Tech And Stuff

Moving on

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 12:23:00 +0000

I have decided to move all my blogging over to whilebrowsing.net, this site will remain for now as a archive of sorts.

whilebrowsing.net

The thing about .Net

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 May 2014 17:45:00 +0000

So I just started a new gig at a small Norwegian company called Signicat and in that ended my period at Acando and also ended, for now, my career as a IT consultant and switched over to the product side of things. The differences between being a consultant and working for a product company are certainly worth a post so I should try and do that, but now I want to talk about .Net and C# and the Microsoft stack in general.

In my two years of being a IT consultant I worked on mostly .Net projects, three projects of slightly different character and type, but they where all .Net C# based. When I began at Acando I had to start using Windows again (Windows 7) and so going from OS X and Android to Windows and .Net was quite the change (yes C# and Java are not that different, but bear with me here).

The change went mostly well. Microsoft did a excellent job with C# and .Net and it is from several perspectives certainly designed to make it easy for Java developers to switch to .Net without to much hassle and when you get the swing (not Swing mind you) of things you might even start to do some neat stuff you where missing from Java since Java is certainly not perfect. After a short while I was actually liking .Net very much and I started to appreciate the clever C# language, the flexible syntax, the base .Net frameworks and the enormous other .Net pieces like ASP.Net, WCF, Entity Framework, Azure and so on. The whole platform and ecosystem feels robust, enterprisey in a good way (and bad ways off course) and there is great support on all of it. There was actually nothing really wrong with .Net and C# and the rest of the gang, my problems with .Net and C# is not the language and it is not the frameworks. The problem are the things surrounding these things, the tools and the OS.

Now before you ramble on that C# is open source and open standard and Mono and bla bla bla I want you to please shut the hell up. If you want to build a .Net server with ASP.Net MVC 4.5 and deploy to Azure you would be crazy as hell if you did that on a Linux or OS X machine. I would strongly argue that to do stuff like that you need Windows and you need Visual Studio (and pretty new versions of both). This is the problem with .Net and C# and it is a very serious problem.

With .Net and C# you get to pick one OS and one editor for the job and they both come from Microsoft and they both cost a lot of money. You have in my opinion zero choice here and they both come from the same company, cost money and have a gazillion different tiers and options. If you don't like Windows or you don't like Visual Studio and you have to make something with .Net or C# then you are screwed. The OS I use and the tools I use to develop software are things I have come to find very important. Yes that is not pragmatic and yes you could argue that it is childish and inmature, but I will argue why it is not. Java, python, ruby, perl, C++, C, javascript, lisp and many other programming languages shows and demonstrates that a language need not be OS or IDE specific. Django, Android, Spring, Hibernate, Rails and many others shows us that frameworks need not be OS or IDE specific either. It is possible to make stuff in a way that makes it easy and manageable to develop languages and platforms that can be developed by the tools that the developers themselves want to use.

Yes there are several things to point out here. Sure there are kinks and problems with a bunch of the languages and frameworks I mentioned when it comes to cross platform development (where cross platform means that the developers use different OSes and tools, not talking about the the target deployment environment here). But these are minor issues and can usually be worked around. It is entirely possible to develop a Android app with 3 devs where they all use different OSes and different IDEs or editors. This is not possible with .Net and C# projects.

Now the argument that Windows and Visual Studio costs money can for many, especially working people, be dismissed by the fact that very few developers purchase their own software, their employers do it. But the fact that the basic tools and necessities to develop .Net and C# requires money down first is something that greatly hinders entrance for two kinds of developers, one of them are students and the other kind is developers from emerging economies where many are grabbing stuff of the net and learning programming themselves. Linux being a free desktop OS that is amazing for programming and computer science in general is so valuable for both students, schools and emerging economies, why no love Microsoft? With the basic tools being free or easy to get hold of the developer base grows and with it grows a ecosystem of support, community and lot of other stuff. The whole .Net and C# experience is very much influenced by the fact that 95% of the people using it are paid developers, this is perfectly ok, but in my opinion far from ideal.

Off course many developers are fine with Windows and Visual Studio and never care about the costs and so on and that is fine. But for me I really hate Windows (sorry Windows) and I really really hate Visual Studio and being forced to use these tools is not something I appreciate. This is sad because I as I said earlier I actually like .Net and C# and would love to use it to make Android apps, web apps or whatever really, just don't force me to use Windows ok Microsoft?

Minor update

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 07:00:00 +0000

Just wanted to mention that I have again switched jobs up here in Trondheim. I'm no longer a IT consultant but a software developer for Signicat, a small product company. So from .Net and over to Android, Java, HTML and Javascript. Must admit I like those technologies very much.

Windows 8 review

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 12:29:00 +0000

Two years ago I had to, or somewhat choose to, go back to Windows computing again. I had been a Mac desktop (and Linux for servers) user since 2006 and as I feared 6 years away from Windows made it a tough comeback. So much of Windows 7 felt and still feels incredibly dated, terrible and just bad compared to OS X (10.6 is my reference) as a desktop user and also as a developer i still prefer OS X (just give me a decent terminal ok?) or even Linux (terrible desktop OS, great developer OS).

But I endured and I managed to be at least somewhat productive on this relic OS (Microsoft proudly explains they have bugs dating back to NT 4.0 for compatibility, so proud they are). So after two years of more or less constantly hating and fighting against Windows 7 the time had come to take the deep plunge and install Windows 8 for real, not just a 30 minute lived VM experiment that ended in terrible nightmares and treatments for schizophrenia. Time go to, eh, purple?

The very short review of Windows 8, the one thing I’m sticking with, is that it’s a terrible OS. That being said it’s an amazing OS, except when it’s awful that is. I could go on like this forever and I will try to explain why, although it’s hard to explain in mere words. Windows 8 is one amazing desktop OS (yes really) and one terrible desktop OS (so bad, so bad) sewn together like two very different siamese twins with terrible scars and deep strains of stitches showing through.

The bad OS is the OS-formerly-known-as-Metro OS now called, eh, modern? It may not be a bad tablet or touch OS, I don't know because my laptop doesn't have a touch screen and oh yes it is a computer that I use with a mouse and a keyboard. I use it with a high res screen, maybe even two, so a full screen only OS is pretty much just idiotic. The whole idea of putting metro (I'm calling it metro ok?) on a desktop OS is to me so absurd it warrants mental checking. Every time I either accidentally open metro or I for some insane reason have to, it's a terrible experience. Its terrible because I'm sucked out of desktop windows and into metro windows, two very different worlds. The switch and zoom animation reminds me of iOS or Android, but those are mobile OSes for mobile devices, you know, smaller screens in your hands. They are designed around fullscreen apps because of usability and performance, much less cpu and battery usage to just show one big app. But I'm on a computer Microsoft, remember those? Computers that sometimes, in fact often, are plugged in to walls with endless power flowing from that wall and also somewhere is a huge internet connection giving me tons of data to process, no charge, almost.

Using weather, news, twitter, video, anything in metro mode on a computer sitting on a desk with two monitors at high res feels absurd everytime it happens and I do my uttermost to try to not let it happen. I try my damnest to stay in desktop mode. Lets talk about the desktop.

The desktop rocks. When I started using Windows 8 it hit me like a ton of bricks, Windows 7 was almost perfect, but 95% compared to 100% can often feel terrible if those 5% are the wrong ones. Windows 8 fixes almost everything that was mind gnawingly terrible about Windows 7. It is much much faster at booting, logging in, starting apps, navigating and basicly just faster in use. Now I also upgraded to a SSD when I installed Windows 8, but the performance gain is much more than just a better disk. Windows 8 feels leaps and bounds more responsive, snappy, faster and reliable than Windows 7, in desktop. Desktop Windows 8 is amazing and I was shocked and happy to find that I actually liked zooming and bobbing about on a Windows OS again, first time in many many years. Then suddenly someone drags me from this happy place and back to the dungeon.

This dungeon has no walls, no chrome, no nothing. It is all compassing and jarring has hell to operate. You are supposed to drag, drop, pinch and who knows what to navigate this dungeon and with a mouse and keyboard it just does not work. The escape button does nothing to escape any app. Hitting space inside the full-screen-video-only-player does nothing, the mouse is the only input that metro-dungeon accepts, almost. Hit the windows key and you get some response in the dungeon. Windows+D escapes you back to the safe zone, the desktop.

The schizophrenia with Windows 8 is quite staggering at times. Settings exists in desktop and metro, some overlap some not. Some settings are only found in metro and some are only found in desktop. Some apps only work in desktop and some only in metro. IE works in both. Search is almost usable compared to Windows 7, but only works, or perhaps only works best, in metro and not in desktop. Most apps appear in the home-metro mode and 99.99% of all apps I install do not support any tile system and look horrible as they stack endlessly to the right. It finally dawns on me that the metro homescreen is the ugly bastard child of metro and desktop, the ugly child replaces, terribly, the already terrible, start menu.

So Im leaving it at that, Windows 8 is a amazing schizo OS that with a proper lobotomy should in fact be a rock solid, fast and snappy desktop OS. Great job Microsoft, really, now lets see if Mavericks is done downloading yet.

Files are out and streams are in

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:32:00 +0000

I came to two realisations this other day when listening to John Gruber and Merlin Mann talking about iTunes 11 for OS X on The Talk Show. One was how incredibly boring it was to listen to two people discuss iTunes 11 design choices for over thirty minutes and the other was that I don't care for files anymore. What I mean about files here are files that I have to constantly take care of and curate and make sure I have a quadruple set of backups of at all times. Files that have bad or non existent meta data or are badly ripped or use a strange file format or DRM or something that makes it unusable in the future.

What I like more and more are streams, streams of data from some service provider of said files. Netflix and Spotify are perfect examples of the age of streaming. I don't have or really need to have a single file downloaded and curated and backed up when it comes to Spotify or Netflix, I just need the internet and I almost always need that anyways. Being able to buffer some content for a short while for offline listening/watching is a nice feature to have, but not really as necessary as I first thought. With streaming the content available on any given device, and the more devices and plattforms the service serves the better, is enormous and not in any way limited to the amount of local storage on said device, a 2GB smartphone can play all the music in the world, something a 64GB iPod cannot.

The service provider is the one who has to curate and take care of these files and these services are much much better suited for this task then any private person, usually at least. Taking care of files is a tedious, demanding and incredibly boring job that I loathe more and more. The only files I now care to actually take care of I put up in the cloud, in hopes that that will save them from the inevitable doom that faces most harddrives, computers or physical entities. But I wish I didn't have to. The new version of iTunes is such incredibly boring news to me simply because it is a program designed to organize, curate and purchase files, and files are dead, long live the stream.

Long time no see

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:38:00 +0000

Been a while since my last post here. I have been very busy and also posted my small posts over at While Browsing. But rest assured stuff is coming, right now I am working on a larger post about MonoDroid and how it compares to good old fashioned Android development so stay tuned.

Daring Fireball 10 years

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:15:00 +0000

Two years ago I did not know about Daring Fireball or it's writer and creator John Gruber, but I had implemented markdown in a website so already Grubers work had influenced me in some way. Today Daring Fireball is the blog I always check and it's first on my web checklist.

When I first started reading some of his posts, ca. fall of 2010, I was often infuriated and angry at his writing. Many times I felt he was blatantly writing in favor of Apple and iPhone and in disfavor of Google and Android. Being a huge Google fan boy and having just started as a Android developer part time this might have had something to do with it. But no matter how angry or wrong I felt the posts where I kept going back to Daring Fireball and it took me a while to figure out why.

The simple reason for my addiction to reading bad things about Android and being angry at the writing of John Gruber was because 1) he was often right and 2) he was never boring to read. It was often writing that I would either like, love, hate or feel something strongly about, never ever boring. I could read Google/Android fan boy drivel and be bored out of my skull, but Gruber always sparked discussion and thought in my brain. He is also refreshingly honest in his writing, these are his strongly worded very subjective opinions on matters he finds interesting, no more and no less. After reading Daring Fireball for almost two years I can only say that his style and topic choices continue to grow on me.

So no matter if he truly is Apple biased or not, a Google hater or not, John Gruber is never boring to read and for that simple reason alone you should, no matter you'r subjective thoughts on the matters of Apple and Google, read Daring Fireball. The podcast The Talk Show is also great and worth a listen. So congratulations to John Gruber for 10 years of Daring Fireball, may you always provoke and spark discussions.

Daring Fireball

The Talk Show

Windows 8 and the Surface

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 08:11:00 +0000

So Windows 8 is getting closer and closer to release and with it the launch of Microsoft Surface (not this), Microsoft's own tablet/pc hardware. I have several concerns.

The biggest and messiest problem is Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM processors and is not to be confused with Windows, but you will most likely do just that. To understand the differences between Windows RT and Windows is very hard and having a degree in computer science helps a lot, always a good sign. Windows RT will not run the classic desktop version of Windows and will not support Win32 based applications as it will only run applications compiled and tested for the new Windows Runtime (probably where the RT comes from). Windows Runtime is a very important next step for Windows as it is a brand new and vastly updated runtime for Windows applications that is the future of all Windows applications, eventually. The problem is not actually Windows 8 RT itself, it is the fact that Windows 8 still exists, a Windows that runs both the old and the new runtimes. Had Microsoft made Windows 8 ONLY support Windows Runtime then it would have forced all applications to be compatible, but now you get a wonderful world of confusion for both developers and more importantly consumers. Had Microsoft made Windows ONLY support both the old and new runtimes then the problem would also be minor because all apps would run on all versions of Windows 8, but this will not be the case.

If you can explain the difference between a Microsoft Surface running Windows 8 (the one with a Intel processor) and a Microsoft Surface running Windows 8 RT to a end user, then please tell me how you achieved this because I have tried explaining it to myself for several months and I still don't really understand it.

The second problem as I see it is the perception of Windows 8 tablets (not Windows RT tablets) from many power users today. They are looking forward to buying the iPad with Windows that can run Office, Adobe Photoshop, Visual Studio, run them all at the same time in addition to iTunes and Spotify and Steam games and last for 6 to 10 hours and dock with USB stuff and have a keyboard and be light as a feather and thin as a sliver of hair that floats on a magical breeze. I also would like such a device, but I would also love a flying car and my personal spaceship, seeing as we are talking about impossible devices that have no real hold in reality. The reality is that Windows 8 tablets (not Windows RT tablets) will be under powered light PCs that will get hot and drain the battery much much faster then any stated spec on the packaging, you will never ever get 6 hours of that tablet whilst using whatever desktop application you love using and you will not have a quick and speedy experience. Multitasking will sludge the device down to a halt or multitasking will not work they way you intend at all. The Windows 8 RT tablets might be great, but the Windows 8 tablets (not Windows RT tablets) will be neither great tablets nor great PCs, they will be bad tablets and mediocre at best PCs. The main point is that they will not be the devices that people are talking about right now, they will be very disappointed when they actually use those Windows 8 (not Windows RT) tablets.

So right now you have Windows 8 (not Windows 8 RT) that will change Windows desktop handling in a radical way and that may be very problematic for all those Windows users who are used to a regular Windows desktop, this may be a big problem. Then you have Windows 8 tablets that will be bad at everything they are supposed to be, not good tablets and not good PCs. Then you have Windows 8 RT tablets that will probably disappointing of a lot of people that where actually trying to purchase a Windows 8 tablet (not RT) but since no one understands the difference at the store they ended up with a Windows 8 RT tablet that does not run Steam, Adobe or anything else that they already use in Windows 7. I am getting more and more excited about Windows 8 that is for sure.

While browsing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 12:08:00 +0000

While browsing the web I come over a lot of stuff, a large amount of lot of stuff, and some of it I want to 1) take personal note of and 2) comment on in a line or maybe three right there and then. This often falls between Twitter and between this blog both thematically and substance wise. So as any other idiot on the net I created a tumblr for this gap of personal publishing space and will put anything and nothing on it at any time I want to about anything I want to. Stuff like nice Android apps and similar content will also be put at this site.

while browsing

Not getting the next version

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 08:55:00 +0000

I missed this somehow, but it is now confirmed that Windows Phone 7 devices will not get Windows Phone 8, at all. They will get some sort of 7.8 version that will add some features, but bottom line is that they are not getting Windows Phone 8. How surprised I am of this truly. Wonder if Windows Phone 8 devices will get Windows Phone 9?

Apple and the map

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:33:00 +0000

So Apple has trown out Google Maps and decided to make their own map service for iOS devices, a bold move and if Apple pulls it off it will be very impressive. One thing comes to mind.

I would bet 10$ that Google is making or has completed a iOS Google Maps app, the question is not if it exists but when or if it will ever appear in the App Store. For all we know the app may be in the "pending approval" state right now, a strange thought. The point is simple enough, Apple can if they choose to deny Google to publish a Google Maps app for iOS so the question is will they? Apple has allowed Google Voice, Chrome (!) and Opera Mini, will they allow Google Maps?

Asus Transformer Prime Review

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:42:00 +0000

I have had the Asus Transformer Prime in my possession for quite some time now so it's long past time for a review so here goes, I will keep it short and to the point.

This device has huge and in my opinion amazing potential as a media consumption device and decent productivity device thanks to the keyboard dock. The Prime is so close to delivering this potential that it is a real shame that it doesn't quite get there. The hardware is great and Asus may not win any design awards, but the device is a pure steel and glass construction that lacks that painfully bad thing about PCs and netbooks, stickers. It's just a tablet in aluminium with a dock in aluminum, that's it and it works really well.

The stock Android 4.0 is great and I have a ok, not great, selection of apps to choose from and that selection is getting better by the day. The Prime fails short on one very important aspect and that is bugs and hangups. The device can deliver very nice gaming with pretty impressive graphics but at almost any given time the most basic app will freeze and a not responding app warning shows up. You can just click wait and the app resumes just fine, but it happens all the time and it kills the whole experience. Browsing is even worse and browsing is the singel most important reason to have a tablet in the first place. Asus is supposedly working on a fix, but as of writing the Prime is still a mess with hangups and random reboots and other bugs.

I was really hoping for the Prime to be the perfect Android tablet, it is not and I can not recommend it to anyone. Perhaps if or when Asus fixes the software, if they can, it will become the awesome tablet I hoped it will be.

One final notice is that for me this is probably still the best tablet out there right now. I did not want a iPad and the other Android tablets have other problems. Right now the Prime is working and I am using it for browsing, twitter and gaming so it works, just far for from perfect. Also I wrote this review on my Prime so it kinda works for writing as well.

Windows Phone update rumors and problems

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:15:00 +0000

Back in April there was a flurry of rumors surrounding Windows Phone 7 devices. The rumor was that the current WP devices would not get updates to Windows Phone 8 or "Apollo" wich is the next big WP version coming this fall (that may also be a rumor, not sure). Here is a article from The Verge about it. Regardless of the rumor itself I did suddenly think of something when it comes to operating systems and the makers of them, namely the business model.

The three big players in mobile OSes these days are Apple, Google and Microsoft (sorry RIM). These three have very different approaches to the mobile phone OS.

Apple
Apple makes the OS and the hardware and it makes money by selling the hardware. As part of "sell a lot of hardware" Apple delivers a very nice software and hardware combo and it also updates them both in a nice fashion. Once a year there comes a bigger hardware change and the software is update across all devices whenever possible. Buying a Apple device is suposed to mean "it works" and "it get's fixed and updated for a long time". Apple doesn't make any more money directly when they update the 3GS to iOS 5, but they hope to get devoted customers who enjoy the long (relatively at least) support and updates. They want happy customers to buy more iPhones and iPads (and tell other people to buy iPhones and iPads).

Google
Google makes a open source operating system called Android wich is free for anyone to download and use. That is the simple version, the real world challenges to this approach is far more complex. The point is that Google does not make any money by selling the OS and they do not make any money (at least not to my knowledge) by selling devices. Manufacturers make money of the devices, not Google. Google makes money, in theory, by selling ads to advertisers that are shown on Android devices running Google services and ad providers, they also push a lot of "Google" tech trough Android like Maps, Search, Mail and Google+. Google is not making money of updating the phones of HTC and Samsung, they couldn't even if they would i suspect. Updating Android phones to latest version is the choice of manufacturers and they don't necessary have the same approach to this as Apple. Many of them create many new models each year and have perhaps a more "buy the latest phone and get the latest OS" approach to updates. Safe to say that there are many neglected Android devices that will never get the latest Android version because of such strategies. The point is that it is not Google that provides these updates even tough they make the OS, it's a complex approach that has gotten Android a huge user base, just not a very simple or homogenous one.

Microsoft
Then there is Windows Phone by Microsoft. Microsoft makes money, in theory, by licensing their OS to manufacturers that make money by selling the phones. This is the model currently popular with PCs. You buy a Asus computer with Windows 7 and both Asus and Microsoft makes some money. You buy a Lumia 900 and both Nokia and Microsoft makes some money. However what is interesting here is the updates. When was the last time you got a free upgrade from one Windows to the next one? Did you'r Windows Vista update to Windows 7 automatically? Was it free? The answer is simply that no, no one got a free update from Windows Vista to Windows 7. The reason is simple, Microsoft makes money from selling you the OS, either directly or trough manufacturers, they do not give away free upgrades for major new versions of Windows. The manufacturer makes money from selling you hardware, they do not give away or pay for you to get a free upgrade to the next Windows version. That is the PC way, what about mobile phones? The problem here is that right now there is a precedence set by Apple where you buy hardware and get software updates to major new versions of the OS (iOS) as long as the hardware is still capable. The Android approach is more laizzes-faire but in any case Google provides Android for free so hardware makers are free to update their phones as much as they like, they don't have to pay for the next version. So what about Windows Phone? One thing is hardware requirements, what about the business model here? If HTC wants to update their existing WP handets to the next version do they have to purchase a licence for each device they update?

My question in this, why would Microsoft provide handset makers or anyone for that matter the next big version of Windows Phone for free? How does Microsoft make money of that? Microsoft makes money by selling software, free major updates is not what they are known for at all. Does anyone have a good answer? Yes Microsoft may give away Windows Phone 8 for free now to get into the market, but that would be a huge blow to income and stockholders would not like the "we just give it away for free now" approach to Windows sales. In any case would Windows Phone 9 be free? I'm thinking it will not.

A brand new device

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 06:42:00 +0000

This post is being typed on a brand new gadget I just purchased. Going to post a review soon, that is all.

Hard to imagine

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:20:00 +0000

Yes John Gruber, it is hard to imagine that Apple releases free peripherals to fix connectivity issues with a already released device, easy to remember though.

Great Android app - Pocket Casts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:37:00 +0000

I see, buy and use a lot of great pay apps for Android and when I look at the sales numbers I get almost sad that they are "just" hitting 50-100k sales intervalls. This may be enough for the developers but in any case I wanted to do my part to highlight great Android apps that are worth the tiny amounts of money they ask in return. First up is the amazing podcast app Pocket Casts by Shift Jelly.

Pocket Casts - Shift Jelly

It's a really solid podcast app that improves on the experience in many ways. Coming from the OK but very basic Listen by Google this app is nicely designed and has some very nice features like:

Supports video podcasts
Uses own server for refreshing so the process is very fast if you have many feeds
Nice and rich search feature
Powerful settings like "Keep last five podcasts"
Nice widget
Excellent player that resumes and has great skip/forward functions

Simply put this is the best podcast app I have used for Android and I strongly recommend you to buy and use it, if you like listening to podcasts that is.

Some excellent points on Android fragmentation

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:05:00 +0000

Kinda getting tired of blogging about Android fragmentation so luckily I found some excellent posts about the topic. Here are links and short descriptions:

From a developers perspective: Fragmentation is a Bad Excuse
From a analysts perspective: An Analysis of Android Fragmentation
Poking fun at the concept: Why I'm Not Supporting OS X

Chickens, eggs and making money

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:41:00 +0000

As long as there has been Android tablets (if you just count Android 3.0 tablets and higher that time is about one year) there has been one big negative point on any Android tablet review page, the lack of great tablet apps. This PC Mag article is great because it tells it like it is, there is little wrong with the hardware and Android 4.0 is a working and OK tablet platform, but the apps are not there yet. Comparably the iPad now has thousands to tens of thousands of great to amazing tablet apps and the iPad is the product any Android tablet will be compared against. The iPad managed to launch with several tablet ready apps and with it's huge success the app quality and selection followed promptly. From the last app gold rush with the iPhone many developers where eager to catch the next money train and publishers where pouncing on a potential revenue source. So with the iPad the product was perfect and the software matched up, Android has not been as fortunate. Some problems discussed below.

The hardware
Android tablet hardware has had two extremely big problems from day one, the first being the sweet spot device. There is no device that simply matches up to the iPad and costs a little less. Regular people, the mass market if you like, want the default easy to choose fail safe device and Android has no clear "this is the one to get" model and has been lacking one ever since the Xoom was a massive let down when it was released. The second big problem is that the perfect Android tablet is always a couple of months away from being released and I mean that literally. I myself have been waiting for the next Android tablet that is just around the corner to be released for over one and a half years. Meanwhile the iPad is being consistently released once a year followed by a mass market roll out no other product is even close to matching (maybe consoles?). I have been eager to buy the Asus Transformer Prime for over half a year and before the damn thing even gets in stock Asus manages to announce a new one, extremely bad for business and consumers. These problems are not good for getting Android tablets to the mass market.

The Android
Even Mathias Duarte said that Android 3.0 was a "emergency landing" and it showed when people got their first Android tablets. Even now Android 3.2 is a terrible experience compared to 4.0 so the release software for Android tablets was not great. This has been fixed all tough as usual the hardware pushers must keep up.

The apps
The last piece of the tablet puzzle is the classic chicken and egg problem, without any users why should devs make apps for Android tablets? This is a problem not just for Android tablets as many developers still have great problems with making money on Android. This is true for iOS apps as well because there is huge competition there, but Android has a different more fundamental problem, the users aren't coughing up cash.

This has been a Android "culture" from the get go where there where more free apps and almost few to no pay apps when the Android Market was launched (now named Google Play). One reason was clearly that it took Google a long time to roll out payment support in Android and even longer internationally, making pay apps a small niche by default.

But today payable apps are available to almost all the Google Play countries and still there is a clear tendency that few people are paying for apps. Just looking at the interval numbers for the top selling apps shows this. Right now RingDimmer is in third place and has sold between 1000 and 5000 units, that is either just a local Norway ranking (but it's the same when i choose English as language) or there are extremely few people actually purchasing apps which makes it possible to hit third place with such low sales numbers.

I say low because compared to iOS charts you would never hit third place with only 5000 sales. Makers of amazing Android game Battle Heart have just blogged about quitting Android development because they weren't getting the ROI they needed to continue (ROI = return of investment). The post got a lot of attention and the Android sites quickly talked about how other games where doing great and making tons of cash, also true but there is a big problem. Many of those other games base their success on being free and ad-driven in revenue. They get huge numbers (1-5 million users a day) and manage to make a living of the ads, even tough ads generate very little income pr. user. My guess is that Mika Mobile didn't want to put ads in their game and rightfully so because it is a gorgeous and great looking game that would feel cheap with ads and is worth every penny. The result where poor sales compared to iOS and lots of problems with development. The dev problems are in my opinion secondary to the real problem which is income, if you make enough money you simply work out the dev issues. Another great game is Angry Birds, the original has yet to bee launched with a ad-free version simply because Rovio feels the sales on Android are not good enough to bother with selling, ads are the way to go.

There isn't a problem with ad-based games and apps but certain developers and many apps work better if there is real cash being exchanged for a quality product, and developers and companies do want their dollars people because they are not working full time or part-time for free I can tell you that much. Getting Android users to pay for quality apps and content is key to making it more interesting for developers to bother with Android in general and especially Android tablets because bigger apps have bigger development costs, pure and simple.

So Android tablets?
So reading this you might think that Android tablets are doomed and we will all be using iPads in the future (more on Windows 8 later). I don't see it as a problem. Me personally I'm going to purchase my first Android tablet this Q2 when Asus somehow manages to get a actual product to some actual shelves, the Asus Transformer concept is incredible and I can't wait to post blogs from one of things. Sure there will be a lack of apps in many departments but guess what, when I got my HTC Hero in 2009 it was the same deal, good apps where few and far apart. But that changed and now there is a great selection for Android phone apps, more then I can hold track of by far. If Google manages to change the customer culture of wanting only free apps and get some cold hard cash flowing from users to devs then better phone and tablet apps will come. If at the same time a marginal amount of Android tablets gets sold, the margin being some magical percentage for hardware makers to care to continue, then all should be well, I hope. Android on phones spent two years catching up and Android tablets have just had one, but things are moving faster and faster so the time is in fact really short to shape things up, let's hope Andy has something clever up his sleeve.

Android Quick Tip - ADB over WiFi

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Someone I had the pleasure of working with recently showed me something extremely cool for Android development. It is simply that it is possible to use the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) over TCP/IP or more practically speaking over WiFi. This means that you don't have to tether you'r Android device(s) to you'r computer when you are developing, you can just connect it to a charger or someone elses computer. This is quite handy if you have more Android devices then USB ports and very very handy if you are working with multiple people on the same LAN that are testing you'r latest builds. Here is a quick tutorial (requires Android SDK and ADB installed):

Step 1.
Connect you'r Android device to you'r computer and have USB debugging enabled. Also you have to have added the Android tools to you'r path or else you have to go to the SDK folder first. Open up you'r terminal/cmd and type:

adb tcpip 5555

This should give the output:

restarting in TCP mode port: 5555

You have now enabled ADB over TCP/IP using the port 5555 (use another port if that one is taken)

Step 2.
Now knowing the IP of you'r Android device (Settings->About->Status) type the following into the terminal:

adb connect <you'r devices IP adress>

you should now get the output:

connected to <you'r devices IP adress>

Step 3.
You should now be able to debug against you'r device as usual as long as it is connected to the same WiFi as you'r computer. A simple test:

adb devices

Should give the output:

List of devices attached:
<you'r devices IP adress> device

Or something similar. Go ahead and try to read the Logcat using DDMS or simply deploying to you'r device using you'r favourite IDE IntelliJ IDEA. I have tested the following to work over WiFi ADB:

Logcat output
Deploy dev app
Debug dev app
Screenshots over ADB

I have been using my Nexus S so this may not work on all Android devices, but do give it a try and post here if you are sucessfull (with the name of you'r device). A huge thanks to Håvard for showing me this!

Update
Sorry for not checking the comments here, a minor typo is probably causing problems as the first line was with 555 and then the following are with 5555, fixed now, sorry guys.

Ice Cream Sandwich one month in

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:06:00 +0000

So I have been using ICS on my Nexus S for about one month now and today Samsung finally launched ICS for their slightly more popular Galaxy S2 handset. Here are some quick thoughts on using ICS for a while:

It is great
It simply is great really. It's smoother, faster, slicker, more cohesive and more of everything that I loved of Android coupled with the gaps that annoyed me. Selecting text, copy pasting, jumping between apps, these are all substantially improved with ICS. The contacts app is finally a great piece of software and the swiping pattern is a personal favorite of mine. The action bar pattern is also a stroke of genius to create something more unifying for Android apps, all tough they are not forced to do so and I love apps that simply look and feel great, no matter the pattern. ICS feels like Android maturing into something finished and the dire need to install third party apps is gone like it was in the days of 2.3 and older. Here is a quick list of nice new features that may have drowned out:

Search in Exchange contact catalog is now built in
Text selecting and copying is greatly improved
Uninstall apps by dragging them from the app drawer to the homescreen and putting them in the "uninstall app" on top of the screen
Amazingly improved contacts app
Better messaging app
Camera app is insanely better
Folders are great (thank you Apple!)
Better animations like "end of list"
Blue is better then green

Not made for my phone
I think there will be plenty of ICS handsets in the near future, Samsung pushing a huge OTA with ICS is a sign that even Samsung couldn't ignore this release, all tough people are as always impatient and never satisfied when they compare to the instant updating of their iOS compadres, wich is understandable. But there is a greater problem then receiving ICS a little late and that is the buttons.

The Galaxy Nexus is not only the first ICS phone, it is the first Android phone without front facing buttons and instead uses extra screen real estate to display three buttons instead of four. These new buttons are a huge deal for ICS because they are changed from the previous ones. We now have back, home and multitask. The multitask button is in my opinion crucial and genius because it puts front and center one of the best aspects of Android and ICS, the multitasking and app switching. With my 2.3 designed Nexus S I still have to longpress the home button and the difference is immense. Add to that the basic fact that ICS is clearly designed with the Nexus S as a sort of minimum spec then you get the feeling that using ICS on a real ICS device like the Galaxy Nexus will be a completely different experience. This will probably be the same for other handsets not made for ICS like the Galaxy S2.

So ICS is great, but I'm guessing it is even greater on a real ICS phone.

The future is bright (as always)
So ICS is great and I can't wait for the larger Android population to actually get it, wich will be about one year from now I'm guessing. 2.3 is about 61% right now so I'm hoping for 70% ICS in one year, because I'm a optimist. In any case if you are getting ICS in the near future, you are surely in for a threat.

iPad 3 predictions

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Here are some predictions for the march 7. iPad 3 launch:

Supernice new “retina” screen with awesome resolution and the exact same aspect ratio as ever (so devs have a easy job and no fragmenting hurts their poor brains)
Apple launches iMaps for iOS and maybe OS X, bye bye Google Maps. This service will not compete with Google Maps (no public webservice solution or public api outside iOS) but simply replace Google Maps for Apples use
Siri for iPad (but just for iPad 3)
WiFi direkt ish feature that lets you bump stuff from iPad to iPhone and vice versa (but no NFC or anything multiplattformy!)
No new iOS version yet
New Apple TV (jay?)
iPhoto for iOS (jay?)

Finally ICS on my Nexus S

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:02:00 +0000

So while waiting and waiting for ICS to arrive as a OTA (over the air update) Google managed to release Chrome for Android (also finally!). That release has one big problem and that is that it requires Ice Cream Sandwich and that latest greatest version of Android currently has 1% of the market share and I had not gotten it yet. As a result I caved and downloaded the OTA myself and manually updated, hopefully this will not cause any problems in the future and seing as it was a signed and accepted update I'm guessing it will not. Here are some quick thoughts on ICS and ICS on my Nexus S.

Ice Cream Sandwich
Finally Android stands as a nice and coherent OS without any skinning from handset makers, ICS is a gorgeous (in my personal opinion off course) OS and it flows and runs like a dream. I like the new font and I like how much more whole the package feels from to to bottom. My overall impression is that ICS is smoother and much more visually appealing then Android for mobile phones has ever been. Here are some quick points on favourite bits:

Kamera app feels much better and looks great
Unlock screen is sweet and functional
Notification bar is even better then before, like pause/skip when using Google Music right in the bar
Launcher is finally usable with four bottom slots and a usable and nice folder system (thank you iOS)
All the apps look and feel much better (contacts, messaging, browser)
I like the blue

ICS on my Nexus S

While ICS is a huge leap forward for Android the current release for my Nexus S has some serious problems and I understand now why I did not recieve my OTA. My guess is that they got plenty of problems reported back to them when they pushed the initial batches and stopped the whole thing to fix some major issues. The good news is that ICS works well on the Nexus S and speeds up the phone considerably, here are the nicest things I have noticed:

Less laggy launcher action with nice and smooth animations
Camera app starts quicker and snaps faster then before, very much improved usability there

Sadly there is one huge issue that prevents me from recommending anyone to update themselves, that one big problem is battery life. I usually get about 10 hours of pure usage, but with ICS I drained 85% in 2 hours or so. This may be a Google+ related issue but I suspect battery performance is not ideal. I also read that many people have reported this on the support for Nexus. My guess is that the next OTA version of ICS can't come quickly enough for many Nexus S users out there.

Moving on to new things

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:16:00 +0000

So january 2012 started a little bit hectic and strange for me and I am now starting a new job as a software developer at Acando in Trondheim Norway. I'm going to be doing .Net development which means several things like:

Gotta use Windows again, last time was about 2006 I think
Learn new programming language and framework called .Net
Doing serious systems development

And a bunch of other stuff I have probably never thought about before. In any case I will not stop doing Android development, it will just be more free time based then before. I'm very excited to learn .Net because I have heard so many great things about it, time to se what all the fuss has been about.

OS X Lion five months in

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:01:00 +0000

I have now been using OS X Lion at work for about five months, at home I still use OS X Snow Leopard so I actually get to feel the differences quite often. Here are some thoughts:

Not missing much
Coming home from work and starting up the basic same apps (IntelliJ IDEA, Chrome, Twitter, Sparrow) and doing the same stuff (coding Android, surfing for codestuff, tweeting, reading email, surfing stuff) I really don't miss anything when I am on Snow Leopard compared to Lion. In fact the feature differences are almost zero. The important thing here is that there are differences between Snow Leopard and Lion, I'm just not using or noticing any of them in practice. Not once I have been using Snow Leopard and tried to do something and had a "damn I wish I had Lion right now" moments.

The real difference
The only real difference I have noticed between Lion and Snow Leopard is that Snow Leopard performs much better then Lion does. After installing Lion on the work iMac 27" the spinning umbrella has been more frequent and crashes have been occurring weekly instead of yearly (Snow Leopard is extremely stable in my experience). So at work stuff is slower and more prone to crash (I don't even dare starting up Adobe PS and the Android emulator at the same time anymore at work) and at home stuff is faster and more stable (sometimes simply amazed at how stable this thing will stay and simply trudge along when the tasks get tough).

Upgrade to Lion?
I'm still not going to upgrade to Lion because right now there is for me zero reasons to do so and several reasons to not do so. Should I ever have to, and sooner or later some cool and fancy app will require Lion or maybe I wan't to start making iOS apps, I am going to do two things first:

Buy more RAM - Lion just loves more RAM and who doesn't?
Buy a SSD - Lion loves swapping out that RAM

That makes Lion quite the investment, so I'm sitting on the fence just a little while longer.

Short Android Story

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:02:00 +0000

Using the Google Reader app and came over an album recommendation, click the link and start listening to the album with the Spotify app. Now I am blogging about it with the Blogger app. Android is a pretty awesome smartphone os.