In my opinion the iPad makes only sense, if it can replace a small laptop, such as the MacBook Air that I use. So how does it look after playing around with it for a an hour: Google mostly presents the mobile versions of their applications, which are - except for Gmail - not yet optimized for the larger screen. Gmail works pretty good, except for e-mails with sophisticated formatting, which are effectively unreadable. Docs only allows limited editing of spreadsheets. Of course you can always switch to the desktop versions. Good news is that syncing with Google via ActiveSync... Continue reading

On the eve of iPad day, I decided to switch back to the iPhone, after using Android on the Nexus One for around two month. Obviously both Android and iPhone OS have their strength and weaknesses: in general I believe more in Google's vision of open, data-centric computing rather than Apple's closed ecosystem. And there's a lot of things on Android that are not possible on the iPhone, mainly because Apple decided that we don't need it. But how does it work out on a day to day basis? Which phone is more fun to use? Which one allows me... Continue reading

Here's what's going on with getting music on an Android device: Spotify's imminent U.S. launch remains imminent after SXSW. Slacker's Android app remains painfully buggy after the update to 2.0.65. Rhapsody's Android app remains in beta, without offline support. MOG's mobile apps are not available yet. This means more waiting. In the meantime I'm enjoying mostly podcasts. Continue reading

When the iPad was introduced end of January, I was seriously underwhelmed. What was I supposed to use this thing for? I also had the sneaky feeling that I would find a good reason by the time it was available for order. Well, I pre-ordered mine on March 12th. So what was that reason? The iPad makes sense to me only if it can replace my laptop (currently a MacBook Air) and thinking about it, it probably can. The applications I use the most are the browser and Evernote and both will be available. Most built-in apps, like Mail, Calendar... Continue reading

There's a lot I like about Android and the Nexus One, mostly that it seamlessly integrates with Google services and that it moves closer to the technical Edge than the iPhone. But there are a bunch of annoyances, which I hope get fixed in a future release: When writing into a text field, the keyboard doesn't show automatically - you need to tap once in the field. This may be ok for devices with a hardware keyboard, but on the Nexus it's just annoying. On the other hand, the keyboard doesn't disappear automatically, often hiding the next text field or... Continue reading

The iPhone famously doesn't allow applications to run in the background, except for some built-in apps like Mail, iPod or Clock. Apple says that this restriction saves battery power and makes the iPhone easier to use. I did agree with that, to some degree, but after using Android for a couple of weeks, things look a little different. So is Apple right and background applications deteriorate the smartphone experience? First, background applications can obviously do things that iPhone apps cannot. Remember The Milk, for example, can reliably notify you about due tasks on Android. The iPhone version uses push notifications,... Continue reading

I was pretty excited about Google Listen with its clean user interface and integration with Google Reader. But unfortunately it doesn't work for me, because at least half of the podcasts fail to download. And after a download fails, you have to fetch the podcast episode manually, means staring at the progress while keeping the phone from going into sleep mode. At least, that's the only way I found out how to do this with Listen. So I'm back to DoggCatcher, which handles downloads better. And it plays video. Definitely worth $7. Continue reading

Everybody is going crazy about location these days and one application is to "geotag" photos, means to add a geographical location to its metadata. Flickr supports this for years now, iPhoto supports it since the '09 version and do does Aperture in its recent 3.0 release. On top of this, there are countless applications out there that allow geotagging pictures, such as the Aperture plug-in Maperture. Now, in order to automatically geotag a photo you can use a GPS device. A few cameras come with a built-in one, such as the Nikon P6000. For all other cameras, you can use... Continue reading

I was pretty excited about Slacker.com's Android app which caches music offline and refreshes its content overnight. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well: The nightly refresh consistently fails. This morning I had to reboot the phone just to get the app to work again. So I hope they update the app soon and while they are on it they could fix the website for Chrome as well. Otherwise, at least for me, a subscription wouldn't be worth it. Continue reading

If I miss the iPhone for something, it's the iPod functionality, which allows me to carry around a large subset of my music library. Android allows this as well, but there's nothing like iTunes, which effortlessly syncs music over. You rather have to copy the music files manually. Also, this requires tethering the phone to the computer, which feels somewhat out of character for Android as a mobile terminal for the cloud. My first solution are podcasts and there are some excellent ones out there. KRCW, KEXP and NPR have several great ones. I also love Resident Advisor's weekly DJ... Continue reading

For whatever reason when I searched Google for Android podcast apps, Google's own, Listen, didn't show up near the top. It is, of course, free and looks much more polished than DoggCatcher, but it also is missing lots of bells and whistles, for the better or worse. Listen's biggest advantage is that it's syncing, kind of, with Google Reader, so you can add podcast right on your desktop, rather than on the tiny screen of the phone. I'm trying it now, let's see how it goes. Continue reading

The Nexus One comes with seven hardware controls plus the track ball versus the iPhone's five. But for some reason HTC left out the silencing switch of the iPhone. Android does have a silencing button on the start screen, but only if the phone is not locked. Then you have to press the power button for menu which allows silencing as well as switching to airplane mode. In any cases these are three interactions versus one on the iPhone. Also, the iPhone can be silenced blindly just by reaching into the pocket. And silencing the Nexus means real silence, it... Continue reading

It is not simple to get music on an Android phone, so how about podcasts? In the Apple world this all happens through iTunes and you get the lastest episodes automatically, as long as you sync regularly directly to the computer. On Android this should be a cloud-only solution. I quickly checked out MyPOD and DoggCatcher. Both allow subscribing to podcasts on the device and download them only when connected to a power source and/or via WiFi. For me that means podcasts would be downloaded during the night, which is just fine. MyPOD has a free and a cheap full... Continue reading

The Nexus One is somewhat smaller than the iPhone and it has a battery with slightly more capacity. But somehow the HTC engineers managed to keep the battery user exchangeable. So why again doesn't Apple like exchangeable batteries in its mobile devices? Continue reading

Of course, Android can play music in all thinkable formats, but how does it get onto the device? Well, you need to connect it to a computer via USB and then copy the music files into the memory card. That easy. Same way you had to do it my MP3 player around 2002. I'm using an iPod since 2004 and have a well maintained library and every time I connect an iPhone or iPod, music is synced over by certain criteria, without me thinking about it. Unfortunately, this is a closed system and Apple does everything to keep it that... Continue reading

I'm still contemplating over the announcement of the iPad. The geek part of me, that is, to put things into perspective. But I can't help feeling that the January 27th announcement showed a company becoming arrogant. It was like the moment in a relationship when one partner tells the other: "You need me more than I do you. So you better play by my rules". Apple didn't loose time and put a new rule in place right away: Apps with location-based advertising will be rejected. This is remarkable for a couple of reasons: first, as usual, Apple didn't feel the... Continue reading

The switch from the iPhone to Android feels a little bit like that moment in Logan's Run (or The Island, for that matter): you're leaving that well designed world, where invisible overlords take care of everything and which is governed by rules that you don't really understand. The outside is rougher, you have choices and need to work to get some things going, but you also can do stuff that wasn't possible or allowed before. The iPhone certainly has the better designed software. Android feels rough around the edges, the scrolling is not as smooth and flipping the device causes... Continue reading

Something was wrong with Apple's announcement last Wednesday and it was not the iPad hardware. It was the way it was presented, in typical Apple fashion: not a single word before, then the door opens, Steve Jobs comes out and delivers a 90 minutes, carefully crafted message. Then the door closes and complete silence again. How do we now that the iPad doesn't multitask? It wasn't mentioned, so it doesn't. Will it ever? Apple will let know, when it thinks it's the right time. Or never. Or does the iPad sync with MobileMe over the air? Wasn't mentioned, so it... Continue reading

Not because it's not a good device. It's probably awesome and even if I don't really know what to do with it, after I've seen it at the Apple Store, I'm probably hard pressed to buy it. No, I'm loosing faith in Apple, because I believe that Apple has presented its vision for the future of personal computing. Beautiful, touch-based user interfaces with a new natural way of interacting with software. It's about time, as the current UI paradigm is more than 20 years old, the underlying, file-centric operating system even much older. But it also means Apple controlling every... Continue reading

It's cheap, that was the only surprise at the iPad announcement. Other than that I don't really ha a use for it: for reading books, the Kindle is good enough. For e-mail and browsing on the road, the iPhone does the trick and it's far more portable. For doing serious work the on-screen keyboard would probably not work for me, so I still need to schlepp the laptop. And then it's as closed as the iPhone. That, of course, doesn't mean that I won't buy one, eventually. Continue reading