Know It Or Blow It

I’ll admit: I’m a gadget freak. I buy stuff. I buy way too much stuff. I buy way too much expensive electronic stuff. I like it.

I’m one of those suckers that got the first iPhone within two months after its release, after which is was lowered $200 in price. And as I live in the Netherlands, I didn’t get a dime from Steve Jobs’ $100 iTunes store credit everybody else got. Alas, but that’s part of the deal of being first.

I also have the iPhone 3G & 3GS, I imported the Kindle US version (so it’s not online for me here in Europe), right before the international version was announced, I got both the iPad as Nexus One on launch-week, and even my previous and current car are more like gadgets than like cars.

Hell, I even have an AIBO, Sony’s discontinued electronic dog/toy. It’s turned off though nowadays, the state in which most gadgets I bought over the years are btw.

Now people naturally ask me when I get the iPhone4, especially since I use my phone for everything:

I (tried to) surf on the Blackberry from within the US hotel rooms I stayed in, reading news-sites et al in text-only, strangly mangled, forms. I read my email in the middle of the night on the phone next to my bed. I had quite a few Nokia’s, BlackBerry’s and other devices that always got one step further in supporting almost internet alike services. It never was a full experience, but the best you could get.

Hence I was very happy when the iPhone came out, finally the full internet (except for Flash…). It pushed my laptop out of the way while being at home, I used the phone for everything. Every new version made the experience richer. The (newest) phone was always attached to my hand, and I’m kinda platform agnostic, I immediatly replaced the iPhone 3GS with the Nexus One when that came along, because It Was Newer(tm).

Now things have changed: the iPad came along. It offers a so much richer experience. I now use the iPad for instant internet anytime I want, (w/ the tethering on my phone) everywhere I want. My phone is my phone again after many years. I hardly use the internet on it anymore, unless being somewhere without the iPad (eg in a bar/in the middle of nowhere).

So the thing is: almost any phone will do now. Sure, it should support the full email & internet experiences, and have a few apps (twitter/facebook, weather&stocks mostly). But besides that, it’s over for me. I don’t need instant ownership of the iPhone 4 / HTC UberWhatever anymore.

I wonder if Apple did forsee this to happen. Because maybe, just maybe, next time for me the newest Nokia, BlackBerry or Palm will do… I’m certainly not going to get the iPhone4 on launch date.

This didn’t fit in a tweet, thus an actual blog post.

I’ve been using the Nexus One for a month now as my default phone (after 2.5years of iPhone only), and thus can say I’ve had my fair share of time to compare them both.

My first experience w/ the N1 was various in nature to say the least.

It took me a whole weekend to set it up as I wanted it to have, installing various software from various places (as some things are not in the market), compared to the iPhone.
The N1’s immediate out-of-the-box workings & syncing w/ Google was quite nice though.

In short, a few of my ramblings. This is not (ment to be) complete, but a mere overview of some of the things that come to mind thinking back.
Keep in mind that I’m not an Apple fan at all, I run Windows on my desktop, Debian on my servers and XBMC on my AppleTV’s:

• Camera on N1 is much, much better than on the iPhone
• Google integration is pretty slick if you only have 1 google account. I had 3 (2 private, 1 corporate), so had to spent quite some time removing merge-synced duplicate contacts, as I want to keep them seperated…
• Default calendar sucks, try Calendar Pad instead, it actually shows a usauable month-overview
• Speaking about sucking, after using the iTunes-store for years now, the Android market is utterly pale in comparison. I spent quite some bucks every month in the iTunes store trying out stuff, on the Android Market I bought just 1 thing (Beautiful Widgets).
• It takes a while to adjust, but the hard-coded back, menu & home buttons on the surface of the phone are a quite good concept. No more searching/wondering where to push, the menu button is always in reach, and you thus discoves quite some interesting options on some screens.

  What REALLY sucks though is that Google/HTC decided to place the buttons like 1 pixel-line below the screen. I can’t count the number of times I accidently pushed the ‘home’ button instead of the space-bar or whatever I was trying to select in the screen…

• Multitasking by itself is no something you need/miss. However, the way it works on the N1 combined w/ the back button is quite interesting: from my twitter client, I press a link, which opens the actual browser, which I then can use to browse normally, hopping from site to site. Pressing the back button goes back (as expected), and going back from the originally opened page goes back to my twitter client. Back again to previous twitter screens etc. etc.

  I don;t want to run multiple applications at once for “background music”, but I do want to use the back-button as designed. Hats off for this, it works as you expect it to be. Apple: copy this

• I really like the notification bar in top for new emails/DM tweets/SMS messages, it allows for a quick overview and immediate access to the messages.
• Where’s my multi-language switch for the dictionary ? You can’t switch languages at all, I solved it by installing another keyboard w/ Dutch as the primary dictionary and switching between these two input methods, but I like the original keyboard better and just want a quick dictionary switch…
• The screen is much better: brighter & high(er)-resolution
• The N1 is not really build for one-hand control: I often notice I can’t press a button on screen, because the skind beneeth my thumb also touches a sidepart of the screen. It’s too sensitive sometimes.
• A lot more is available for free: every developer and his mom can write software for the Android. So they do. So you have to hunt the internet and google-code for the latest&greatest builds… (Have I mentioned that the Android Market sucks ?)

Overall, the Nexus One is a pretty damn good phone, only not for the average consumer. Me being a nerd, I’m willing to spend the time downloading apps and configuring the phone to my likings. I wonder though if Joe the Plumber will do this, or even knows how.

I feel sad sometimes I promised my 3GS to my girlfriend, and am looking forward to the iPhone v4. After which I will certainly miss the N1’s back&menu buttons, as well as the message-notification bar for sure…

// JP
[ Oh, btw: Where’s my Skype for Android ?! Come on, Android has been out for quite a while… ]

Just a quick post to let you know I bought a new car, a Grande Punto Abarth. Afine replacement of my old Smart Roadster.

When I searched for my current TV, I thought it might take a while before I had to look for a new one.

But now, Philips has announced it’s new Cinema 21:9 line, kinda like a super widescreen. i’m going to closely watch for reviews on this (and am wondering how traditional 4:3 will be displayed on this )

Today is the almost the first day of the rest of my life, as this is my last official working day with Zylom, the company I co-founded. After 7.5 years, almost 3 years after we sold the company, I’m ready for a new challenge.

BUT, first I’m going to hack my home

And for this, I’m a beta-tester of the new Nedap Combi Outlet: it combines both UTP (Cat 5e) as well as Coax (RG6) in a single outlet. I searched around, and it seems nobody else has this kind of outlet available.
ISDN/Coax combi outlets, or Coax/UTP till 100 Mbps are already available, but this one combines gigabit speed together with std. RG6. Hoefully they will be available soon for normal distribution, as I think more ppl do want to have them.

Sometimes the best ideas seem so simple…