Massive Mileage

Are background applications really a problem in Android?

The iPhone famously doesn't allow applications to run in the background, except for some built-in apps like Mail, iPod or Clock. Apple says that this restriction saves battery power and makes the iPhone easier to use. I did agree with that, to some degree, but after using Android for a couple of weeks, things look a little different.

So is Apple right and background applications deteriorate the smartphone experience?

First, background applications can obviously do things that iPhone apps cannot. Remember The Milk, for example, can reliably notify you about due tasks on Android. The iPhone version uses push notifications, which don't work without a network connection, means you cannot rely on being alerted in time. DoggCatcher and Slacker.com can download podcasts and music during the night - the iPhone relies on desktop iTunes to do that. The consequence is that you can operate an Android phone completely without a computer, but not an iPhone, at least if you want to use it as a music player.

On the downside, you have to think a little bit more about how to set up apps in Android. On the iPhone, it's not a problem to install dozens of Twitter apps, because only one can be active at a time. On Android they would all happily sync themselves with Twitter at the same time and suck your battery dry for nothing. For apps that download bigger files, such as DoggCatcher, you need to make sure that it's set to WiFi and/or connected to power only to protect battery life. Every app has its own settings and every app has its own bugs, so don't take it for granted that those settings always work as expected.

Another issue is which app controls the headset button. In my experience, it's random: so pressing the button while listening to Slacker may indeed stop the music or it may start DoggCatcher to play at the same time, which is never what you want. The latter has a setting to always take control over the headset button, but then it doesn't work anymore for the phone, which should have priority in all cases. I hope that Android addresses this in a future release.

I don't see any issues with the battery, but the Nexus One does not get a 3G signal on AT&T so that makes it difficult to compare battery life with the iPhone. Interestingly, though, I don't miss 3G a bit.

How to correctly silence a Nexus One phone

The Nexus One comes with seven hardware controls plus the track ball versus the iPhone's five. But for some reason HTC left out the silencing switch of the iPhone. Android does have a silencing button on the start screen, but only if the phone is not locked. Then you have to press the power button for menu which allows silencing as well as switching to airplane mode. In any cases these are three interactions versus one on the iPhone. Also, the iPhone can be silenced blindly just by reaching into the pocket.

And silencing the Nexus means real silence, it doesn't even vibrate. In order to have it vibrate in silenced mode, like the iPhone, you need to install a free third-party app "vibrate mode by force".

This nicely illustrates the differences between Android and iPhoneOS: the latter gets it right out of the box for most people. But Android allows third-party apps to fix such issues by granting access deeply into the configuration of the phone.

Swapping the iPhone with Android, first impressions

The switch from the iPhone to Android feels a little bit like that moment in Logan's Run (or The Island, for that matter): you're leaving that well designed world, where invisible overlords take care of everything and which is governed by rules that you don't really understand. The outside is rougher, you have choices and need to work to get some things going, but you also can do stuff that wasn't possible or allowed before.

The iPhone certainly has the better designed software. Android feels rough around the edges, the scrolling is not as smooth and flipping the device causes the screen to jump around instead of and smooth, animated turn.

On the other hand while the dogmatic simplification of the iPhone's user interface and hardware has it's benefits regarding ease of use, additional buttons, lights and notifiers do have some value too. For example seeing the trackball flashing when a new notification arrives is helpful when the phone is silenced. And seeing notifications in the status bar, notifications from any application, including Twitter (Twitroid) or Remember The Milk, I find rather useful than confusing.

Will Google iPhone contact sync ever work? Why I don't like FREE service.

Google has some great services and everything is free. That's nice as long as you don't have issues. But I do: addresses between Google Contacts and the iPhone get completely messed up, in particular non-US addresses.

So what to do? Obviously Google doesn't provide support. It's beta and it's free. There's a help forum, with a post-apocalyptic ten-to-one spam-to-signal ratio.  I searched around, but nobody seems to have the same issue. I found some hints that it may be related to the way Google Contacts interprets addresses. I found somewhere a comment from a Google employee that they're working on it (I cannot find it again).

So will they fix it? Or is it maybe an issue specific to my set up? How can I find out? What if Google doesn't want to fix it? Wouldn't glitches with the iPhone sync be a good reason to switch to Android? That would be borderline evil, but nobody can force Google to through resources at problems whose solution is not aligned with their strategic interests.

Well, there's no way to find out, so in the meantime I go back to sync my contacts via MobileMe. Which doesn't work either right now, but there I have paid for support, so I know how to get it fixed.

My technology wish list 2010 (with Apple and Google this year)

So here's what technology I'm hoping for in 2010.

Apple

Of course, almost for sure there will be the tablet. In particular, I'm wishing for:

• It needs to be lightweight, small and robust enough so I can throw it in a small bag and carry it with me wherever.
• It needs to allow me do anything what I could do on a MacBook Air.
• Enough battery life for a day of work (means 8h or more)
• Some comfortable way of writing text. Anexternal, portable keyboard would be ok, but I hope that Apple is coming up with something better than that.
• Syncs with everything, including iTunes and Google (via ActiveSync)
• Cellular wireless support for any carrier.

Then there will be a new iPhone. Hardware-wise, honestly, I don't really see any revolutionary improvements that Apple could come up with. A higher resolution screen, maybe, a faster processor and finally sufficient battery life. But most likely I'll wait until I get the full rebate or even until my AT&T contract runs out (which is hopefully before the end of the world).

It will be interesting what iPhone OS 4.0 will add: I wish Apple opens up more APIs to developers and gives up on refusing apps that "duplicate" built-in functionality. There's no way that Apple's MobileMe could ever really compete with the Google services, so if there are not native Gmail, Google Voice etc for the iPhone, I sooner or later will have to switch to Android.On the carrier-side, I hope that Apple ends the AT&T exclusivity. If nothing else, this would distribute the load on more than one network and competition would drive AT&T to improve theirs.

I'm up for a new MacBook this year and I'm eying the 15" screen after it gets a refreshment. Here I wish for integrated support for any cellular wireless provider and of course a lower price for the specs I need.

Also, Apple needs to upgrade Apple TV. In its current incarnation it falls short, but I'm wishing for an app store enabled device, maybe with iPhone/iPod touch enabled control for gaming. I won't use it or games, but I want to listen to music and watch movies in our living room, not on the computer screen.

Google

Google has been cranking out new products and functions almost daily, so 2010 will no doubt bring lots of new stuff. This is most important to me:

• Chrome on Mac catching up to the Windows version. This will no doubt happen, so my wish is that it's happening soon, let's say by March.
• Getting serious with offline. Gears is currently somewhat in limbo, so I hope a HTML 5 version of Gmail is close to the front of the pipeline. Also, Docs needs full offline support. It would be nice if this can be done fully in HTML 5, if not, then a seamless sync with some desktop app (even OpenOffice would be kind of ok)
• Get Contacts right. Seriously, Google could do so much more with their Contacts app, like integrating it with Profiles, for example. Or with Facebook, LinkedIn or whatever. If Google wants to be the place where we store all our information, then Contacts needs to be seriously enhanced.

Let's see what will happen.

Did wishes come true? Checking off my technology wish list 2009

Let's have a look at my technology wish list of January last year:

Apple

• iPhone cut & paste and notification became reality with iPhone OS 3.0
• The MobileMe shared calendar didn't happen. In fact, nothing really happened with MobileMe, which is why I'm using Google's services now.
• Still no Apple TV apps. No idea what Apple is planning with Apple TV and I would replace it with my spare Mac mini, if it just played nicely with our big TV.
• The Apple Tablet hasn't been released yet. But it's coming soon, isn't it?
• There was no significant Aperture release in 2009. Is one coming up? I have no idea, while I'm anxiously looking at Adobe cranking out one Lightroom release after the other.

LiveScribe

I hoped for handwriting recognition, which was released but didn't work very well for me. It still doesn't seamlessly integrate with Evernote, but it's fairly simple to "print" a PDF directly into Evernote.

I'm surprised how short my wish list was for last year. The one for 2010 is coming up soon and it will be longer.

Google Contacts messes up addresses on the iPhone

I'm a big fan of syncing the iPhone directly to Google's services such as Gmail, Contacts and Calendar. Im doing this for a while now and it works at least as well as with Mobile Me.

Except addresses in Google Contact. The issue here is that Google Contact allows entering addresses is a free format text field. That's actually very helpful for quickly entering or cutting and pasting addresses from somewhere else. The iPhone on the other hand uses distinct fields for street, state, zip etc. This is a gap that can be bridged by parsing the free form address into distinct fields. Not trivial, as different countries have different address formats, but solvable – Microsoft Outlook is doing this reliably since its first release.

Right now it doesn't work at all in Google Contacts, neither for the U.S. nor for other countries. U.S. addresses need to be entered as

Street
City
State
Zip
Country

This defies the purpose of being able to cut & paste completely.

International addresses don't work at all as the country on the iPhone is not set correctly. Worse, after correcting it on the iPhone is syncs back into Google Contacts in a format that doesn't sync back to the iPhone correctly.

Could Google please assign somebody to fix this quickly (if it's not an ActiveSync or iPhone issue)?

Remember the Milk vs. OmniFocus task management

I'm a big fan of todo list and I've been using them for a long time, basically since my first PDA, the HP-95. Since that time, I usually lived with whatever the device I was using provided.

Until the iPhone came out. Because among its many innovations is also Apple's persistent refusal to include a task manager that syncs with iCal or Outlook. The App Store solved this problem, however, and there are many alternative task manager.

I chose the most expensive, OmniFocus. It goes for $20 for the iPhone plus $80 for the desktop version. For this money you get a task manager that is only a Gantt chart short of a full-blown project manager. Recently, I switched over to Remember The Milk (RTM) a web-based task manager, which is $25 per year if you want to use the iPhone app.

So which one is better?

• OmniFocus supports projects and nested actions, distinguishes between sequential and parallel execution and allows to specify a custom sequence of actions. This allows setting up complex workflows. RTM has only tasks and lists, which kinda like work like projects, but in the end you just have a pile of independent tasks.
• OmniFocus uses contexts to separate actions, e.g. those who can be performed at home vs. the office. RTM has tags that can be used assigning context or whatever else you like. It also supports locations via Google Map, which OmniFocus only does on the iPhone app.
• OmniFocus has a start date of actions which helps to get future actions out of the way. RTM lacks that feature.
• OmniFocus allows flagging actions – I dearly miss this feature in RTM.
• RTM syncs nicely and quickly between the iPhone app and supports working offline via Google Gears. OmniFocus has various syncing options. I liked the one via the Internet, which requires a WebDAV server (e.g. MobileMe), but is pretty slow on the iPhone.
• The RTM iPhone app reminds you via push notifications. OmniFocus has some sort of setup of reminding via calendar, but it's so cumbersome that I found it not worth looking into.
• RTM allows interaction with other users via sharing, publishing and sending. Elke and I just started exploring those features, so more about this later.
• Also, RTM integrates with Gmail and iGoogle, something that OmniFocus can't.

RTM updated its app last week and got rid of the weird way you could select a single task and multiple tasks at the same time. Instead there's a nice text box that allows to quickly add a task with all attributes in one go.

What both apps are missing, is a compelling overview page (no idea if anybody finds the "Overview" tab in RTM helpful). In OmniFocus you can create custom perspectives, but I've never found a setting that really satisfied me. Also I miss a way of scheduling tasks/actions, but haven't seen a task manger who has such a feature.

So which one is really better? I think that RTM is pretty much what I need, but with OmniFocus one can carry task management to the next level and, for example, implement GTD by the letter.

Please stop the App Store bashing - why TUAW is wrong here

What gives, Apple? You release a couple of amazing apps to the world this week (Facebook, Spotify, TUAW, and Yelp), but you hold up the next release of an established app over an icon. I'm giving the App Store approval people the "idiots" tag on this post.

via www.tuaw.com

With all due respect, but TUAW is wrong here. If you care about user experience – and Apple certainly does – UI design and icon consistency does matter. It's a normal process in application development that UI designer disagree with developers and force them to change their applications. You can argue about this icon being confusing to users or not, but you can't call it "stupid" and people, who are tasked to ensure the consistency of the iPhone experience, "idiots" (although it's not unusual that developers do this with their UI or QA people).

The iPhone App Store is a completely new approach and far from being perfect. There are real issues, when developers are unclear about the rules and apps get rejected, because Apple - for reasons unknown - doesn't like their general functionality (like Google Voice). But disputes over the UI consistency or that the process add a couple of days to the overall time-to-market of an app is certainly nothing to get aggravated about.

Why I prefer web apps over desktop/native apps

During recent discussion about the Google Voice iPhone app being rejected by Apple it was presumed that a "real" app is always superior to a web app (this is certainly the case for Googles current mobile web app, but they have promised an better version soon). Same on the desktop: for example, for Twitter, people seem to flock to desktop apps like Tweetie, TweetDeck or Seesmic, because...

Because of what, actually? A Twitter app isn't worth much without a Internet connection, so there's really no advantage in using a desktop app. In fact, the Seesmic web version is almost identical to the desktop app (not functionality-wise, but that's because it's in an earlier development stage). And by the way, TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop both are using Adobe AIR, which is a web environment simulated on the desktop.

Technically, there's not much a web app can't that a desktop app can. It's just that web apps are using a standardized, higher-level language to render their user interface, while desktop apps use the native UI libraries. There are certainly applications that are better implemented on the desktop: photo and video manipulation apps, for example, which need access their data on the local disk. 

But apps that are working with data from the cloud, should be web apps. Why? Because you can access your data from everywhere, without a local installation. And when you want to use some other app, you just go to a different URL, with no uninstall or no left overs remaining on your system.

Web apps have only two downsides: offline support on a laptop is still sketchy. Some apps have it fully implemented, some only partially and some not at all. For some, like a Twitter client, offline doesn't really make sense, but others, like Gmail, Google Docs or Calendar need it and it's not perfect yet.

The other issue is the browser. Web apps have to live in a browser, which makes them behave differently than a native app. On the Mac it's worse than on Windows, as Safari windows don't show up in the dock and neither can be tabbed through. Fluid provides relief here with creating so-called single-site browsers (SSB), which then behave like a normal desktop app. Gmail or Google Reader, for example work greatly with Fluid, with other apps your mileage varies. In the end, though, I would expect that web apps are treated same as desktop apps on the OS level. On the iPhone that would be easy: just get rid of that little animation that shows you that a web app is running in the browser and remove the address and search bar from the window.

I'm sure that is exactly where Google's Chrome OS is going and I'm really looking forward to see some serious innovation here.