Why I don't love android

A few years ago I decided against the ever so fashionable iphone and bought the first Android offering, the G1. I quite liked it but the software available (ok... Apps) let it down. Google irritated me by not including some of the basics, taking an attitude of 'the community will provide this'. Trouble is that took too long.

So I went Apple and haven't looked back until now.

Recently I got a nexus 7 and, whilst it's a really nice piece of hardware, I still don't love android.

The trouble is despite android devices outnumbering humans on the planet, or something, nobody is making much seriously good software.

Apple have keynote, pages and Numbers whereas Google have... Actually they have quick office, which Google has bought up and is absolutely dreadful on my nexus 7.

Apple has garageband, which is superb. Google has... Nothing comparable.

And there are hundreds of third party, truly excellent products available for ios with no comparison for Android.

I don't know why, but it seems there isn't enough money in apps for Android... Either that or it's much harder to write software for Google's platform.

Either way, I'm disappointed by what's on offer. So much so that I think the nexus 7 may well have to make way for an ipad mini.

Apple's way of restricting their users often grates, but they've created by far the best eco system for portable devices and Google has simply failed to catch up, despite the number of Android devices sold.

Fundamentally it doesn't matter how good the android hardware is and how unrestricted the os if I can't do what I want with it.

Why does Google hate email folders?

I get a lot of email and its the primary way I do a lot of business communication. I use folders in my attempts to organise it all and keep my in box clear. It should be noted I usually fail.

I use my nexus 7 a lot. It's great to have something small enough to fit in my coat pocket (just) but large enough to work with effectively.

I just wish android's email client did folders. Nested folders to be precise. My lovely, and not terribly complex folder tree is always displayed flat. Because I often have sub folders called "filed" this makes quickly filing emails impossible.

I can do what I want effortlessly with ios so often reach for my iphone to file an email.

This is stupid. It's one of the things I disliked about Android when it was first released and partly why I rejected my android phone in favour of an iphone.

To still have the same frustration a few years later, despite all the bells and whistles added to jelly bean, is truly frustrating.

Beware the automated tweets of convenience

If you use timed tweets or an automated bot for twitter, be it for personal or business use, you want to be careful. Whilst they can be really useful, there's no substitute for actually posting things yourself and there are other pitfalls.

Asking: Why?

Where I work we have a monthly staff lunch at which there's usually a short talk from someone with something pertinent to share. We've so far heard from an architect, the HR director of a large multi-national company, the leader of a church in Leeds and there's more good stuff to come. Most recently the speaker had to pull out so we watched this TED talk instead.

Why should I buy it from you?

In the market for a compact laser printer, I did my research, chose an HP model and found Amazon was the cheapest. Just as I was about to hit buy, I remembered that Amazon don't seem to pay any UK tax. As someone who does pay quite a lot of tax this annoys me. So I decided I would instead visit the beleaguered high street and buy my printer from Dixons. Turns out there's a reason the high street is struggling.

Why I care who's paying

A while ago I posted this while mulling over a task manager web app called NirvanaHQ. Although I flirted with it for a while, I've decided it isn't for me in its current state. I've just registered for Wunderlist which looks promising, but the same questions rear their head: If it's free, who's paying?

Drupal and Nginx

I'm responsible for this website which is hosted on a Linode vps. Recently we've switched from using Apache to Nginx. In this post, why and what we've found has happened as a result.