Tag Archives: HTC
The Apple conundrum part 2: When Windows Attack
This is a follow up to my last post here. If it seemed like it was a little one-sided, that’s because it was. It was getting a little long in the tooth, so I split it into two separate entries. If you read one, and feel the need to comment, please make sure to read both.
At the end of my last entry, I sort of bashed on the iPhone unfairly. It’s not that I have an actual issue with the iPhone per se, but it was the best example of Apple’s “we can charge you extra for what PC user’s have had for years!” mentality.
In truth, where Mac OS shows everything that making a computer “idiot proof” can do wrong, the iPhone shows where “idiot proof” isn’t such a bad thing! (special thanks to my friend Robert, a Mac user, for the phrase “idiot proof”).
Also this last weekend, my phone fell apart. I’m not making that up either; part of the screen fell off and the center 5-way directional wheel peeled away, leaving a nice glue spot to press against my face. I’ve never had a phone, much less a Motorola, suddenly do this and it was more than annoying. Since I can’t go out and just buy a new phone (not with all the features I want, anyway) I was in a bit of a spot until some friends came to the rescue. Welsdog and Robert both let me use their phones till I could save up for a replacement one of my own. Since Robert’s was more advanced than Welsdog’s, I settled on it out of the two.
The “old” phone is an HTC 8525 on AT&T’s network running Windows Mobile 5. Well, it was for about ten minutes anyway; I had the SIM unlocked to use my T-Mobile card and the ROM upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 within minutes. I’ve used Windows based smart-phones before, and they’ve always left me wanting. Sure, they are little powerhouses compared to most small electronics, but the interface is downright maddening!
In a device that is going to be primarily used as a phone, I don’t want to have to use a stylus to do everything. And I mean everything! Answering a call should not be a chore when I have a touch screen! You should not bury the keypad under 4 menus! This is a phone first, and a mini computer second! Windows has problems with that, it seems.
While waiting for my iMac to create its backup image and let me know if it was going to work or not, I started modifying the very nature of my phone’s interface. I decided that, for all faults it might have, the iPhone interface is actually very finger friendly. The fact that I can read and scroll through all my contacts without bringing the phone up to my chin was appealing to me. After a lot of reading, experimenting, and cursing at various applications, I was able to completely transform my Windows Mobile 6 smart phone into an iPhone clone. Only this one actually has hardware you’d want to use (and can cut & paste).
Just so we’re all up to speed on this; I made an Apple product run Windows, and made a Windows product behave like an Apple one. But I can justify this by the type of products we’re talking about! Apple’s OS X (as I previously pointed out) likes to treat a desktop system like it’s an electronic toy; to be reset and replaced on a whim. That’s not how you treat an actual workstation! That’s how you treat . . . well, an electronic toy. Sort of like a phone.
Windows treats an electronic toy (which I’m sorry, all smart phones are, I don’t care what you use them for) like it’s just as important as your desktop computer. It’s not! It’s a phone! You can reset the crap out of it and it will keep on chugging along. You actually make backups of everything important on it every time you plug it in (kinda like a Mac!), so recovering from a massive failure literally only takes a few minutes . . . and involves resetting it and restoring from backup!
Don’t get me wrong; I like that the Windows Mobile environment is flexible and powerful enough to adapt to any situation I’m going to give it. But like so many little devices, I’m only going to tweak it so much before I just let it be. Can you imagine if Microsoft had used the same interface for their car-bound Sync platform? People would die in massive pile-ups constantly!
“Sync, unlock, confirm unlock, access phone, contacts, scroll, scroll, scroll, home, main number, dial, yes. I said yes.”
Don’t even start on how you’d access your music or directions, and that’s assuming they’d even keep the voice interface!
Sync: Microsoft's first true idiot-proof concept.
It’s not that I don’t understand or appreciate Apple’s simplified interface on a laptop or PC, I do. I do, and I find myself enjoying it. But it’s such a downer when you realize that the back end of the operating system isn’t any more complex than the pretty interface on top of it.
On the flip side, Windows seems intent on bringing the same “give you every option you could ever want” to its most simple devices, leaving them drowning in menus, screen taps, and endless file directories.
I can go on and on how I hate Apple’s advertisements and their pricing structures, but that really wasn’t the point of my posts. On a design vs. design level, both Apple and Windows could learn a thing or two from each other. In the end, one could summarize the difference between the rivals as such:
In OS X, you’ll be able to find your way and understand the entire system within moments of turning it on . . . but that’s as far as it will ever be able to take you. You may never be able to learn all of Windows little secrets, but you’ll be able to take it farther than you ever thought you’d need to.
Lackluster launch for Android
The HTC G1 launched today for T-Mobile (though the phone itself won’t be available in stores until October 22nd). For anyone who wasn’t paying attention when it wasn’t announced, this is special because the phone uses Google’s mobile operating system, named Android.
And what a botched job it was. Don’t get me wrong; I love Google, and I love HTC. I also have T-Mobile service. So why am I disappointed with this first phone? Well, namely because it seems like too little fanfare for something that could potentially be huge. Or, maybe because too much hype has been generated for what it isn’t doing yet. I’m not entirely sure yet.
The Android Logo
Android has been in the works for a little under a year now. It’s an “open source” SDK with an Java based architecture that is supposed to offload much of the processing requirements from any hardware, thereby allowing it to run much faster than traditional operating systems. This is especially important for mobile devices since they don’t have the same horsepower as your laptop or desktop will have. Conversely, they also don’t need all the features that your PC does, so it can run much leaner than Windows Vista or OS 10.5 and get away with it.
The main downside to it is that it IS open source. While Google itself is a huge company who could throw endless resources at making a mobile phone, they wouldn’t get very far in the commercial market. For this reason they partnered with HTC, T-Mobile, Amazon, and who knows who else to get their system out there. I get the feeling that a lot of concessions were made in the process, since we are NOT looking at the iPhone killer that many people were expecting.
And the really dumb thing is that none of it is Android’s fault! If you look at the G1, it looks like any other HTC phone! It operates like it’s the Touch, and even has a similar menu system as both the Touch and the Shadow. The system menu (the load of icons) looks more like a Blackberry or Windows Mobile 6 than it does anything else, the only apps that even exist for the thing are either Google’s or Amazon’s (in an attempt to sway the iTunes Store users), and the thing is downright clunky.
What we were promised vs what we got
Apple released the iPhone to a stunned crowd, and for good reason; it’s a shiny toy. Apple learned how to sell anything by simplifying it and making it an accessory. Don’t believe me? The iPod is more status symbol than actual device nowadays, the iPhone (as much as it failed in many of its original objectives) is still immensely popular, and the iMac I’m using to write this post is more designed for loft-dwelling hipsters who can’t afford both a TV and a computer (so why not have a computer the size of your TV).
"In my loft, on the interwebs. I'm just like those hackster kids!"
This is not a bad thing though (it’s not a great thing either). However, it’s not really easy for other companies to duplicate, and HTC going on about their new phone and how it’s going to have all the same interface “shinys” of the iPhone was probably the wrong way to go as it gave people unfair expectations. Does Android seem to stand up to Palm OS? Well, hard to say since we haven’t seen any sort of Synch capabilities. Does it stand up to Blackberry OS? Seems to, though 3rd party support isn’t there yet. Does it stand up to Windows Mobile 6? Oh yeah. And then some.
But see, all of these mobile operating systems are actually USEFUL! They aren’t toys and they aren’t accessories. This isn’t a Sidekick we’re talking about here, it’s an actual smart phone. They could have launched it as just another HTC phone, and people would have been happy with it. Instead, they drummed up that it was using Android and therefore was about to rock our world!
Well we’re left rather non-rocked, looking at a phone that can does what every other smart phone already does, wondering where all the apps are for it.
But hey, at least this thing can cut and paste!
