Ubuntucat

I know some privacy nuts are very anti-cloud storage, but I’ve seen enough distraught users having just lost all of their data from a failed hard drive, accidental deletion, or stolen computer to know that even though “The Cloud” isn’t for everyone, it’s still good for most people. Most computer users do not make regular backups of their personal files, and most corporations have redundant backups. So is it theoretically conceivable that Amazon or Google might somehow lose your personal files if you store them on a remote server? Sure. But it’s far more likely you’ll lose your files if you store them only locally.

More importantly, cloud storage doesn’t have to be the only storage. I back up to two external hard drives, a second computer, and the cloud. While I do value my privacy to a certain extent, I don’t have a privacy-at-all-costs approach to life, and there are other things I value just as much, if not more (e.g., photos that cannot be retaken, a music collection it’s taken me decades to build), so I was excited when this spring Google and Amazon each decided to release a cloud-based music player. Here are my pros and cons on the two services.

Google Music Beta Pros

• Storage of up to 20,000 songs. I have only about 6500 in my collection, and that’s my total collection that it’s taken me decades to amass, so I’m highly unlikely to ever go over that storage limit.
• Relatively fast upload. Given just how many GB of songs I had to upload, it took only a few days to upload. Not bad.
• Decent-looking interface. It’s no iTunes (and I know there are iTunes haters out there, but I think it’s a great program, except for having no Linux port).

Google Music Beta Cons

• Right now it’s invite-only. Eventually I did get an invite, and so did my wife, but I don’t really think the invite system is really necessary, considering the program has the word beta in its name.
• There’s one song that just refuses to upload. It isn’t the wrong format. I’ve tried the workarounds Google and others have suggested. It just won’t upload. And there’s no way to manually upload it.
• The upload client is Windows or Mac only. Some clever Linux users have found a way to make the Windows client work in Linux using Wine, but Google really should release a Linux native client. Or, better yet, upload straight through the web browser using a cross-platform tool like Java or Flash.
• This is the real deal-breaker for me: it isn’t really a cloud back-up solution, since you cannot re-download the songs once you’ve uploaded them. You upload them, and then the only thing you can do is stream the songs or delete them. For me, this totally defeats the purpose of cloud storage. And even when, on my Android phone, I marked certain albums as available for off-line use, the actual music file doesn’t show up anywhere on my MicroSD card, so for all practical purposes, it’s still just a streaming service, because I’m cut off from re-downloading my own music.

Amazon Cloud Player Pros

• You can download songs after you’ve uploaded them.
• You get free storage for any newly purchased Amazon songs or albums.
• You get 5 GB of free storage, but you can bump that up to 20 GB if you purchase an Amazon MP3 album once a year.
• The Amazon MP3 uploader actually shows you the progress of each individual upload. Google Music Beta will show you just the current number out of the total.
• You can manually select a location (not just all of iTunes) to upload.

Amazon Cloud Player Cons

• The upload verification process is buggy. I tried to upload only songs from a particular playlist in iTunes. One time it said it was done uploading but only half of the songs had actually uploaded. Another time it was supposed to simply resume uploading where it had left off, but it started again from the beginning and created a bunch of duplicates I had to manually delete.
• The uploader itself is buggy. It works just fine on my Macbook Pro running Leopard, but it hangs on Loading… on my wife’s Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard. I’ve Googled but haven’t found a solution to this. Uninstalling and reinstalling the uploader doesn’t help, nor does installing the latest version of Adobe Air, quitting all the other programs, or rebooting the computer.
• Like the Google Music Beta uploader, the Amazon one is for Windows and Mac only. I’m not sure if it’ll work in Linux using Wine or not. Again, why not just use Java or Flash? Why a separate application?

Oh, and for both Google Music Beta and Amazon Cloud Player, why isn’t there a way to display and then purge duplicate songs? The algorithms for detecting duplicates before upload is deficient for both services, so at least they should make an easy way to clean up after upload.

Overall, I’m pleased that Google and Amazon have started down this path. I’m mainly going with Amazon, though, just because it allows the ability to re-download songs, so the cloud storage is real storage (a back-up solution) instead of just a way to stream songs. Perhaps after Google Music comes out of Beta it’ll be a bit more polished. Then again, Amazon’s Cloud Player is not in beta, and it still lacks some of the polish Google Music Beta does.

A couple of years ago, I posted An unbiased view on Macs, because I couldn’t find anything even remotely resembling an unbiased view. I looked to see if there was an unbiased view of Android vs. iPhone, and I actually found one. It’s right here: Android vs. iPhone. It’s an extensive list, from a Mac developer who also happens to have a Nexus One, of pros and cons of Android, using iPhone as an opposing reference. I quite like the list. It really doesn’t reek of fanboyism. So if you’re interested in a comprehensive list of pros and cons, that’s the link you want.

I’m presenting it in a bit of a more personal view—why the iPhone appeals to me (why I love using my wife’s iPhone), and why I still use an Android phone.

First of all, I want to say that I think arguments fangirls and fanboys have about Android and iPhone are usually stupid. They tend to be arguments about which platform is “better” or which is more popular. The problem with “better” is that it is a vague and meaningless term that doesn’t help consumers make a choice. The bottom line is that neither the iPhone nor an Android phone will be the best smartphone product for everyone‘s mobile lifestyle. iPhone will be better for some. Android will be better for some. And some will find both equally good or equally useless.

So I’m more interested in the practical. What are the kinds of things that are important to you in making a smartphone purchase?

What I like about the iPhone
I know a lot of people who have iPhones. I’ve played with my friends’ iPhones. I’ve seen strangers use them on the bus. I’ve played with them in the Apple Store. I’ve “borrowed” my wife’s iPhone periodically. Here is what I can tell:

• iPhones are sexy. The displays look good. The casing looks sleek. Even third-party apps generally tend to look better than their Android counterparts.
• The interface is designed with touch in mind. That makes sense, since it is a touchscreen OS. One hard button takes you to the home screen if you press it once and then to search if you press it twice. Everything else is through the touchscreen. Android has too many hard buttons (Menu, Back, Search, Home, a trackball).
• The touchscreen is very responsive (you’ll notice in a lot of YouTube videos comparing iPhones to Android phones that the reviewer often has to swipe or tap a couple of times for it to register on the Android phone). Pinch-to-zoom is a lot faster—there is no lag.
• Multi-tasking is not a priority. Yes, I know some people view this is as a con against the iPhone, but I view it as a pro. I agree with Steve Jobs that performance and battery life matter more than multi-tasking. I really don’t use more than one app at a time anyway.
• Here’s another one I like that I’ve heard many iPhone users complain about—notifications. I like that they just appear and then disappear. One thing I dislike about Android is that, to get rid of notifications, I have to swipe down the notification bar and then either click on the notification or click Clear to clear it. A notification should just notify me and then go away. I don’t need it lingering and requiring a lot of extra taps and swipes to remove.
• Updates come right away to all phones whose hardware can support the latest version. Don’t get me wrong—I definitely think criticisms of so-called Android fragmentation are exaggerated. Fragmentation doesn’t have much direct affect on the end user. But there is a real sense in which consumers just like to have the latest and greatest. If a new version comes out and Google says “Hey, it’s got this cool feature and that cool feature,” and you know your phone is powerful enough (enough processor speed, enough RAM) to support the update, it can be frustrating not to be able to install the update right away, and not everyone is geeky enough to risk a voided warranty to install a rooted rom (rooted roms can also be extremely buggy). With the iPhone, you just plug your phone into your computer, and iTunes will install the newest version of iOS as soon as it’s released.
• I may be the only Linux user who thinks so, but iTunes is a nice interface, and over the years it’s just gotten snappier in performance. I love the smart playlists and syncing capabilities. When it works, it works extremely well. Of course, I also know some iPhone users (particularly ones who have tried to use their iPhones with multiple computers) who have had a lot of bad experiences with iPhones and iTunes connectivity.
• Even with the growth of Android as a platform over the past two years, sometimes there are apps available for the iPhone that are not available for Android. One that comes to mind is Netflix streaming. The iPhone has had this many months now (almost a year). Netflix just has murmurings about it possibly coming to Android “soon” and then for only select devices. Edit (June, 2011): Netflix now has streaming on just a handful of Android devices.

Why I’m sticking with Android
I don’t get fanboyism or fangirlism. How can you think one popular product is superior to another in every single way and not acknowledge that people have different needs and preferences? How can you not even acknowledge that almost everything (if not everything) in life has both pros and cons? Well, I’m definitely an Android user, but, as you can see, there’s a lot I admire about the iPhone.

Nevertheless, I won’t be switching to an iPhone any time soon. Here are some great things about Android that keep me there:

• I love Google Voice, and its integration into Android is seamless. Back in 2009, they tried to submit an app to the iTunes App Store, and Apple rejected it (or just simply didn’t accept it, depending on what semantic backflips you want to employ). My guess is that Google then put zero effort into the iPhone Google Voice app for the next year and a half so that by the time it was released it was just garbage (I know because my wife tried it out on her iPhone). Maybe after a few updates Google Voice for the iPhone might be usable, but even then there are some levels of integration Apple simply will not allow. With Google Voice I get free, unlimited text messaging. I can block numbers. More importantly, I have one number I can give everyone, and it can ring my Android phone when I have my phone on, or it can ring my GMail account when I’m on the computer. Voicemail transcriptions are notoriously inaccurate (almost hilariously so), but they are still better than nothing.
• On a related note, Android has the ability (and has had this since at least Android 1.5, Cupcake) to send certain numbers straight to voicemail. So even if people call my real cell phone number (not my Google Voice one) as a wrong number, I can just add them to my “wrong number” contact, and I’ll never have to hear the phone ring again when they call. If they call my Google Voice number as a wrong number, I can add them to “wrong number,” and they’ll simply be blocked—they won’t even have the opportunity to leave me a voicemail.
• The keys on the iPhone keyboard are easier to peck at accurately, but I still prefer the Android keyboard for a couple of reasons. To sum up quickly, it’s the visual distinction between upper- and lower-case letters, as well as the autocomplete suggestions. You can read in more detail in my The Pros and Cons of the Android Keyboard entry.
• Occasionally we’ll rent a ZipCar and drive around some place we’re unfamiliar with. Turn-by-turn GPS navigation is really helpful during those times, and that comes with Android for free… even though the voice is a little scary. My wife and I call her the dominatrix.
• I don’t think it matters that the iTunes App Store has more applications than the Android Market has. Most of the important ones are present in both stores. More importantly, Google can’t tell you what not to install. Even if an app is rejected by the Android Market (which is rare), you can still choose to override that and install apps outside the Android Market (you get a big warning that is a security risk, of course). Now with the new web Market, you can install apps on your device remotely using your computer. Google also allows you to install various web browsers and email clients. There are no restrictions on apps with a claim that they duplicate core functionality of Android.
• In theory, at least, Android can use Flash in its web browsers. You have to have Android 2.2 or higher, though, and your phone has to have hardware that supports it. The ability to play Flash is never a con. Even if you don’t like Flash, you don’t have to use it, and as far as I can tell it is just Flash on demand anyway (you have to manually decide to play Flash to get it to play).

So should you get an iPhone or an Android phone?
Well, I don’t know who you are, but I will tell you that the iPhone world and the Android world are very much eco-systems.

If you want the best experience from an iPhone, you should have an iTunes account and use iTunes to manage your music. It’d be nice to have a Mac with Mail and iCal as your main email client and calendar, respectively, and to use iPhoto to manage your photos. Your music, mail, address book, and photos will sync up when you plug in your iPhone.

If you want the best experience from an Android phone, you should have a Google account and use it for GMail, Contacts, Google Voice, and Calendar. You shouldn’t mind dragging and dropping music files to removable storage (even from iTunes) instead of having things automatically sync. Ideally, you should actually prefer dragging and dropping to iTunes syncing.

Since I use Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu all regularly, drag-and-drop (as opposed to iTunes syncing) is ideal for me. I know that isn’t the case for everybody. And since I use three different operating systems, it’s nice to sync to “the cloud” my emails, contacts, and calendar, instead of to a single computer.

It’s certainly possible (and I know people who do it) to use an iPhone with a Windows computer and a GMail account. I just don’t think you’re getting the most out of it by doing so. Likewise, a hardcore Mac-Safari-iCal-Mail-MobileMe user who has no GMail account could use an Android phone but would also not get the most out of the phone by doing so.

I hope this has been helpful in some way. As always, use what’s best for you. There is no empirical “best” for everybody.

In Google: Judge, Jury and Online Shopping Executioner, Lance Ulanoff says Google—in updating its search algorithm to no longer reward with top search results businesses who have lots of negative user experiences—is potentially dooming other legitimate businesses:

Borker was very upfront is[sic] his dastardly business strategy and has only his self to blame for the world’s largest online search corporation summarily dismissing him for them web. But who are these other companies? How did Google come up with this list of companies with bad user experiences? How will these companies know if they’ve been “Borkered”?

Uh, read Google’s official announcement about the change. They didn’t come up with a list of companies. They updated their search algorithm. I’m sure they probably did some investigating to find a handful of Borker-similar businesses so they could test their algorithm, but they don’t have a static or periodically updated blacklist of “bad” businesses. They have a search algorithm. The algorithm got updated.

But what if some didn’t deserve it? What’s their recourse and where does Judge Google stop?

A computerized search algorithm will never perfectly return the absolute best results as determined by Lance Ulanoff. It’s an algorithm. Google’s been tweaking its algorithm for over ten years now, and it’s never been perfect, but it’s been good enough that people still use it more than any other search engine. Hey, I think my wife’s graphic design firm is the best, but if you search for graphic design firms on Google, she doesn’t appear anywhere on the first page. This is an outrage! What recourse does she have? Where does Judge Google stop? How could Google have condemned my wife’s business to a lower ranking than some worse design firm? See where this is going? You aren’t entitled to be at the top because you think you’re the best or that you’re just supposed to be there. As Ulanoff admits, even PCMag itself isn’t into such a supposed meritocracy:

PCMag.com doesn’t sell anything to consumers (aside from our Utilities Downloads), but we certainly work hard to be a part of the first page of any Google search relating to products and technology. Our methods are based on good search engine optimization (SEO) training—and mostly focus on topic relevance.

If you’re search engine optimizing instead of just being the highest quality content you can, aren’t you anointing yourself your own judge over what should be at the top instead of just letting the natural results rise to the top?

Here’s the most ridiculous example:

I have seen big companies struggle to shake off the burden of previous missteps. Perception is not only reality, it can be awfully persistent. Look at Symantec and its product Norton Internet Security. For years, it was a dog of a product that, while properly protecting your PC, turned it into a sluggish mess. A few years ago, Symantec completely rebuilt the security suite. It’s now among the fastest, lightest and most effective security suites on the market. Yet, when I speak to people, they still think it’s a dog and refuse to even try it. It’s like they have their own brain-matter-based search engine that’s stuck on all the bad info fed into it years ago. New, positive information can’t seem to rise up above the vast amount of negative sentiment they initially received about the product.

In Google’s new world, bad actors are always bad actors. They could be banished based on bad reviews, even if the company is busy cleaning up its act.

First of all, bad actors are not always bad actors. Somehow Ulanoff missed that Google updated its search algorithm. It’s not a static blacklist of businesses that are bad.

More importantly, if you do a Google search for antivirus, Symantec shows up in the first ten results. The idea that customers who have a bad experience with a product will not return to the product despite its later improvements has absolutely nothing to do with Google search results. That’s just life. That happened before Google. That happened before the internet. That’s a branding and marketing issue. That isn’t search result ranking.

If Symantec wants to fix its problem, it need a proper marketing campaign. And if Google wants to fix its problem, it needs to update its search algorithm, which it actually has done.

The irony is that Ulanoff’s “article” has risen to the top of Google News right now over other more sanely written articles on the same topic. Maybe Google’s next algorithm update project should be on punishing attention-grabbing headlines for poorly written articles.

I’ve been an email client person ever since I got off using Telnet and Pine. I’ve used Eudora, Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail. I like email clients (well, with the exception of Outlook). Once I got an Android phone, I thought I’d give Gmail a try. A friend of mine had been using Gmail for quite a while, so I asked her what she thought about it. She loved it… except she had to warn me about how annoying “conversation view” might get. She wasn’t lying. It’s annoying. In fact, if you search for how to turn conversation view off, you’ll see thread after thread, feature request after feature request practically begging Google for the ability turn it off. Well, Google has finally relented. Maybe they are keeping to their pledge to not be evil.

P.S. To followers of my blog, I haven’t posted in a while, because I’ve been a little tired and busy, and I also haven’t had much new to say. So you get a fluff entry about Gmail. Yay!

I love my Android phone. It’s a lot of fun, and I think Google has done a lot of good things with the Android platform. There are still some major usability issues, though, that I hope Google will iron out in Android 3.0 (Gingerbread).

Here’s one, for example:
Issue 1664: Gmail should allow choosing the From: address on an account that has multiple addresses
Send As Feature in Gmail

For years, I’ve been using Thunderbird as my email client. I used it on Windows. Then I used it on Ubuntu. Then I used it on Mac OS X. Recently, inspired by my move to an Android phone, I decided to go as Google as possible. Google Voice. Google Docs. Google Maps. Google Reader. Gmail. There were some things that took adjusting to in Gmail (conversations instead of messages, anyone?), but I didn’t miss Thunderbird as much as I thought I would. Google gives you nigh-unlimited email storage (I don’t see meeting the 7 GB limit any time soon the way my emails are going), and the interface is simple and quick, and easy to use. More importantly, I can aggregate with Gmail a bunch of email accounts into one, just as I would with a traditional desktop email client (like Thunderbird, Mail, Eudora, or Outlook).

In the regular Gmail web interface, you can choose which of these accounts is the default email address (meaning if you compose a new message, that message will have the from: address be that email address unless you choose otherwise), and you can also choose to have all replies sent from the email the original message was sent to. That means if someone sends an email to my church account and I hit Reply, the reply will appear to come from my church account; and if someone sends an email to my home account and I hit Reply, the reply will appear to come from my home account.

Pretty nifty feature to have. Too bad it’s missing from Android’s Gmail app. In the Android Gmail app, if you compose a new message, it will always come from your Gmail email address, regardless of what your setting is on the web client. And if you reply to a message, it will also come from your Gmail address. That makes it pretty much useless to me in terms of writing emails, seeing as how I use my Gmail account to aggregrate other email accounts, and I basically never want emails to appear to come from my Gmail account.

Fortunately, there’s a workaround, but it’s not pretty. The workaround is not to use the Gmail app. Just use the Gmail web interface in your favorite Android browser (Browser, Opera, xScope, Dolphin, etc.). If you use the mobile version (which is the default) of the web client, you won’t actually get to see your from: address, but it’ll still operate the way it’s supposed to (I tested it on both a reply and a new email). You can switch to the desktop (or “classic”) mode of the web client if you actually want to see the from: address.

Now, Google, how difficult would it really be to fix this problem?