Very beta version is available.
[Updated: 11/30/10 at 10:31 PM] What a great app it is.
Month: November 2010
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Explaining the Comcast v. Level 3 Situation
John Biggs with an excellent look at the Comcast and Level 3 crap:
In fact, given the value of Internet connectivity to the average user, Comcast could do itself a favor and offer faster, better service to its current subscribers for a little more money instead of shaking down Level 3 (and then probably shaking us down by telling us it can offer “Gold++ Netflix Streaming Service” for $50 a month). As it stands, cable and DSL service is abysmally slow and underperforming in the first place. Clearly Comcast needs to get its own house in order before crying victim.
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WordPress TextMate Bundle
Shawn Parker:
The WordPress TextMate Bundle is a TextMate bundle built with the sole purpose of reducing the amount of time spent digging around the WordPress core to look up the little things that we work with every day.
Nice!
[via Jonathan Christopher] -
The Human Factor vs. The Machines [TSA Thoughts]
Over the holiday weekend here in the States I had some lively discussions about the new TSA backscatter machines with family members. As with any political discussion I tend to be mellow and not get to heated with people, it just isn’t worth it to have a shouting match on Thanksgiving. One question that seemed to keep popping up is the notion that lack of privacy is worth overall safety. To which I argued that better trained agents would allow safety and privacy, over what the backscatter machines currently offer.
The Argument
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argues that backscatter machines are necessary because they have no other means of checking for concealed weaponry on a person (things that do not set off metal detectors). This is incredibly valid and true, they have no way. Now whether backscatter machines solve this problem and whether or not these machines are health hazards is not important. What is important is that these machines solve a problem using a strict set of rules, that are defined to each traveler.
Making the rules known and steadfast is the security hole, or loop-hole if you prefer.
Everybody knows that lie detector machines can be beaten ((Hollywood teaches us so.)) , that is if you train hard enough you can beat a lie detector. The reason you can train to beat a lie detector is because you know how that machine operates – you know what AND how it is looking for lies. That knowledge is incredibly powerful and allows smart and creative people to find a way around those rules, without breaking them. Thus allowing them to ‘beat’ a lie detector.
All of the checks that TSA and DHS implement at airports work the same way: within a set of rules and procedures readily available to all travelers.
If a terrorist really wanted to bomb an airplane, nothing will stop him. He knows how to beat the backscatter machines by: avoidance (finding and airport/line without the machines), pat-down (placing the bomb in a body cavity that will not be felt). The only wild card in that process is the TSA agents watching over all the procedures. A TSA agent may see something out of sorts and pull them aside for further screening, they don’t know what the agent may see so the potential for failure is incredibly high – which is why most terrorists have multiple people set to carry out the same thing at the same time, thus TSA would not be able to react quick enough if they caught one of the people.
Israel
I posted this link a while back, but as reported by Cathal Kelly of TheStar.com here is how Israel does security: ((This is important because Israel is under a much more imminent security threat than the U.S..))
Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion’s half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.
According to the article the last time Israeli security was breached at an Airport was 2002. 2002. That is absurd. Each guard at the Israeli airport is trained in observation and profiling to help stop potential threats, all without subjecting travelers to undue inspections or wasted time. Basically you are not beating a set of rules (other than the magnometer) you must instead beat a highly trained human. Now you know they are looking for ‘suspicious behavior’ but what that actually looks like to each agent differs.
The Human Factor
Israel knows that the greatest threat to a terrorists success is the human factor: the ‘will our guy be caught factor’. Any little slip up of a terrorist in Israel could lead to a search and arrest of the terrorist – the variables for success are so huge that to succeed is astronomical.
So the question that has been circling the net is whether such a system would work in the U.S. The answer is maybe, maybe not. The U.S. is massive in size compared to Israel and training that many people would be a huge financial cost and time consuming action. Better trained agents would have to be smarter and therefore paid more. Isn’t that what we want as a nation though: smarter and better paid people?
What if each U.S. airport security check point was required to have four agents on duty all the time watching the passengers, these agents would be trained by FBI/CIA deception experts to weed out potential threats. Perhaps only those identified as threats would be subjected to further screening, the rest of us can go back to bringing on our water and only having to be checked by metal detectors.
What would that do?
Maybe, just maybe, Bruce Schneier said it best:
It’s not even a fair game. It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater.
and later:
Airport security is the last line of defense, and it’s not a very good one. What works is investigation and intelligence: security that works regardless of the terrorist tactic or target. Yes, the target matters too; all this airport security is only effective if the terrorists target airports. If they decide to bomb crowded shopping malls instead, we’ve wasted our money.
I vote for better trained TSA, and a diversion of backscatter funds to help shore up ‘the human factor’.
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Random Tweets That Amuse
God I love comments. It’s like your drunken uncle yelling at the TV, but in front of everyone.
One must be aware that loving Photoshop – and most other Adobe products – is actually more akin to software Stockholm syndrome.
Mike Monteiro (link NSFW):
It must be weird for TSA agents to go to strip clubs and not be able to touch.
There’s no rule saying we can’t thoroughly soak our crotches in lukewarm water right before going through security at the airport, right?
Wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Apple had a CDMA iPhone all along and they spent 4 years convincing Verizon not to put their logo on it.
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‘A Waste of Money and Time’
Bruce Schneier:
A short history of airport security: We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn’t have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces — the level of magical thinking here is amazing — and they’re going to do something else.
Take all the money spent on new security measures and spend it on investigation and intelligence.
This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.Sounds about right.
[via DF] -
Quote of the Day: William Gibson on Twitter
I was never interested in Facebook or MySpace because the environment seemed too top-down mediated. They feel like malls to me. But Twitter actually feels like the street. You can bump into anybody on Twitter. -
Optional Attendees = Genius
Google has added the ability to have ‘optional attendees’ in invited events. What an awesome move, this makes me very happy and I hope iCal implements this.
[via The Next Web] -
‘Mac of the future: the OS’
Siracusa thinks that the key to future OS X versions and Mac sales is simplicity. Which can only be a good thing.
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What Does Steve Jobs Think of Email?
In the recently released 1985 interview with Playboy, Steve Jobs had this to say about the telegraph in comparison to the telephone:
It [the telephone] performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
He elaborates:
It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we’re in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won’t work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are “slash q-zs” and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel–one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It’s the first “telephone” of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don’t simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.
I can’t help but think that Jobs looks at email and thinks that email is very similar to the Telegraph, in fact a great deal of our online communication these days lacks that intonation that is heavily relied on in speech.
Still to this day there is a lot of miscommunication happening due to the lack of intonation in communication mediums such as text messages and emails. People think I am ‘mad’ all the time because I send brief emails, or they think I am joking when I am anything but joking. Is that why Apple decided that FaceTime needs to be an “open” protocol?
I can tell you one thing, communication is never clear unless it is done face to face. Even video conferencing does not solve this. When you stand and talk to another person you take note of every movement they make, you know if they like what you are saying or not based on more than just words and facial expressions, the way they stand, shake your hand, shift their weight – all important things.
There really is no point to this other than to throw the thought out there to everyone – how do you digitally convey all these non-verbal cues?
[This part of an ongoing series on dealing with email, to see more posts look here.]
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WordPress Plugin: Headline Split Tester
From the plugin page:
This plug-in allows you to enter an alternate headline for every post on your blog. The headlines are then randomly alternated on your website until a certain number of “headline views” has been reached. At that point, a “winning” headline (as determined by the number of people that have clicked on each headline to date) is determined and that headline is shown going forward.
Pretty clever, I’m giving it a try.
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‘The Only OS X Shortcut You Need to Remember’
What a great tip, invoke the help menu via the keyboard and then you can find any menu item you want use – with no mouse. Excellent (CMD+SHIFT+/) read the post for more info.
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Angry Birds Plush Toys For Sale
I don’t know when these came out, but they would make a great gift for anyone obsessed with Angry Birds.
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TBR Sponsorship
Did you know that you can sponsor The Brooks Review’s RSS feed? Yeah it works pretty much the same as everyone else’s RSS feed sponsorship – it only costs $99/week. Click through to read more about it, your sponsorship would be much appreciated.
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The Glif
The Glif is a tripod mount for your iPhone 4, oh and a stand for it as well. It is very neat and very minimal. I am a Kickstarter donator to the project and was so at a level where I got a pre-production unit. I have been using the Glif now for over a week and I must say it is perfect.
Very small, light and durable. Easy to slip into a bag. The one thing though, so that in some of the videos they show the iPhone 4 hanging with the Glif mounted to the top – don’t count on that. In my testing that always resulted in the iPhone falling out. The Glif attaches by friction alone, yet doesn’t scratch up your iPhone.
Buy one, two, three you’ll love it (it’s $20 you can’t go wrong).
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Rovio’s Awesome Android Success
Quentyn Kennemer:
Wait, what? It’s only been a month and a half since the popular game was released on Android and it’s already reached 7 million downloads.
Something tells me had they charged for that game they would not have had that kind of success. The Android market is very different from Apple’s app store.
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More on the health risks of backscatter machines
Jason Bell, a molecular biologist and biophysicist on the porno-scanners:
According to the TSA safety documents, AIT uses an 50 keV source that emits a broad spectra (see adjacent graph from here). Essentially, this means that the X-ray source used in the Rapiscan system is the same as those used for mammograms and some dental X-rays, and uses BOTH ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ X-rays. Its very disturbing that the TSA has been misleading on this point. Here is the real catch: the softer the X-ray, the more its absorbed by the body, and the higher the biologically relevant dose! This means, that this radiation is potentially worse than an a higher energy medical chest X-ray.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab Properly Reviewed
Note: This is a review unit loaned to me by Verizon Wireless, the device and internet access was no cost to me while I had it.How do you review something that doesn’t fit any predefined category for a device?
This is the problem that the Samsung Galaxy Tab presents: it is a tablet, but not in the same way that the iPad is. In fact these two devices are so very different that I don’t think they really ‘compete’ with one another in terms of how you use them. With that in mind it is rather easy to see why so many others failed at doing a proper review of the Tab – it turns out the device is quite the enigma.
The Difference
There are two major reasons that the Tab and iPad are not direct competitors: size and app stores. This may seem like it should not be that big of a difference, what’s three inches after all – additionally the Android Market is a pretty robust app store right? Well no, not really. There may be a lot of apps in the Android Market, but there are not many good apps. Oh, and three inches turns out to be a huge difference for a tablet.
The iPad is a companion device, but a companion device that is both large enough and powerful enough to serve as a primary computer for many people. Just take a look around the web and you will see a good number of Geeks like myself who have left behind their laptops on recent travels, preferring instead to take along their iPad only.
The Tab is not that type of device, it is not able to span the category of both companion and possibly a primary computer. As I see it the Tab isn’t even a secondary computer. That does not make it a bad device, I actually rather like it under the right circumstances.
Sizing Up
If you own an iPad and you pick up the Tab you are probably going to get a grin on your face – I know I did. The size just feels very natural to hold in your hand. It is almost the same thickness of the iPad, yet its surface area is just a fraction of the size. From day one the iPad has always felt like a device that required two hands, a stand, table, or lap to use properly. The Tab though is a handheld computer in the truest sense, it looks down right absurd to try and rest on your lap while you use it. I certainly grinned the first time I picked up an iPad too, but something about the Tab feels right from a size standpoint. The size though is more troublesome then it is good.
There have been a ton of arguments between Apple and seemingly every other tablet maker about 7” screens, with Apple (and I) both arguing that 7-inches is just not a practical size for a tablet – it is too in between to work. I still feel that such an assessment is accurate, but I would add that, as with everything, there is a time and place for each.
I just plopped the Tab on top of my iPad and the first thing that came to my mind was MacBook Airs. If you go to the store and look at the difference between the 13” MacBook Air and the 11” MacBook Air then I think you will get a good understanding about the difference between these two tablets. The Tab is the 11” Air, that by itself would be silly to own, but for the right people makes and excellent computer, so too then does the Tab make an excellent tablet for the right user.
If you are on the go all day and rarely create any content (more on this in a bit) then I think the Tab would suit you well. I can picture political aides running around with these things, emailing on their Blackberries and then grabbing the Tab to gulp down some news and policies while going from meeting to meeting.
To me the Tab makes the iPad feel like the type of device that you grab when you want to ‘settle in’ with something, whereas the Tab is the device you grab when you are ‘go, go, go’. If that makes any sense. Let me try explaining it another way, if I am going on vacation to a city I have never been to here is how I would use the iPad versus the Tab:
- The iPad would be the device I would want for lounging around the hotel, or going to Café to catch up on the world.
- The Tab is the device I would want while running around the city and exploring it.
The iPad would be too big to take with me, especially if I don’t want to be a mugging target. The Tab though could slip in a purse, or large pocket while stilling being every bit as useful – perhaps even more useful given the ease of carry. I am not talking about sticking it in your back pocket either, it fits in a few of my jackets pockets.
App Stores
The Android Market is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the entire Tab experience for me. I did not find one single suitable replacement for any of the third-party apps that I use on the iPad. Angry Birds is the same, save for that really ugly add that sits atop while you play. Twitter (official app) is similar, except that it never remembered my position correctly, nor does it allow for multiple accounts. Turning to other options in the Market was of little help to me, and I think John Gruber summarized why best on Daring Fireball when he said:
In fact, the Android Market, as a whole, bears a lot more resemblance to the Cydia app store than it does to Apple’s official App Store. This is both in terms of content (system hacks, geek utilities, lower-quality UI design) and audience (the sort of users who put “task killers” and home screen replacements at the top of their favorite app lists). Browse the Android Market apps listed at sites like DoubleTwist and AppBrain, particularly the most popular lists. Then browse the listings in the Cydia app store, and tell me there isn’t a strong similarity.
That is a dead on accurate look at what the Android Market feels like. There are a few scattered good apps, but most of the apps felt like things that only real nerds would want to use, not the average users. Perhaps the best example was when I was trying to figure out how to take a screenshot on the Tab. After googling for some answers it became clear that you needed a third party app to take a screenshot. I hopped into the Market and did a quick search (which to Android’s credit is far faster than Apple’s iOS App Store search mechanism) and up popped a lot of screen shot apps. Not one of which worked – I tried about 12 or so of them, only the free ones. Most every screen shot app said that I would have to gain Root access to the device before I could use the tool – something I was not willing to attempt on a review unit.
There are very few apps that have been optimized for the Tabs larger interface, so most of the time you are looking at a scaled version of an Android phone app. In fact the Market is lacking the universal apps that Apple has. I did a quick search to find out what the best Tab apps were and among the ones listed I was told to download the New York Times app. So I did, and it was a small rectangle on the screen – which I found odd. I searched again and found that there are two version, one for tablets and one for phones – yet these two version were separated by 5 other apps in the search results. Confusing and annoying me at the same time.
What I am saying is this: you don’t buy the Tab to use apps, you buy the Tab for what it has built-in and the web. The apps that are available are serviceable, but lack compelling design or features (such as send to Instapaper which seems to be quite the enigma in the Android Market). There is a very good reason that Apple has commercials only displaying third party apps for iPad and Samsung does not advertise the same thing, I have yet to find a single compelling Android app for the Tab that was made by a third party developer.
Stephen Hackett may have said it best:
The biggest thing Android has going for it is its integration with Google’s cloud services.
That is very true.
Typing
The meta thing to do would have been to type this entire section on the Tab – so I tried to do just that to keep my ‘geek cred’ high. I decided though that the attempt was futile and I should stop before I pulled out all of my hair. Typing anything longer than a sentence (if even that) on the Tab is a frustrating experience – no matter which orientation you are using the device in.
In setting up the device I noticed that there is an option to turn ‘haptic feedback’ on and off, this is the little buzz the device does in response to you typing or hitting the menu keys. To be honest with you, I really like the haptic feedback. It is a really nice reassurance that you are actually pressing something. The haptic feedback was also very helpful in letting me know when I hit a button that I didn’t want, or mean, to press.
Haptic feedback is where the pleasantness of typing on the Tab ends. This is not just a matter of getting used to the keyboard. The device is simply too small to house a practical and functional landscape keyboard. I have typed many 1000+ word documents on my iPad onscreen keyboard in landscape mode with only minimal frustration. Trying to type even a paragraph though on the Tab was irritating for me – to the point where I had to go do something else for a bit. If you want to know what it is like to type on the Tab’s landscape keyboard and you own an iPad, you are in luck – flip your iPad into portrait view and pop up the keyboard, what you are looking at is faster to type on than the Tab’s landscape keyboard. This has to do with both the size and layout of the Tab keyboard. The layout should be a non-issue after using the device for a while, however the size will always be an issue.
The portrait mode is better though, in fact I am convinced that one should only use the Tab in portrait mode as landscape offers little to no benefit. So let’s talk about the portrait keyboard on the Tab – it is much better than the portrait keyboard on the iPad. It is a thumb typing keyboard that looks and feels like a jumbo version of the iPhone keyboard. It will be a bit to big for those with small hands, and troublesome for those with fat thumbs. That said I would guess that most people could get up to reasonable speed on it with practice. It is far easier for people with big thumbs to use than something you would encounter on a smartphone.
The Tab has Swype installed on it, and when I first started using it I found Swype to be in the way. Once I turned it off my typing speed substantially increased as the keyboard layout more closely mimicked iOS’s keyboard layout. The Tab’s keyboard is simply too large to use Swype with if you want to use it for speed. However, if you just want to use it because you don’t like lifting your finger, well by all means…
The last bit about typing, perhaps the most important, is the auto-correct mechanism. iOS utilizes a dual auto-correct method. The first line of defense on iOS is that the target areas for the predicted next letter increase in virtual size (meaning you don’t see the increase). So if you are typing fast and you meant to hit ‘a’ instead of ’s’, if the iOS device thinks there is a larger chance you meant to hit ‘a’ than ’s’, the letter that will appear will actually be ‘a’. ((Usually)) This leads to a lot fewer typos and a lot quicker typing. The second line of defense that iOS has is a very aggressive spell check engine that suggests and word and inputs that suggestion if you don’t actively tell it not to.
The Tab must be utilizing a similar method as iOS, but the auto-correct suggestions work in a vastly different way. In fact the suggestions appear below where you are typing, just above the keyboard. The problem with that is you must take your eyes off of the sentence you are typing to watch the suggestions – they are just as aggressive as iOS’s are. This slowed my typing speed significantly, having to look away from your sentence is very annoying. The nice part about Android is that you can tweak a lot of these settings to your liking.
Overall I have had great success tapping out most words – with a bit more practice, shooting out one to two sentence emails should be a breeze. That said there is one last annoyance with the keyboard – lag. I mentioned above that I like to keep haptic feedback on, the reason being that if you are typing fast (which I try to do) the keyboard illumination (glows blue around keys when you ‘press’ them) will lag behind my fingers – haptic feedback has yet to lag behind so I get a better sense that the Tab is keeping up with me. That said I find the portrait keyboard to be very serviceable, but the landscape keyboard to be abysmal.
Usage
Everything that I have been talking about so far has led us up to the most unique, interesting and troubling aspect of the Samsung Galaxy Tab. How, where and when do you use the Tab?
That is not an easy question to answer. As a Kindle reader it works great, the smaller footprint and lighter weight of the chassis makes for a very enjoyable experience. The lack of a quality RSS reader and Instapaper app though will certainly limit the usage of this device.
Web Browsing
One huge downfall of the device is how the browser reports itself to websites – most websites will automatically kick you to a mobile version that is truly formatted for small phone screens. This usually is not a problem as you can click the full site buttons, but some sites lack those (why people, why?). Facebook was particularly troublesome for my Wife as it kept forcing her back to the mobile site with each page on the site she moved to. This seems to be much less of a problem for the iPad as many people have checks to see if you are using an iPad these days.
I am not entirely sure if it is possible for web developers to set rules for Android Tablets as I am not sure how they report to sites, or if they even report differently than other Android devices. What is clear is that something needs to be done to improve web browsing experiences on the Tab – my guess is that both Google and web developers need to work on this. Of course web developers will need to have a compelling reason to do more work (though 600,000 opening month sales is a good start).
Scrolling seems to be somewhat of a contentious topic for Tab reviewers as people are all over the board about it. Here is the bottom line on scrolling: if you use iOS devices the scrolling will disappoint you to the point of frustration, however if you are not coming from an iOS device you should be fine. That said there are significant problems with scrolling on graphics heavy pages, Engadget.com is one such site that is particularly laughable to navigate. ((Full site, not the mobile version.)) Even this site was problematic when I scrolled by images. I should note that scrolling on the mobile versions of sites is very pleasant.
One last thing about scrolling: the ‘inertia’ scrolling on the Tab (the scrolling that keeps moving after you stopped moving your finger, allowing for ‘momentum’ to stop it) is much different from iOS. It seemed a lot less “real” if that makes sense. It scrolled much to fast when I flicked it, often just sprinting down to the bottom of the page. Oh, and that remind me, there is no shortcut I can find for quickly moving back up to the navigation bar at the top, which is a bit annoying. Actually it was really annoying come to think of it.
Purpose
In my usage of this device, which has been very extensive at this point, I can see why many reviewers either seem to love it or hate it. There is a lot to like about this device, and I do think that it is a very good device. The problem though is that the iPad re-defined the tablet landscape when it was launched and the Samsung Galaxy Tab does not fit within that definition, which is not a bad thing. Samsung could simply be trying to re-define the market once again.
The Tab is more mobile than the iPad, while being easier to use than mobile phones – in the sense that it has a larger screen that is much easier to see. If you want to know where you would use the Tab over the iPad the best way to think about it is like this:
The iPad requires a bag for the most part, otherwise you will have to carry it in your hands. The Tab though could fit in most jacket pockets and thus does not require a bag for traveling. Now think about all the times you have been out and about, think about the times when you had wished you had the iPad with you to look something up. That is a Tab situation. Think about the times you had the iPad with you and you wished you had somewhere out of the way to put it – the Tab again eliminates the frustration ten fold.
That is why the Tab stands to have a nice size market, and I would guess why they sold 600,000 on opening weekend.
General Thoughts
One really interesting thing that I noticed in using the Tab is that unlike in iOS everything seems to be buried under at least one layer of menus. Be it the main App view, the menus and settings. Everything is one more click away than I am with iOS. It is a little annoyance, something like trying to get to the settings on Twitter’s app for iPhone and having to back out to the account screen first, a minor annoyance because you have to think about where you need to go.
The ON/OFF button is in the wrong spot. It sits just above the volume rocker along the right side of the device. It might be because I am so used to ON/OFF being on the top – I still have yet to get used to the side ON/OFF and it drives me crazy. I constantly hit the top edge of the device to try and turn it off, and then I would hit volume up trying to do the same on the side. Annoying.
Unlike the iPad the Tab is not really a device that you use in any orientation, the bottom row of home keys really spells out how the device is to be held: in portrait view. This is a not really a bad thing I found this view to be the best with just about everything I did on the Tab.
There is no hardware switch for mute or orientation lock – Samsung though has made it very easy to get to these settings and more. On the lock screen you can slide to unlock, or slide to Mute/Un-Mute the device which is a very nice touch. The volume switch if held mutes the device incredibly quick or drag down the top bar with your finger and you can silence the device. This is also where orientation lock is stowed away.
I want to talk a little about the four buttons along the bottom of the Android standard: Menu, Home, Back/up, Search. At first I thought these buttons were stupid, but Android does a great job utilizing them (as well as Android app developers). I found the menu button to be OK, but menus in general seemed silly and overly large. The home button was a home button (surprise!). The search button is a great addition and after getting used to the fact that it was there I really found that I liked having it. The back button though, I hate that back button. In iOS developers use a little button usually at the top that is in an arrow shape pointing left, and all iOS transitions lead you to feel that you advance to the right ((Which must really screw with the heads of countries that read right to left, like Japan)) in Android that little button is replaced by a hardware button. In all the hours I spent with the Tab I never once got used to that, nor the behavior that button had. Like how if you keep hitting it you eventually return to the home screen. Why not just stop working when you get back to the first screen for the app, I will press the home button when that is where I want to go. Odd.
Hardware
To be honest I set my expectations for the hardware pretty low from the outset. I have been using Apple products so long that it is very rare that other consumer electronics impress me when it comes to hardware. Having said that the build of the Tab is solid. Like the iPad it is not a device that feels fragile in your hands, in fact the Tab feels quit cozy in your hands. ((Having a plastic back helps.))
There is a gradual curve along the back of the device and a slight texture as well (see the dots in the pictures). The Tab is not ‘grippy’, but at the same time it does not feel ready to slip out of your grasp. As with most Android devices the Tab has four ‘physical’ buttons along the bottom – these are actually touch sensitive buttons and do not depress. They act as the menu, home, back, and search buttons for the device. Along the right side you have a volume rocker and the power button.
The most interesting thing about the Tab though is the bezel around the device. It is about a quarter of an inch smaller on each side than the iPad. That quarter of an inch though makes for a dramatic difference. I measure my thumb when it is resting on a ruler with the normal pressure I would use to hold the iPad or Tab, my thumb is almost 7/8” wide. The iPad has a 3/4” bezel, while the Tab has a 1/2” bezel. That means that on the Tab my thumbs get in the way a bit more than on the iPad. This is not a nit-picky thing, it has caused some unexpected results when browsing the web. I find that I often accidentally click on ads when I am browsing because one of my thumbs is actually on the touch screen. This is something that you most certainly would learn not to do in time as you use the device. I strongly feel though that you should never have to learn how to hold something in order to use it. ((Just to save myself some emails yes I use an iPhone 4 and no I have had no antenna problems no matter how I hold it.))
Of note the Tab uses a dock like interface, the connector is almost identical in size and shape to an Apple dock connector (no they are not the same that I could tell). This has no bearing on usage of the device, but I was very curious to see this and thought it was rather interesting.
Overall the hardware is very well done. The Tab is not a beautiful piece of art, it is a black rectangle. It does however win where it counts, the Tab feels right in your hand, feels solid, looks solid, and seems very well made.
Miscellany
- I found setting up email accounts a bear, as I am sure it is on iOS but the lack of being able to sync over all your email accounts like you can in iTunes was a really annoying problem. Setup is a bear if the Tab cannot auto configure the account for you.
- The camera is more or less a joke on the device and without a FaceTime app I was not able to test the front facing camera. You can see some example shots here, here, here and here that I took with the rear facing camera.
- I am not sure if this is a hardware or software issue, so I am tossing it here, but the backlight sensor is overly…sensitive for lack of a better word. My hand moving in the wrong spot always makes the screen dim in situations where it needs to be bright, this is not a major problem, but it is a tad bit annoying. Especially given that the Tab dims faster than it brightens back up.
- As I mentioned on Twitter this device was incredibly frustrating for my wife – she hated the Haptic Feedback and found the web browsing on Facebook less than stellar.
- Being able to attach things to emails from within the email composition screen is amazing. I can’t tell you how many times I start an email in iOS and then realize I want to attach a picture, which means starting all over again. [Updated: 11/26/10 at 9:52 AM] A reader writes in to say that you can do this in iOS if you just use copy and paste after you start an email.
- The send button, it is right above the keyboard and that is perfect, love that.
- Mobile hotspot, this thing can be a MiFi, so can many other Android devices. Why this isn’t the case on iOS I don’t know, but it really should be.
- I loved not having to worry about Internet access, my next tablet will have 3G it is way too convenient.
Bottom Line
The biggest deciding factors for whether you should buy the Tab need to come down to two things: what is your intended use and why do you want a tablet. A person that hates bags should probably go with the Tab, a person that is indifferent or loves bags should go with the iPad. If you carry a laptop anyways, perhaps a Tab instead of a larger iPad to save room. If you are all about Apple then why are you reading this?
Do not be confused however, I think the tab is an awesome device – much more impressive than I had initially thought it would be. That does not mean it is better than, or even as good as the iPad – it is not. The iPad is still the ‘bees knees’ if you will, that though is due to the superior app store. iOS has an excellent app store, and you might as well forget about Android’s as it is rather pathetic right now. If you want a tablet to get cool apps the Tab is the absolute wrong choice for you.
The Tab truly is a large smartphone and most everything it does reminds you of that fact, though a very good large smart phone. The Tab for me doesn’t come close to fitting in my workflow, I think it’s good, but the app store is pathetic and typing is too poor to make it any better than using my iPhone. Again this is a device for specific people not for the masses.
[Updated: 11/26/10 at 9:46 AM]
I didn’t mention anything about Flash, sorry about that I had meant to. Flash is irrelevant, when it worked it worked. When it didn’t work it crashed the browser or ran like crap. Flash on a tablet is like a website that uses a lot of the ‘:hover’ attribute in CSS, just doesn’t work all that great for touch interfaces, but most of the time you can get by without noticing the pitfalls.
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Windows 7 tablets
Charles Arthur on Windows 7 as a tablet OS:
The reason I'm going to have to be negative about it is nothing to do with the hardware, which is perfectly fine. It's the software. Windows 7, which it runs, definitively proves that there is a difference between a touch-screen operating system, and a tablet operating system. Windows 7 is, certainly, a touch-screen operating system. What it is not is a tablet operating system.
