down to the iPhone, it’s a device that I know I can support, that works well, that is not open but is well-regulated by Apple and I see that as a deliriously good value. That “Big Brother” looming over all of our shoulders helps keep the device stable and safe for people to use, and after all, that’s what my goal is. My goal is usability, to have refinement and elegance in the human interface and to have a company with a good track record of good devices, such as Apple, standing behind what they make. The quality of Droid is suspect, while the quality of Apple is beyond question.

For some reason I cannot shake the image burned in my mind of the snarl I saw on the face of that Sprint representative. The adversarial conduct, the tone, the body language, it’s nearly all I need to kick Sprint to the curb and give my $2000 a month to someone else. We shall see what is to come, see if Verizon comes through, or if they shit in my hands.

Peril is the New Black

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On my daily slog through the grand stream of news, and it flows like a mighty river, I came across an article regarding how the Android mobile phone operating system has its first trojan horse. It’s a rite of passage for operating systems, to be exploited, the authors hard work lampooned by some clever other who finds a way to trick users to perform some really comically bad tasks on their device, often without them even being aware. This particular trojan horse is an otherwise innocuous Android app that does something simple, like wallpaper changing or something, but in reality what it does surreptitiously is send SMS messages to pay-for-SMS sites, the guess is that the trojan horse is sending SMS traffic to the right people so the writers of the trojan horse benefit financially from the trojan horse and it’s spread.

When I saw this story, I immediately started to re-compare the iOS system that Apple uses and the Android system that Google uses. Along with this I can’t get Cory Doctorow or Richard Stallman out of my head. These two were the ones who lambasted Apple for their closed approach to software, closed device, a curated application creation process and restricting what the device can and cannot do. Both Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Stallman have railed at length, declaring that the only real computing platform is one that is utterly open and utterly free. I have to register that I respect both of these men, as much as I respect Steve Jobs at Apple, but to their point I feel I must point out a thin sliver of bullshit. While having a system that is perfectly open and perfectly free is very attractive, it is also wide open to the nasty aspect of computer science, the malware authors and their creations.

If we lived in a perfect world without the people who created these bits of malware such an open system would be an utter utopia, it would be level, easy, efficient, and wonderful. We do not live in that sort of world. This is where I differ from Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Stallman. What system do I prefer, which one would I want my family to use? It has to be iOS from Apple. That applications are curated by Apple is partially the value, the other is that the devices are firmly locked so that there is no possibility for a certain kind of clever creativity. The devices work according to a logical plan set forth by Apple and nobody is allowed to stray from the path. This grates against the tenets of Free Software, that if you own a thing you should be able to do whatever you wish to the thing. I respect usability and the non-expert nature of users too much to accept that this is a good thing for the consumer. It’s a good thing for the clever like Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Stallman, but these devices weren’t built for them, they were built for regular folk. Having the walled garden, the curated applications, and having Apple as a firm overseer to everything that is done with these devices is an absolute value that only enhances iOS. You accept that some things won’t ever appear on an iOS device for the protection that the overseers provide. Regular folk don’t care to be clever with their technology, they want their technology to be rational, useful, safe and looked after.

Android’s trojan horse is huge. It illustrates this exact point that I am trying to make. If my family were using Android and downloaded this app and used it, they would have an SMS bill to pay and the maliciously clever app writer would make off with their limited resources. I would rather have them living in a gilded cage of Apple’s making than the wild west of Android because I know that they would be happier in-the-cage than out-west.

People come to me and they ask me quite often for guidance on which platform they should adopt, Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and the other two, which would be Palm’s WebOS and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. The latter two don’t even exist to me, Microsoft has been dead to me for several years now, and Palm spent most of their time waffling into a ditch. The real competition, the real money is between iOS and Android. Before I had respect for the Android system and my only beef with it was that it was way too new and that older devices may not support updated versions of the Android OS and the risk that people could be trapped with an older piece of software because they couldn’t afford to break their two-year committment to the carrier. Now I can say, with a clear argument, that iOS is superior to Android simply because it is safer. What would I have my loved ones use? I’d rather they all use an iOS device from Apple. It’s not only the right choice, but it’s the only choice.