Posts by abortrephrase

E-book maker speeds E Ink Pearl tech

Pretty sure the Cybook Opus could do the same thing. I found the ghosting too much after even two page turns, but perhaps that was the older screen tech, or my dodgy eyesight.

In my experience the border thing is an Adobe renderer thing, not a Bookeen/Sony/whoever thing. If you've got a DRM-free ePub book you can tweak the margins down considerably.

On a tangent, I really hate the Adobe renderer. It takes a strong "publisher knows best" approach to rendering with no way to over-ride. Which removes one of the key advantages of an ebook for the vision-impaired.

As an example, take a typical commercial ePub book (my usual test case is "The Wordy Shipmates") and increase the font size on a device using the Adobe renderer. The already-too-big margins get even bigger, to the point where the text is just a small strip down the middle of the screen!

Netflix on global spree

Price will be key. I'm in Australia, and my cable company wants to charge $3 for a 20-minute TV episode. I did it once to see if it worked, won't be doing it again unless the price becomes more reasonable.

Netflix streaming is a great deal, provided you can get it. Expect Australia will be last on the list of target markets, we're too small and the TV business has all the content locked up in long-term contracts.

Creative Ziio 7in Android tablet

Process and customisation

This is purely speculation as I don't work in that field, but my understanding is that the whole "custom layer" thing adds a great deal of time and effort required to OS upgrades. Bear in mind it's not just "if it compiles, ship it!", there's a whole QA process to go through too.

It also probably doesn't help that Google are pretty secretive about future releases and seem to only work with a single vendor for each one. So with 2.3, for example, if you weren't Samsung then you're even further behind.

'Steve Jobs' switches to Android

Locale

The app that finally helped me make my mind up was Locale. In part because it's just so great -- for example, it turns wifi on my phone on when I'm home, and off when I'm not -- but also because it's precisely the sort of useful thing a motivated developer can do on Android that they can't do on iPhone.

With the iPhone you're stuck waiting for Apple to innovate. With Android, any random developer can replace parts. There's a danger in that, certainly, but I think it's the model more likely to produce good results in the longer term.

Fair dues to Apple though, the iPhone forced mobile handset manufacturers to think about interface design in a way they hadn't bothered doing before. Without Apple's work in the area we'd all still be stuck with Series 60 as the pinnacle of user experience...

Fake Steve is right

I came to a similar conclusion as Fake Steve. Each software update has made my iPhone slower and less reliable so I was already looking around at upgrade options.

The control-freakery -- particularly on the content side -- pushed me over the edge and I went for a HTC Desire.

And you know what? The user interface isn't any less elegant than iPhone OS. There aren't as many apps (yet) but most of what I needed was there. It's snappier, more reliable, and chewing through less battery on an average day.

I'm pretty happy with my decision.