The iPad And Why You Hate It
9:58 Jan 28th, 2010 | 0 notes
The iPad is a fickle creature. It’s been bullied, tormented and taunted ever since it came out to play, which was only a few hours ago. It’s hard to imagine that this would have been the reaction to the fabled Apple tablet computer. Rather than review the device, which I’ll save until I have one, I’ll review the generally negative reactions people have been giving to it.
The majority of all the complaints with the iPad stem from the iPhone OS which it runs on. In 2007, what we saw today would have been revolutionary, fresh and new. By virtue of the fact that we’ve seen the fundamental interface before, people are instantly disappointed. I think it’s worth putting the iPad in perspective not as an Apple product, but as an entry into the new tablet category. So far, the serious tablet contenders we’ve seen have been running Android OS and Windows 7. Looking at these platforms, both have their inherent flaws. Android apps won’t run perfectly on every device due to it’s open code nature. The variety of screen sizes means that some will be incompatible, or just look odd. Windows 7 tablets bring all of the baggage you have on your regular computer. Security needs, maintenance etc. Additionally, Windows was never designed to be fully touch based. You would find yourself needing a stylus eventually.
Next to Android and Windows, the iPhone OS on the iPad starts looking much better. Sure, it may not be saving kittens from trees or rescuing puppies from burning buildings, but it’s far better than the competition. iPad Mail, or Outlook on a Windows PC tablet? iPad music player, or the desktop iTunes software?
I’m starting to look at the iPad as I looked at the iPhone at first. There are problems with it that are purely software based and could so easily be fixed. Multitasking: software. That huge, empty, begging-to-be-filled lock screen: software. Flash Player: software. Let’s not forget that we still have WWDC coming up in the middle of the year, with iPhone OS 4.0 bound to make an appearance. While I do admit that the lack of any camera was a massive disappointment, we all know exactly why Apple didn’t put one it: iPad 2.
Comparing the iPad to the iPhone once again, the iPad starts its life with one major advantage; a well developed SDK and base of developers ready to write the next great app. I have no doubt that all the familiar apps will make there way onto the app store in a new iPad flavor. Things, Tweetie, Facebook, countless news apps and games will all be rewritten for the iPad. It’s just a matter of patience. I’m confident that given time, the iPad will become as appealing as the iPhone.
The tablet computer category will slowly find its place as time goes on, possibly even replacing netbooks. While the iPad isn’t groundbreaking, it is a product we already know and realize will be a joy to use. At this point, I think Apple is doing what they do best and trying to define a category that is clearly a mess. Who knows, maybe Apple will eventually put the full OS X on future iPads. But for now, I know that I would rather put my money towards an iPad than a PC Slate running Windows 7, Norton Antivirus, iTunes, Internet Explorer and the Kindle Desktop Software.
ChromeOS and Why Google Won’t Succeed in the OS War
7:52 Jul 13th, 2009 | 0 notes
Look at the laptop market ten years ago. What do you see? You see Windows dominating the PC arena, a Mac OS that isn’t anywhere near its current glory and a Linix base still wondering why people aren’t using it in the masses. Essentially, you have one market dominator and a few stragglers hanging around. Jump forward to today and you see a very different market for laptops. Windows is (still) dominating, but Mac OS X and Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, are growing like never before. The biggest difference you see in today’s market is that there is choice. You can walk around a store or browse the internet and find quality operating systems ranging from $500 to absolutely free.
But this is just the laptop market. Next to these well developed operating systems and machines a new bud is growing out of the idea that you don’t need a 17”, quad core processor to do everyday computing tasks like checking emails and browsing the web. That bud is the netbook, and with their smaller screens and slower processors a new need has arisen. That need is for an operating system to match the machine.
A few days ago Google announced their entrant into the netbook OS (operating system) market named ChromeOS. It promises to be a light weight, open source operating system designed with one thing in mind: cloud computing. Google says the OS will have no preinstalled applications and that computing can all be done on the web using services like the Google Apps suite and more. Originally, the idea for netbooks was that most of the work to be done on them would be done using cloud computing. It looks like Google is trying to return to this original idea.
But here’s the problem for Google: nobody will use ChromeOS.
By nobody I mean that the ChromeOS will fail to gain any sort of substantial market share. Why? Because Google has chosen to enter the budding netbook market when flowers are already starting to appear.
Look at Windows for example. Microsoft already acknowledges that the netbook market is going to be big with what they’re doing with Windows 7 (coming out in October). They looked at the netbook market, saw that the current Windows Vista doesn’t work on netbooks and that people were happy buying them with Windows XP installed, and decided that they needed to focus on getting Windows 7 to work perfectly to fill the gap they created with Vista. Their netbook solution: Windows 7 Starter Edition. While I can say first hand that Windows 7 Ultimate Edition runs brilliantly on a netbook, there is one very good reason why Starter Edition is Microsoft’s solution. Microsoft has said that they plan to essentially give Starter Edition away for free to manufactures just to make sure your next netbook will be running Windows. With the behemoth from Redmond giving away the most popular OS in the world, why would manufacturers even think about using a newcomer like Google’s ChromeOS on the same scale as Windows?
On that same point, look at what the Linix base has been creating for netbooks. Ubuntu Linux Remix has been out for a while now, ask any average user and they won’t even know what Linux is, let along Ubuntu. Even the likes of Dell, HP, Acer and Asus have offered Linux alternatives for their netbooks, but every attempt has been outsold by Windows XP. This shows that people like the familiar, even if that means the familiar is slower and older than the new alternative. For Google, ChromeOS presents an entirely new way of thinking about computing as well as being far different to peoples’ safe Windows haven. This will prove to be part of its downfall.
Restrictions in Linux OS’s and netbook OS’s have led me to use Windows 7 on my netbook. As an average consumer (well kind of) I don’t like the thought of my experience being restricted in any way. If you look at the ChromeOS, Google plans for you to do all of your computing over the internet. That means no storing your music, photos, documents, contacts, email or calendar on your netbook. Google wants that all online. It is this type of restriction that will be a major reason why ChromeOS will fail. What if you’re in the middle of nowhere? What if you’re on the subway? What if you’re on a plane? You won’t have internet access to get to your files. That is restriction number one. Restriction number two is online services. Google Docs, Flickr, Photoshop.com and iMeem are all great internet services, but none of them are at all comparable with their desktop counterparts. For example, Google Docs has nowhere near the functionality of Microsoft Office. That means the scope of your computing is restricted by the limitations of what the internet can offer you. With ChromeOS relying on you doing all of your computing online, you would be downgrading to a more limited experience by using it.
Similarly, Google themselves claim that all of the web apps usable on ChromeOS are available on all other operating systems. After all, ChromeOS is essentially just a web browser. Google’s struggle to market ChromeOS will come when people ask why they should choose it over Windows, which has much, much more to offer than just a web browser. People will have this choice: buying an OS that is a web browser, or buying an OS that has a web browser.
The final reason ChromeOS will fail is this: Google has chosen to enter ChromeOS into a market where comsumers are already confused. Judging from the reaction of my peers to my HP Mini, it’s clear that the average consumer doesn’t understand the purpose of a netbook. People don’t ‘get’ what a netbook is, even when it’s running Windows. Such a far out concept like ChromeOS and its way of interpreting netbooks as just a web browser will only further confuse people.
Google’s mantra has been about simplicity and ease of use. But in the case of ChromeOS, I believe they’ve made things too simple. Google has failed to see that netbooks can run full operating systems to a high standard. They’ve failed to recognize people’s needs and normal computing habits. Most importantly, Google has failed to recognize that are attempting to bring what looks like an inferior product into a market with much better alternatives.
Google has come into the netbook game with too little, too late.
Word Pad Sucks
9:38 May 29th, 2009 | Notes
Have you ever installed a release candidate version of windows, not bothered to install a full word processor, started using Word Pad to type up your music composition process diary then have the entire OS crash and then get the blue screen of death?
I have!
I was writing my process diary during debating training (yeah, not much actually happens) when, all of a sudden, without warning the screen flickered and gave me the classic blue screen of death then restarted. I didn’t have time to react. No frozen screen or cursor or anything!
What the hell happened?! This is Windows 7! It’s not supposed to do that! It’s supposed to work properly!
The up side is that once it had dumped the memory, it quickly rebooted. My work wasn’t there but at least it went to the trouble of restarting for me. In all honesty, I wasn’t that annoyed, I had only done about three lines of work. But I’m still kind of curious as to why the hell it happened.
Should Our School Get Macs?
7:48 May 28th, 2009 | 0 notes
Here it is! My latest article for the school newspaper! Enjoy!
***
By now you all probably know that Macs are slowly making their way into more and more of the school. There are sleek, shiny iMacs creeping into computer labs in each of the campuses. This raises the question? Should the school get more Macs?
Personally, and from a completely bias perspective, I believe we should. Macs just work better than PCs in a school environment. Lets be honest, no body likes having to wait for all of the random pop ups to finish doing their thing and wait for firefox to open before they can start doing their work on the current PCs*. From my experience using the Macs in the music center, none of this stuff happens, allowing you to get down to work right away.
Macs also have features that save time when working. On a PC, if you have multiple web pages, documents and other files open, the task bar (the blue bar down the bottom) gets cluttered very quickly. This makes it hard for you to find the window you are looking for without dragging windows all over the screen to finally uncover the right one. On the Mac, there is a simple way to see all your windows at once and quickly select the one you were after. No hassles. All the Mac users will understand what I mean when I say “It’s the button on the keyboard that makes all the windows fly around”. Get what I mean? It’s features like this that make using a Mac very quick, painless and more efficient in getting you work done.
It’s also valuable to look at the trends in what computers students are buying. Last year the highest selling laptop in the high school and university student market was the MacBook. If computers are all about making life easier and simpler, the school’s buying habits reflect the students’ decision to move to a more user-friendly and painless computer. By that I mean the students recognize Macs are easier and are buying them, therefore the school should do the same for their own peace of mind. After all, peoples’ pockets don’t lie.
The computers at school are running a version of Windows that is getting close to eight years old. That’s decades in computer years. No matter what happens, in the next few years the school will have have to upgrade the computer as the life of Windows XP comes to an end.
What do you think? Should the school continue the trend of Mac purchases? Would you like to see Windows Vista in the library computer labs instead? Would you rather we wait for the release of Windows 7 before buying new computers?
***
*Note: Our school is using Novell which throws out tons of pop ups at login. Bleh!
Note: Article has been edited to maintain anonymity of my school! Yay civil liberties!
Note: Sorry for using so much italicized text.
OH NO! A Windows Explorer window and a Windows dialogue box both telling me that I have hundreds of viruses on my C: drive! Quick! I better download that .exe antivirus program to remove the viruses from my Windows XP PC!
Wait a minute…
Bonus Quiz!:
What’s wrong with this picture?
ARGH! I know, it’s a Zune!
Don’t worry, I didn’t go out and buy one. I’m in Australia, I can’t. But I did download and try the software on Windows 7!
So here’s my short review: iTunes is better.
Why you ask? It’s completely the user interface’s fault. You know the iTunes interface as a simple, sleek and highly usable. It’s not cluttered, it’s very unified and everything is going to be where you expect no matter what part of the software you navigate to.
I think of the Zune Software like this: it’s fine. Yes it’s totally usable and I could live with it. It has all the features of iTunes (minus the apps and ringtones). It even has some features better than iTunes. The Now Playing window in the Zune Software is pretty cool. Using the Zune.net social network, it grabs data and photos (similar to the Last.fm artist profiles) of the artist you are listening to and turns them into a fantastic screensaver like display. It’s far superior to the iTunes visualizers.
The problem I have is that the Zune software window is like a canvas. Any time you click into a new section, the user interface is wiped away and replaced with something completely different. You click from the Artists tab to the Album tab, and everything moves around. This is incredibly frustrating! While the iTunes sidebar is always there, the Browser is always there whether you’re looking at podcasts, music or movies, Zune doesn’t follow a unified browsing UI! To be fare, it’s something that I could get used to. It’s just something I don’t want to.
The user interface is gorgeous, I’ll put that out there now. Great graphics, great animations. Herein lies the problem. The animations are infuriatingly bad. Not the animations themselves but the rendering. When ever you change tabs, the UI you were looking at glides gracefully out and the new UI glides gracefully in. But the text! Oh god the text! It’s terribly rendered! The animation is fairly short, but not instant. So when the text is blurry and unreadable for about two seconds while it re-renders properly, I feel like bashing my head against the keyboard. How, after three versions of the software can’t the font render properly?
iTunes doesn’t employ fancy animations or transitions, but it is fast and properly rendered! For me, I would gladly ditch the animations and UI of the Zune Software (which doesn’t even follow Microsoft’s design principle) for the ease of use, simplicity and unity of iTunes.
Plus, I have an iPhone. I have no choice.
Dual Booting Windows 7!
11:18 May 23rd, 2009 | Notes
I’ve been meaning to dual boot the Windows 7 RC for a while now, but never got around to it for one reason or another. So this morning I decided I finally would.
Let me tell you, it takes a whole freaking day.
I went into this foolishly thinking that it would take a hour, two hours at max. Boy was I wrong. I began by clearing out my Mac of all the crap I’ve acumulated over the years to get me 50GB of space. I planned to devote just 20GB to 7, because I won’t need that much space. With the space cleared out, I ran Boot Camp Assistant a clicked partition.
“Partitioning Failed”
Crap. I eventaully learned that my drive was too fragmented to create 20GB of continuous space. Here’s where I jumped to conclusions: the Mac doesn’t have defragmentation software built in, therefore the Mac doesn’t get fragmented/it defragments on the fly.
WRONG!
What!? My drive is more fragmented than the chinese government!? NO! How do I fix it?!
Searching around the internet I found a few programs that claimed to defragment my hard drive… for $20. Since I don’t have a card that works on the internet, that idea went out the toilet. So I did the only logical thing, reinstall OS X. It took hours to get my Mac back to it’s original state. Wiping the drive, installing Leopard, partioning the hard drive, migrating my Time Machine backup, installing over a gigabyte of patches. THEN, I installed Windows 7.
The amount of driver problems I had was fairly minimal. The only big problem I had was getting the right driver for my graphics card. Windows Update got it right, then the Boot Camp Assistant installed another driver over the top of it and broke it! System Restore, Unintall Driver, Install Updated Driver.
OK done!
Finally, after about 10 hours I have Windows 7 installed on my Mac. Despite all the pain of going through all of this crap, some more good stuff came out of it. I have a partition I can install anything to, I have Windows 7 installed (duh) and it has speeded up my OS X install by quite a bit!
In the end, all I really have to show for it is that I have a pre-release version of Windows on my Mac.
I feel unclean…
Ooooo Windows 7 RC!
Amazingly, it’s still good! I thought that Microsoft might stuff it up or make it bloated and slow, but I think it’s actually faster than the beta! If this keeps up I might actually buy a copy!
Wait, what am I saying? *shiver* Okay, calm down James. Breathe, Breathe. Think of Steve, think of Steve. Ahh there, much better.
Right, I <3 Mac!
That’s better.
