Wow, the thread that ate the list!
I've plowed through it all to now, and have some randomish comments from our
experience here.
In an iEnvironment, and with a little Settings play, all the portable Apple
stuff is pretty nicely integrated. Much of
my family had already gone "i", and we came a little late to the party. When
everyone you do much communication with
outside of email is on iDevices, it's very seductive. Siri and Message are a
great combo, without paying for text
service to the cell provider.
With a WiFi printer with Airprint, printing is transparent. We have the HP
model before Airprint, so have to rely on
HP's iApp for printing, which works fine, if not transparently.
I was not that impressed with the Android environment. As reported, I bought a
Toshiba Thrive last year, with the intent
to avoid Apple's failure to work with external storage. I really tried, but
found the Android marketplace and apps
simply less slick/clear and finished than Apple.
The hardware was capable of using SD card and external drive at once, but none
of the 9-10 file management apps would do
a simple copy of new files only from one to the other. The file manager apps
were all like clones of each other in
function if not always appearance. I didn't try paid ones, as there was little
detail info available, and what there was
didn't suggest the functionality I wanted was there. It appeared that most were
just the same function, without ads.
They made Windoze Explorer look awfully good, and the old XTGold for DOS like
nirvana. As others have mentioned, Android
makers, even the big companies, tend to abandon OS updates for their devices
the moment they are released. Other than
Google itself?
The screen was also not much, far dimmer, less saturated, etc. than Carol's
iPad Retina screen. Then the Thrive didn't -
the first refurb of any kind that I've had go south in a short time, but after
90 day warranty expired.
Oh, about screens, notice the aspect ratio before buying, and what you may
need. iPad Mini Retina is 4:3, 2048x1536, and
the Nexus 7 sqquished is closer to HD, at 1920x1200, although not full 16:9.
More recently, I looked at the market again. Things had changed. The iPad Mini
now has a Retina screen with the same
pixel resolution as the iPad3-Air. With my good visual acuity, that's a huge
change. I couldn't have lived with the
first Mini. Side by side with an iPad3, there's a quite small difference in
color, but not significant to me. It's also
faster, on a par with the full size version. After reading some review
comparisons with Android devices, I was sure it's
what I wanted, but for lack of external storage, but that limitation turned out
not to be the deal killer it was before,
either, with new solutions available.
With the Apple productivity apps gone free and available in iCloud for the PC,
the issue of doc and spreadsheet
compatibility has vastly improved. I drag a .doc or .xls into iCloud, it
uploads, and is instantly available on all our
iDevices. I don't imagine I'll ever do much serious work on a spreadsheet on an
iPad, but I can read the ones I need and
make changes. And I'm helping edit a friend's book in Pages on my Mini. Pretty
easy with a small, dirt cheap Bluetooth
keyboard. Keeps track of changes like Word.
We both had LG flip phones that were excellent phones for years. I switched to
an iPhone, then a year or so later, Carol
did. It's not all that much about the phone function. Like Jim and others, I am
not much on the phone, and the iPhone is
no better at that than its predecessors. But having excellent messaging,
calendar coordinated with spouse, weather,
banking, and so on, and on, immediately at hand is wonderful. I haven't, for
example been to the bank or ATM to make a
deposit in ages. Go into the bank app, enter amount, take pix of front and back
- all done.
As to the older hardware slowing down. Those who have done software development
may know about the problem of adding
useful function, and its effect on older hardware. Should Apple (or anybody)
hold back development of their OS
capability to accommodate devices 3 or more generations old - at the expense of
newer devices? I don't propose any
absolute answer, only propose that it's not an easy balance and slower
performance of older stuff not an intentional
ploy. In the time we've had iDevices, the OS has indeed improved overall.
About Reading: The basic truth I reached a while ago, and Carol has recently
reached, is that the wildly different
screen technologies mean that anyone who reads much, and does so often in
brightly lit places and outside, as we both
do, simply needs two separate devices. Even in dim places, I prefer my Nook
Simple Touch to the Mini for reading. And
everywhere I read at home or on the road already has lighting for books anyway.
We have Nooks, vs. Kindles, for a couple of simple reasons. The actual reading
experience is virtually identical; the
Nook may page quicker? However, the Nooks are cheaper (I just picked up a
back-up on sale for $39.) Format is not an
issue either way if, as I do, one uses Calibre (free, wildly capable) to manage
our books. It can strip the protection
out of books from Amazon as they are loaded, mixing them freely with those from
B&N and those grabbed off the web, and
then loading them as desired onto pretty much any sort of reading device. If
Nooks eventually die off, and ours fail, we
can still load our books for reading onto something else.
The Kindle Fire HD seems to be an excellent piece of hardware, and may be
rooted to unleash its capabilities.
Jailbreaking iDevices seems a fool's errand, as Apple is actively working to
close the holes with each new OS release.
My younger son had his 4S all spiffed up with lots of special stuff, all of
which would disappear if he upgraded the OS.
He finally gave up when he got an iPhone5s.
As to external storage, it appears there are real, practical solutions for both
iThingies and Anfroid thingies without
card readers. As I said, there are a few devices that act as remote external
storage, router and recharger, using WiFi
to connect to phones and tablets. I ordered a RavPower with my Mini. More on
that in another post.
In use, the Mini is so far a joy for me and my vision.
Yes, there are holes in the apps. Their calendar now searches back, but not
very far. I have our travels noted on our
calendar. I find it odd that calendar developers seem not to have twigged to
the fat that users will want to know when
they were in Yosemite, where they had lunch with a friend a couple of years
ago, and so on. I'm still on the lookout for
a calendar uses Apple Calendar data or syncs and has real search. Google
calendar for Android never synced on its own,
but I did find a cheap app that did it. And it had a rudimentary search, but
quite clunky.
I do find the Apple ecosystem superior to Android for me, and the Mini hardware
exceptional.
iApple no Mac Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|