iOS 5

iOS 5 finally arrived on Oct 12th as Apple announced on during "Let's talk iPhone" event on Oct 4th. I was prepared for the arrival of iOS 5 - upgraded iTunes, Sync'd up and Backed up my iPhone 4.

This time, I wasn't interested to upgrade to iPhone 4S. There are 2 main reasons ...

    •    One, I have 2 year contract with AT&T and AT&T approves my upgrade after Feb 2012 (18 months completion of the contract).
    •    Second, except for Siri, I didn't find the new capabilities of iPhone 4S compelling for me to upgrade. I'll wait, I am good with my iPhone 4 for now :-) 

iOS 5 Upgrade

Upgrade to iOS 5 took a long time, it was more than 2 hours - the upgrade failed for the first time and then, iTunes was trying to restore from the backup. I was beginning to get worried if I'll end up with no phone for a day or two. Thank god, once iTunes prompted that restore is complete, there was a sigh of relief. Interestingly, I was surprised that my iPhone 4 has been upgraded to iOS 5 regardless. So, I really don't know if my upgrade was a successful upgrade ;-). My iPhone 4 with iOS 5 is working fine since then …

In this blog, I am going cover some of the iOS 5 features based on my experience on my iPhone 4. I won't be writing about Siri or other features that are iPhone 4S specific or iPad specific. Let's jump right in ...

Notification Center

One of the very first and visible features of iOS 5 is its notifications center. Pretty good implementation for handling notifications and catching up with Android platform. Prior to iOS 5, the notifications were terrible on iOS platforms - notifications were handled like a system message/alert, interrupt your work or game play, can't handle multiple notifications and you can't get to notifications later. I am glad that iOS 5 notifications took care all of those issues.

New System Apps (Reminders, Newsstand)

Apart from enhancements to existing system apps on iOS devices, Apple has added a couple of new system apps in iOS 5.

    •    Reminders

          ⁃    Finally, there is a TODO app that comes with iOS - for free. It was long overdue. Location aware (Geo-fence) Reminders are pretty cool. Now, you can set up a reminder to buy milk when you are near a grocery store.

          ⁃    Didn't quite understand why there is an integration with Yahoo Reminders given that there is an iCloud Reminders.

    •    Newsstand
          ⁃    Newspapers and Magazines - Similar to Books, specifically designed for subscription based content delivery. As a user, I didn't find anything great or interesting enough content.

iCloud and PC-Free

Now, you can back up your iOS device on the cloud with iCloud - pretty neat. iOS upgrades are PC-free (no iTunes tethering required anymore and everything can be done Over The Air (OTA)). Apple hopes to end jail breaking with such features, it would be interesting to see what happens on that front. Apple is smart with 5GB free option - I had to clean up my iPhone 4 content to less than 5GB to use the free iCloud backup. I suspect most people will have to pay for iCloud services (Nothing really comes for free from Apple).

There are more than 200+ features/enhancements on iOS 5. Check out iOS 5 features @ http://www.apple.com/ios/features.html. 

Summary

iOS 5 adds significant number of improvements, enhancements and takes the OS capabilities of smart phones/tablets to the next level.

Apple Mac OS X Lion - a review

Recently, I upgraded my Macbook Pro laptop to OS X Lion (from Snow Leopard). Let me share some of the real goodness (and a few issues as well) of OS X Lion …

• OS X Lion upgrade from Mac App Store for $30

• Pretty neat and a sweet deal. No hassle with purchase/shipment of CD/DVD.
• Finally, a Desktop OS is catchup with more modern OS (Phone/Tablet OS) features.
• Full-Screen Apps and Window Resize
• With OS X Lion, most Apple software support full screen view - From Safari to terminal window supports full screen mode (Text Edit is one exception that I have come across till now) . Slideshow of pictures in fullscreen view looks great now!
• Another nice feature is sliding between full screen views with 3-finger slide gesture. Pretty cool!
• Now, Window resize can be done from any of the corners - this was kind of annoying in earlier revisions as it was only available on right bottom corner.
• Resume Feature for Apps
• With OS X Lion, you can quit an application or reboot the device without being prompted to save your work. Resume feature brings back your unsaved work when you open the application again. Neat stuff.
• Auto save and versions make it easier to switch between your changes, a very useful feature.
• Gestures
• i.e, more gestures with Mac OS X Lion release.
• With 3 fingers slide horizontal, you can slide between different work spaces - full screen apps, dashboard and desktops.
• With 3 fingers slide vertical, you can zoom in/out all your open windows/workspaces (a.k.a Mission Control).
• With 2 fingers slide horizontal, you can do previous/next actions - For example, on the browser, it would mean taking back/forward actions.
• With 2 fingers slide vertical, you can scroll up/down on the page.
• While all of these gestures are great, I have to admit that it still causing me some trouble …
• Sometimes, when I try to scroll up/down - may be because of my finger positions/slide action - it sometimes recognizes as previous/next actions. While I expect to scroll down/up a page, it ends up showing me previous/next page from the browser history, really annoying.
• In Mac OS X Lion, 2 finger slide horizontal up is scroll down and 2 finger slide horizontal down is scroll up. Comparing with my other laptops (Windows or Chromebook), where up/down scrolls are implemented opposite for up/down gesture. Switching between laptops and getting adjusted is more difficult now.
• Others
• Mac App Store come built-in with OS X Lion as primary software distribution channel. Software updates will be similar to iOS Devices - for both Apple and non-apple software.
• Launchpad - provides iOS devices like Apps view - for all installed apps. This is going to make OS X eventually look like an iOS device.
• There are 250+ new features in OS X Lion and check them out @ http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/

• A few other $30glitches …
• After upgrade to OS X Lion, my dashcode and Xcode tools stopped working. I had to uninstall development tools and reinstall Xcode, then everything is back on track (For more details on the issue/solution, check out here)
• Another issue after OS X Lion upgrade - an annoying popup kept coming up. I had to turn off Time Machine to disable that popup. Check out the issue here.
• A few personal settings & PATH settings were overwritten by OS X Lion upgrade, I had to update PATH settings (for example, git)
• Considering a major OS upgrade and first time upgrade over App Store - I would say, OS X Lion upgrade was pretty smooth and the features worth the upgrade.
• Kudos to Apple and OS X Lion team for another great product release!

Samsung Series 5 Chromebook - a review

Recently, I got a gadget gift from Google - a Samsung 5 Series Chromebook with their new Chrome OS.

Based on my 2 weeks of what I would call it, a moderate use of the Chromebook, I'll share my review about Chromebook. (Disclaimer: Note that I have taken into consideration that this is a version 1.0 product - So, my expectation was, that I'll run into some glitches as with most 1.0 products).

Check out the product specs of Samsung Series 5 Chromebook

Thumbs Up

• Packaging
• The package was pretty decent, I wouldn't call it as good as Apple products packaging though.
• Setting Up
• Initial setup was a breeze - just few steps (wifi-setup, google account) and you are ready to go.
• When I setup with my google account, I was bit worried that how to share the laptop with other users since Android tablets have the issue of sharing your google account with other users. It was nice to see that you can setup multiple users for accessing Chromebook and even there is a guest user account access (no google account is required).
• Starting Up/Shutting Down
• Within a few secs you can startup or shutdown the computer, impressive! I am sure that Windows users will appreciate this feature very much.
• Battery Life
• Since there aren't many background programs or apps running - Chromebook battery life is pretty good.
• Once I started playing flash games (my favorite Bejeweled Blitz), then the battery consumption was similar to other laptops.
• SD Card & VGA Adapter
• One issue with my Macbook Pro - I don't have a built-in card slot for SD Card for uploading photos. It was nice to see the multi-card slot.
• Also, there is a VGA adapter for projector displays. Unlike my Macbook Pro, Samsung Chromebook shipped with VGA adapter, which saves you from buying accessories.

Thumbs Down

• He's dead, Jim!
• It was hard to believe the Chrome browser from Chromebook crashing more frequently than I anticipated from a version 1.0 product.
• Chrome browser is the only app accessible for the user in Chromebook - it needs to be rock solid, period - otherwise, it feels like completely useless.
• Touchpad and Gestures
• Samsung Chromebook supports buttonless Touchpad with Gestures support similar to Apple Macbook Pro.
• However, this is really bad - don't know if this is a hardware or software issue - especially compared to Apple Macbook Pro. Try playing a game (again, my favorite Bejeweled Blitz) - its almost impossible use the Touchpad with Gestures. It doesn't respond smoothly and often displays right click menu for swipes or vice versa. This is something that they need to fix right away.
• Transfer of Files
• Since they had SD Card slot and USB slot - I wanted to transfer some photos from SD Card to an USB stick for viewing in other machine. It should have been a dead simple feature - select/copy from SD Card file list to USB folder, right? It was shocking to accept that this is not straight forward and I am yet to find a way to accomplish this.
• I can't believe products get shipped not supporting such basic use cases. Whom are these products getting built for? Sorry, Google. Apple wouldn't be shipping such a product.
• Photos Viewing
• Another bad user experience for simple use case - viewing photos. Once SD Card is inserted, a chrome browser window displays a list of directories. Selecting of the directory to see the content - you need to click exactly on the icon, it took a while to figure that out why my selection, double click/right click on the row doesn't work.
• And, there was a preview of photos - Selecting a few photos to preview - displays with out title information, you won't know which photo you are viewing - duh?!
• Cloud or Cloud Apps
• Even for simple and basic operations, like capturing screen shots or printing documents over WiFi, there are no easy/simple steps like laptops or even tablets.
• Offline Access
• Unlike laptops or even tablets running local apps - working offline is almost impossible with the current release of Chromebook - disappointing!

Verdict

• Disappointing. Is it really worth it or even usable day-to-day? I would say NO as it stands today.
• I don't know if Chromebook has any unique value proposition compared with a Laptop or a Tablet. Leave me a comment, if you think otherwise.