Although I am obsessed with eBook readers (hereafter “ereaders”; likewise, “ebooks”, “epaper”, “efotainment”, etc.) and have wanted to have one since the first Kindle was announced, I’ve spent the entire time since then vacillating between models, complaining about the prices, and drooling over unreleased models (both officially announced and rumored devices). In that time I’ve probably spent $300 on boring old printed books, so with the recent ereader price wars I decided to get in the game with Barnes & Noble’s cheapest model, the new wifi-only Nook. I ordered it on Monday and it arrived, impressively, on Tuesday. I haven’t spent much time using it yet — half an hour yesterday and about half an hour this morning — but I’ve already formed some concrete opinions on the device. They follow.
I’ve already had one issue with the Droid (the battery cover falling off problem that seems to have made the rounds in the places online inhabited by obsessive nerds like myself), and my experience getting that fixed wasn’t so great. I had the usual long wait at the Verizon store, after which they told me that 1) they didn’t have battery covers in stock and would have to mail one to me; and 2) even though it was within the standard warranty and even though I also pay the monthly insurance charge, I would have to pay for the replacement they had to ship to me. In summary: first world problems, white whine, tough life, etc. Irritating experience, though, which leads me to my more recent problem with the phone.*
Sometime over the weekend, I noticed a bit of a problem with my Droid–the sleep/wake button stopped working. It wasn’t a critical issue, in that I could still wake the device by opening up the keyboard, but it was definitely broken. Nonetheless, I expected to get a hard time from Verizon, either blaming me for the problem or claiming that it wasn’t serious enough to get a free replacement. So I made with trepidation the walk over to the Verizon store.
And, wonder of wonders, I had a terrific experience there! I did have to wait a little while for help, but it wasn’t more than 15 minutes. And in that time I found that they had restocked the multimedia dock that I have been lusting after for a month. And not only that, they actually discounted it, so it cost less than the MSRP (and less than Amazon was going to charge me if they ever got it back in stock).
A few minutes after paying for the dock (quick review: it does what it is supposed to do, but the USB cable should be a little longer), I got called up by the tech support person. I explained the problem and she just said “okay, we have handsets in stock for exchanges”, and then she actually replaced the phone without any hassle. I didn’t have to argue about how the phone broke, didn’t have to figure out whether the initial warranty still applied, didn’t even need a copy of my receipt from the original purchase. I would definitely chalk this one up as a Christmas miracle if I believed in Christmas or miracles.
And while we’re on the subject of miracles, this experience gave me a chance to enjoy one of the benefits of cloud computing: watching all of my contacts immediately populate the new handset. I logged into the phone with my Google account and my contacts list (including icons) immediately began to populate. It turns out that if I had set the original phone up correctly, I could have had it save my general settings to the cloud as well, but I hadn’t set it up that way. Fortunately, I quite enjoy going through convoluted decision trees to customize electronic devices, so that was another fun activity.
As far as I can tell, there’s only one annoying thing about replacing the Droid–I lost all of my non-default apps (meaning everything that doesn’t come pre-installed), as well as their settings. This isn’t the end of the world–I’d only had the phone for 5 or 6 weeks, so I really didn’t have a ton of stuff installed–and it forced me to think about what apps I had actually been using (as opposed to installing once and then never running again). But I think it would be smart if the Android Market kept track of what apps you downloaded so that you could download them all again in a batch if you needed to set up a new device.
Still and all, I have to say that it was a very good experience, due both to Verizon and to Google (and the other folks responsible for the Android experience). I can appreciate Apple’s approach (regularly backing up your phone through iTunes), but there’s definitely some appeal to knowing that my contacts and other data are continuously stored and accessible through our Benevolent Overlords’ servers. And for a semi-utility like Verizon, the best you can ask for is that they do their job and get out of the way. That doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should, so I’m happy to recognize it when it does.
In other news, we had a bit of snow in DC over the weekend.
* This is as good a time as any to say that, so far, I’m quite happy with the Droid. It’s not a perfect device and I certainly have my quibbles, but overall it’s a really nice phone. Android and the associated app ecosystem appeal to my geeky, do-it-myself side (not to mention my admittedly pathetic too-cool-for-the-mainstream anti-iPhone proclivities)–and the hardware at least feels quite solid, my two recent problems notwithstanding. So take my first paragraph as a mild referendum on how Verizon does business, not on the phone or the accompanying service themselves.
Well, it’s been 7 months. Might as well let you know what I’ve been up to.
- I grew a beard, then shaved it off, then grew it again, over and over and over again.
- I moved from my apartment in Cleveland Park to an apartment I’m sharing with my friend, Drew, in The Center of Cool DC (i.e., the 14th St. Corridor between Logan Circle and U St.).
- I obsessed over Foursquare and Twitter and Google Reader (and, related to these things, Fojol Brothers, ChurchKey, Google Wave, and Android). These obsessions have yet to wane, and indeed I have managed to infect many other people (but not enough!) with them.
- I went to Spain and ate all of that country’s pork and foie gras.
- I listened to the same music as ever–Daft Punk, Kanye West, Chromeo, Ratatat, the Old 97′s, Lily Allen, Lil Wayne, and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”–on a continuously rotating basis.
- I relished the most recent seasons of Lost and Mad Men, and have so far found the current season of Top Chef to be a very enjoyable return to form. Dollhouse was as good as it could possibly be, but that actually wasn’t very good at all–it was a fundamentally flawed show that richly deserves cancellation.
- The Redskins went 2-6 against the easiest first-half schedule in the history of the NFL, because the owner refuses to hire professionals to manage the team and let them make football decisions. But then they won one game, and now everyone loves them again!
- Obviously, I completely lost the habit of posting anything on my blog. This may be permanent, although I would like to get back to it (even though, as I may explain in a forthcoming blog post, Twitter + Google Reader have essentially replaced whatever meager benefits I used to get out of having a blog).
And… that’s all, folks. See you again in 2010!
Warning: this is going to be one of the more geeky/uninteresting posts in the history of this blog (and that’s saying something). I am going to criticize the user interface of Twitter. So just prepare yourself for that (or click “next” in Google Reader).
Here’s the problem:
I follow a fair number of people on Twitter. Not a crazy number, but enough so that during the day I tend to get at least 5 or 6 updates an hour. When I spend the whole day at the computer (or check in online every few hours), it’s no problem. Twitter’s home page shows 20 updates at a time, so unless I miss more than 20 tweets I can catch up all from the one page.
Where it gets tricky is when I miss more than 20 tweets. First of all, Twitter’s API limits client programs to seeing the most recent 20 updates. If there are more than 20 that I’ve missed, all but the most recent tweets simply don’t show up. This is aggravating, but understandable–Twitter bears the cost of serving updates to users’ clients (and if it served up everything, users could use clients and circumvent the site entirely); if they want to force people to their site for deep access to data, that’s fine with me. But if they do it that way, they really need to make sure that using the site isn’t a miserable experience. Speaking of which…
So what do I do if I’ve missed those 20+ tweets? If I’m out of town for a week, I don’t bother going back over the archived updates, but if I miss just a few hours I usually go to the Twitter site and page back to where I left off, using the “Older” button (when the “Older” button works–but that’s another story). So the problem here is that it’s a huge pain in the ass to do this–if I have to go back 50 or 60 updates, there’s not really an easier way to do it than to click on “Older” multiple times. What’s worse is that the cursor focus is set to the update text entry box, so I can’t even quickly page down to get to the “Older” button again. This is not smart design, because it assumes that my primary goal in loading an archive page is to post an update to my own account–but why would I have just clicked “Older” from the main page if what I wanted to do is update my account?
Anyway, back to my main critique. Because of the stolen focus, I have to click outside the text box, or use my mouse’s scroll button, to get down to the “Older” button. Meanwhile, I have no choice but to skim messages, looking for a familiar one, to figure out where I left off. So I’m stuck reading tweets in reverse order, navigating using an awkward, ungainly process that really doesn’t make much sense.
I propose that Twitter create a new process/UI for navigating through one’s update stream. Here’s how it would work:
Add a tab called “Timeline”. On the Timeline page, give me a basic horizontal timeline (or vertical would work too, and might fit in better with the general site design). Mark off the time by whatever makes sense–minutes, hours, days–depending on how many updates a user gets per day. Or alternately, create a logarithmic scale, so that the first timeline unit navigates by minutes, the next by hours, the next by days, etc., so it’s easy to skip back just an hour or two, or much more, all without messing around with settings. The latter idea appeals to me more, and once people get used to it would probably be easier to use, but it is not as simple as a regular old timeline.
Allow me to drag a slider on the timeline, to start reading missed tweets starting at any time on the spectrum. A live-updating box could display the tweet closest to whatever time the slider is at, and once I saw I was in the right neighborhood I could release the mouse on the slider. Starting with the tweet I’ve just seen, the page would display the proceeding tweets in chronological order (as opposed to the current “Older” pages, which display tweets in reverse chronological order–that makes sense for the main page, arguably, but it’s poor design for this purpose).
That’s about the extent to which I’ve thought this out, but I think, if you’ve actually made it this far, you’ll agree with me that with nothing but constructive criticism I’ve single-handedly made Twitter’s website a million times better.
Lately, a bunch of my RSS feeds have been silent all day (or sometimes longer than a day), then popping up with dozens of new items all at once. Usually it’s a bunch of posts I haven’t seen yet, but occasionally it’s a bunch of old ones. What I want to know is whether this is a Google Reader problem, or, e.g., a GawkerPlex problem. Have any of you who don’t use Google Reader (are there any of you?) run into this problem?
Second problem: For some reason, as of a week or so ago, Google Reader is including all of my shared items (which, pretty much by definition, I’ve already read) in my “Unread Items” count. It’s also including them in my “All Items” stream, so I can’t practically use that to scan my new items.
Is this what resting on your laurels look like? Or is Google’s development team busy working out the kinks on Google Reader 2.0?
Update: Well, that’s one feed accounted for. But my general query remains!
After I take the bar, maybe I’ll have time for posts based on something other than my site visitor logs (or cut-and-pasting from someone else’s blog). Until then…
I’ve been thinking about my most popular posts, in terms of hits (most coming from web search sites). The common thread is that Googlers really want to know how to do stuff: how to reset their ipods, how to block the stupid video on ESPN’s homepage, and how John Basedow died in the tsunami (or not).
The first two links (A and B) consistently get more hits than the rest of my blog, combined. The ESPN one, I get–it was linked by Deadspin, and actually fixes a problem that lots of people have. But the iPod one is even more popular, and the actual content of the post is basically just a series of links to other, useful sites. I don’t understand it.
And the John Basedow post is not actually that popular, but it is a personal favorite, especially since the lazyweb came up big and I now have the mp3 of the John Basedow theme song, of which I will never tire.
Now You Know.
From the NY Times’ Talking Business column*:
What is it with Steven P. Jobs and batteries? On Friday, Apple’s new iPhone went on sale (for a mere $199; how does that make you early adopters feel who stood in line last year for the privilege of plunking down three times that amount? Just wondering.) In their reviews of the new device this week, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the iPhone’s battery problem had gotten worse in the new iteration.
The original iPhone, you may recall, got “8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback and more than 10 days of standby time,” to quote Apple’s public relations mantra. There were two catches, however. To get that long battery life, Apple had to forgo high speed wireless 3G, which chews up batteries. Second, if the battery did run down during the day, you couldn’t just swap it out for your backup battery, as you can with just about every other smartphone. The iPhone case was sealed tight. Looked cooler that way.
The new iPhone, of course, has wireless 3G — indeed, that appears to be the biggest improvement in the new model. And sure enough, it’s a battery-killer; according to The Journal reviewer, Walter S. Mossberg, the new iPhone battery lasts only about four and a half hours before it needs a new charge. Yet Apple still insists on sealing the case, thus preventing customers from using a spare battery when it runs down. For heavy cellphone users—and who isn’t these days?—the battery is going to need a charge by lunchtime. Good luck with that. Unless Apple does something about its battery problem, the iPhone will always be more a toy than a tool.
Or maybe people will just charge their phones more often. THE HORROR!!!!! At any rate, the 3G iPhone’s horrific battery life isn’t, in fact, any worse than the other 3G phones on the market (in most cases, I believe, it’s actually better). So the issue here isn’t Apple, it’s the industry as a whole. Better battery life is a worthy goal, but singling out Apple for what is really a industry-wide chipset problem is kind of silly.
Also, the lack of a replaceable battery isn’t just an “it looks cooler” choice. It allows Apple to use non-standard batteries, custom-fitted to whatever space the iPhone’s internal design allows. Designing for replaceable batteries requires a designer to make other concessions (size, weight, durability, cost, etc.) that might be more irritating.
To be honest, this is a reviewer’s problem more than a real life problem. Battery life is something easy to measure and easy to criticize (critics did the same thing with the iPod’s features for a long time–how’d that work out?), while user interface and hardware design are difficult to quantify (more on this from Daring Fireball). So everything that Apple excels at gets lost in the shuffle of a simple (and deceptive) feature checklist. Would you rather have an ugly, awkward, pain-in-the-ass phone that gets eight hours of battery life, or a really useful, intuitive, powerful handheld that gets four hours? I get the impression that most reviewers would recommend the former, but it’s safe to say that most consumers want the latter–and are happy to pay a premium for it.
All of that isn’t to say that the iPhone’s battery life isn’t annoying, but for 90% of people it really won’t be an issue. Those who really need more battery life will, no doubt, be able to buy external battery pack gizmos, just like they have been doing for the iPod for many years. And if battery life is more important than data speed, consumers can facilitate it: they can just turn off the 3G radio, which allows the device to use the EDGE network instead, with slower data but better battery life.
What this “problem” comes down to is that the iPhone is so much more useful than just about every other phone on the market that people will be glued to it all day long. Of course that uses more battery, but it’s really a symptom of Apple’s success. If your product’s biggest problem is that people like using it too much, I’d say you’re in the catbird seat.
* Incidentally, the column starts out, “If I were a blogger, these are some of the posts I would have written this week.” Which is kind of an odd start, but is actually much odder when you look at the bottom of the page and see: “Joe Nocera’s new blog, Executive Suite, can be found at nytimes.com/executivesuite.” Huh?
I’ll be honest; this isn’t really the top 10 anything. Depending on how you count, it’s the top 9, top 15, or top 16 things I want changed about the iPod Touch. But I hear people like top 10 lists, so I thought I’d try to entice you with the post title. With that caveat, let’s get to business.
I have a new toy, an iPod Touch. I just got it last week, and I have been having a lot of fun with it, especially using Safari to browse the web (on a tiny screen, but still–it’s pretty nice not to have to boot up my laptop to check my email and Twitter feed).
But not to worry, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Apple is set to release version 2.0 of its mobile operating system (which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch) early next month. With that in mind, here are the ways the fanciest iPod model needs to be fixed–just through software (and note that most of these changes could, and should, be implemented in the iPhone as well). Let’s hope we see these features in just a couple of weeks.
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