Donald Kelly

It’s pretty common to see mentions for Spotify on Twitter or on Facebook, it’s become one of those services, like Facebook itself, that you just expect to see. Before this time last year, except for when I was in the UK, Spotify was one of those services I couldn’t take advantage of. This of course, thanks to the music industry and it’s various licensing bodies who control the flow of payments back to labels, and in some cases, the artists themselves.

However, it’s for this reason, that I’m saying farewell to my Spotify premium subscription.But it’s not Spotify causing me to leave, it’s the music industry itself.

See, when you sign up for Spotify in various regions, your account is linked to that region, and what Spotify are allowed to offer you. I’m English, but I live in America, and therefore my Spotify account is linked to what they can offer me under their current licensing agreements for those in the states.. This though, is the problem. If your American, Spotify will suit you quite well, anything on the Billboard Top 40 will be there, along with most things from years gone by, along with all of the lesser known artists and their various tracks.

If you try and search for the tracks that make up the UK Top 40? Have fun. You’ll find… a few, mostly from people like Rihanna, Fun, Katy Perry or B.o.B, who are well represented in America. Search for artists like Ed Sheeran, Jamie T, Ellie Goulding or the like and you’ll find results, many of which are greyed out, as they’re not available in my region.

This fact, along with my long standing preference to own my music and have it on any device I please, anytime I please only further highlights my issue with services like Spotify. In theory, the lure of many thousands, if not many millions of tracks for just £9.99/$9.99 per month, on most any device, or for free on your desktop, with the occasional advert is lovely. In reality however, the music industry kill the idea, from geographical restrictions to limits on the amount of times you can play a certain track. The experience is tainted by the industry and it’s outdated expectations of consumers and service providers, like Spotify.

I personally think in future, we’ll see more favourable terms for cross region distribution of music, but until that time arrives, services like Spotify pose a challenge to those of us who live abroad, or those who simply are a fan of artists not from their home country. Spotify still has the potential to bridge a gap for many, but in my case, it widens the gap, more than it actually manages to bridge across.

Over the past few years, I’ve become quite harsh on Google. From 2006-2009, I used Google products like Gmail and their search product almost exclusively. I managed to get a MobileMe account (£69/year at the time) for 2009, and seeing how I use a Mac exclusively and for the most part, was using an iPhone in 2009, I simply switched away from Google and their services.

In 2010, as my MobileMe account expired, I switched back to Gmail and their new products, however, they seem to have made some decisions in 2010 that didn’t sit overly well with me, and I became a bit of a Google hater. The problem I’m faced with today? I can’t remember why I’m hating on Google and their (seemingly) high quality offerings. At the same time, I’m left to put up with iCloud and it’s many, many outages. Not to mention the lack of standards for contact syncing and the seemingly never ending login issues I experience when using Mail with iCloud.

So, starting next week, I’m running a bit of an experiment, on myself. I’m going to completely remove iCloud from my life and rely entirely on Google and it’s services. I’ll also be saying farewell to Dropbox, in favour of Google Drive and abandoning Facebook for Google+. I obviously won’t be switching to Android, as I have justified reasons for my dislike of Android (more on that later this month).

I’m going to be running this little experiment starting this coming Monday until the end of the month, and I’ll be writing a weekly update to highlight the shortcomings and advantages I find through experience. While I’m not expecting to use all of the products all of the time, I do believe I’ll learn quite a bit through this, as it’s been a while since I’ve taken myself out of my comfort zone and forced myself into trying something new.

My early predictions is that Google+ will be the first noticeable short coming. I’ve mentioned ad nauseum before that I’m far from an avid user of Facebook, but my friends on Facebook aren’t the type who instantly jump from one social network to another. They’re invested in Facebook through the use of Facebook Connect and the various apps and services connected to their profiles.  I admittedly don’t connect through Facebook often, with the occasional “poke” being the exception.

Gmail is something I’ve used since the early beta days (when many paid fair sums to receive a beta invite) but migration to the more basic Gmail UI from Apple’s lovely, but buggy iCloud Mail UI will be a change, but not one I’m expecting to find overly jarring. I’ve been using Google Drive for a while now, and have been starting to prefer it over Dropbox in many respects.

As I mention, this will be an ongoing project of mine, and I’ll be sure to post updates as time continues on.

“Mark and his signature hoodie: He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him. I think that’s a mark of immaturity. I think that he has to realize he’s bringing investors in as a new constituency right now, and I think he’s got to show them the respect that they deserve because he’s asking them for their money.” Michael Pachte of Wedbush Securities

This story caught my attention as I was reading through various headlines this morning. Those who know me well are well aware that I’m not a fan of Facebook and therefore don’t care much about it’s IPO on the US markets, but I couldn’t help but double check to see verify this was a real quote.

The issue here is that Zuckerberg isn’t asking anyone for their money, it’s entirely the other way around. Investors are begging to be allowed the privilege of off-loading huge sums of money into Zuckerberg’s pocket in hopes of seeing a return on that investment. Never has any member of Facebook gone out and said “PLEASE INVEST IN OUR STOCK!!!”.

In my eyes, this just highlights how disconnected the worldwide financial industry is from “regular” culture. What a CEO wears shouldn’t be of any importance, possibly it would be in 1964, but we’re not. Sadly I often times wonder just how many bankers actually understand even a bit of today’s culture.

Six months ago today, after much debate, I picked up an iPhone 4S, as an early holiday gift to myself. While I really could have gone without the 4S, seeing as I had only upgraded to the iPhone 4 in August, picking up the 4S, at the time, seemed worth it, the new camera, slightly faster processor and Siri seemed like features that I found worthy of an upgrade.

However, as we all know, the 4S wasn’t the most well received update in the history of the iPhone product line. Apple’s critics bashed them more than I can recall them doing before and said the 4S was “set to fail miserably” due to the lack of any external changes, alongside the fact that it didn’t feature an upgrade to the screen size, as many people had predicted. Beyond the harsh initial reception, the 4S has done brilliantly in terms of sales. While it wasn’t the huge update many geeks and tech journalists were hoping for, it was still, for many, a solid update.

Camera

The new rear camera features an 8 megapixel sensor and an additional lens optic, an IR filter which, when combined with software processing, makes for noticeably better colour reproduction and white balance control.

In my use, the difference between the two cameras isn’t so much noticed in the clarify of the pictures or the size of the images it produces, the iPhone 4 and it’s 5 megapixel camera was still entirely class leading in that department and, in my opinion didn’t require an update. What I’ve noticed most is the better colour and white balance from the 4S. If you need a good example of this, try taking a photo in a room lit by “warm white” fluorescent tube lighting. If you take a photo on the iPhone 4, the photo will be clear, but the white balance will be nothing short of horrendously off. The shot is cast in a horrible orange glow, much more pronounced than the actual lighting in the environment.

The 4S however doesn’t have this issue. While your still likely to notice a bit of an orange tint to photos, it’s much less severe than what you’d see on the iPhone 4, and if needed, can be corrected in Photoshop or a similar editing tool. The updated sensor is nice, but as I mentioned previously, the additional megapixels are doing minimal good here when compared to the better white balance and colour.

Battery Life

As for battery life, the 4S has a slightly larger battery, but features a different set of antennas, which in my use, has resulted in the battery life being less than what I received with my iPhone 4. While usually sufficient to survive a day with moderate use, any task which requires a higher than usual pull on the battery, will result in a noticeable reduction in your battery life, more so than the previous model. This has shown to be a particular problem for AT&T customers in America, who are forced to use the HSPA+ network, which requires a bit more power, and results in a bit of a drop in battery life.

Abroad, where HSPA networks aren’t as commonly deployed, this may be less of an issue. However the sometimes spotty network coverage in certain regions may cause the phone to scan for networks more frequently and could also cause a drop in battery performance. The fact, above all, is that while Apple would like you to believe otherwise, the 4S battery is, in some cases, lacking when compared to the iPhone 4 battery.

Siri

Siri was easily the most mentioned feature of the iPhone 4S, but in reality, I think you’ll find it to be the least used.  The sometimes spotty reliability of the service, combined with it’s limited abilities makes for an occasionally frustrating experience. Mind you, it’s better than any other voice control solution before, but I think it highlights a somewhat poor demand for voice control in general. Unless the solution works spot on, nearly every time, people won’t hesitate to return to the old way of using their device, and for now, Siri is simply unable to deliver the experience as often as is needed.

I personally don’t use Siri commonly, except for the rare occasion of having a bit of a play with it, or using it to dial from the lock screen, without having to go in and access the dialler, sort through contacts or recent calls to find who I’m looking to ring at some point during the day. I’m not saying Siri isn’t incredibly useful for some, and that it doesn’t have a potential in future devices, However, I’ve been slightly disappointed with Apple’s decision to market Siri as much as it has, while Apple itself still noted that Siri is indeed a Beta product.

Everything Else

Beyond the camera, siri and slightly larger battery, the 4S, really does show itself to be identical to the model that came before. It still has the two pieces of glass with the aluminium band and small antenna separators, the 30 pin connector, retina display and front facing camera, just like the iPhone 4.

For people who are upgrading from the 3GS or have never owned an iPhone before, The 4S will be a lovely device. If you have an iPhone 4 however, this is a completely unnecessary upgrade, to put it simply. The advantages of the new hardware, don’t justify the cost of a new device, and the additional commitment to a new 12-24 month agreement with your provider.  For some, this may cause them to look elsewhere for a new device, and I myself have even done so.

The Future

HTC, Samsung, Nokia and even RIM and BlackBerry now have devices that are fresh, functional and offer high value for the money. Apple are still delivering a beautiful device that is solid and simply works, but few people are willing to upgrade to a device that appears to be identical to the device they spent 12-24 months with previously.

The Lumia 900, which I’ve previously written about is lacking in certain respects, but it does offer something new, usable and beautiful. The Galaxy Nexus is the top of the line Android device at the moment, and features a considerably larger screen, a unique design and the new look of Android 4.0, where as the 4S is using the same UI we originally saw on the first gen iPhone, with only slight tweaks.

Honestly, with the way I’ve found myself using my device lately, I’ve even reconsidered BlackBerry. RIM recently revealed the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device at BlackBerry World in Orlando, Florida featuring the new BlackBerry 10 OS, based on the QNX architecture. While those devices won’t be out until closer to the holiday season, it’s done enough to catch my eye once again, and has caused me to seriously consider the advantages of sticking with iOS, versus moving to another platform.

I think Apple will remain dominant in the market for quite a while. However I do wonder what the longer term will look like. We’ve certainly seen rumours and bits of information that point to the idea that iOS may loose it dominance at some point, and more so than ever, I’m starting to believe it.

Even if Apple update iOS and the iPhone hardware tomorrow, it begs the question as to what future update cycles will look like, and how long we should expect to see the same hardware. While many justify the longer than usual update cycles for Apple hardware, saying that the designs are superior than others and therefore don’t require yearly updates, I’ve disagreed with this since the iPhone 4. Both BlackBerry, Samsung and HTC have a history of updated devices yearly with new features, and just as importantly a new design.

Adobe this morning announced Adobe Creative Cloud, a subscription based licensing approach where you pay a set fee, per month for a license of Adobe applications, and for access to Adobe services, instead of paying a single, one time licensing fee, usually in the hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. As someone who’s followed Adobe closely since 2008, and uses their applications almost every day, this entire change is hugely exciting to me.

While Adobe does their best to hide it, and certainly isn’t happy about it, Adobe faces a huge piracy issue with their more popular application offerings, like Photoshop and Illustrator. They loose hundreds, if not million of pounds each year to people who illegally acquire copies of their software and use tools to create licensing keys or tools that generally allow a user to circumvent the licensing system put in place.

Allowing users to pay for the cost of software over time, as part of a subscription, is a brilliant idea, and an idea far over due. As much as Adobe can justify charging what they do for their software suites, such as the Master Collection, most people, even designers, don’t have between £1,000 to £1,500 to spend in one shot on a shrink-wrapped collection of DVDs, it’s certainly not impossible, but not common either.

What Creative Cloud allows, is for people who would have likely acquired Adobe software through illegal means to acquire it legally, use it and the associated services it came with. Everybody wins, the users, the company and the developers. Adobe certainly are doing their best to downplay this aspect, but I think most users, who are familiar with the Adobe piracy situation know that Creative Cloud could be a significant help to Adobe on this matter.

I personally already placed a pre-order using my Adobe US account for the yearly agreement, which is $49.00US per month for 12 months. This adds up to around $600US for one year of service, and increases to nearly $1,000 per year should you choose to subscribe on a month-to-month basis. I personally believe the “contract” basis which the pricing works may be a point of friction for some people, however, this wasn’t so in my case.

While in the end, you are paying more, just spread over time, I still love the entire concept of Creative Cloud and some of the unique advantages it offers. You also get some other extra such as access to TypeKit, which Adobe acquired in October of 2011, Business Catalyst, as well as some Cloud Services we should find out more about later on.

This will definitely be a post requiring a follow up in 8-12 months, when we’ve seen the success or failure of Creative Cloud. This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve seen software firms allow consumers to license their applications on a month to month basis, but I believe this is one of the more significant examples.

It’s obvious that Nokia and AT&T in America are putting quite a bit of effort behind the launch of the Lumia 900, what many consider to be the new flagship Windows Phone device and what some consider to be an indicator the future success of Windows Phone.

It’s not been any secret that the first few generation of Windows Phone devices from Samsung and HTC have been less than inspiring, partially because of the limitations of Windows Phone as an OS but also becuase of the questionable dedicated by the two OEMs to the platform, along with the questionable hardware they’ve been attempting to sell.

Offerings from HTC have included the HD7 and HD7s, both of which are reasonable devices, but use an old hardware design from the HD2, a Windows Mobile 6.5 powered device that still leaves a bit of a bitter taste in the mouths of many consumers, Samsung have offered a few devices like the Focus Flash, but those devices have been let down by shoddy camera sensors, poor battery life or poor overall build quality.

Nokia’s Lumia 800 and 900 are different however, for the most part Nokia is investing entirely on Windows Phone, as it’s platform of choice for it’s future high-end devices. Meaning you won’t find a Nokia device running Android, so internally, the hardware and R&D teams should be better focused at making a brilliant device for Windows Phone 7.

I’ve been an iPhone user since 2009, the days of the iPhone 3G and later, the 3GS. I’ve never really been interested in Android devices, except for the HTC Desire Z, which ended up being a massive disappointment. I’ve also not had much interest in Windows Phone. Sure, the HTC HD7s is a nice device with reasonable specs and decent build quality, but it always seemed lacking and a bit old (probably because it was) – however the Lumia models have changed that.

Like the HD7s, the Lumia 800 and 900 are actually based on the Nokia N9, which ran Nokia’s Linux based “MeeGo” software. However the Lumia devices have been tweaked for Windows Phone, sporting slightly faster processors (1.4GHz as opposed to the 1.0 in the N9), Nokia’s “TrueBlack” display tech, as well as better cameras. This should make for a brilliant Windows Phone device, right?

Well, for the most part it does. The screen is just brilliant with great colour reproduction and good contrast, it’s responsive, the onboard apps work well and for those using one on AT&T, the data speeds are perfectly acceptable. Synching with a Mac could be a better experience, but Microsft are mostly to blame there. I’ve been an iPhone user for quite sometime, but the Lumia 800/900 have caused me to take a look beyond the rumours of the next iPhone, towards another device, for the first time in quite a while.

I’m not here to defend Nokia, they have their fanboys and girls that can do that for them. However I do feel that stating “third-party app offerings are weak” as a negative in a review, is showing a bit of deseperation to find something to be critical about. A platform not having a lovely selection of third party applications is not a hardware issue. iOS saw it’s app catalogue grow hugely in a short amount of time, but this isn’t a common occurance, and shouldn’t be factored in to a review for many reasons.

If your in the market of getting a Lumia of either model, my suggestion is this. Read the reviews, think about the points made, but above all else, Go out, and try one in a shop for yourself. It’s a new device, that in my eyes, will quite likely define the segment for future devices. Try it for yourself, and make your own informed decisions.

Twitter is a service I have a very long history with. I joined back in 2007, possibly earlier, and have always loved the service, to be fair, I still do to this day. But I believe Twitter has some faults, many of which have shown up since Twitter set it’s sights on becoming cash flow positive and making a profit.

Like most, I dislike the entire concept of “promoted tweets” which are essentially Twitters way of serving adverts to you in the least intrusive way possible, via injecting them to your timeline with the “promoted” badge on them. It’s not that I don’t feel Twitter should be making a profit, all services like Twitter are, first and foremost, businesses, with people to pay and huge hosting and data centre bills to pay as well.

This post however, isn’t about Twitter and it’s promoted tweets. It’s about Twitter and it’s image hosting service, which seems to have come about around the time that Twitter made the announcement, that it would be encoding all posted URLs with their own “t.co” shortener. 

If you’ve ever used the “Post to Twitter” function in the photos app of iOS, or use Twitter for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone or Mac, you’ve at some point used Twitter’s in-house image hosting service, it’s also set as the default on some popular Twitter apps like TweetBot and Osfoora. Supposedly, it’s designed to compete with TwitPic and yFrog, and it’s supposed to be a seamless, smooth experience, but in reality? It’s anything but.

What you see above should be simple and efficient, but is instead an absolute pain in the ass. Twitter and their desire to bring everything in-house, from mobile apps, to image uploading services, to URL shorteners to even a micro-blogging service, seems to be taking a toll.

“Twitter will continue to buy or develop apps and features it needs, even if third-party developers already provide them.” 

That’s the comment, Even Williams made to The New York Times on the 9th of April 2010, which set off quite a backlash. The issue with Twitter and that logic? Is that the core-service Twitter provides is often times slow, buggy and unreliable. As a user of the service for many years, I sincerely believe that Twitter is doing a poor enough job at providing the core experience to users, before you count in all the services they’re trying to provide as well.

I can’t help but wonder if Twitter really understand what users want. I don’t for a quick second doubt that people want a simple, easy to use Twitter client, but Tweetie was just fine in that role before Twitter purchased it. They’ve simply turned the app into something that in many respects, disregards the norm for interface development in iOS and Android applications. 

Remember TweetDeck? Another app purchased by Twitter. Originally a cross-platform, Adobe Air based application, TweetDeck is now a native client for Mac OS X and Windows. Linux support for TweetDeck? Binned. Certain features often used by power-users? Binned as well. I’m having a rather difficult time thinking of anything good that came about as a result of Twitter acquiring TweetDeck. Besides of course the over-simplified user interface, platform dependencies and let’s of course, not be so daft as to forget the security issue that the app seemingly developed as well.

Per my usual standard, I’m not going to lie and say that I’m “slightly upset” with Twitter. That would be nothing but a pure lie. I think Twitter has made a string of changes recently that have not only made no sense at all, but also caused the experience for the average user to suffer and caused huge amounts of frustration to those of us who have stuck around through the years, and continue to do so today.