Ok, I admit I’ve cheated: Google Reader is much more than just a website. I use it as a replacement for any kind of newspaper. I have folders with “anything-Apple” news, sports feeds, ANSA news, geek stuff, webdesign magazines, photography and much more. Oh, and updates from my Twitter and Facebook buddies. With 800+ entries coming in each day, I’m pretty sure I’m not missing anything important happening in the world.
Sembra che lo smartphone Android (HTC Dream) venduto da TIM (e da Orange in Francia) non abbia la possibilità di sincronizzare contatti e calendar con il proprio Google account. “Problemi di stabilità”, la risposta ufficiale di Orange. Già, peccato che sul mio dev phone tutto funzioni perfettamente…
Ai miei tecnofriends non posso che sconsigliare un acquisto frettoloso: aspettate un nuovo firmware (ufficiale), o compratevi un iPhone.
[Aggiornamento]
Consiglio la lettura di questo fantastico articolo apparso su Androidiani.
I’ve never hidden my deep love for the iPhone 3G. It’s the perfect smartphone, and OS 3.0 will fill most of the users’ requests for features. This doesn’t mean that I’m blind to other exciting competitors like Palm Pre and HTC’s Android devices. I just got an Android Dev Phone v1 last Friday, and I want to share some thoughts with you.
Usability
The winner is iPhone. No doubt, no competition. Designers hired by Apple belong to the next century. iPhone’s design is simple and sexy. Sometimes ago I read someone (could have been on TechCrunch or Mashable) saying that Android stands to iPhone as Linux stands to Mac. Let me quote this sentence. The HTC Dream is cute, but nothing more. I’m used to the virtual keyboard, and I miss it on the HTC Dream.
Touch
iPhone wins at photofinish. I had the feeling that iPhone is faster in responding to touches, but the difference is the “pinch” gesture.
Mail
This is probably my biggest question mark. I read my business mails with the iPhone and my personal (g)mails with the Android. I don’t know if Android can sync with Exchange and support push. I know for sure that iPhone can read my gmail… but I’d love to see a stronger integration between Mail.app and Gmail: archive, star, label… that would be wonderful.
I’ll give this point to Mail.app.
Contacts & Calendar
Android rules: contacts and calendars are synchronized with my Google contacts and calendar. I still wonder why I should pay for a MobileMe account to get the exact same thing. (Ok, MobileMe gives you other useful features, but I’m just considering Contacts and Calendar now). So let me rephrase the first statement: Android wins, because you don’t have to pay.
Apps (AppStore vs Market)
No winner here. I’m not an expert of the Android Market, but my general feeling is that iPhone apps are nicer than Android ones. In average. Shazam is available on both devices, and the same for Facebook and Twitter clients. Locale is a wonderful context-aware application for your Android device.
Ok, uninstalling apps is easier on the iPhone.
SDK & Programming tools
The winner here is Android. Let me explain why. Before writing my first iPhone application, I had to learn Objective-C. With my C# background, “downgrading” to Objective-C made me spit blood (and swear far too many times). Creating GUIs is not so simple, at least at the beginning. You can’t just drop in that fancy view and hope everything will just work. You need IBActions and many, many, many “who’s the bloody delegate for this”?
Android runs Java code. Not that stupid MIDP, this is real Java. Why did it take so long? Knowing Java, it took me 10 minutes to write a first simple application which outputs the last known GPS position. And let me give you an advice: at the beginning, all runtime errors will be caused by permissions. Asking for permissions (even for browsing) is a must in Android. Sounds like a polite OS, doesn’t it? Don’t say I didn’t tell you.
Conclusions
iPhone wins. But Android can become a serious competitor. Many things will be determined by the price of Android phones: in Italy TIM is rumored to start selling the G1 (HTC Dream) in a few minutes at €429 (unlocked). In my opinion, the price is too high to compete with the iPhone.
Tornando alle cose serie, pare che G1 supporterà GMail in modalità push (ci mancherebbe altro…):
(da EngadgetMobile.com)
Sure, there’s a lot of to love about the open-source, Android-powered T-Mobile G1, but Google’s Andy Rubin just confirmed what might be the new handset’s killer app: push Gmail. While that’s not a first, it could be a major differentiating feature for Android phones here on out, since it sounds like the app is advanced and partially web-based: it has the threading, search, and Google Talk presence features of the web client.
Il progetto Virgle è veramente fantastico, ed è stato lanciato da Virgin e da Google: a partire dal 2014, verrà fondata la prima colonia permanente su Marte. Vi invito a completare il questionario di valutazione della vostra elegibilità a diventare un nuovo pioniere:lo trovate qui.
Le domande sono molto semplici, ad esempio:
If I had to wait up to 40 minutes for a response to email, I would
* Die
* Rejoice
* Choose my words more carefully
* What’s email?
Come vedete, è una cosa veloce… un piccolo questionario, un grande passo verso Marte.
Mi raccomando, non dimenticate il vostro pesciolino… rosso, ovviamente.
Esco dall’ufficio. Comincia a piovere.
Fossano. Mi accorgo che oltre alla pioggia c’e’ qualcos’altro.
Cuneo: figata, nevica di nuovo.
Quando nevica come stasera, è tutto meraviglioso. Ti viene voglia di giocare a palle di neve, di metterti in mezzo alla strada con la testa in su per farti cadere i fiocchi in bocca… Ti viene anche da discutere su come si chiamano i fiocchi di neve in inglese.
Snow flakes, appunto.
Chissà se saremo così fortunati da ammirare New York sotto la neve, la settimana prossima… Ora ci sono 52 °F (che secondo Google corrispondono a 11.11111 °C), ma secondo Accuweather nel prossimo fine settimana si toccherà un picco negativo sulla temperatura percepita: -9 °F, nientemeno che -22.77778 °C.
L’SDK di Android è stato rilasciato nella serata di ieri (http://code.google.com/android/download.html). Come nel caso di RIM, l’SDK permette lo sviluppo di applicazioni Java, e ad una prima occhiata mi sembra che le API fornite agli sviluppatori siano molto ispirate a quelle del Blackberry (sarà un caso?).
Le feature offerte da questo SDK sono:
Application framework: enabling reuse and replacement of components
Dalvik virtual machine: optimized for mobile devices
Integrated browser: based on the open source WebKit engine
Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional)
SQLite for structured data storage
Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
GSM Telephony (hardware dependent)
Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent)
Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent)
Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE
Mi sembra un buon inizio… Tra l’altro il WebKit non è altro che il framework utilizzato per molte famose applicazioni per Mac OS X: Safari (!), Mail, Dashboard (!!!).
Per quanto riguarda il S.O., Android come prevedibile si affida a Linux, con kernel della famiglia 2.6:
Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.
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