Android Market now available in SA!

One of my longest standing gripes with Google is the lack of availability in South Africa of paid market-apps! An announcement was made that clarifies that; the full Android market is coming to SA.

 

Brilliant news, and about bloody time!

Xoom running Honeycomb 3.1

I've managed to hack Honeycomb 3.1 onto the Motorola Xoom I am evaluating. The highlights that are outlined are all implemented, and to summarise;

• its faster
• screen transitions are smoother
• Adobe Flash seems to have less impact on the device
• Stock system widgets are now resizeable - duh!
• Most importantly, the e-mail client now actually deletes mail from IMAP servers

 

Its an incremental upgrade and should have been called 3.02. But hey, marketing.

Motorola Xoom review

There are notoriously few decent Android tablets around, and the first tablet-

optimised version called Honeycomb, running on the Motorola Xoom, was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2011.

 

I lusted after it immediately, but actual release was only in April 2011. To make matters more complicated, the tablet was launched in partnership with Verizon, which meant a US-centric launch plan. I managed to acquire one, and have spent two weeks with it. I also ordered the Portfolio case, an official accessory.

 

Pro's for the Xoom;

• It doesn't run iOS
• It can multi-task
• It runs a tablet-specific operating system
• Its CPU is dual-core
• It can run for 8 hours continuously

 

Con's however outweigh the pro's;

• There are so few Honeycomb-optimised apps that its not worth buying specifically
• The official case will damage the device over time, and forces you to have it open when charging
• The power button is at the back - very silly place for a power button
• The few apps that do exist require you to be in the US to buy them - pretty useless if you don't live in the US or UK
• Its heavy
• Its expensive

 

Its disappointing, but on the weight of the device (literally) and the lack of optimised applications, I'd have to say that Google missed several really good tricks here. The software is severely buggy (e.g. the e-mail client can't delete mail from an IMAP server), and the lack of a decent app ecosystem makes this a dead duck.

 

In comparison to an Apple iPad (the original), the decision to go with this device was marginal; with the iPad2, you'd have to be an idiot.

Assertion: Most iOS apps exist to work around shit browsing

So I've got an iPod touch. And had an iPhone 1G (which sucked), a 3G (which sucked), a 3GS (which sucked a little bit less) and a 4 (which sucked the most because of the rubbish signal and battery life).

 

I also borrowed and used an iPad for about a month, as a laptop replacement. I therefore feel adequately exposed to comment on them. What I learned from all these devices that in spite of the gazillion apps that are in the Apple Store, most of them are simply to work around and/or circumvent the frankly shit browsing experience and/or lack of Adobe Flash that exists on these devices, and none of them multi-task properly.

 

I regularly see my colleagues and family showing me apps that frankly only exist to work around functionality that should exist with a proper ecosystem. And the app update process is simply a nightmare, if you mix/match store accounts.

 

Is it just me, or is that simply disingenuous ?

11" Macbook Air, Dropbox and LogMeIn

I received my 11" Macbook Air from The Core Group, the local Apple distributor in South Africa. The machine does not disappoint.

 

Exquisitely manufactured from aluminium unibody construction, the machine is

• ridiculously compact and small
• beautiful to use and travel with
• easily powerful enough for what I need it to do

Battery life is better than I'm used to (about 3-5 hours), but not as good as the iPad (which is about a week). Fine for me, but might be troublesome to frequent fliers.

 

It is, in essence, a Mac netbook, which is precisely what I need. The only thing is that to protect it is rather difficult. Because its so small, conventional covers and the like just don't fit. I ordered a leather case off Amazon, and it arrived within a week! Now that is great service. The case works very well; gets a thumbs up!

 

A more interesting exercise is the syncing of data using Dropbox, which works flawlessly. Although fairly early in usage, I think the maturity of cloud services, and specifically cloud storage, makes it easy to move from system to system, environment to environment.

 

I've also signed up for LogMeIn Pro, a solution that allows you to remotely access computers. I had played with the software quite a while ago, and while I was impressed with the concept, thought the solution needed to go some ways before being ready for me to use it. That time has arrived; I went for the Pro option for the ability to transfer files easily. It is quite expensive ($100 for two machines), but I think it'll pay itself off quite quickly.

Working remotely and how I bought a 27" iMac

I don't travel much. To be honest, the largest amount of traveling I do is to the shopping centre over the weekend. My daily work commute is less than 5 minutes (and a similar number of kilometers).

 

So why do I need a laptop ? Well, I do a fair amount of work from home. This work is not particularly system intensive; it primarily comprises reading e-mail, browsing, some RSS feeds and Skype. The heavy lifting is generally done at work. I've been waiting for Core i7-based quad-coreMacbook's for at least a year, and so have a few other people. Bottom line, I don't forsee it for at least another 6 months to a year, if then.

 

Meanwhile, the quad-core iMac has been around for a while, is well priced, and gotten good reviews. The 27" also has the added ability to be used as an external monitor, which is useful once the machine outlives its useful life.

 

So I ordered a custom version; 2.93GHz quad-core i7, with 8GB of RAM. It arrived last week, and I can only say, "Wowzers!". The thing is blazingly fast, and consumes everything I'm throwing at it with ease. I migrated all my data across, and am using it full-time for a week now. All I can say is wow, wow, wow!

 

So, initial thoughts;

• For what you get, its a great price
• The unexpected Bluetooth keyboard, mouse and trackpad (which I wasn't expecting) is cool - what is mind-boggling is that they were already paired with the machine before unpacking them
• 27" is quite large; obscenely large, actually (maybe a bit too big)
• Its a pity there is no eSATA support, or ability to expand using ExpressCard support

 

For what I need it to do, its great.

 

PS. I've ordered a 11" Macbook Air as a companion device to use remotely; its fast enough for what I need (I've played around with a few), the screen is large enough and when used with Dropbox to sync my data, will be flawless. Also, all the stupidity of the previous generation seems to have been sorted out.

 

I'll survive by using the iPad I'm borrowing in the interim. It sucks.

 

My Air is only arriving in January 2011 (thanks Apple) for putting Africa at the bottom of your priority list. A post for that when it arrives, for sure!

iPad (and iDorks / iTards)

So the Apple iPad generated a huge amount of interest and attention. I've managed to play with one for about 3 weeks now, sufficient time to talk about it authoritatively.

 

Likes;

1. Its fast and highly responsive
2. The screen size is right - a 7" would be too small
3. Gestures are a more intuitive method to browse / peruse information
4. The battery life is brilliant - almost a full week, with an hour or three use per day

 

Dislikes;

1. its fundamentally unusable when not connected to the Internet
2. Most apps are still not multi-tasking / threaded compatible
3. It has no camera for video conferencing
4. The video out is controlled on an app-level
5. There is no USB interface to get content onto it
6. You're in this diminishingly exclusive club of posers

 

Summary;

if you wanting to use it a a computer replacement, it isn't. If you're using it a tool to augment content consumption, its ideal. Overall, is it worth R7000 ? Nope.