01.04
With it being the New Year, I’m making some changes to the technology that I use in the hope of making life better and more productive this year. Mainly, the desktop and mobile stuff. Here’s what, and why:
MOBILE:
The closed, controlled eco-system surround the iPhone has always put me off somewhat. I really don’t like the various reports that have emerged over the last couple of years about how Apple has shut out developers who have been seen to step on either their toes or the toes of Apple’s partners (I’m thinking Google voice, Skype originally, Qik etc). The recent revelations about China (see the desktop section below for more on this). The complete lack of support for developers post-release too. More than that though, recently, the credit card I have on file with Apple expired and as I’ve been buying anything in iTunes recently I hadn’t updated it. I tried to download a free app and was told I couldn’t until I update the card. I tried to run some updates on paid apps that I’d previously bought and found the same thing. Basically, Apple was holding me and my purchases to ransom for no real reason. Whilst this is a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things, the bigger issue is the control that Apple has over you and ‘your’ content. Did you buy the app or not? Are the updates free or not? In this case, yes and yes made no difference – Apple said I couldn’t progress until I’d met their demands first. Not cool. The end result for me is that with my O2 contract coming to an end this month, I will not be renewing it nor upgrading my iPhone. If Google don’t announce immediate availability of the new Nexus One tomorrow, then I shall either wait (if the launch is close) or just go to a G2 (HTC Hero) instead. Android seems a much better way forward in terms of the consumer to me right now.
DESKTOP:
Some time ago I tried living with Ubuntu powering my main computer. At the time though, the paymasters in my life all seemed to require various things that could only be easily achieved in various bits of Windows and OS X (I’m referring to things like Flash AS stuff etc). As a result, although I kept an Ubuntu machine around I’d pretty much had to stick to my Mac as a main machine. I think it’s time to revisit that decision though…
Windows: My interlude at Microsoft forced me (I didn’t go easily mind) to use Windows Vista on a daily basis and even though I won’t criticise it per se, it definitely was not even close to being a desktop environment that I’d consider using by choice. Windows 7 is of course significantly better than it’s predecessor, but even so it’s so far off of being worth the hassle that is always associated with any Window’s machines that I will never go there willingly…
Mac OS X: It’s a great environment of course. It has everything a software developer could want and a whole bunch more. That said, Apple’s two-facedness is beginning to sit very badly with me and I can’t help but let it affect my decisions when it comes to technology choices. The app store experience as a developer should be amazing given their control over the entire eco-system, but it is most definitely not amazing. Not at all. The lock-in to using iTunes and it’s DRM is beginning to limit me for the first time because I want to copy some music over to my daughter’s Ubuntu powered laptop and I find that it’s just not that easy. The whole China and Dalai Lama issue, well I shouldn’t have to tell any right-minded peace-loving person how I feel about such blatant profit-over-morals behaviour (don’t get me started on how Apple used the Dalai Lama to create the aura of ‘Think Different’ in it’s marketing not so very long ago). Maybe I just bought into the hype too much and believed their marketing messages when I should have been more sceptical, but Apple is fast fading in my expectations right about now.
Ubuntu: Over the holidays I installed a couple of Ubuntu machines in and around my home. I used the latest edition, Karmic Koala, to install as a VMWare machine on my Mac as well as installing an older netbook for my daughter (which I also mirrored on my wife’s Mac too). Every single time, it was a breeze – I had to do almost nothing to get it working the way I needed it to and although it can be tricky to install some stuff it’s certainly not beyond being worth the trouble. Whether it was the VM’s or on the netbook, it just worked… The working environment I’ve set up for myself is brilliant although perhaps not as pretty as the Mac in places. Songbird is a great iTunes replacement and most of the other apps I use regularly on my Mac were originally native Linux apps anyway. It looks great and it works great..
As a result, my main machine is now the Ubuntu VM. I really hope to transition fully at some point in the future though. I think the main thing holding me back right now is my photography stuff. I use Lightroom on the Mac right now, but a cursory glance at the Linux photo processing apps hasn’t grabbed me as yet. For this reason, I’ll be keeping my Mac on standby for now. But I really hope to be able to make the shift permanently soon…
Thus, for me, the love affair with Apple is dying a slow and painful death. They’re not the company they used to be and it’s unfair of me to expect them to be so probably. I’m not eradicating Apple’s products from my life, just making an initial positive move away from them. I’m also not radical when it comes to open source but I do believe in it a whole lot more than the alternatives right now.
Now, I just need Google to announce a rapid worldwide release of the new Nexus One tomorrow and I’ll be very happy!
Note: Joi already has one… Of course… 
[...] Apple has Steve, and by inheritance a personality that is immensely charming, yet secretive and controlling. They don't play well with others and for developers a life with Apple can feel like an abusive relationship. We adore them but they don't treat us with respect. For a few of my friends at least, their famous distortion field is weakening. [...]
A 15-year Mac user, I feel exactly to same as you do. Apple’s behavior really rankles me. When my jailbroken iPhone was stolen last summer and AT&T tried to rape me over the cost of replacement, I turned my back on AT&T & the iPhone for good…
…Or so I thought, until I had owned a MyTouch 3G on T-Mobile running Android 1.6 for about 4 days. I had assumed I was hearing “Android isn’t an iPhone killer” because most users weren’t technically adept enough to leverage the power of what I assumed was a potentially far superior, open OS with a growing user base.
My disappointment upon owning an Android phone for 4 days was so great it actually threw me into a funk for a day or two. The iPhone, even before jailbreaking it, was an order of magnitude superior an experience in virtually every way.
- The number of essential, useful and/or fun apps I found on the iTunes App Store when it was 2 months old was astounding. The number of similarly useful or delightful apps I can find on Android market , which has been around for over 18 months? A mere fraction of that. The apps generally pale in comparison. The simple, ingenious utilities I had on the iPhone have no equivalents in the Market, simple utilities have yet to be written in better than a half-baked form (Is it really so hard to put my SMS history in a widget on my desktop?) and the games… let’s not even go there. I’ve combed the marked and haven’t found more than 1 or two truly addictive Android games yet, and even those have graphics straight out of 1998. On the iPhone I had multitudes of addictive games with fast, very high-quality visuals. Mostly it feels like the app store has been stocked with programs by very smart teenagers… lots of potential there, but not yet up to snuff.
- Once jailbreaking it, modding the iPhone was actually much easier and ultimately more fun and painless than it is on the Android phone. Dpkg, please!
- T-Mobile’s coverage is pathetic – and I’m being kind here. Living in the middle of San Francisco, I rarely get a 3G signal – and never get one indoors, or anywhere within a 7 foot perimeter around my building. The phone gets 1-2 bars of wifi from my router while my Macbook, sitting right next to it, gets 4. It only gets 3 bars when I set it right next to the router. And the couch I used to sit on chatting away over AT&T with my iPhone? We have 3 T-Mobile phones in the apartment, and none of them get phone coverage anywhere in that entire room.
- I pushed my iPhone HARD, and was accustomed to running out of memory, slowdowns, etc., but nothing like the time I spend waiting for things to happen and/or force-quitting apps on Android. I rooted the phone and installed the Super D rom, and performance is a bit better. But it’s still nothing to write home about compared to the iPhone I purchased a year before my MyTouch even hit the stores.
- The Android Market app itself seems to have been written with the least thought possible. The list of useful, simple features the iPhone store app has that Market sorely needs is as long as my arm. Huge, barely-categorized, unsorted lists of apps? No way to tell if an installed app was free or paid, or how much a paid app cost, without visiting the Google Checkout site? No way to know which version a comment is for? No way to batch-update my apps? Puh-lease.
I could go on at much greater length, these are just off the top of my head. Suffice it to say… I can’t believe I am even saying this… when the new iPhones (likely) debut this summer, I will be switching back to Apple and AT&T and their respective foul, predatory corporate policies. :facepalm: God help me.