Apple? Or Samsung/Android?

I find myself in a bit of a quandary as of late. Those of you who know me will know that I am a pretty diehard Apple fan boy. I'm not exactly a card carrying member of the Church of Jobs, I don't worship everything Apple does, or Steve did. But I've owned Apple equipment since the Apple IIe. I currently have an iPhone4, a 3rd Gen iPad and a (core duo model) MacBook Pro. I'm not exclusive though, my desktop, self-built, is a Windows 7 system, and my primary laptop (because the MBP is old) is a Windows 7 Samsung. So I'm not one of those fanboys who uses only one in exclusion of all else. I'm also a big fan of Linux-based Operating Systems, and have watched Android's progress with great interest.

But come we here to the aforementioned quandary. I'm disappointed in Apple. There, I said it. Tim Cook has not been wowing me like Steve Jobs did. The 3rd gen iPad was released to very little fanfare and lack lustre reviews. I'll grant the display upgrade was phenomenal, and a dual core processor was a nice boost. But how about the camera(s)? 5Mp is nothing to sneeze at, but when the competition is using 8Mp cameras, it leaves the consumer a little wanting. Even the iPhone 4S has an 8Mp iSight camera, so why doesn't the iPad? Yes I know, it's still 1080p. I know, it sports Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 a/b/g/n, and 4G LTE. I know. But they hardly even tried to wow us with its release. And honestly, Tim looked like an attempt at Steve Jobs 2.0 as he delivered the keynote address. I'm sorry, but he needs his own style. 

But ok, the iPad isn't my biggest gripe. My biggest gripe is the lawsuit. These Samsung lawsuits are already ruining Apple's public image. Apple wants to make the statement not to mess with them. Not to steal from them. (Whether or not Samsung *did* steal anything from Apple is a topic for a totally separate debate.) But that's not the message they're putting out there. The message the public is seeing is that Apple fears Samsung. Apple fears Samsung's innovation. The public is seeing Apple saying "Samsung's products are just like ours but less expensive." Now of course, that's not what Apple *wants* to say. But it is what the public is seeing. 

And to be totally honest, Samsung's products are becoming as good as Apple's, and are indeed less expensive. There was a day when I'd have backed Apple's refutation, and their rebuttal that their products cost more because of the higher cost of manufacturing such high quality products and designs. And I don't know, maybe this is a case where Apple spend millions on R&D to come up with these great manufacturing processes, and along comes Samsung and follows those same processes, but because they didn't have to spend the millions on R&D, they can sell it to the consumer for less. Maybe, I don't know. But even if that's the case, it's time for Apple to stop trying to recoup the R&D money. They have to stay competitive, especially if they're going to survive Steve's death. And maybe that means they have to stop trying to recoup that money, and instead, price their products more at par with their competitors.

Has anyone reading this really looked at Samsung's latest offerings? Their hardware is really, really good. And paired with Android 4.0 ICS, they have a really good platform. Steve once commented on how the reason why he didn't think Android would be as successful in the developer marketplace, and therefore in the consumer marketplace, was because it was Linux-based, and therefore inherently insecure. Not meaning that the Linux kernel was insecure, but that the Open Source model is insecure, because if anybody can write code for it, anybody can break it too. I thought he may have been right at the time. But Android has come a long way since then, and I haven't heard of any significant security issues or exploits.

So, to the specifics of my quandary. With my cellular providor, I have the "new every 2" option, meaning every 2 years, I can upgrade to a new phone and extend my existing contract, as though I were a totally new customer. That 2 year mark will arrive in January 2013, and I'm faced with the choice of upgrading to an iPhone 5 (which is supposed to be coming out around October of 2012), or totally switching and picking up a Samsung/Android phone. If the latter, I would also likely sell my iPad and pick up a Samsung Note 10.1. 

I'm going to wait and see if Mr Cook manages to wow me in October. What are your views? And please, let's keep the Apple or Android bashing to a minimum. I'm looking for reasoned input, not inflexible and often untrue dogma. Comments of the latter variety will be removed. This blog is not a democracy, it's a totalitarian dictatorship. :)

~Mahalo~

Doesn't Anybody Read?

In having a Facebook account, a Google+ account, and a few of the other myriad social networking accounts available these days, I've come to notice something really annoying: People don't read. In an age when we have more information available to us than ever before, people read less of it than they ever used to. There are exceptions of course, because there are those who will choose the comments section on a FB or G+ post to argue and debate, and show their net prowess. But for the most part, people don't read, and here's what I mean. I'm reading a Google+ posting that had a mathematical equation in it. Something + something - something x zero + something. Now, anyone who remembers even high school mathematics should know the order of mathematical equations. PEDMAS = Parentheses, Exponents, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction. So, in the example I listed, the multiplication comes first. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. So if, for example, the equation were: 5 + 9 - 3 * 0 + 7, you break it down thus; 3 * 0 = 0, leaving us with 5 + 9 - 0 + 7. Now that's where people get mixed up, because most will just do it one step at a time, left to right.  But if you do, your answer will be much different than if you followed PEDMAS. As expected, there were a lot of wrong answers. But then, at one point, a college mathematics student posted and cited PEDMAS, then broke the equation down correctly. Hours later, there were still people giving wrong answers, and explaining why it was right, and with no regard to the PEDMAS post, making it obvious they hadn't even read it. Had they read it, they could have looked that up to see if he was right, and saved themselves the embarassment.

Another example. Today, +Guy Kawasaki shared an article originally posted by Alan Taylor in The Atlantic. The article was about Neil Armstrong, his life and career. This article contains several pictures of Neil, particularly during his NASA career. One of the pictures, the one that was highlighted on +Guy Kawasaki's Google+ share, was of Neil in a Gemini 8 capsule, during training before the Apollo program. Now, the picture wasn't captioned, so I can't fault many people for not realizing that this was not an Apollo capsule. But very early on in the list of comments, it is explained by somebody who went to The Atlantic and read the article, that this was a picture of a Gemini capsule, not an Apollo capsule, and it was not taken upon Neil's return to Earth from the moon. It was also explained that the green colour in the water was not antifreeze, as many +'ers wondered, but locator dye, used by NASA and the USAF to locate the astronauts upon splashdown. One of many methods of location. Yet again, many, many comments after this, people are still talking about it being an Apollo capsule, and antifreeze.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: READ! You'll probably manage to prevent yourself from looking the fool more often than not. Nobody has ever died from being too educated. Foot in mouth disease is as prevalent in type as it is in live speech. Do some research instead of talking out of your ass. It will stand you in good stead, trust me.

~Mahalo~