Archive for category Microsoft
Android vs. iPhone
Posted by Matt in Microsoft, Smartphones on February 24th, 2010
I just got my first Android-powered smartphone last week and have been transitioning my life away from my Palm Centro and iPod Touch–the two devices that kept track of my music, calendar, contacts, email, and so on. Yes, the Centro can do most of those things by itself, but I didn’t have a data plan at the time and could never get it to sync properly with Windows 64-bit. It didn’t have Wifi either, so I needed the iPod in order to get email, web, and more on the go. Annoying to carry multiple devices, but so worth it–especially on trips.
iPhone OS is good. It provides a smooth and intuitive interface, things are easy to use, generally easy to find, and it’s a powerful platform with some excellent multimedia capabilities built in. It really was almost an iPhone–just without the phone and on-the-go data portions, so it’s a pretty accurate comparison. I’ve now explored both types of devices in depth and here’s what I’ve found.
Hardware
This comparison is more about software than hardware, but I just wanted to take a minute to examine the iPhone hardware vs. my Droid Eris.
As far as specs go, the iPhone hasn’t changed a whole lot over it’s three iterations so far. Sure, there have been some additions like a faster CPU, more ram, better sensors, and a radio allowing for faster data transmission (although AT&T’s network doesn’t yet support the new HSDPA+ 7.2 standard). We have yet to see what the next iteration holds, but the differences probably won’t be earth shattering.
My Eris’s screen is a tad smaller than the iPhone’s, but it is far sharper and more vibrant. There’s almost no comparison–even at it’s highest brightness setting, the iPhone just can’t match the beauty of the Droid’s screen. Match it up against the Motorola Droid or the Nexus One, and there really is no comparison. The Android phones blow the iPhone away in resolution and clarity. The Eris has a 528mhz processor and some say it’s a little sluggish. I’ve noticed a slight delay from time to time, but it’s not bad and the Android 2.1 update coming in the next few days may resolve that completely. The Eris has more RAM than the iPhone.
The iPhone has one main button. I know Steve Jobs likes simplicity, but seriously? Sure, the one button does what it needs to do, but I really feel like navigation on the device could be more intuitive with dedicated call buttons or a quick way to jump to MMS or the Phone function itself. I like my Android-device because it has a dedicated “back” button that sends you back to the last place you were. So even if I jump from one app to another, I can immediately go back to the previous app. Pretty slick.
As far as battery life goes, it differs from device to device. Google’s Nexus One has some of the most amazing battery life I’ve seen to date. Comparing my Eris to the iPhone, Apple’s device edges it out just slightly according to specs from their website. The Eris can go 8-10 hours with the standard battery and light-moderate usage.
All in all, I can’t say one device is better than the other. They both work well and provide good feature-sets.
The OS
According to some, the iPhone OS is the gold-standard by which all other phone and OS makers must match, but I tend to disagree. The iPhone OS is one way of interacting, but there are other good ways of using the feature-set of an OS. On a side note, it’ll be interesting to see how Windows Phone 7 stands up against everyone else with it’s completely different interaction philosophy and UI design.
App Navigation
So the iPhone OS looks good and is easy to use, but I see serious oversights by the designers and architects of the system. First, navigating from one app to another is cumbersome. Let’s say I’m reading through a meeting request I just received via email. I’m not sure if I’m free, so I hit home, find the Calendar app, open it, check my schedule, and then hit home again, find Mail, and re-open it. That’s a lot of steps.
With Android, if I’ve recently had my calendar open, I can just switch to it and immediately switch back with maybe two taps. Even if I had to go locate my calendar in the apps menu, it’s incredibly easy to flip back to my email since I just came from there. Perfect example? No, but there have been plenty of times using the iPhone where it’s just driven me nuts how ridiculous it is to have to hit the home screen every time I need to switch apps.
Winner: Android
Notifications
That’s a good workflow example, but here’s another one. On the iPhone, the only way you can tell if you have new emails is if you locate the Mail app and check to see if the “new items” indicator is attached to the icon. If you were reading a book, surfing the web, or updating Facebook, you’d never know unless you exit the app and manually check. The only way to bypass this requirement is to jailbreak your iPhone–something I’d recommend that every iPhone owner should do. It’s completely worth it.
Android makes this process so easy you don’t even have to think. The top section of the screen contains a status bar just like the iPhone, but this bar also updates it’s left-hand corner to show all kinds of notifications. Facebook updates, new emails, new text/pix messages, calendar appointments, and more are all possibilities that might show up. I can then expand the status bar to reveal additional details about the alerts, and if I deem one of them important enough to interrupt whatever I’m doing, I can tap it and open the corresponding app. If I don’t need to see it, I can clear it away just as easily. All without ever leaving the app I’m currently using. This is 2010 and Android knows it. It’s so easy.
Winner: Android
Apps
The iPhone has somewhere around 120,000+ apps these days. I doubt if more than 20,000 of those are actually used on a regular basis, but it’s clear that users have a great selection for the most part (except in those cases where Apple rejects perfectly legit apps–but that’s a separate issue). The Facebook app for iPhone is better and more evolved than it’s Android counterpart. Starbucks hasn’t even written an Android application yet. Most big-name banks have made iPhone apps, but not necessarily ones for Android. The iPhone comes out ahead here from this perspective–although I haven’t yet found an app that I absolutely cannot live without. Most of the mainstream iPhone apps have Android siblings and they generally work equally well except in cases similar to the ones noted. Then again, the iPhone app store has been out at least 12 months longer than the Android Marketplace and with 25,000+ applications, Android is quickly catching up.
The place where I find myself once again loving the Android experience is found in one area: multitasking. The Android platform does this so seamlessly it’s almost funny how obvious this feature is to today’s advanced devices. Even Palm’s webOS does superb multitasking at little expense to battery life. I don’t get why Steve Jobs is so resistant to this feature, but it’s definitely something the iPhone needs in order to keep pace with today’s mobile devices. You’re lookin’ a little old and decrepit there, iPhone…
One app (available only on Android) that deserves specific mention is Cnet’s Scan & Shop. This little jewel allows you to scan any barcode using the phone’s camera and immediately find reviews and price comparisons for that particular product. Now, you can price out that elusive LED TV in BestBuy and find expert reviews in addition to better prices. Everyone needs this app.
Winner: Tie, Android edge. The iPhone having 100,000 apps is somewhat irrelevant if I can’t use more than one at a time, but Android needs some more major players.
Network
Do I even need to mention this area? Everyone knows the AT&T network seriously limits the iPhone OS’s abilities. Android has devices across multiple networks making the devices more portable when moving from one network to another (if you are unhappy with your current provider). The multiple-carrier philosophy and openness of Android devices also means that as they continue to grow in popularity, I’ll meet more and more Android users every day. This can only mean good things for Android users.
Winner: Android
Multimedia
I mentioned the fact that my Eris has a much better screen than any iPhone, but it’s multimedia capabilities also one-up the iPhone’s. In addition to playing music and movies in tons of different formats, Android can also play music from services like Pandora, Last.fm, and Lala in the background while I do other things. This is excellent news since I can read ebooks, surf the net, send and receive texts, and comparison shop all without stopping the endless stream of music over Verizon’s robust 3G network. I streamed Pandora all the way home the other day without a hitch.
Winner: Android
Sync, PIM, and Backup
I’m free of iTunes and that alone makes me want to shout for joy. Regardless of my feelings from that angle, Android has some great syncing features. First, it supports push Gmail and DirectPush MS Exchange technology. In addition, it syncs up your Google Calendar, contacts, links your Facebook contacts and profiles (if you so desire), and natively supports many other Google services. Depending on the manufacturer, the phone will also sync to a PC running Outlook.
The iPhone has Exchange support, but for the most part, the honeymoon stops there. Mail is pull-only, although if you’re patient and determined enough, you can partially get some Google services to push to your device. This mechanism is unreliable at best. I had no end to problems with it. Basically, if you have an iPhone, you’d better be prepared to use iTunes or you won’t be able to back up your device or update your device. Major caveat. MobileMe offers a lot of services similar to Google’s, but who seriously wants to pay $99/yr for that?! Google services are free and I’m more than happy to let Android push my data into the cloud.
Winner: Android
Conclusion
The clear winner here is Android–by a wide margin no less. Pretty good for having been released long after the iPhone’s initial offering. Analysts see Android-powered devices taking over the #1 positioned smartphone by 2012 and I fully expect this to be the case. I wouldn’t be surprised if it surpasses all other U.S. smartphone offerings well in advance of this projection. Just as Apple is a niche product in the PC market, so the iPhone is quickly following in it’s footsteps. This really reminds me of the “battle” of old between MacOS and Windows. Apple released MacOS well in advance of Windows, yet Windows still controls 98% of the worldwide PC market. We may not see the exact same plot unfold in the smartphone market, but things are shaping up in that direction already.
iPhone with the early lead…Android closing fast. Better watch it Apple or your face is going to be rubbed in the mud once again…
Can Windows Mobile Survive 2010?
Posted by Matt in Microsoft, Smartphones on February 13th, 2010
I’ve almost never been a fan of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. I’ve rarely defended it, been quick to judge it, and in recent years have been largely unimpressed. Just like you, most likely. I’ve been a Palm user since the Palm Pilot Personal/Professional of 1998 and up until last night (when my Palm Centro suddenly went kaput), I’ve used Palm PDAs and Smartphones across the board. I’ve owned the Palm Pilot Professional, a couple different m505’s, a Tungsten T|5, and finally the Centro. They’ve all been–for the most part–fantastic devices and I’ve defended Palm as a company even through their years of non-innovation–always touting PalmOS 6 as the game changer we’re all waiting for.
Well, obviously PalmOS 6 never saw the light of day and has since been replaced by webOS, but that’s not what this article is about. There was a period in 2005/2006 where Microsoft really surged ahead with it’s Windows Mobile platform both in the PDA and Smartphone arenas. First with version 5, then 6, and then 6.1. They surpassed Palm in the PDA market by hitting over 50% and it was looking rather likely that Windows Mobile was the OS of the future. It really did look that way only 4-5 years ago and I remember thinking that perhaps it was time to give in and move to the Windows Mobile camp. Looking back, I’m glad I never did.
Back then, there was no iPhone, no Android, and RIM’s Blackberries were only beginning to gain traction in the corporate and enterprise markets. Most Smartphones ran either PalmOS or Windows–those were your choices. Symbian/Nokia were doing a lot of business overseas, but even today don’t hold much of a marketshare in the US. Nobody saw what smartphones would become. Nobody imagined that Microsoft would drop from almost 50% marketshare to a little under 20% in 2010. Nobody knew what direction things were headed or how quickly things would begin to change. Nobody.
At this point, I think we need to look at the iPhone and see it for what it really was–the reset button. I don’t feel like it “changed the game”–instead it really just threw out the current game and started over from scratch. A sort of “market reboot” if you will. Even though the most vocal of Apple’s fanbase had been begging them to create a smartphone for years, Apple just wouldn’t do it. Apparently, they just felt that the time wasn’t right–that is, until they finally launched the first iPhone iteration in 2007. That event really woke companies up to the fact that the Smartphone market had stagnated. It took other companies over a year to develop any sort of response to the iPhone, although the lack of application support really held things back at first. Without apps, the iPhone was really just another phone that also happened to have email and Internet support built-in to a nice touchscreen interface.
I look at this period in Windows Mobile’s history in the same light as most of us now see Internet Explorer 6. Microsoft had captured the marketshare majority and decided that they could just quit. Obviously, that never works. Someone will always be around to come back and take you out if you aren’t careful. Like Firefox did to IE, the iPhone did to the entire Smartphone market (excepting RIM). That’s not to say that it’s the best phone out there–it’s just to say that it helped restart the market and get things moving. Consequently, the market has sent Windows Mobile marketshare plunging because that particular OS still feels like it belongs in the early 2000’s. And for the most part, it probably does.
But the thing to remember is this: Android devices, Blackberries, and iPhones now dominate the US Smartphone market, but that really doesn’t mean a thing. (Well, not much of a thing, anyway.) Microsoft is gearing up to release Windows Mobile 7 and none of us really know what’s coming. We know bits and pieces, but until it’s officially unveiled, we won’t know what’s really happening. In the Microsoft arena, the number “7″ has a lot going for it at the moment. Windows 7 has been a huge success and when people think of Windows Mobile 7, they will associate it, consciously or not, with Windows 7. That could end up being a very powerful marketing technique if Microsoft plays things properly. Of course, the OS will have to stand on it’s own merits, but just as today’s most popular smartphones were once non-players, Microsoft could potentially take back a large percentage of it’s former marketshare.
I’ll be closely watching the announcements and press regarding Windows Mobile 7 over the next several months–if nothing else, just to see what’s coming down the line. I’ve just chosen an Android-powered phone to replace my dead Centro, but who knows what the market may look like 2 years from now when I’m ready to replace my phone once again. Competition is good, and we’ve certainly got plenty of it…
All future versions of Windows to be minor revisions of Vista? Yeah, right.
There’s an article floating around on the web claiming that Microsoft will no longer implement new major revision numbers to the Windows operating system kernel. You can read more about it here, but essentially what they’re saying is that Vista broke many applications by incrementing from kernel version 5.1 to version 6.0. Windows 7, in an attempt to preserve as much application compatibility as possible uses kernel version 6.1 rather than going to a 7.0 model. To me this time, it makes sense. You’re doing a pretty major refresh to Vista with a lot of new code and functionality built-in, plus many new performance and stability improvements. At the same time, the kernel probably isn’t that much of a different animal–it’s just a 6.0 kernel evolution that is enough of of a change to be a major revision increment to 6.1. Cool. I’d say this versioning scheme will remain in effect for the next several versions, perhaps like Apple did with OS X v10.1, 10.2, etc…but eventually you make enough changes to the core of your OS that you are almost required to increment the major version number! The issue of these articles is that they make it sound like every version if Windows from here on out is going to follow this pattern. The word ‘all’ is rather misleading.
So worry not–innovation is not keeling over, and Microsoft will continue to produce innovative software as long as there is competition out there to ‘encourage’ them 
Because we all know that without competition, any company is liable to stagnate, right? (*cough* Palm *cough*)
There’s my two cents.
Why the EU will not force MSFT to remove IE from Windows
It seems to be all over the news these days: companies are joining the fray left and right in the European Union’s investigation to determine whether Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows violates anti-trust laws. Just this week Google became another voice in the suit initially begun by the top execs at Opera, a browser that holds around 2% of the overall market share (no wonder they’re upset!). Mozilla is also part of the suit as an “interested 3rd party.” Ultimately, it seems that the EU is more interested in protecting competitors than protecting true competition. As has been proven by Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, if you create a better product, people will actually use it!
But here’s the real problem with this case: if Microsoft is forced to remove IE from Windows, then you face numerous problems, first of which is…how do consumers initially gain access to the Internet? No IE = no browser. Buying a computer through an OEM would allow bundling of that company’s preferred browser, which would help in alleviating some of the difficulty there.
A second issue points directly at Apple. If Apple is allowed to bundle Safari with their OS, how can you possibly tell Microsoft that they can’t bundle IE with Windows? This point is further supported by the fact that most Apple OS X users prefer Firefox over Safari and make it one of the first applications they install after buying a new Mac. Clearly bundling Safari with OS X hasn’t hurt Mozilla at all. I imagine this will be further illustrated once Google releases Chrome 2.0 with support for OS X. Not to say that Safari isn’t popular–it is–but it doesn’t discourage most users from using alternate browsers. Alternatively, you actually can completely remove Safari from OS X if you like–I just tried it. But…why would you want to??
Opera is a pretty small fish in a very big ocean–who is most likely just jealous that most people prefer other browsers over theirs. This suit will get more face time in the news during the coming weeks and months, but in the end, expect everyone’s pockets to be just a little lighter. Not much else will change.
Font smoothing in Windows (and why Mac users don’t like it)
Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a twit remarking that font smoothing in Windows 7 was not done properly and how Microsoft still hadn’t gotten it right. I hadn’t noticed any obvious issues of this nature in my usage and testing on Windows 7, so I was instantly curious to know why he thought as he did and if Microsoft, after all these years, still hadn’t mastered something as simple as font smoothing. So I set out to do the research.
Joel on Software has a great article thoroughly explaining the reasons behind the differences, but for those who want the digest version, I’ll give it to you here.
Apple and Microsoft use the same process for rendering fonts, a technology called “sub-pixel rendering.” The reason the two operating systems render text differently (specifically in web pages) is due to the algorithm behind the font rendering engine. Each character within a font is set to take up a certain amount of space measured in pixels–thus an “A” takes up more horizontal space than, say, an “I.” In addition to that, each typeface has it’s own style of letterform–that is each letter is designed to look a specific way and may, in some cases, slightly exceed the given letter-space when font smoothing is applied.
Apple, the company with a philosophy that the artistic and stylistic aspects of just about anything trumps everything else, wrote their font smoothing algorithm to allow type to exceed it’s allocated space, giving fonts more character at smaller sizes. This makes for a smoother looking font, but also is sometimes blurry and can be hard on the eyes. Microsoft on the other hand took a more practical approach and decided that each character must fit exactly within the available space and therefore “chisels” the characters to fit within that space. This creates a less-smoothed font, but makes things far easier to read on-screen. In fact, you can see this difference directly on a Windows machine by putting a Safari for Windows window and an Internet Explorer or Firefox window side-by-side. You’ll see what I mean.
So the question is now: Which company is correct?
The short answer is both. Apple’s OS will provide a more unified look between computer screen and printed output. This is yet another reason (whether they realize it or not) why designers often prefer OS X over Windows. Microsoft gives users a more readable on-screen experience at the expense of some character style (although at large font sizes, these differences become less noticeable.
All-in-all it’s pretty much just a matter of personal preference. Neither way is necessarily wrong–it’s all about what you like.