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The iPhone 5S - Target of Misguided Perpetual Disappointment

Apple has announced the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C, and they are almost exactly as the rumors and leaks predicted. As many Apple fans suggested before the announcement, the immediate tales of disappointment have begun flowing. This is as much of an annual tradition as the iPhone announcements themselves it seems.

Just one problem...

These "disappointing" updates to the iPhone continue to result in record setting sales and very happy customers.

Misguided Disappointment

I have a theory on what drives this misguided disappointment. Two main points:

1. Smartphones are a mature market, expecting Earth-shattering news at every release is wasted effort.
2. Tech bloggers' unwillingness to accept that a few highly refined, beautifully executed, and relevant features is as good (or better) than a myriad of gimmicky features.

Smartphones are Mature

The smartphone market has flourished, and parts of it are still growing fast. Case and point, performance:

However, the point remains that the market is maturing, and deltas between product generations aren't what they were the first few years. (At least not the ones that get tech bloggers' underpants all wadded up.) Every year I hear that the updates weren't enough, yet every year the sales are higher, the reviews are better, and the iPhone is the benchmark of the entire industry.

Features that Matter

Samsung has made a name for itself by releasing a wide variety of phones, many of which contain a set of features that span the entire usefulness spectrum, albeit heavily weighted toward the bottom end. This approach gives tech bloggers more to talk about, maybe that's the appeal.

Apple's approach is, always has been, and hopefully always will be, to add features that have been incredibly well thought out, expertly designed, highly refined, and very well implemented. As Jony Ive said in the promo video today:

"We believe technology is at its best and most empowering when it simply disappears." 

This is Apple's approach; it is so evident in everything they do. It has worked well for them in the past, and there is no sign of there being a change in that trend.

Closing Thoughts

I don't know if people are really disappointed, or if they just want the clicks. Either way I don't consider the perspective to be all that well thought out. This doesn't mean you have to love or want an iPhone, it doesn't even mean you need to like the iPhone (or Apple). It just means that we're all getting tired of folks hitting send on the "I'm disappointed with the new iPhone" message that they had composed and ready to send an hour before the announcement.

Reality of the Day-to-Day with the Pebble Smartwatch

The Pebble has gotten a TON of press, so I'm not going to rehash my whole product experience. I'm far too late to the game to pull that. Instead I want to share some of the unexpected things I've found from life with a Pebble.

1. Battery life is not as advertised. It isn't bad, but 3-4 days is no 7 days. However, with a charger as beautifully designed as this one, I genuinely don't mind at all.
2. Do Not Disturb Mode - Your iPhone might adhere to Do Not Disturb mode, but your Pebble won't.
3. Light as a feather - really threw me off at first, but I love it.
4. Forget using it to golf. One of the top features I was looking forward to was using it on the golf course. I'm going to say, "there is NO golf GPS support." Then someone will reply, "Yes there is, there is Free Caddie." Then I will reply, "Exactly, there is NO golf GPS support." 
5. RunKeeper is a keeper. I walk 1-3x per day, and RunKeeper support is wonderful while you're using it. I just wish I didn't have to disconnect/reconnect/reboot the app/reconnect again httpebble every time I was finished using RunKeeper.
6. Dis-Connectivity. Bluetooth connectivity between watch and phone is incredible, no issues there. However, if you use httpebble for anything (watch faces with data on them for example) you'll find it disconnects 5-15 times per day, 100% of the time after using RunKeeper.
7. Limited to 9 watch faces stored on the watch.
8. Soft plastic face scratches easily.

This only looks like a list of (mostly) complaints because the praise has already been given. This is a very cool watch, it was very fun to be part of the Kickstarter craziness, and I still chose to wear it ever day. I like my Pebble, but it hasn't changed my life like I expected it to. It is exactly what you'd expect, a first revision product from a new (ish) hardware company.

I have high hopes for the company and their future. They made a splash in the industry disproportionate to their size in the tech world. Perhaps most importantly, they put wearable technology onto front pages of papers across the nation and into conversations of people who I would never have expected.

Summer with a Nest Thermostat

A Colorado winter with the Nest thermostat was nothing short of wonderful. Check out my Living with Nest post from just a few weeks with Nest as the weather began to turn cold. Now, we're several months into a hot summer in the sunniest state in the U.S. and the Nest continues to impress.

There are two features that stand out to me - Airwave and Leafs - both serving as great complements to Auto Away, smartphone/tablet apps, informative monthly usage reports, and reliable intelligence.

Airwave

Nest's Airwave feature is one of their eco-friendly, yet user experience friendly, features. Simply put, Airwave saves energy by shutting off the air conditioning before the desired temperature is reached, but leaves the fan running to run air over the ice cold coils in the air conditioner and deliver the cold air into the house as if the AC was still running.

The cost of running the fan is nearly nonexistent compared to running the compressor, so the savings during this time is tremendous. AC is not an inexpensive way to stay comfortable, saving 10 minutes of running the compressor every time the AC runs on a hot day adds up very quickly.

Leafs

It has been repeatedly proven that using games, or Gamification, to motivate and inspire is extremely effective. The theory is simple - create a game-like scoring or reward system to show users a quantifiable result of their efforts. It works with weight loss, it works with achieving goals, and it works with making eco-friendly (perhaps more importantly, wallet-friendly) decisions about how to heat or cool your home.

Nest uses "Leafs" to do just this. Leafs show you when your Nest is set in such a way that it is using less and saving you more. Here is my Leaf summary from my last monthly report and the first time I was in the top 5%!

It is addicting. I enjoy seeing the tangible results of my decisions, and it is very inspiring to see that this is possible without sacrificing comfort. We like to keep the house comfortable, so achieving this didn't require putting ourselves out in any way.

It has been a lot of fun to have such an exciting piece of technology to play with. The apps are well written, stable, and intuitive. After almost a full year with the Nest, including both summer and winter, I can say with high confidence that this has been a great investment that I continue to recommend highly to family and friends.

First In, Last Out - The Story of Waiting for my Pebble Kickstarter Watch

[UPDATE] I just got my tracking number! Finally, the email I've been anxiously waiting for. ETA is now Monday 7/29/13 - 471 days from the date of backing. It has been a heck of a ride; some ups, some downs, but above all excitement.

Make no mistake, I stand behind Pebble, I stand behind Kickstarter, and I stand behind my decision to back the Pebble project on Kickstarter... all 456 days ago (at the time of writing).

Let's back up. Like a lot of the tech news (absorbing) community I caught wind of the Pebble Kickstarter project on the 11th (day 1) or 12th (day 2) of April, 2012. It triggered that feeling we all have, the feeling of "hmmm, how can I justify 'needing' this tech to my wife...?" No convincing needed, she was on board.

Looking back now, it seems like an eternity between that point and April 14th when I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my white Pebble smartwatch. Cue the deep and longing sigh for a photo break.

If you did notice the subtle clues, I still haven't gotten mine. Using the Pebble-created tools*, I determined that by being a day 4 backer, I was "in line" at approximately 16,000 of 85,000 total Kickstarter preorders. There are no publicly available numbers to determine where I was in line with the white watch crew, but as of July 11, 2013 Pebble announced that 58% of white pebble orders were out the door. I can only assume that means the number of white Pebble orders were heavily weighted toward the beginning of the project.

To put that in perspective, when I backed the Pebble project, it had raised approximately $1,700,000. When the project closed about 5 weeks later they had raised over $10,000,000 - Ten. Million. Dollars. Clearly I wasn't really "first," but being within the first 20% of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history was, and still is, very exciting.

So, what happened?

Pebble announced that all of the black, red, orange, gray (some still in transit), and 58% of white Pebbles had been shipped out or delivered to customers. The order the colors are listed corresponds to the order they were produced in, so inherent to that is the fact that any white Pebble backers would be getting theirs later than most. The catch? We didn't learn about them producing one color at a time or what the order was until February/March of 2013, well after their estimated ship date of September 2012 (not complaining).

When Pebble was so successful on Kickstarter they had to completely change their plans for production. They moved from California to China. They changed materials. They made upgrades (water resistance, Bluetooth 4.0, etc). They changed nearly everything. Despite angering many folks, it was the right decision. Given the extent of the changes, dates started slipping. When they missed the projected date in September 2012 and it became apparent that they were nowhere near shipping, they made the decision to withhold further shipping estimates until they were positive.

The lack of detailed communication from Pebble was frustrating at times. It is hard not to want instant and complete updates on anything of interest in the instant time we live in. Add to that a sense of ownership given the contribution to funding the project, you get a fairly hostile group of backers. The other group were those who understood how much work really needed to be done for such a project AND could appreciate the decision to do what the CEO thinks is best for the company and stick to that decision no matter what.

Dates kept sliding out, but finally we got a tangible shipping date - January 23, 2013. Excitement soared, and that is when I wrote my first article to project shipping dates. I foolishly stuck to the optimistic "maximum production volume" estimates, and took Pebble at their word that we'd all have our watches by the end of March. Missing that late March target was completely outshined by their extraordinary success, rave reviews, and stories from happy Pebble owners. The miss was also less of an issue because the folks at Pebble wisely gave all of the color backers an option to get a black Pebble instead, immediately no less. Add this to their list of great decisions.

I could barely contain my excitement after seeing how beautiful the product was, so I forced myself to "stop reading" about Pebble since it made the waiting seem to be that much longer. When I say "stop reading" I should probably say "read slightly less, but still follow on Twitter and anxiously await the Kickstarter Project Updates," but a little self-delusion never hurt anyone, right? I digress...

When the colored Pebbles went to production I kept kidding myself white would come next, it didn't. The "Pebble is finally shipping!" tech blog craze came and went. There was software update after software update. And there was my dumbwrist. My poor lonely dumbwrist.

So now "everyone" has their Pebble and I'm breaking my "just don't think about it" rule. Every time my wrist phone alerts me of an email my heart skips a beat. It could be any day now. Any minute now. Pebble landed a deal with Best Buy to get their products into the mainstream, to get their product out to folks beyond the early-adopter type. Cue more complaining from the few Pebble-less Kickstarter backers... "shouldn't you take care of the people that made this possible first?"

My answer: they already did, for the most part. Now, with the huge number of very big players entering the smartphone arena (Apple, Google, Sony, etc.), Pebble is doing what is best for the company. Given the size of the marketing wallets of their soon-to-be competitors, they're doing everything they can to be the name that is synonymous with smartwatch. It is their best chance at surviving this. It also helps that the other startups are trying to create smartphones for the wrist instead of focusing, like Pebble did, on simplicity and user experience.

Pebble has a long and challenging road ahead. They have come a long way. They made mistakes. They made headline after headline. Most importantly, they made PEBBLES. Damn fine Pebbles.

I just hope their "long road ahead" swings by my neck of the woods and drops off a white Pebble. Cheers to you and the team, Eric, from a very anxious day 4 Pebble Kickstarter project backer.


*The tools used were the (now neglected) ispebbleshipping.com and the 3rd party Kickstarter tracking utility Kicktraq. I also used my original article on determining the shipping date of your Pebble based on the available data at the start of the year, it proved to be wildly optimistic; though in all fairness, it was relatively accurate based on the numbers and information available at the time.

2013 Internet Trends

Is it meant to be ironic that the "authority" of internet trends is hosted on a site that reminds me of the AOL era?

2013 slides are out. There are over 100, but worth scanning through them. There are some solid numbers on how serious of a market China is. It shows the iPad growth outpacing the iPhone by 3x.

I think the biggest surprise in there is the focus on sharing sound clips. Video and photo I understand, digital voice/VoIP/video calling I understand, but uploading audio content to SoundCloud seems somewhat insignificant next to those. I must not be a part of that/those demographic(s), I'll have to take their word on it.

i(ve)OS 7 - Bring it on!

Tim Cook confirmed the new look at D11 in the usual Apple (read: vague) way, but that's ok. Ive is nothing short of a genius, and he's heading this thing up. I say "bring on i(ve)OS 7!"

Jony Ive's iOS 7 Influence Will Be More Than Skin Deep - MacRumors

On Yahoo! Purchasing Astrid

I tried starting this with "Dear Yahoo!"... not only could I not live with "Dear" when addressing Yahoo!, even the exclamation point isn't sitting right with me. Maybe in the context of disappointment it is appropriate, but certainly not in the context of enthusiasm with which they intend.

Let me back up.

Yahoo! (ugh, "!") purchased the single best* shared to-do app 'Astrid' and has announced they're shutting it down in 90 days. Now Astrid (perhaps will honorably live for 90 days as Astrid! in my heart) wasn't without faults. There are the list counts that are usually wrong on shared lists, the UI isn't terribly attractive, and the weird Pac-Man Ghost-looking characters are juvenile, but I can forgive that. Astrid was by FAR our (my wife and my) first choice of shared to-do apps.

Grocery list? Astrid. To-Do list? Astrid. Weekend project list? Astrid. Home Depot, Costco, Target, Long Term Project Ideas, PetsMart? All Astrid. Tens if not a hundred or more items tracked, synced instantly, and wildly convenient. My wife can add something to the grocery list while I'm at the store, you can assign due dates, assign tasks, set reminders, there is a website you can log into and manage, the iPad app is good, the list goes on.

There is competition for Astrid, but none that even made a strong case. SimplyUs is simply miserable to use. Avocado is more aimed at messaging your partner, but has some shared list features. Cozi was uncomfortable to use at best. Toodledo is so hard on the eyes I'd hesitate about downloading it for free, never mind $2.99. I want to like Clear, but if you need a guide on how to use the UI, you failed at making a UI. If Remember The Milk has shared list capabilities they're buried, and that's about all I want this for. Any.Do is stunningly beautiful for a few to-do's that aren't shared, but anything more becomes cumbersome.

And Wunderlist... oh dear Wunderlist. A favorite of mine years ago was replaced by the native iOS Reminders app (for my personal, non-shared to-do list) comes to the rescue. I ditched them for sub-par sharing features and what seemed like a tried-too-hard-to-simplify UI. I decided to test drive each of these apps before stating that Astrid had no competition, and I'm glad I did. I'm happy to announce my wife and I will be switching to Wunderlist.

Ok, back to a now-less-overwhelming feeling of disappointment.

I can't blame the folks at Astrid. Turning down an offer from a big company like Yahoo! isn't something I can say I'd look forward to doing. I can, however, blame the folks at Yahoo! (Exclamation seems appropriate, this time.) I was hopeful when Marissa Mayer took over. I enjoyed the news of her firm positions on certain things. Now I'm thinking that she, along with the rest of Yahoo!, doesn't know where they fit in this world. They're struggling to find an identity online, a place where Google owns just about everything search or email related.

Marissa, this isn't the way to do it. I'll change my position if you re-launch Astrid in a new and better way, but if you integrate it with Yahoo! Mail in such a way that I've got to switch my services over to Yahoo! from Gmail, you have failed. If you don't re-launch Astrid in a new and kick ass way, and you've done nothing historically to make me believe you're capable of such a feat, then you have failed.

Yahoo! reminds me of a young teenager - struggling to figure out who they are while lashing out without thinking twice about taking others down with them in the process. Now if only there was a way to send them to their room to think about what they've done.

*Single Best title was awarded before re-trying all of the apps mentioned above. I've only had the new Wunderlist for a half hour or so, but they're giving Astrid a run for its money at least, if not besting it.

P.S. - Huge thanks to Wunderlist for improving your product and providing a superior experience! You've got 2 new customers, and I suspect many more to come.

An iPhone User's Trial Switch to Android

I have been intensely interested in trying out an Android phone ever since the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the operating system was released. It was at this point that Google started to hone in their user experience, a major iOS-ism that many reviews agreed was lacking from Android previously.

I'll pause here to state that this isn't bashing either mobile OS. This is nothing more than my experience, as a long (ish) time iPhone/iPad user, living with the Android operating system on a non-Google "flagship" phone. I also understand that my starting point for expectations was largely based on iOS, no matter how much I tried to avoid it. Consider this and understand that my stumbling outlined below isn't an anti-Android rant, rather it is simply a documentation of my hardships. I welcome any feedback on how I could avoid these types of issues.

I was presented with the unique opportunity to try out an LG Optimus G on the Sprint network here in the U.S., for free. This device is running Android ICS v4.1.2.

Key Features and Specs:

• Quad-Core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor
• 4G LTE connectivity
• 13MP rear camera (AT&T version has 8MP)
• Dimensions: 5.15" (H) x 2.82" (W) x 0.33" (D)
• Weight: 5.19 oz.
• Screen: 4.7" 768x1280 IPS+
• Battery: 2100 mAh
• Capacity: 32GB

My Experience

My experience was a mixed bag. I hoped to come away from this experience genuinely struggling to say what my next phone I purchase will be. I planned on capitalizing on the inter-app data sharing, tweaks/customizations, and widgets that Android had to offer. Most of all, I wanted to dispel any notion that fragmentation is an issue with high end devices. I wasn't entirely successful.

Quick disclaimer: I should mention that any speed issues I (appropriately) attribute to the Sprint network, not the device. This phone was very fast and responsive and was always as fast as the given network connectivity would allow me to be. After suffering with AT&T in the early iPhone days I have practice at separating the phone experience from the carrier's shortcomings.

Powerful, Useful, and Generally Awesome Things

There are some features that were extremely welcome, Apple would be wise to take some cues.

• Snoozing reminders and calendar events. No brainer here, it can be implemented cleanly and makes multitasking on the device (and in life) much more powerful.
• Faster dictation, types as you talk. The dictation didn't seem to be any more accurate (though, maybe a bit), but the fact that it types out as you speak makes the experience smooth and fast, much faster than iOS.
• More useful status bar. I don't think Apple should adopt this, but there are certainly times it is handy. I'd pay money for an icon in the status bar to show me when I'm muted on a call though. Alas neither OS fills that need (unless Android can and I missed it?).
• Closing a tab in a browser that was opened from clicking a link in another app closes the browser and returns me to where I clicked the link. This is a great feature, but wouldn't be needed if they solved the problem like iOS and uses web views within that app with the link. 
• Share menu. Powerful, but cluttered. I liked sharing more easily to Google+, my social network of choice. For the average user this menu is filled with a TON of apps, scrolling through them wasn't terribly pleasant. Again, not something I'd suspect or want Apple to borrow.
• Browsing and installing apps from the web. You can do this with iTunes, but that requires iTunes.
• All of your calendars sync for Google Calendar. If you've got pro sports teams, they sync. In iOS, those calendars do not sync, but most do. Really iOS is just missing pro sports team calendar syncing as far as I can tell.
• Although the stock (LG, not the stock Android) keyboard was fantastically miserable, I remedied this by installing SwiftKey. Both the Flow and standard input with SwiftKey were fast and fluid. SwiftKey's autocorrect was better than iOS by quite a bit, and I like the iOS autocorrect for the most part.
• Clear all notifications in a single tap. Astonishing iOS doesn't have this.
• Kill all open apps in a tap. Again, astonishing that iOS doesn't have this.
• Quick and responsive operating system. It was very clear I was using a phone with great hardware specs.
• Good camera. I didn't do thorough camera testing, but in the handful of indoor shots with the Optimus G and my iPhone 5 the LG fared very well, often better than the iPhone.

Pressure Points

• My biggest complaint, hands down, is that headset controls don't work in a system wide fashion, or hardly at all for that matter. Per my understanding, you can buy headsets from a company, then use their music player app, and the headset works (play, pause, volume, issuing voice commands) within that particular app. This NEEDS to be a system wide thing. To pause music I have to press the lock button, enter a PIN, find the music app that's playing, open it, tap pause. Some offer play/pause functionality in the notification pull down, but that's not much better. Now consider how frustrating that is while walking the dog in the cold all bundled up with the phone tucked away. Not ok, I might have to seek therapy for how upsetting this is.
• Size... the phone was far too big. Single handed usage is entirely out of the question other than scrolling down a feed/website that is already open. Back button? Not going to happen. More on this later.
• Stock keyboard was terrible, so very terrible. (LG-ism, Android is not to blame here.)
• Non-fluid UI. Though improved, it is still far from iOS. Here's a nice breakdown of why. This wasn't as big of an issue as I thought it might be. It didn't feel like iOS, but it isn't iOS. Overall the system was very speedy and responsive, just not always fluid.
• When you're momentum scrolling, you tap to stop, right? Wrong. This selects whatever you tapped on to stop, very frustrating. You can work around this by tapping and dragging ever so slightly, but it is illogical to select whatever you tapped as you scrolled by at lightning speed.
• Error messaging isn't always informative. One error told me to update the profile, no indication of where or how this could be done. Not really a big deal 99% of the time though.
• Stock messaging/SMS app is unimpressive. Tap back once to hide the keyboard, tap back again to view all threads. This is frustrating. 3rd party SMS apps provide good work arounds, I used Chomp.
• Messages get marked as read when they shouldn't be (LG-ism). If the messaging app is open when the device is locked, unlocking the phone returns you to the home screen, this appears to be the same for any app (but I didn't test it in depth). This little nuance has the byproduct of marking any new SMS you got while the phone was locked as read when you unlock the device.
• Auto-brightness seemed more like front row tickets the backlight having a seizure. This was during indoor use in an office with overhead lighting, but I experienced this whether moving or not.
• Subtle visual indicators were something I didn't realize I was so accustom to. For instance, in the Gmail app I couldn't find the notification settings. When I learned I just had to tap my email address in settings, all was well, but it surprised me there was no visual indication that it was tappable. I found I was frequently tapping things that were labels and not tapping things that were tappable. I also missed the rubber band effect.
• Icon notification counts. The info is in the status bar, but those numbers are tiny. Not a big deal, but I missed them. 
• Gmail app crashed, a lot. Likely an LG-ism, but not okay.
• Full screen YouTube videos in the Chrome browser didn't trigger whatever the phone needs to understand it should leave the screen on. Let that sink in. On an Android device. With the Chrome browser. YouTube didn't work. If only a single company owned all of those....
• Notification settings aren't centralized. Some are in the OS settings, some in the apps. The stock apps weren't nearly as configurable as 3rd party, and in some cases not even as configurable as iOS.

Larger Screen Size - Good or Bad?

Not long ago I upgraded from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5, to this point that has been my large screen experience. I know, Galaxy Note owners are trying to catch a breath between laughs...

I'm an average sized guy. 5'11'. Hands aren't oddly large or oddly small. There was no question that I cannot use this phone entirely with one hand. I could sort of wiggle my hand and make it work at the expense of securely holding the device, but as I'm walking or on the go I use my devices one handed a ton. I also want to have a decent grip on the phone; I define a decent grip as the ability to invert my hand and overpower gravity's attempt to claim the device from my grip.

Most of the time I'd just bring in the second hand briefly to tap the back button or to click the URL bar up top, or to reach that "other" ~30% of the device that was otherwise off limits. It made me feel better about stretching to reach the back button in the top left of every iPhone 5 app, but made me realize it was doable. This 4.7" LG, for me, is just too big.

I expected to be frustrated with the extra size while it was in my pocket, but love it when I was using the device. I found the opposite. I had no qualm with the device size in my pocket, but when I was using it, I rarely found that I could do, see, or enjoy anything more with the extra screen real estate. The inability to one-hand the phone was too large of an issue for me to brush off, it was a real problem for me.

Here's an example of what I mean. Now I'm the first to admit that this example is sort of bias - the screen IS bigger despite the Gmail app on the LG (above) making poor use of the extra space as shown here. Watching a video is much bigger, and some content is just bigger, but not always. Not to mention seeing 8 tweets instead of 6 at once isn't a "feature" when I can only read one at a time.

Demonstration of my feeling that the screen size didn't really gain me anything.

Android-Only Features

There were things like inter-app data sharing, widgets, and customizability that are, at the core, against everything iOS is designed for. These are the things I expected to knock my socks off, to really show me the light that is the explosion of Android popularity, and to ultimately seal the deal that Android might just be for me.

Inter-app data sharing wasn't terribly useful. The best part was sharing to Google+, my social network of choice. I could see the same being true for any social network. Beyond that, there didn't seem to be anything iOS didn't offer, besides an extremely cluttered list of apps to chose from. In iOS, you can chose to process the file with any installed app that has alerted the OS that it can process said file type, so only the relevant apps are in the list. For Android, they're all there, all the time. What are some common use cases where this feature kicks some serious ass? I'm all ears!

Widgets were interesting. Weather was useful, though only a swipe closer to me than iOS has it. Email widgets were pretty helpful since the notifications show less of a preview of the message than iOS does. Twitter seemed to randomly update and show a couple of tweets from the semi-recent history randomly in your timeline. System usage is interesting, but more of a parlor trick. I found myself adding several, then removing most of them a few days later. I certainly haven't missed them since I've been back on iOS. Edit: I take this back, the antenna/feature toggles such as wifi and bluetooth were amazing, I can't believe iOS has these so buried in menus! What other widgets was I missing? What are the favorites?

Customizability was certainly available. It wasn't always straight forward, but I could change an awful lot of things. Had my corporate email not required a PIN (I later removed it for flexibility) the lock screen was capable of being more functional that most home screens, but what's the point of a lock screen at that point? The home screen could be anything, not just apps. Themes aren't of interest to me, or most anyone over 15. Changing default services was pretty cool, though I expected more of a system level way to do this. For instance, with messaging you just disable alerts for the system messaging app when using 3rd party, like Chomp. The Chomp app told me to do this, it wasn't automatic when I installed Chomp, nor was I even presented with the question if I'd like the system to do it for me.

I'm not calling these things duds. Quite the opposite, they gave me some very new and interesting toys to play with. The big difference is that I only found myself using them when I was playing, not when I was using my smartphone as a smartphone.

Google Play

I was a little bit surprised how daunting Google Play was at times. The names of apps and plugins are cryptic at times. Usually the app you're looking to download is straightforward, and at (or near) the top of the search results. However, there are a surprising number of search results that are named so similarly you second guess yourself about which to install. It gets better as you get used to it, but it is odd. Seeing a version of an app for certain phones, then a different version for other phones was something I didn't expect to see. I liked the explicit outline of the app's access to your phone, though the amount of access some apps unnecessarily had was troublesome.

Not Calling this Section Fragmentation

"Fragmentation" is over used, and usually when the term is mentioned, half the audience stops reading. So this section isn't called "Fragmentation".

I've spoken with users of true-Google devices about some of my pressure points, crashes, and things that bugged me about my Android experience. I was reassured on several of the frustrations that they weren't Android-isms, but were LG-isms. Point taken.

The iOS perspective here is that these LG-isms that greatly detract from the user experience simply shouldn't be allowed to exist. They're so fundamental and frustrating for anyone used to iOS stability (and trust me, I wasn't expecting iOS stability) these things are pain points. If the point of Android is to be open so nearly any hardware/software configuration is an option for customers, why is it that a flagship phone is allowed to exist with such a flawed user experience?

To me, this seems damning. Where does that put the non-flagship phones that account for the majority of Android activations? I'm almost scared to know.

My inner-nerd can't entirely agree with that position though. It wasn't Google that detracted from the experience, even if they enabled it. Blaming Google for LG's poor execution isn't fair, I just wish it weren't an issue to begin with.

What's Next?

I plan to root the device so that I can install Jelly Bean and attempt to get the most current and most pure-Google experience. I expect this will help with several of the software complaints I had, I hope it will anyway.

I welcome any input, too. Please leave comments about your switch or how you took advantage of Android awesomeness that just isn't possible on iOS. I'd love to hear about it!

Closing Thoughts

Andy Inhatko's recent piece on why he switched from iPhone to Android was inspiring, I suggest reading it. One huge difference from his experience is that this is my first hands-on (longer than 2 minutes) with the OS. To attempt to compare Android to iOS, where I'm extremely familiar, after anything less than a few months is probably painting myself as ignorant. What I hope to do here is document my initial experience and seek feedback on how to speed through the rest of the learning curve.

There's no getting around the fact that everyone uses their phone in their own unique way. These experiences are my own and, more than likely, these experiences only slightly overlap with your usage. Apple has chosen a one-size-fits-all approach where they (attempt to?) base their design and functionality on common ground. Android takes the opposite approach.

It is an interesting dichotomy, and I can't help but wonder how much (more than I'm aware) my current usage and expectations are biased due to the fact that I've been using iOS for so long and formed my habits on iOS, so that is how I expect a device to work. 

Choosing Sides in the iOS/Android Discussion... Don't

If you have read comments from a technology review or article in the last five years, or really just about any article, you'll see that most people think there is a war going on in tech - Apple vs. Google, iOS vs. Android, Closed vs. Open - call it what you want. There are people, myself included, who disagree.

Andy Ihnatko hit the nail on the head this week, several times in fact. He started on Tuesday when he published the first piece to his story 'Why I switched from iPhone to Android'. He continued on Wednesday when he published part two about customization and collaboration. To close, he cemented his place in tech journalism history (if you ask me) as intelligent and genuinely here for the technology with his conclusion published Thursday detailing the pros and the cons of the switch.

Andy, I want to thank you. I want to thank you as an iPhone owner, one who is very happy with my device. Your agnostic analysis of why Android became the right choice for you renewed my faith in technology journalism. It was a refreshing piece that focuses on how magnificent the technology of our time is and how it is the most exciting time in history to be alive (if you like tech that is).

For those who haven't read it, here's one of the several "disclaimers" (that are entirely necessary as demonstrated by the fact that even with them the comments went off into troll-land) that explain why both iOS and Android can be awesome and it isn't a black and white debate:

As I said at the very beginning, this isn’t the story of why Android is Way Totally So Much Better Than iOS. This is the story of this one dude who switched phones. Andy Ihnatko moving to Android isn’t a pivotal moment in the history of mobile computing. I just thought that a detailed piece of my observations, concerns, and experiences would be of interest to anybody who’s curious about Android. And given the revolutionary improvements in the platform over the past year, I thought it was timely.

When I assert the position that both mobile operating systems are incredible most responses I get are passive aggressive. "Well yeah, iOS is great for old people." or "Android is cool, but I just don't want to risk getting viruses." My favorite is when someone uses open or closed-ness as their argument for iOS or Android but isn't able to explain what open/closed means or how the respective OSes embody it. I'm not suggesting everyone needs to understand the intricacies of their mobile OS's philosophy; rather I'm highlighting how ridiculous the "war" has gotten and how entrenched so many people are in their opinions, often blindly.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and not everyone will give credit to the "other" OS for one reason or another. Unfortunately, if your opinion is such that only one OS can "win", you are wrong (hint: italics are sarcasm font.) Like Andy said, it isn't Apple OR Google, it is Apple AND Google.

I won't rehash the platform agnostic, pro-awesome-tech, stance because it has been done already. I cannot recommend highly enough that you read Andy's work - part one, part two, and part three.

If you agree that both companies are awesome, this guide to making Gmail on your iPhone/iPad work how you want it to work might help.

Determine the Ship Date of Your Pebble Kickstarter Order [Outdated]

UDPATE - This post is quite outdated due to some updates from the folks at Pebble. My attempt to re-estimate was lost in the Blogger auto-save world and I don't have time to redo it.

If you haven't heard, they announced at CES yesterday that Pebbles will start shipping on January 23, 2012. This is very welcome news for my fellow backers and I who have been following their story and updates closely since early April 2012.

Image from Pebble

Thanks to Kicktraq we can use the funding progress graph to determine an approximate ship date for your Pebble smart watch.

Image from Kicktraq

First you'll need to find the date that you backed the project, personally I did on 4/14/12. As far as I can tell, the only way to get this information is from the confirmation email they sent you. If you log into Amazon Payments, you get the 5/18/12 date since that is when the project finished the Kickstarter campaign and credit cards got charged - this isn't the date you backed the project.

[UPDATE] - Thank you to Brian Phillips for pointing out this tip on how to determine your backer date if you cannot find your email from Amazon Payments: "...sign into Kickstarter then go to My Backer History (drop down the menu under Me in the upper right corner), it will tell you what day you backed the project."

Now you'll need to figure out how much money was raised at the time you funded the project. There were 85,000 watches ordered with $10,266,844 raised. Naturally there are various factors we cannot account for - some people only backed a few dollars rather than buying watches, and some watches cost more than others, so this is an approximation.

It is crude math, but let's say the average watch cost $120.79 ($10,266,844/85,000) - a reasonable assumption if you ask me. They said they will be making 15,000 watches per week, and shipping starts on 1/23/13. It is safe to assume at least 30,000 watches will have been made at that point since they entered mass production around 1/9/12 or before - meaning at least 2 full weeks of full production before they start shipping.

This means that 35% of watches will be made when orders start to ship. So looking at the math, we see that if you ordered by 4/16/12, you are likely to be in the first batch of shipments. However, looking at this chart of backers by day, you see that backing as late as the 18th might still mean you're in the first shipment since that was the day they hit ~30,000 backers.

Image from Kicktraq

If you backed after the 16th (or 18th, depending how optimistic you are), you can assume that 15,000 new watches being made every week, resulting in these approximate shipping dates:

I used data from Kicktraq, and as you can see not all $10.2M or 85,000 are accounted for exactly, so there is an error margin here. However, this should give you a pretty good idea of when your order will ship. I will say that these dates seem a bit optimistic compared to the "6 to 8 weeks" Pebble stated would be required to fulfill all Kickstarter orders. I have absolutely no affiliation with Pebble, nor do I have any inside information. This is just an attempt to use publicly available information and numbers (huge thanks to Kicktraq) to put this together.

They will be shipping via USPS and will be contacting you approximately a week before your order ships.

I hope this help since I'm sure all of you fellow backers are as excited as I am about this!

A Great Gmail Guide

No need for an extensive write up, this site handles it. Here's a fantastic guide to understanding why Gmail is simply amazing, how to use it, how to make it work for you, etc.

http://gmail-miscellany.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/gmail-101.html