Moving to Germany

 My wife and I decided to do something new in our 'mature' years: move to Europe!  We both love Iceland and looked for a home there for a year or so, but couldn't.  Then, after visiting Portugal, and hearing about others' great expat experience there, we thought that might be a cool place to live.  But we eventually settled on Germany - mostly because I'm originally from there and speak the language and because my wife's company has a subsidiary in Heidelberg.  We visited, loved it, and as a sign from above - an apartment within 500ft of her office and only a mile to downtown was for sale.

I am writing this because a lot of the experiences we've had so far might be of interest to others thinking of doing the same.  And I do encourage everyone to live abroad at least once in their lives - it'll not only open your eyes to another culture, but make you a bit more empathetic, I think.  The world is still a friendly place and putting yourself out there in a place where you occasionally need help and understanding, will let you see others' vulnerabilities when they come to a new country.

This initial post will describe our preparations, the move, and initial experiences.  I will do follow-up posts as new experiences accumulate.  Hope you find it helpful.

Preparation

Well, the first decision was obviously the country.  We started looking at Heidelberg because, as mentioned earlier, my wife's company has a subsidiary there that she could transfer to.  So we started looking at the german real estate web site www.immobilienscout24.de  which seems to be the most widely used one in that country.  The first thing we noticed is the prices - Heidelberg real estate is expensive!  And we didn't really see anything we liked for a couple months.  Eventually, there was one apartment that seemed ideal - very close to my wife's company office and right along the Neckar river and within a mile of old town (the tourist area where all the good restaurants are).  But it was out of our price range.  In May 2025, we happened to be in Switzerland for vacation when one evening I scanned immoscout again and saw that the seller had decreased the price by over 10%, so we cut our vacation a few days short and hopped on a train to Heidelberg to check it out!  And we ended up making an offer that was accepted.  Yeah!  The purchasing process is going to be another post - very different from the US - but what is important, in terms of preparation is that you need a residence in your new country1

And, of course, in order to stay more than 90 days (US citizens can stay 90 days visa-free) you need some sort of residence visa.  I have German (and US) citizenship, so my wife (American) had two options: a "relative-of-German" (me) or a work visa.  Since the road to permanent residency is quicker via a work visa (27 months vs. 36 months) and she had the above-mentioned subsidiary she could transfer to, that's the route she went.  We started this process before we moved to Germany, but didn't complete it until after we moved in and registered as residents in the local town.  You need to show you have a residence before you can get a work visa.  Speaking of work visas, there are several types - the most advantageous, if you qualify, is the "Blue Card" - that'll give you the most flexibility of movement within the EU once you live in Germany.

Packing and Shipping.  We found shipping to be incredibly expensive.  I mean, really expensive - to move all our furniture, clothes, etc. would have probably cost more than $20k!  We decided it would probably be cheaper to just ship essentials and buy everything else.  But even shipping those essentially (we used a service called https://upakweship.com/that works what it says: they give you a big cardboard box on a crate, you fill it, and then either you take it to their terminal (for the big box we chose) or they pick it up.  A relatively small L 83″ x W 44″ X H 78″ box cost us $3500 (plus $200 for the rental truck to take it to their terminal).  I just went to their web site and the cost is now almost $3900!

We still have our place in the US.  So now whenever we visit, we bring empty suitcases there and filled ones  back to Germany.  Much more cost effective, if you don't need to ship everything at once!

In our digital life nothing is more important than our smartphones.  And the one thing you can't do when moving overseas is port your number.  I don't recommend you go "cold turkey" and simply get a new phone number and plan in the new country as you will end  up missing a lot of important texts and phone calls meant for your US identity.  Instead, I recommend keeping  your existing plan and simply add an (e)-SIM to your device for a new local plan.  Plans here in Germany are much cheaper than the US.  I simply added an eSIM from the German O2 provider ($20/mo) to my iPhone and use that as my primary voice and data line while in Germany and switch to my T-Mobile provider whenever I'm in the US.  Once we're completely settled here and all affairs in the US have completed, I'm thinking of "parking" my US phone number with Google Voice and have it set to forward all the texts/voice-mails to my email.  That is the only 'free' solution I could think of so far.

Health insurance.  to reside in Germany (all of EU?) you have to be insured.  In Germany, you have a choice between private and public insurance.  90% of the population has public insurance.  Picking the right one is a pretty important decision, so don't make it lightly.  Things to think about: if you pick "private", you can never switch to public again.  So why would someone ever want to pick 'private"?  Because if you're reasonably young, private insurance will probably be cheaper than public as premiums are based on your health and age, whereas the public insurance is based entirely on your income - around 16% of your income!  So if your income is 50,000 Euro, your yearly insurance cost in public will be 8,000 Euros.  If you have an employer, that cost is split between you and your employer.  And the premium is capped at around 70,000 Euro income level.  But when you're old and unhealthy and are on a fixed income, you don't have to worry about your premiums sky-rocketing.  As they will with private insurance.

Lastly, I want to talk about money and banking.  Before you move to Europe - or as soon after as possible - you need a bank account.  Because you will need to start and pay utilities, grab money from an ATM, etc. and they all require a German, or at least, an EU-based bank account.  On top of that, you'll want to convert money from USD to EU.  And for all of these things, there's no better friend than wise.com - a global currency conversion AND bank account service.  With Wise, you start off with a USD based account (that's based in the US) and you can add other currency accounts.  If you add one for the Euro, you now have an EU bank account too!  Conversion between currencies is MUCH cheaper than you could get from traditional banks too.  With your EU Wise account you also get a Visa Debit card that you should use instead of your American credit card, since your US card operates in USD and every purchase you make in Europe will undergo conversion which is, for many credit cards, a profit center for the CC company.  With the Wise debit, since its balance is in Euro, there's no conversion fee.  But MOST IMPORTANTLY, your Wise EU account comes with an all important IBAN - the number you will let your EU employer deposit your paycheck under, with which you will pay your utility bills, your HOA fees, and even your property taxes.  IBAN-based payments and auto-deductions are the norm in Germany.  You can't live without one.

If you're moving to Germany in particular, I suggest getting one additional bank account - but with a real German bank, where your IBAN starts with "DE" (Wise Bank, being based out of Belgium begins with "BE") because there are some old-fashioned services in Germany - e.g. Deutsche Bahn - that restrict payments to/from "DE"utschland based banks.

Initial Experiences

I only ever lived in Germany as a child.  It's amazing how different adult life is here from the U.S.  From buying real estate to banking to paying for utilities.  From healthcare to transportation - all handled differently from what I'm used to in the U.S.

Aside from the banking and payment related differences, the first "new" thing (aside from real estate purchases, which I'll talk about in another post) is the "resident registration": after you move to an address in Germany, you have 14 days to register your residency with your local town's "Einwohneramt" (resident registration office).  This is critically important as you will need the proof of residence you get there to get your residence visa,  a job, and to tax id.

Life is more communal than in the US.  We've now been here for over 6 months and haven't really missed not having a car.  We use public transit for almost all our needs.  Filling the tiny fridges here in Europe doesn't require a car - a backpack full of groceries already does the job.  If I don't want to wait for a bus, I take my e-bike or e-scooter - or I simply walk.  We both have a "Deutschland Ticket", which lets us ride any local transport (i.e. bus, subway, tram, and local and regional railroads) in Germany for $65/mo.   We only needed a car once or twice - so we rented one.  So much cheaper - and healthier! - than owning and maintaining a car!

Speaking of cars: we need to get our German drivers license soon.  Once you become a resident, you're supposed to convert your US license within 6 months or risk having to take the driver test again (for NC drivers license, by reciprocal agreement you only need to take the theoretical test as well as a first-aid course to convert to the German drivers license).  You might want to check your state - maybe you get lucky (e.g. if you live in VA) and don't even need to take the theoretical!

Well, this is where I will leave it for now.  More experiences in the next post.

Apple HomePod - First Impressions

When Apple introduced its HomePod, I was not impressed.  I thought Apple had a flop on its hand because I did not think anyone would part with $350 for a smart speaker with great sound when Amazon & Google smart speakers - with "good enough" sound can be had for less than a quarter of that price.  I certainly wouldn't.

But I caved.  While purchasing some Apple stuff to give as gifts for an upcoming China trip, I began thinking:

     "...the speakers on our TV are crap and we could really need a sound bar - and the HomePod could serve as that when watching stuff through our Apple TV streamer!"

and:

     "... it sure is a pain to have to find my phone or iPod to invoke some home automation function!  The HomePod is supposed to have great microphones that can pick up your commands from anywhere!"

and, finally:

     "...in order for you to invoke home automation when away from the house, you need to designate a device a 'hub' and it needs to be always on.  The iPad that had been fulfilling that duty had already run out of juice a couple times, keeping me from turning on the lights before I got home!  HomePod can be a 'hub'!"

Well, you get the idea.  Before I knew it, there was a HomePod in the bag along with the other stuff we actually came to the Apple Store for.

So how do I like it?

Well, I do love it and don't regret my purchase: the sound that comes out of this little (very elegant) cylinder is simply amazing; it's also freaky how quietly you can give a Siri command even while music is blasting away and HomePod still 'hears' you; equally disquieting is that the speakers are so good/sensitive, it often hears/responds-to me while I'm in another room trying to ask my iPhone's Siri a question (and there's also some team work going on here - no matter what, when I do 'Hey Siri' and both my phone and HomePod hear it, only the HomePod answers.)  Integration with my limited home automation (a couple lights and a door lock) is fantastic and so is Siri's accuracy in understanding my commands.

There are some niggles: there are still a couple bugs with AirPlay (when using it as a soundbar, my Apple TV needs to send the sound to the HomePod via AirPlay - it works well at first.  But if I pause the movie I'm watching, once I begin playing again, the HomePod no longer outputs the sound :-(  Also, if I am to enjoy the HomePod as a sound bar, I really need a second one to get stereo sound.  While sound coming out of it is much better than the TV speakers, having everything emirate from the right of the TV isn't a great experience.  But another HomePod is another $350!  And, besides, for this to work requires AirPlay 2, which isn't ready yet.  The HomePod updates by itself, so it's just a matter of waiting.

While Siri is very accurate at understanding my requests, its ability to answer them is more limited than it ought to be.  This is well documented: Apple, which used to be the clear leader in voice assistants, has fallen behind Alexa and Google Assistant.  Don't get me wrong: Siri is getting better with every release of iOS - just not as quickly as the competition.  Apple seems to have realized this (rather belatedly if you ask me) and recently gone on a hiring spree for AI talent.  Hopefully something will come of it.  Siri could be much more useful than she currently is on HomePod.

So I love it.  But it's the first Apple device I've owned for which I paid more money than I thought its functionality warranted.  Unlike my iPhone, AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad, Apple TV, and laptop, the HomePod is a luxury rather than a necessity.  I would not (yet) miss it, if it disappeared tomorrow.   But I'm confident this will change as the software evolves - and Siri improves.

I don't think HomePod will be a flop.  There simply are too many well-heeled Apple fans out there for whom $350 is an 'impulse purchase' and it is a typical Apple device with its elegant design and quality hardware.  Why not?  But I also don't think it will be anywhere near as big a deal as the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or even AirPods (which I think is the best, most magical Apple product in years - and flying kind of under the radar.)

2018 China Vacation

We’re on our return voyage from the annual 2-week China trip. Unlike previous visits, this time we spend the entire time in Suzhou (where Yiqing’s family lives). I now have 20+ hours to kill, so I decided to write a quick summary of the trip followed by some hopefully interesting factoids.

Most of our stay was spent within walking distance of Lake Taihu, China’s 3rd largest lake (think Great Lakes in size). Our first night we decompressed at a fancy Holiday Inn (much more luxurious here in China than what we’re used to in the US) followed by a week in a “hotel” that was basically just apartments in a high rise being rented out. It was just a few minutes walk to Yiqing’s mom’s apartment.

Then Yiqing’s sister arranged for a couple nights at a nearby resort which was really lovely. Surrounded by bamboo forest, the place had dozens of geothermal outdoor pools, each with different herbs/aromas with different supposed medicinal purposes. Don’t know if those herbs do what the folks think they do, but the baths sure are relaxing :-). The resort also had a driving range - hitting about 500 balls over 2 days, I went from zero skills to pretty good (at least in my mind :-)

The remainder of our vacation was spent at a youth hostel within a few hundred feet of Lake Taihu. Most of the hostel is shared rooms, but we got a private one with its own bath. Very clean - very different from the youth hostels I experienced in Europe in the 70s and 80s. Highly recommended for folks on a budget.

Factoids:

As always, the food here is incredibly varied and delicious. Every time I visit China, I get to eat at least a dozen dishes I’ve never tasted before. This was my 10th trip, but with a 5000+ year old culture, I look forward to many more surprises. I realize am very privileged in this regard: without Yiqing and relatives, I would never have the opportunity (or guts) to try so many different foods.

Infrastructure throughout China is much more modern and vastly better maintained than in the US. Roads are always smooth, all traffic lights have large countdown timers so you can plan to stop or go. Busses are cheap, frequent, and on-time: a 30 minute ride to town on a cushioned bus was 33 cents. A subway ride (the subway was new with new lines being added all the time) across town was 80 cents and a 30 minute Didi (Uber equivalent) ride was $7.
Why is this? The US once prided itself on being the most advanced country on earth: now just about everybody is passing us. My sister from Germany recently visited and commented that infrastructure and some buildings reminded her of Eastern European villages just after the Soviet Union collapsed - dilapidated :-(.
I don’t know the answer but suspect that most Americans don’t realize how third-world their infrastructure (and K-12 education) has become - because our leaders are telling us otherwise and keep telling us that we must spend ever increasing percentages of our taxes on our military instead of on our citizens (how many more aircraft carriers do we need when we already have more than the whole rest of the world combined???). Those TRILLIONS would be much more productively spent on infrastructure that helps us compete globally!

Now back to my trip report :-) Traffic here is terrible - not only are there loads of cars and even more mopeds (90+% of which are electric now - on my first trip in 2005, it was probably the reverse!), but nobody obeys traffic laws. My sister-in-law once stopped in the left lane of a divided, 60mph highway to search for directions on her phone! My heart nearly stopped. When I asked her how she could do that, her matter-of-fact response was that there was nobody behind her when she stopped! :-( Being a German, I would suffer road rage in no time if I had to drive here.

Living expenses: surprisingly, single family homes are much more expensive than equivalent sized homes in the US. (but more solidly built from concrete). E.g. a house that might go for $800k in the US costs around $2 million in Suzhou (Shanghai would be way more expensive still). Condo apartments I’m guessing are similar to US prices. On the flip side, there are no property taxes (yet) in China.
Food used to be much cheaper here than in the US, but is now just a little less. Clothing can be much cheaper, but if you want name brands you’d recognize as a Westerner, you’ll pay about the same or slightly more.
Electronics are much cheaper unless, again, you want name brands. E.g. Apple products are ~20% more expensive here than in the US. Electric mopeds, scooters, bikes are less than half what they’d cost in the US. We’ll try and buy an electric bicycle and have it shipped here and use it for our commute to work. We didn’t dare try to buy one and hope to get it on the plane - big lithium batteries are frowned on by the airlines :-(
Internet: while speed is good everywhere, as a Westerner you’ll go crazy with all the blocked sites. No google for crying out loud! And the Western search engines that are allowed - I used bing/yahoo - are heavily censored - ie many links simply don’t connect or lead to an unauthorized warning. I use an RSS reader called Feedly. Tapping on any news headline coming from NYT or Bloomberg or Reuters are blocked; BBC seems to be blocked sometimes, while The Guardian, CNN, USA Today always worked for me - at least when I clicked on stories not involving “China”. As a news junky, needless to say I’m suffering withdrawal symptoms by now. There’s lots of free wifi around here - but most require you to provide a token sent to you via SMS before you can use it. In the past, we typically didn’t have cellular while in China and were, thus, out of luck. This time we borrowed a relative’s phone and it helped on several occasions. In any event, if you don’t read Chinese, none of this matters - you won’t know what buttons to press to get to the free wifi - but I have the wife to depend on :-)
Speaking of phones: they’re used for *everything* here! I didn’t see anyone even use a credit card, much less cash. Everything seems to be done via direct debit using the phone and QR codes. Through WeChat (China’s FB+Paypal+CraigsList+...), I think. People actually looked at us as if we were dinosaurs when we tried to use cash!

Apple's AR Strategy

Back in 2015 I wrote a post titled Apple's Next Big Thing.  In it, I mused about Apple's strategy with wearables and, while doing so, predicted the introduction of AirPods.  While they not yet have all the features I forecast - foremost among them the current lack of an 'always on' capability - I think the general ideas expressed in the article are still valid: that Apple is adding and integrating ever more wearables to its product line in order to seamlessly blend the virtual world with the real one.  In some not-too-distant future, the iPhone will rarely leave your pocket - yet manage all your computing needs.

Once one realizes this, Apple's "next big thing" becomes quite obvious: AR glasses.  Apple already laid the groundwork by its introduction of ARKit.  This software - which already has thousands of developers creating new experiences for hundreds of millions of iPhones running iOS 11 - is paving the way for the day the glasses arrive.  Thousands of AR apps will be ready to project their content onto the glasses rather than your iPhone's screen.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict AR glasses.  After all, Google already developed a pair a couple years ago, Snapchat tried its (limited) hand at it.   But as with all other portable electronic gadgets, it will be Apple to do it right.  So what is "right"?  To answer that, we again look back at Google Glass - what were its shortcomings?  Well, there was the now infamous recording feature that caused its wearers to eventually receive the label of 'glassholes'.  So Apple's version will avoid recording video - at least until AR glasses have become ubiquitous.  Google Glass also had notoriously short battery life.  Why?  Because Google tried to do too much "on-board".  Instead of being a companion device, Google tried to stuff a complete computer - i.e. CPU, memory, video controller, storage, networking, etc. - into the temples of the glass frame.  Since glasses have to remain light in order to be worn comfortably, the amount of battery capacity they could stuff into the glasses was too limited.  Therefore, I predict that Apple's AR glasses will have just enough electronics to let it receive instructions on what pixels to project onto the glasses and to send onboard sensor/camera data back to an iPhone.  It might even use its existing AirPlay tech for the display aspects.

The Politics of Fear

We are a nation with enough guns in circulation to arm every man, woman, and child.  Yet we are fearful of a handful of terrorists on the other side of the earth.  We are so fearful, we let our leaders trample on our privacy in the name of keeping us safe.  14 deaths by terrorists cause us to contemplate closing our borders and hearts to refuges fleeing for their lives.  A handful of deaths by terrorists scare us so much, yet the deaths of thousands every year by guns and other "American" violence leave us unmoved.

It is a strange and sad thing to behold in a country founded by immigrants whose battle cry seemed to always be "give me liberty or give me death."  Has "give me liberty" been reduced to "let me own guns"?  The right to bear arms was meant to help us defend all those other liberties & freedoms we cherish.  Such as the right to privacy.  Freedom of speech.

And politicians - some running for government, many already in government - use this fear to their advantage.  Mr. Trump is a veritable virtuoso at it.  Don't let them.  Terrorism is no different than all the other aberant deeds we witness every day.  We deal with it - we don't hand over our liberties to politicans promising illusory safety.

Apple's Next "Big" Thing?

Apple has recently stepped into the wearables arena with the introduction of the Apple Watch.  While the success of the watch is still unclear, its capabilities give us a hint about Apple's thinking in this arena:

The Apple Watch is a "companion" product.  Although it can operate independently, it only reaches its full potential when within bluetooth/wifi range of its master, the iPhone.  With the watch, Apple is selling convenience and the watch is only the beginning.  What could be Apple's next foray into the wearables market?

Bluetooth in-ear headphone(s).  It makes perfect sense.

Siri, iPhone's voice assistant has come a long way since it was introduced on the iPhone 4s.  Over time, Apple has not only improved its voice recognition dramatically, it has also broadened the ways in which you interact with her.  You can hold down the Home button on your iPhone or the crown on the Apple Watch to talk to her; if you plug in your iPhone into a power source - or if you hold your Apple Watch up to your face -  you can get her attention by simply saying "Hey Siri", followed by your spoken question or command.  Heck, thanks to a new low-power chip in the iPhone 6s, you don't even need to plug in your iPhone to chat with her.  But the form of Siri's answers aren't always convenient.

When you ask Siri a question on an Apple Watch, she's a mute.  I guess Apple Watch's designers felt that her speaking the answers - as she does on the iPhone - would be too obtrusive in a setting where you chose to interact through the watch rather than the iPhone.  So Siri, on the Apple Watch, displays its answer on that tiny watch screen.  Which isn't always optimal - e.g. when you're driving.

Using a headset would be the perfect solution.  But why should Apple come out with a new pair, when there are loads of wired and bluetooth headsets on the market already?  Because none of them have the feature Apple just introduced with the iPhone 6s: the aforementioned "always on" listening for "Hey Siri"!

With an unobtrusive headset that always listened for "hey siri", life would be so convenient!  No raising of a watch to your face a la Dick Tracy; no more fishing your phone out of your pocket to look something up!  With the headset always in your ear, you simply ask what you want, preceded by a quiet "Hey Siri" and Siri whispers you the answer.

There are so many things that could be facilitated by such a device.  I can imagine, for example, a situation in which I need to interact with my Chinese in-laws.  I could simply put my iPhone or my arm with Apple Watch on the table and whisper to Siri "Hey Siri, begin translating."  When I subsequently say something, the Chinese translation pops out of the iPhone or Apple Watch, for my in-laws to hear.  When they respond, the watch or iPhone pick it up and Siri whispers the translation into my ears!  This is getting pretty darn close to Star Trek's universal translator, isn't it?  The technology is all here!

And there are some promising signs that Apple is, indeed, thinking in that direction.  A year ago, Apple bought Beats Audio.  Granted, this was likely about acquiring that company's music talent and streaming service, but Apple likely also picked up some serious audio expertise in the transaction.   Then there was yesterday's news that apparently a shell company (i.e. a company that doesn't really produce anything and whose ownership is hidden) copyrighted the name "Airpods" in several countries.  The law firms handling this company's business just happen to be the same ones Apple has previously used when using shell companies to hide its tracks.  Hm....

Hey Apple, if you hear this: will you give me a pair of Airpods, if my predictions prove to be right?

E-Trade Bill Pay - A Study in Bad User Interface Design

I love E-Trade.  I’ve been a customer since the late 90’s.  Heck, I was a customer of E-Trade’s predecessor/progenitor: K. Aufhauser.  Why do I like it so much?  Because I’ve always found E-Trade’s web site to be head and shoulders above the rest.  Everything in its user interface (UI) was arranged in a clear-cut manner and there was a consistent “theme” and usage pattern to every page across the site.

Alas, recently the management at E-Trade must have decided that their site wasn’t good enough and they began “improving” it.  A few months ago, E-Trade programmers modified the online bill-pay feature - a feature that was already perfect, as far as I was concerned!  The original page had two “columns”: a wide one on the left, which simply listed all of ones registered payees  with a text field in which to enter the amount to be paid and a calendar widget through which to specify a date of payment, and a fairly narrow one on the right, which showed a historical record of scheduled and previously made payments.  Very simple.  Very elegant.  In my particular browser window, I could see/edit 20+ payees and see a record of 20+ payments.  Whatever I didn’t see, was just a single scroll away.  I wish I had a screen shot of the original user interface.  But since E-Trade’s first modification came without notice, I didn’t have a chance to get one for comparison.

This first modification was not as usable as the old one, as far as I was concerned as things had begun to “spread out” - apparently the UI designers felt that white space was more important than information.  But, alas, I don’t have a screen shot of that either - since that particular experiment didn’t last too long.  It was quickly replaced with the even uglier, even less usable user interface that presents itself today.  Since I’m just about fed up (especially since E-Trade is not threatening with an overhaul of the entire system - based on what I’ve seen in the Bill Pay area, I shutter to think what awaits me now), I decided to take screen shots this time and elaborate on what I feel are its most annoying shortcomings.

As an aside, I should mention that I have 25+ years of software development experience - much of which in UI design - so I may be a little more critical than the average user.  But my comments are solely based on my use of the system - which has suffered greatly from the changes that were made.

Let’s start off with a screen shot of the screen that precedes the “Bill Pay” page:

Note the look of the tabs for both E-Trade’s overall tab group and the “Account Details” tab group (I put a red “1.” next to both): the outline and internal shading of the tabs is identical and the fonts are the same (the lower tab uses a slightly smaller font size).  There is a consistency of theme there.  Also note the size of the font used in the table that shows transactions and the row height for each transaction.  The original Bill Pay’s “Payee” table where you entered payments used to have row heights that were similar.

Now, let’s go to the “Bill Pay” page:

Quite a jarring change, wouldn’t you agree?  The tabs for the “Bill Pay” tab group (red “1.???”) look like they were drawn by a 10-year old and their shading (none) is completely different from the E-Trade tab group shown just above (red “1.”)!  Even the fonts are different (and larger, wasting space). In other words, the page’s theme isn’t consistent.  And the tabs are just plain ugly.  But that’s a trivial shortcoming compared to the others.

The row height (see “2.” on image above) for each payee is humongous.  As mentioned before, I used to be able to see - WITHOUT SCROLLING - about 20 payees in the old Bill Pay.  Now I see seven!  Why is that important?  Because most of us try to pay our bills once a month.  It is, therefore, nice to be able to simply click on the “Amount” field for each payee (and maybe specify a later date) and then hit “Submit”.  In the old Bill Pay, I could do all this without ever scrolling.  Now, I can’t avoid scrolling to pay everyone, scrolling to re-check the amounts I entered, and then scrolling some more to get to the “Submit” button.

So why is each payee row so tall?  Well, the only answers I could come up with are (a) a love for white space and (b) to accomodate the drop-down menu that lets one specify the money source (account) for each payment.  I won’t discuss (a), but (b) merits further inspection:

Let’s first review how we got to this “Bill Pay” page in the first place.  E-Trade, on its main page (“Account Overview”) lets one pick an account to work with.  That leads to the “Account Details” page shown in the first image above.  From there one clicks the “Bill Pay” tab to get to the second image.  So by virtue of how one got to “Bill Pay”, one has already decided which account to pay with!  So, why is there a need to have an “Account” combo box for each payee when most folks just want to pay their bills from the account they’re in?!

Why did E-Trade lower usability for the most common use case in order to satisfy a really infrequent one???  Poor thinking.

A much better design (which E-Trade actually uses in the “Account Details” image 1): simply put a single Account drop down at the top of the “Bill Payee” page, instead of one for every payee row!  For the common use case, users get to see/pay more of their payees without scrolling and for those who need to pay some folks with one account and others with another, they would simply hit “Submit” more often (once for every account from which payments need to be made).

Other than the oversized rows, the new design simply wastes a lot of screen real estate that should be used to show information (see labels “3.” in image above).  The most glaring example of this is in the tab group on the right.  The most useful one in that group is the “Activity” tab (don’t ask me why E-Trade designers didn’t make that the first tab, given that it’s the one most people need to look at most frequently!  Or why they do some inane auto rotation that, if you leave the tab group alone, auto-rotates focus through all the tabs - very annoying and zero value!)  Anyway the “Activity” tab shows historical payment activity as well scheduled payments.  It’s basically a table with three columns: “Send on”, “Paid to” and “Amount/Status”.  If the developer of this screen had done his job, this table would stretch with the available browser space, instead of fixing it at some arbitrary width (see all the white space in the image, for christ sake!) that requires the column content to spill over a single line - again reducing the number of rows that can be shown without scrolling, and making the whole thing just less readable.  But the waste of space doesn’t stop there.  Why, in gods name, is this tab group not the same height as the payee panel to its left - i.e. why doesn’t it make use of the web page, like the payee panel???   Now, in addition to only seeing SIX activities (due to row height), I need to scroll the “Activity” tab independently of the web page (see labels “4.” in image)!

(the fact that in Mac OS X you don’t see scroll bars until you hover over them doesn’t help the situation).

Just poor, poor design.

iWatch - What is Possible?

Analysts and Apple fans have recently become enamored with the idea of an iWatch.  Bruce Tognazzini, a respected ex-Apple employee has an excellent blog post in which he describes all sorts of smart uses/features for such a watch.  As anticipation for such a device is building, so are the expectations for its features.  Some have come to see it as essentially an iPhone with a small screen.  I think those folks will be disappointed.  Think about it: we're talking about a device that needs to be thinner than an iPhone and, at most, 4 square inches in size.  There is no room for much of a battery!  Add to that the fact that, historically, people don't expect to have to recharge their watches every day, and you begin to see how impossible a "mini-iPhone" iWatch is.

So the features of an iWatch must revolve around power: how to minimize consumption and/or how to provide more of it without taking the watch off.

What can be done to keep power consumption to a minimum?  The two largest power hogs in a mobile device are its screen and the various radios driving communications (wifi, cellular, bluetooth).  Screen power consumption can be minimized by using a technology used in e-Readers (and in the recent "Pebble" smart watch): e-Ink.  With e-Ink, power is only needed when the screen needs to change.  But the technology, by its nature, has two drawbacks: slow refresh rates (making video impossible) and lack of color.  If Apple deems color and video playback indispensable, its option is OLED.  Reducing power on the various radios is easy: simply limit communication to one low-power channel.  I believe that is Bluetooth 4.0.  Of course, if the iWatch doesn't have wifi built in, it will not be a "connected" standalone device.  Apple's choice.

So, if the iWatch uses an e-Ink display and Bluetooth 4.0 for communication with an iPhone, what could such a device do?  Well, it could tell time! :-)  Also, like the Pebble, it could act as a remote display for all the phone's notifications.  For notifications requiring action, the watch's microphone could be used to tell Siri (located on the phone) what to do.  Similarly, the iWatch could display (or speak) results of any spoken Siri query.  The built-in speakers and microphone could also be used to make or answer phone calls (like today's Bluetooth headsets).  The bottom of the iWatch and/or the watchband could contain sensors that keep track of basic biometric info (e.g. pulse rate) - perhaps something similar to what Nike's Fuelband does - and send it to the phone occasionally (where an app can let you analyze the data over time).  Finally, an e-ink based iWatch could display OCR codes from Passbook.  When at a "favorite" store, the iWatch would automatically display the store's pass.  No need to fish for the phone or wallet!  Some analysts/users propose that the iWatch should have an NFC chip for payments.  I think this might be a future addition to the watch - there aren't enough (any?) NFC-based cash registers out there to warrant the additional complexity (and power drain) in the watch.  How long between charges?  Well, we have a couple examples that give us a clue: the Pebble smart watch lasts 7 days.  The Nike Fuelband is said to last 4 days.  So Apple, with its engineering prowess and deep R&D pockets, should be able to produce a watch that lasts at least as long as the Pebble.

If Apple wants to endow its watch with a color display and the ability to carry on FaceTime video conversations or watch Youtube videos, e-Ink is out of the question - an OLED display becomes necessary (it uses less power than LCD and can be put on a flexible substrate to allow for a curved display).  If the watch has a built-in accelerometer, intelligent power management software could turn off the display whenever its wearers' arm is hanging by his/her side and gets activated only by the touch of a finger or by an incoming notification.  Perhaps, this way, the iWatch could still last 5-7 days between charges.

But no matter how hard Apple tries, an iWatch will have to be charged on at least a weekly basis.  What can Apple do to make this as painless as possible?  Some manufacturers have begun offering wireless charging pads (and Apple owns a patent on doing this over the distance of up to 1 meter) that might be useful here.  If one didn't have to plug in yet another device and, instead, simply placed the watch, along with ones iPhone, on such a pad for charging at night, people might not mind!  Heck, if they can pull off that feat, maybe an iWatch only really needs to last as long as the partner iPhone!

Let's Save The E-Reader!

Dear Mr. Bezos,

I recently saw statistics which suggest that the e-reader has had its hey day in 2011 - apparently sales for 2012 are down for the first time in the technology's history!  That saddens me.  I'm an avid reader and a great fan of the Kindle line of e-readers (we have two in our household and I gifted a couple more to relatives).  But I understand why sales are down: the tablet is eating the e-readers' lunch!  People apparently prefer these multi-purpose devices over the single-purpose e-readers.

But that should come as no surprise to anyone - history is full of examples where multi-use devices eliminated superior single-purpose competitors.  Most famously, the cell phone: a multi-purpose device that doesn't do all that great a job making phone calls.  Yet it has largely supplanted land-line phones.  It doesn't take great pictures, yet it has largely eliminated the point-and-shoot camera!  It does a so-so job browsing the internet, yet more and more web surfing is done via mobiles rather than desktops.  The situation is identical for e-readers versus tablets: tablets are inferior text-reading devices - I don't think anyone who has used an e-reader would prefer an LCD-based tablet for any lengthy reading - but people are willing to put up with a mediocre reading experience, because they can also use the same tablet to surf the web and enjoy rich media (e.g. audio and video).  Last, but not least, they can use tablets to run useful general-purpose apps (e-mail, facebook, Words-with-Friends, etc.)  People don't want to fill their lives with single-purpose devices!  So the e-reader is headed for the museum, right?

Not so fast!  Why, exactly, is the e-reader a single-purpose device?  I understand that e-ink technology prevents it from being a video player, but why can't it be a good web browser?  Why can't it be a great audio player?  Why can't it host useful apps?  There is no technical reason!

I have a 3rd-generation Kindle (the one that still has a keyboard).  Sure, it has a rudimentary web browser, but because it lacks a touch screen and because the CPU is too weak to render pages in a reasonable period of time, surfing the web is neigh impossible.  Newer generation Kindles have added touch screens, but have not addressed the slowness issue - so surfing the web on a Kindle is still much more painful than on any tablet.  But this should be a simple issue to address: simply improve the software and use a quicker CPU (even if that is at a slight cost to battery longevity).  It's not rocket science!   Making the Kindle an excellent audio player should be even less of a problem.  It already plays music quite well - the Kindle's user interface is simply too horrible to operate the audio player in a convenient way, so most people don't bother - or even know it exists!  So get some decent UI developers (which are also sorely needed in other areas of the Kindle's operation) to make the audio player easier to access/use!  Finally, there is the need to run apps.  Kindle e-readers are based on Linux and Amazon has had a "Kindle Developer Kit"(KDK) available for a long time, but to-date, only a handful of apps exist.  Why?  It can't be the programming language - the KDK is based on Java, the most widely used programming language in the world.  I suspect developers aren't flocking to the Kindle platform because the API is too limited which, in turn, is probably because the CPU is underpowered and can't handle sophisticated apps.  So the solution is a brawnier CPU and, possibly, a beefier API.  Again, no rocket science involved.

Making these relatively simple changes, would allow folks to use the Kindle a lot more.  Sure, it still won't let them watch YouTube videos or Netflix content, but they'd be able to peruse the mountains of static content on the Web, to visit social sites such as Facebook & Google+, and to read e-mail.  They could listen to their music while they do these things.  E-readers could, for most users, be the tablet-of-choice, since they would be easier on the eyes while reading and surfing the web, yet still allow for decent audio and app experiences.  Users who want to watch video or enjoy color on the go could still do so with their cellphones.  Tablets could be headed for the museum! :-)

I'm an avid reader and a news/web junkie.  Because the Kindle is not usable in the latter contexts, I've gotten used to using my iPhone and, when my wife isn't looking, the family iPad - the Kindle is collecting dust most of the time.  But my eyes are killing me!  I'd much rather surf the web using e-ink! If future Kindles had the capabilities I outlined, I would immediately buy e-readers for the whole family!

In summary, please build a Kindle with the following specs:

• E-ink, touch-sensitive display in a variety of sizes: 6" is fine for books, for newspapers and magazines with their natural multi-column layouts, a bigger screen would be very nice.
• Hard buttons for power, page forward/backward (I have no idea why such a useful feature for reading was removed in the latest Kindles - it allows for one-handed reading!), volume, and maybe wifi (to preserve power more easily)
• A CPU and software fast enough to support fast web surfing and sophisticated 3rd-party apps
• An intuitive user interface for reading, surfing the web, playing apps, and listening to audio

Best regards,

A reader and web surfer with tired eyes

Apple TV - My Predictions

For almost a year now, rumors of an impending Apple TV have been hitting the various news & technology sites.  More recently it's even factored into many financial analysts' views on the future of Apple stock.  But in all this time, I've not seen a detailed description of what such a TV might be able to do that is different from today's existing hardware.  Many people think that it's main feature (aside from Apple's vaunted ease-of-use) will be the ability to subscribe to individual cable channels - a feature that will depend entirely on Apple being able to strike a deal with the cable companies.  So I thought to myself: hey, you're into technology and are using most of Apple's existing gadgets and various existing media/streaming sites - why not use that knowledge to describe what you think an Apple TV might look like.  So here I go :-)

First, the obvious: physical design & price.  I think Apple will continue its existing design language and make the TV look like a larger iMac or Cinema Display.  The new iMacs are razor thin at the edges and clad in aluminum like all Apple devices are these days.  I expect a minimum or non-existent bezel around the screen - i.e. the front will be all black with the back enclosure aluminum.  The stand will likely also be an aluminum contraption similar to the Cinema Displays.  There will probably be two or three sizes (42", 55", and maybe something even larger, to accommodate its more affluent customers who have gargantuan rooms).  Price-wise, I expect the 55" version to be around $2500-$3500 (based on the fact that the top-of-the-line Samsung LED TVs cost that much).

Next, the user interface.  Apple already has an "Apple TV" product that might give a hint as to how one might interact with the actual TV: basically a grid of icons that get you to the content you want.  Since the remote on the existing Apple TV product, while sexy, is somewhat lacking in basic usability (if you ever tried to enter a search keyword using its onscreen alphabetic keyboard, you'll understand what I mean), the TV will come with an iPodTouch-like remote control that duplicates what you see on the TV.   Essentially "mirroring" (a feature that newer Apple devices already support) in reverse.  There will be an app for existing iDevices that can do the same thing - so any existing iPod, iPhone, or iPad can become an additional remote control for the TV!

What about content?  Well, some of the content will be exactly what you already get with the existing Apple TV box: access to iTunes content, Netflix, Pandora, etc.  But, no doubt, there will also be real-time TV channels to choose from.  How these channels get into the Apple TV is an interesting bit to conjecture on.  It could be that there will be the traditional coax connector in the back of the TV and either software or a hardware "module" from your local Cable provider that will emulate the cable box (sort of like the failed CableCARD standard of yesteryear).  But I don't see Apple allowing something as retro as a coax cable to come into its beautiful devices - Apple is renowned for simplifying the cabling to its devices - why would they want to propagate such an antiquated connection?   I think Apple will do all the work in its data centers and simply stream the content to your TV.  The channels you "see" will depend on what deals Apple can strike with which content providers and what you subscribe to.  So if Apple strikes a deal only with Comcast and your current cable company is Cablevision, the programming you'd see on your Apple TV will be Comcast's rather than Cablevision's (so you'd use Cablevision only for your Internet).  If Apple strikes a deal with both cable companies, you might even get a choice on which cable company gets to bill you!  Although, either way, you'd simply be paying through your iTunes account :-)  Finally, depending on what deals Apple can strike with these cable companies, you'd either continue to have to buy "packages" of channels or you might get to pick individual channels.  I hope it's the latter - I only really watch a couple channels - why am I subsidizing all the other crap that's in my "package"?
The channel guide will be on a "time line", initially centered around the current time.  But you can slide backwards in time and access TV programs that have already happened (i.e. no more DVR needed).  Maybe those shows will even have advertising automatically (or, more likely, for a price) stripped.

What am I missing?  Oh yeah, since it's an iOS device, it'll have all the existing benefits of being part of the Apple ecosystem: any Apple device can stream content to the TV (AirPlay, Mirroring).  Apple might also figure out a way for multiple iOS devices to share the same Apple TV - thus allowing for multiple player games on the same big screen!

Well, that about does it.  What do you think?

iPhone 5 - Owners Impressions After Android

I got an iPhone 5 two weeks ago and thought I'd share my impression after being an Android user for a year.

First some background: I used to be an iPhone owner who, a year ago, was seduced by the impressive hardware specs of the Samsung Galaxy S2 - see my initial, agonizing decision making here and my impressions after one month of ownership here.  My main gripes with the Galaxy S2 were its poor battery life and the poor operating system support by the telecom (it took months for AT&T to make operating system updates available - presumably they need the time so that their crap-ware stays compatible with the new O/S :-(

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I was so fed up with constantly "managing" my battery usage (by turning off wifi, bluetooth, and GPS whenever not needed, lowering screen brightness, exiting apps so they wouldn't try to talk to their backend server, disallowing all sorts of pushed notifications, etc.), I broke my contract to get the new iPhone 5.  What follows are my impressions after two weeks of use:

First the good news: the phone is beautiful.  It's difficult to explain - it simply feels luxurious!  Perhaps it's the feel of the cold metal after the phone has been sitting on my desk for awhile.  Maybe it's the tight fit and finish.  Better still: the phone manages to keep a charge much better than the Galaxy S2 - in the two weeks I've had it, it never once got below 20% by bed time.  And that's with the screen at default brightness and with wifi, bluetooth, GPS always on.  The Galaxy S2 would always get into "battery critically low" before 10pm unless I took the above-mentioned battery conservation measures - despite it having a higher-capacity battery!

Less important but also worth mentioning is how easy it is to operate the iPhone 5 with one hand - something I used to do all the time with my iPhone 3GS, but which I had to abandon when I moved to the Samsung Galaxy S2 with its 4.3" screen and the ill-conceived placement of buttons in many Android applications.  Let me be clear - the iPhone 5 is not as easy to operate one-handed as the 3GS due to its 4" screen (my thumb can no longer easily reach the "back" button in the top left of the screen), but is still much better in this regard than the Samsung Galaxy S2 (I imagine single-handed use is impossible with the newer Galaxy S3 and other 4.8"+ phones).  Similarly, the phone's onscreen keyboard is much better (at least for me) than any of the Android keyboards I've tried.  I can't explain it easily, but I simply don't make nearly as many mistakes on it as I did on the Galaxy S2.

Finally, I want to mention that our cable provider's iPhone/iPad app is much more capable than the Android version.  The OptimumOnline iPhone app lets me remote-control all aspects of the cable box as well as stream channels directly to my device.  The Android version just had a channel guide! (to be fair, supposedly, it could also manage the DVR functionality of cable boxes - but since I didn't have a DVR function on mine, I could not try that).

But the move back to iPhone land wasn't entirely positive.

As was reported prominently, Apple Maps just can't hold a candle to Google Maps.  I often search for business locations in maps.  It seems like 1/4  of the time, Apple Maps doesn't have the answer.  Google Maps always does.  I put a shortcut to the web version of Google Maps on my home page, but obviously that's not a perfect workaround.

Related to Apple Maps, I should mention that I was really disappointed with Siri, Apple's much hyped voice assistant.  I tried, on several occasions to initiate navigation using Siri.  Alas, half the time Siri remained silent.  Initially I thought the problem was network connectivity, but Siri was also often silent when I was at home, using wifi.  Eventually I figured it out: sometimes Siri wasn't actually silent - I just didn't have enough patience waiting for her - if I waited half a minute or more, she would eventually come back with her interpretation of what I said and do her job.  I began to suspect that Apple's servers were just getting overloaded - they seemingly weren't ready for all the traffic!  This was confirmed when on a couple occasions, after I waited several minutes, Siri would come back with the apologetic "Sorry, I can't fulfill your request at the moment." :-(  Although Android doesn't sport a fancy voice assistant, Google voice searches never gave me any trouble and were always answered promptly.  I.e. they were reliable, unlike Siri.

I also miss Android's physical "Back" button.  Aside from being in a good location for my thumb to reach, it also works universally - not just within applications.  The Apple "Back" button is, as mentioned before, on the top-left of the phone and, thus, harder to reach by thumb now with the new 4" screen.

Finally, I wish they iPhone 5 came with a micro SD slot like the Samsung.  The 16GB card I stuffed in into my S2 prior to a recent vacation came in very handy.  Friends traveling with us used an iPhone 4s and had to upload pictures to the Web to free up some space for more pics/videos.

The iPhone 5 is supposed to have a great display - Apple even gave it the "Retina" designator.  But in reality, the screen wasn't really noticeably better than my Galaxy S2.  But since I had to keep the Galaxy's screen on minimum brightness all the time to save energy, the iPhone's display wins :-)

Did I make the right choice?  Definitely.  We have a few other Apple devices in our family and aside from the above-mentioned benefits, my new iPhone integrates much better with these devices (e.g. AirPlay to our Apple TV).

Samsung Galaxy SII and Ice Cream Sandwich

I gave up my iPhone 3GS last year for a Samsung Galaxy SII last year.  I previously described my experiences on my blog and am providing this update because I had high hopes that the new Android release (Ice Cream Sandwich - ICS) would help alleviate my main issue with with the Samsung Galaxy SII: it's horrible battery life.

After waiting months for AT&T and Samsung to make this release of Android available, it finally happened a week ago.  Although the upgrade was not available over-the-air, it was a relatively painless affair to do so via the desktop and Samsung's otherwise horrible Kies desktop software.  Other than losing all my direct-dial shortcuts and app icons from my home screens, everything seemed to have been preserved.  Has it been an improvement over the existing Android release?  I guess so - but not in huge ways.  There are still the duplicate/redundant applications (e.g. mail & gmail; AT&T Navigation & Google Navigation); some apps have different but not perceivably better layouts/menus (e.g. Google maps); many apps still don't use the standard Android "Menu" button (e.g. Words-with-Friends).

Did it improve my phone's horrendous battery life?  Not initially.  But I didn't expect it to happen on its own.  But I knew that ICS sported a new feature: the ability to "disable" some of the built-in apps.  So that's what I did.  Below is a list of the apps I disabled so far (via Settings->Applications->"All"):

• Accuweather Weather Daemon
• Accuweather.com
• AT&T Navigator
• Buddies Now
• City ID
• Exchange Services
• Face Unlock
• Home Screen Tips
• Media Hub
• MusicFX
• News & Weather
• Remote Controls
• Social Hub (two entries??)
• Swype
• Talk
• Yahoo!Finance

Some of these might be apps I installed, but most are built-in processes.  There are many other processes listed under "All", but since there's really no way of knowing which of these services are required for Android to function properly and which are optional, I had to guess.  If you know of more apps that can be deleted, please let me know and I'll add them to this list.

After disabling these apps, I also went to Settings->Accounts and sync and turned off auto-sync (on my phone the list of apps under this heading consisted of only two: Facebook and Google)...I have no idea what this menu actually does - even with it turned off, I still get notifications of mail arriving in my Google mail account - but I don't appear to be betting Facebook notifications.

After these changes, I tested the battery by no longer turning off wifi whenever I wasn't at a wifi location.  Lo and behold, my battery still lasted all day (well, it did go into the red once at 10:30pm, so it obviously still depends on where I move throughout the day)!  So I'm a bit more likely to keep my Galaxy S2 for the term of my contract (I was ready to give up on it already).

I may still eat the AT&T penalty and get the iPhone 5 when it comes out - because iOS is just more intuitive/consistent across all the applications (Apple's toolkits, style- and approval-guidelines are just more strict than Android's, I guess) and, most importantly, Apple, unlike Google, doesn't have to wait for the telecoms to make its system upgrades/improvements available to its phone customers and Apple doesn't allow those same companies to preload the phones with bloatware that can cause the slow-downs/resource drain my Galaxy obviously suffered from.  I will decide once I know how much better the iPhone 5 hardware is from the iPhone 4s.

Facebook - Heil to our new Data Overloard

As the Facebook train rumbles towards its potentially record-breaking IPO, I decided to play 'the boy who cried wolf' (all puns intended) and point out the danger that Facebook presents to the World Wide Web.

First, a little background.  Since the dawn of civilization, people have known that information is power.  Thus, throughout history, the folks in power have tried to limit dissemination of information in order to maintain or enhance their positions of importance.  Then, in the early 90's, a little thing called the World Wide Web came into existence and, with it, the possibility of ubiquitous access to the world's information.  As more and more data came online, companies that helped us find it flourished - the most successful of which, of course, being Google.  Google crawled the WWW, indexed all the information it was allowed to access using massive server farms so that when we entered our queries, it would instantaneously be able to point us to the web pages containing the desired information.  As the underlined statement suggests, there have always been "dark pools" of information - stuff which companies kept hidden behind firewalls or in proprietary databases.  But, by and large, the WWW was beginning to deliver on its promise of delivering data to everyone.

That is until the various "social network" companies came into being, chief among them Facebook.  These companies are accessed through the World Wide Web, but they represent the antithesis of the idea behind the Web.  The information in Facebook is not accessible to everyone.  Search engines cannot access it - unless you're logged into Facebook, you can't search for the pithy post a friend put up last week regarding your boss; you can't find that awesome picture you uploaded only a month ago for everyone to see.  Facebook is creating a gigantic "dark pool" of information.  It's balkanizing the Web.  On purpose.

Facebook and its ilk ask us to accept a devil's bargain: in return for letting us easily "share" our information with our friends, it asks us to give up sharing it with the rest of the world.  The reader's response might be: "What's the big deal? After all, everyone can get an account on Facebook."  That's certainly true.  But even a Facebook user doesn't have access to all user posted information - you have to be "friends" with someone to share information with them.  With 800million users, I'm reasonably certain that there's lots of interesting information on Facebook that I might find interesting/useful, but which I will never see - simply because the author wasn't a friend.  And, in most cases, the author - had he cared to think about it - probably wouldn't even have minded if it were shared with the world.

Is that what we really want?  To be beholden to Facebook for all the precious information you upload to it?  Are the alternatives to Facebook any better?  To be honest, I don't know.  Google recently started their own social site, Google+.  It has a nice user interface.  But not many of my friends & relatives have gone on it - pretty much for the reasons Facebook had hoped all along: they've already made a heavy investment in Facebook by uploading content there and all their friends are on Facebook doing the same thing.  But suppose Google+ could overcome this problem (they're trying really hard by integrating Google+ with their other services) - wouldn't they just become our new Data Overlord?  I suppose it depends on their policy toward the data you upload there. Google is already integrating Google+ information in its searches.  Will it allow other companies to search for the same data?  I have a feeling they would!  Not because I'm a big Google fan, but because they're asking other social network companies to let them search their databases - it would make sense for them to do the same thing.

But I have no doubt that Facebook would never share its data with Google.  It needs to keep this data to itself so it can maximize its ability to monetize on it.  After all, if the data were accessible to Google and other search engines, advertisers might send their dollars to them rather than to Facebook!

The Android Experience from an ex-iPhone User

I recently blogged about the Samsung Galaxy SII vs. the iPhone 4s.  I ended up choosing the Samsung phone and have been using it for almost a month now.  Enough time to share my impressions.

The Good: The Samsung has a great screen - much better than the iPhone 3GS it replaced.  From in-store comparison with the iPhone 4S, I'd judge it better than it too.  Also, the physical dimensions of both the screen and the phone itself are, in my opinion, better than the iPhone.  Another great new (for me at least) feature is the Google Map/Navigation. I can't emphasize enough how convenient it is to be able to enter an address or simply a point of interest via natural voice instead of fumbling with a keyboard.  And Google Maps' ability to understand is pretty amazing - it rarely makes a mistake when I ask for an address.  Siri it is not, but very useful, nonetheless.
At first I didn't like Android's separation between application folder and the home screens.  But now I can see the usefulness of being able to put all the "important" stuff I use every day on the home screens...and everything else in the applications bucket.
Another nice feature is the Notification area.  I use it all the time.  Apple's iOS 5 has Notifications now too, but I have no experience with it there - the Android one is done well.

The Bad: The user interface is just not as intuitive as the iPhone's.  I don't know what it is - perhaps it's all the junk apps the vendor and/or phone operator pre-installs - or perhaps it's the duplicate apps that do the same or similar things (e.g. "gmail" app and a "mail" app; "AT&T Navigation vs. Google Navigation).  Perhaps it's the lack of physical buttons for menu/home/back/search - forcing you into trial-and-error when not looking or when in the dark (how brain-dead is it anyway that those keys light up *AFTER* you press them).  By comparison, the iPhone has a physical Home button that your thumb can find by "feel" and, thus, allows for at least some rudimentary navigation without looking.
Some of the built-in applications (e.g. the alarm clock), although often more feature rich than the iPhone's equivalent, are of questionable quality and/or usability.  For instance, I use the alarm clock every day.  But a couple times, when I had to change my normal "wakeup time", have found myself oversleeping because I somehow managed (fat fingered or bug in software?) to change the hour instead of the minutes.  That never happened to me on the iPhone.
Or take the email app.  In the default view, you see your inbox arranged reverse chronologically and separated by days.  That's good.  But deleting a message without viewing it first involves 4 touches (Menu->Delete->Check the message->"Delete")....vs. the iPhone's swipe->"Delete".  Placement of on-screen buttons is also not very good.  In the mail client, "Compose", "Reply", and "Trash" are all near the top-right of the phone, making them hard to reach with the thumb on a tall phone like the Galaxy.

The Ugly: The battery life of the Galaxy S II is just horrible.  I think much of it is due to the apps in Android not being well designed - many seem to communicate with servers way too frequently (to fetch news updates, ads, etc.)  After de-installing various apps (e.g. the "Engadget" app; the "GO" keyboard; Facebook) and setting others to check for notifications much less frequently (e.g. gmail) and by turning off wi-fi or GPS when I'm not using it, I can get through a whole day without sucking the battery dry....but what's the point of having a "Smart" phone when you have to make it dumb to make it last through a day?
The keyboards on the Samsung all suck.  It's kind of funny - the iPhone had one keyboard and I hardly ever made a mistake on it.  The Galaxy S II gives you a choice of THREE built-in keyboards...and I can't even enter a simple google search without accidentally entering a period instead of the letter 'n'.  Maybe it's the dimensions of the phone - it's much taller and perhaps a little narrower than the iPhone.  The keyboard letters seem squished.  There are several third-party keyboards available for Android (I guess they sprouted because there's a definite market?) and I found one that was pretty decent - the "Go" keyboard....but seemed to be a contributor to my battery woes (I suspect it was phoning "home" for unknown reasons), so I uninstalled it again.  I now live with the crappy keyboards as best I can (I try to use voice more), but it's not easy/fun.
Finally, there are some apps that are just not available on Android (yet).  The two I hate not having are: (1) Bloomberg Radio+ and (2) the Optimum Online app.  The latter one actually exists for Android, but it's a piece of crap that requires you to have DVR before it does *anything* (meanwhile, the iPhone version not only gives you a channel guide (that can act as a remote for your cable box!), but also lets you view live TV).

The Verdict: While the Galaxy is a physically beautiful phone with an awesome screen, I wish I had gotten the iPhone 4S.  Since I didn't, my hopes are now pinned on Ice Cream Sandwich becoming available on the Galaxy SII which will, hopefully, address some of issues I mentioned.

Samsung Galaxy SII or iPhone 4S?

I have a difficult choice to make: should I get the new iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy SII.  My contract expired a few months ago and had Apple followed their usual release cycle and announced the phone in the summer, I would have gotten the new iPhone for sure - as there was really no worthy competitor around at the time.  So I waited.

A few days ago, AT&T finally released the Samsung Galaxy SII, a device that had been available internationally since May and which had garnered rave reviews everywhere it was released.  Although I was psyched by the new phone's specs, I figured I'd wait a few days more - after all, the iPhone 5 was just about to be announced.  Rumors suggested it would have a larger 4" display, new body (possibly aluminium like the Mac Book Pro), faster processor, better camera, and some voice input.  Boy was I let down when the 4S was announced today: no new body, no bigger screen.  Sure, it will come with a much faster processor, voice input, and a better camera....but most Android devices out there had these features for awhile now, so nothing new.

So the decision on which way to go is much tougher now.  Below, I'm going to list a few advantages of the Galaxy SII over the iPhone 4S and then do the reverse.

Samsung Galaxy SII Advantages:

1. Storage is expandable (using micro SDHC cards)
2. Battery is replacable
3. DLNA compatible - i.e. you can stream media files to any DLNA-compatible TV (even wirelessly, if the TV is wireless.  I have a Samsung TV connected to a Wifi router, so theoretically, I can send my videos to the TV from the couch).
4. HDMI output.  The AT&T Galaxy SII supposedly comes with a mUSB->HDMI cable that will let you hook up your cellphone directly to any TV with that input (e.g. if you want to output your Netflix or Hulu streaming on your big-screen TV)
5. Flash support.  Not much to say: Android phones can view web pages with Flash content, while iPhones cannot.
6. Speed on AT&T Network.  The SII's theoretical top speed is 21Mbit/sec while the 4S's is 14Mbit/sec.  Not sure where those top speeds are available, however.
7. Screen size.  At 4.3", the Galaxy has a 0.8" larger screen than the iPhone.  That may not sound like much, but when you're doing serious surfing or reading, that extra real estate helps the eye-balls quite a bit.
8. Turn-by-turn voice navigation?  The SII has it, I'm not sure, but I think the iPhone still does not.
9. NFC.  The Galaxy SII has the electronics for it, but according to an Engadget review I've read, AT&T has it disabled for now.  This function, when enabled, might allow for easier credit-card payments at some stores....not sure if that's a big deal.  The iPhone 4S doesn't even have the hardware for it, so you'll definitely not have that feature.

Apple iPhone 4S Advantages:

1. Design.  Although I have not yet touched a Galaxy SII, it looks plastic in pictures.  By contrast, the iPhone 4 (and 4S) with its aluminium band and glass front/back "feel" more expensive/luxurious.  Also, I've played briefly with other Android-powered phones and the UI on these devices didn't seem as cohesive/consistent/polished as iOS.  But this may not be an issue with the Galaxy - I won't know until I try it.
2. Screen resolution.  At 960x640, it definitely has the edge over the Galaxy SII's 800x480.  But it's benefits are arguably lost on such a small screen.
3. Voice.  The iPhone 4S has "Siris" - a voice assistant that supposedly lets you do all sorts of things by voice that were previously done by touch.  I don't think Android devices have an analoguous technology.  However, Android does have voice input where I'd expect it to be most useful: when taking notes or sending e-mail.
4. Integration with other iOS devices.  My wife has an iPhone and iPad.  My daughter has an iPod Touch and will probably inherit my old iPhone 3GS.  If I get the Galaxy, I'll be the "odd man out": I won't be able to "FaceTime" with them or use the new iOS-specific IM feature.
5. Update cycle.  Apple releases updates to its iPhones fairly regularly.  Android phones seem to get updates whenever the carriers feel like it.  AT&T, specifically, has been fairly bad at providing updates to Samsung phones in the past.  Samsung would provide an update and AT&T wouldn't release it until 1/2 year later.

I'm sure I missed a bunch of things, but these are the ones that are most important to me.  The Galaxy SII, on paper, seems a better choice.  But I'm a sucker for good design - and would like bug fixes to appear on my phone fairly rapidly.

Update: I ended up buying the Samsung Galaxy SII.

Update 2: I've decided to return the Samsung :-(  Although most everything about the device is great, its battery capacity most definitely is not!  For the past 5 days, it hasn't lasted through the day a single time - and I don't even use the phone that much :-(  The other thing I could not get used to is the on-screen keyboard (yes, I've tried all three built-in ones as well as a downloaded one).  I don't know what it is about the geometry of the keys, but I constantly find myself mistyping things.  It might be the placement of the period next to the space...I constantly hit it, instead of the letter 'n'.

Final Update: I stuck with the Samsung.  I found a good keyboard in the App store - the "GO" keyboard - that helps me with the typing issues.  The battery issue was resolved by cutting back on the frequency with which I had mail checking for updates and by removing the "Engadget" app - which seemed to be updating quite frequently also - causing the GSM o Wifi radios to be used quite a bit.

I recently wrote a post on my experiences after one month of usage.

A Danger In the Cloud

I recently cancelled my subscription to Netflix.  After the deed was done, I realized that I had just lost years of ratings I had input into Netflix to let the service help me choose future movies.  My opinion on 1000+ movies gone - poof!  That's when the thought struck me: in the cloud, we don't really own anything!  We input our personal data into these cloud-based services but are not allowed to retrieve it upon cancellation of the service or, god forbid,when  the service goes out of business.  Think about it: does Facebook give you a way to retrieve all the photos, videos, chats, etc. you've uploaded?  Does youtube let you easily download all the videos you've put there?  Does LinkedIn let you download all your contacts?  Does Pandora let you export your radio stations?

Of course not.  By not allowing you to export your data, these services make it inconvenient for you to move to a competitor.  A formidable weapon against competitors.

Something to consider as we parachute head-first into a cloud-based future.

Top 4 Problems (for me) with Mac OS X Lion

I updated my 2010 MBP (8GB RAM, i7, 80GB SSD) to Lion the day it became available and, overall, I'm reasonably happy.  However, there are a couple annoyances (bugs or just poor design choices) that I feel are worth mentioning:

1) Mission Control.  For heavy users of Spaces and Expose, Mission Control is just a very poor substitute because it loses previously available functionality: (a) you can no longer move windows directly from one desktop to another; there is a "workaround" that requires making the source desktop the active one and then  dragging the window to the destination desktop....but even this doesn't work if you want to drag the window to the secondary monitor.  (b) you can no longer rotate from the last space to the first one.  I know Apple is not targeting people like me (software developers) for its OS, but - common - you can't just take away capabilities without telling people!  The Mission Control feature was advertised as combining Spaces & Expose into one elegant, integrated interface - nobody said that it did so at the cost of losing functionality.

2) Choppy scrolling in Safari.  Recently - since I started using my MBP's "sleep" mode when moving between home and office rather than shutting down/powering up - Safari "stutters" when scrolling using the touchpad.

3) iPhoto hangs temporarily on startup.  Whenever I start iPhoto, there's a 20 second "hang" - the cursor changes to the color wheel and the app is unusable. After the delay, everything works as before.  This simply didn't happen before.  Very annoying.

4) I have yet to be able to get into my work's VPN again.  The Mac OSX built-in VPN for Cisco IPSec never worked for me in Snow Leopard, but there was a free client from Cisco that did.  With Lion this client no longer works - and the built-in VPN still doesn't work with our Cisco VPN Concentrator.  An Apple engineer contacted me when I posted my troubles in this forum (thanks!).  He let me try and log into their VPN (a Cicso ASA) and that worked.  We guessed that perhaps we could make our Cisco box work if its firmware was upgraded...an unforeseen expense.  If that doesn't work, I'll be forced to buy Cisco's ConnectAnywhere client since that will work on Lion....another unforeseen cost.

I hope this list is useful to people - especially those who have not yet upgraded from Snow Leopard.  The discovery of (4) certainly helped my boss who was getting ready to upgrade when I told him.

The Cost Of Your Privacy - Not Even 30 Silver Coins

Most people don't like to think about it - privacy that is.  They hope (or pretend) that it still exists in this electronic age.  But every day companies and governments learn more about us - often with us willingly supplying the information.

How did it happen that we so freely give up our most private details?  Although we've always given up bits and pieces of it whenever we applied for credit or purchased something online, large scale harvesting of private data didn't begin until Google offered Gmail to the public.  I bet most people, when they signed up for a gmail account, didn't realize that they made a pact with the devil: in exchange for free use of its service, they gave Google permission to rifle through all received or sent emails - ostensibly only to present "targeted" advertising in the margins of a personalized gmail web page.  Subsequently, Google went a step further and developed "Chrome" - a free browser whose use is predicated on its users agreeing to let Google snoop on the user's browsing habits.  Again, most people just hear from their friends how fast Chrome is...they don't know that they're agreeing to have Google harvest certain browsing-related information.  But who cares, right?  After all, Google promises to "do no evil".

Google's successes and the continued commoditization of computer hardware have led other software & hardware companies to join the bandwagon.  Foremost among them being Apple.  The company that, in 1984, made a big marketing splash by warning us of an Orwellian future where "Big Brother" is watching everything we do - has now morphed into what it warned us against.  Its iTunes store has always held our music related preferences and credit card information, but with the advent of the iPhone and iPad, Apple's wealth of information about us has increased exponentially: it now knows what types of applications we like, what books and magazines we read, how much time we spend on the web - heck, it even knows where we are at every moment in time (see the recent revelation that the iPhone and Google's Android kept the phone's latitude/longitude information in a local cache that was occasionally forwarded to their company's respective servers).  And now Apple wants you to keep your emails, calendars, contacts, and all other manner of data on its "iCloud" servers.  I'm guessing that you won't get an option to encrypt that data either.  After all, that would make it difficult for Apple to provide you with the benefits of "targeted advertisement".

The vast majority of the population (including some technically savvy people I count as friends) doesn't know of this data harvesting - those that know either don't care about this loss of privacy or gain from it.

Should we be worried?  I think so.  When I signed up for my gmail account, I was fully aware of the implications.  I optimistically bought into Google's "Do No Evil" mantra.  I think maybe I was naive.  Google is a corporation - its only obligation is to make money for its shareholders.  "Do No Evil" is no assurance that some day the needs/desires of the investors won't be put before the need for privacy of its customers.  More disturbingly yet, Apple is now hoping that we keep our entire digital life on their servers.  The company will make it easy and cheap.  It'll extol the convenience of the service; it'll offer much of the service for free - all in an effort to become *the* hub for our online information...the harvesting of this data can't be far behind.

Big Brother Is Watching

Will Smartphones Destroy the Web?

I started writing this blog early last year and never finished it.  Today I saw the draft and thought it was even more appropriate today than last year...

Today's smartphones are amazing devices: aside from making phone calls and texting, they let us play games and surf the web at ever increasing speeds. So, what's not to love?

The danger appears in a feature that is becoming ubiquitous in smartphones: apps and app stores. Huh? How could those tremendously useful little applications found on the iPhone, Droid, etc. threaten the web? Quite simply: by existing.

Before the arrival of the iPhone, the Web blossomed into an indispensable information tool to which everyone with a Web browser had access. During this incredibly fruitful time, Web standards ruled and they became more and more sophisticated as the needs of the users of the Web and the applications they desired grew more demanding. Since standards underpinned everything, browsers continued to be able to support users. The Web ecosystem was flourishing.

But now more and more developers are foregoing developing their applications for the web.  Lured by the highly sophisticated but platform-specific APIs offered by cellphone manufacturers, they are spending their time and resources developing "apps".  Since apps do not work across platforms, mobile phone vendors achieve greater and greater "lock-in" as their app stores (and user dependence on them) grow.  Balkanization.  Suddenly only Apple users can access some information - information that used to be accessible to anyone with a Web browser.

Ergo: apps destroy the promise of the Web: access to information by all.