Silicon Shecky

Just over a month ago, I decided to get a Nook Color. Now after a month of using it, here is the good, and the bad.

I have friends who have the Kindle, and family with the regular Nook, but I wanted something more than just an e-reader, since I would be using it for IT related items. An iPad or Galaxy Tab were right out of my budget, as much as I felt a tablet would be fantastic. Besides their higher initial fees, then you needed a monthly data plan for 3G. Sorry but I’m not going to cut down on what I spend on items I really need, like food, just to have a tablet. I had been hearing good things about the e-readers out there, but everyone agreed that the web experience was not as good, and PDF rendering was poor at best. Then I saw the Nook Color, and I did a double take.

The Nook Color is the next generation of Nook e-readers. Yes it did away with the e-ink display. This allows for better web site viewing. The drawback is a bit more reflections when reading in bright light, although I have not had a major issue with that. The special coating that Barnes and Noble say they put on the touchscreen to help cut down on the glare seems to do its job decently.

The Nook Color runs on Android 2.1, with a special front end which was developed with help from Adobe. The fact that it is Android 2.1 is noticeable in speed and sensitivity of the touchscreen. while not completely awful, if you don’t do a hard power down every now and then, the lag time between opening a book, and the time it opens becomes unbearable, let alone the slowness of page turning. I haven’t had to do a lot of reboots, but once every few weeks seems to do the trick. This isn’t a game breaker for anyone, but more of an annoyance. It should get better with Froyo when that comes out early in 2011, but there is no exact time frame on it arriving. Also coming out in Early 2011 is supposed to be a marketplace, which I am curious to see. I really feel that the Nook Color could become the perfect thing for students, but alas while you can view Word Documents, you can’t edit or create them. I am hoping that sort ability comes from apps in the marketplace.

There are some other disappointments with the Nook Color also. One being that Watermarked PDFs do not open. I haven’t tried the DRM PDFs, which are supposed to open on it, but the watermarked ones will not. Regular PDFs open nicely, but if there is graphics behind the letters, you well get a light red X on the screen because it cannot display the graphics properly, which is another annoyance. Yes you can still read the PDF with the red X through it, or at least I could, but this is something else they might want to fin a solution for. I know plenty of people who play RPGs, and while the Nook Color is better than the Kindle or regular Nook for dumping all those source books onto, the Watermark and red X issues do cause pause for thought. Considering Adobe helped with the technology behind the Nook Color, these issues are a bit surprising.

The Nook Color comes with WiFi only, no 3G. Considering how much WiFi is out there now this isn’t that big of a deal, although it would be nice to see some sort of plug in 3G modem that would work with it. Web browsing is as good as any Android device, although it won’t have flash until Froyo comes out for it.

Small thing to note if you do decide to get the Nook Color, it is larger than the regular Nook. As of the last time I went into Best Buy, they still did not have any cases for the device, and had no clue as to when they would have cases. Barnes and Noble stores do have the cases plus the devices.

Overall, the Nook color is a solid device, and I have been enjoying it. I keep my tech books on it, along with some magazine subscriptions, and find it very nice that I don’t have to carry 1000 page tech books anymore. For $250 you get a mini tablet that really can become a full tablet and overtake the market if Barnes and Noble make the right choices.

So I try to read the online tech sites on a daily basis at least. I recently came across and article about the problems with Google’s Android Marketplace. I want to say that before I go into each of his points, yes there are some shortcomings with the Marketplace, but Android overall is a different creature, and if you expect it to be an iPhone clone, you are in for a rude awakening.

Garett Rogers, in his article, breaks down what he sees as wrong with the Android Marketplace. Unfortunately, this “story” is actually more of an Op/Ed piece without being clearly marked as such. Everyone is allowed their opinions, but to try and pass opinions off as unbiased new is wrong, and gives actual journalists a bad name. I make no qualms that this blog is my opinions and thoughts, and while I do try to keep it as professional as possible, and at time do reviews where I do my best to set aside my biases, I have no problem reminding people that most things are op/ed here. That being said, lets get onto his points and my counterpoints.

Garett breaks the issues he has with Android’s Marketplace to 5 items. First up  on his list is “Add a review process.” This point is good in an aspect of weeding out spam apps, but Android is an open platform, and the marketplace is just as open. This is not Apple, where you have to abide by terms that change from moment to moment, and on a whim. Also, there are user reviews (star ratings) on the apps in the Marketplace, which is a self vetting process.

Second item on Garett’s list is, “A good ratio of paid apps vs free apps is absolutely necessary.” I tend to disagree with this, and he needs to remember that a lot of the free apps, come with a small, non-obtrusive, ad-bar (Which i barely notice). Google’s money is made from advertising. From that advertising, even “free” apps make money. The thing to research is, how do these ads, and ad money translate to the developer.

Third up on the hit parade, Garett writes, “Apps need to be discoverable.” This point I couldn’t agree with more. The search function in the Android Marketplace is ok, but really needs to be improved on. I can search and while I get a good amount of semi-relevant to relevant apps, I get a lot of junk that has no relation to the words I typed in the search box. Google, being the king of search, has been disappointing in this aspect.

The next point brought up is about currency, and I really can’t argue against showing the app prices in the currency of our choosing. I have no clue how many dollars to a pound, I just want to know what my cost is in my currency.

His final point is, “Modify the return policy.” He basis this on the developer possible loosing money because of returned apps. Now I don’t know how Apple does it, or if they even allow for app returns, but toughening a return policy on apps downloaded is a tough thing to do. Its an open market, and by showing their respect for the consumer, Google looks like the consumer will wind up helping police the bad apps. Its a review process, a vetting process.

Is the Android Marketplace perfect? Not by any means. It has area that can be improved upon, but to make it go down the road of the Apple Marketplace and iTunes (Stupid piece of junk that iTunes is), leaves no room to grow, or worse, could prompt legal action. After all we all have been reading about how everyone loves suing everyone over pattens now.

I had the opportunity yesterday to watch the Android keynote from Google I/O. I was impressed with some of the stuff they talked about and showed. I was amused by the jabs at Apple also.

The new version of the Android operating system, named Froyo, looked as impressive in a demo. The features such as natively being a wireless hot spot, speed increases, the new API for pushing from the web, the new update features, all of it seemed to work rather nicely and smoothly. Even the peeks at the future beyond Froyo looked nice. The addition of flash was one of the biggest improvements people wanted to see, and it didn’t disappoint either.

To compare, they had an iPad, and tried to bring up Nickelodeon’s website. This is a children friendly, Flash based website. Of course, the iPad failed at it, as would the iPhone. The new version of the Android OS, opened it and showed it no problems. The dig at Apple was complete. The OS that allows porn, also allows a kid to view a site that has Sponge Bob on it.

After the keynote, I was chatting with some friends about it, when we all came to the same realization. We’ve seen this fight before, and we know who loses.

At this point, lets set the wayback machine to 1984. the computer world has a number of players, but the 2 big ones are IBM with its PC, and Apple who has just announced the Macintosh. The Macintosh, was an innovated, fantastic machine. the price points between the PC and Mac were about the same. The Mac offered that simple GUI interface and a mouse in a compact, all in one unit. The PC was larger, ran DOS, and you needed to get a monitor for it separately.

It was the start of a war that would last for a number of years, with Macintosh staying as a closed system. The PC opened up, a number of manufacturers started making them and selling them with Windows 3.1 on them in the early 90′s. Prices dropped on the PC. Windows 95 Came out, and made the PC even more popular.

In the same time frame, Macintosh got rid of Steve Jobs, and became a niche product, that was amazing for graphical artists, but not worth the price for an everyday user. Limited software, due to the tightness of the development terms was a big problem. The hardware was all controlled by Apple, with no competition for other types of Mac OS machines. Even when they tried to license the OS companies couldn’t compete to drive the prices down. The Game market took off, and those games were not as readily available for the Mac, again because of restrictions, or cost of getting the proper information to program the games for Macintosh. Apple needed to stay in control of all aspects of the Mac and force others to follow super strict guidelines.

Now don’t get me wrong having to follow those guidelines does help prevent some crashing, make things work nice and seamless, etc. Apple, though real innovative, had gone ahead and limited itself. Basically what ammounted to trying to kill itself in small increments. Microsoft came in the 90′s and infused money into Apple to help keep it afloat. Jobs came back, created the iPod, then the iPhone, and now the iPad. Apple was back in a position of innovative importance.

So you all know, I use a Blackberry Curve from work, my personal phone is a Motorola Droid. I support clients that have iPhones in a SMB environment. I have had a chance to play around with the iPhone, and it is a nice phone. It does just work. The issues I’ve had with it are, the lack of being able to change the battery out on it, and how much control Apple has over it.

You take a look at the market now, and its really iPhone OS vs. Android OS. the Android OS has become viable in the 18 months its been around, and continues to impress. It also works on multiple devices, on multiple carriers, and is open to developers. The new terms of the iPhone OS developers agreement tightens the requirements again. If the rumors of an Android tablet from Verizon and Google is true, Apple could be in major trouble.

I hope that Apple turns around and learns from the mistakes of the past that they made, because competition is good and needed. If they don’t, well, we already saw this happen to Apple once, and I don’t know if they can survive another downturn like that. After all, those that don’t learn from the past, are doomed to repeat it.