Dreaming of Green
Technology
Garage door guy couldn’t have come along at a better time. I’d barely posted my take on the smarthome hype when news broke of a negative IoT gadget review on Amazon leading to a customer getting his device bricked by an angry entrepreneur. You can read the full story on CNET, BBC or other news outlets for some chuckles.
Once you’re done laughing, „IoT Take 2“ weiterlesen
Sooner or later I was going to have to post my two cents‘ worth on the Internet of Things (short: IoT), and here it is. And for the lexically challenged or those who can’t be bothered to read the whole thing here’s the summary: Most of it is strictly for the birds. „Smarthome – the Truth 2.0“ weiterlesen
I’ve had a relationship with computers since the dawn of consumer PC’s; longer than I’ve been married, in fact. And neither marriage nor buying a new laptop are an easy thing in my universe. So here I am, trying to buy a new laptop and browsing the net from one end of the world to the other looking for, well, at least a decent compromise. „Time to Boycott Dell in Hong Kong/Macau?“ weiterlesen
So I finally motivated myself to go over to the local telecom shop and take a look at the new Galaxy S6 and its sibling with the curved display. Great looking devices, even if the curved display seems pretty pointless. The S6, well, plenty of reviewers have already gone over it with a fine tooth comb – it’s clearly Samsung’s finest achievement so far. It’s a great looking phone; it feels good in the hand and it’s quick as can be. I mean, really, I love my iPhone 6+, but it actually felt rather clunky after playing with the S6.
But here’s the thing: it’s still running Android and it’s still a Samsung. My Galaxy S3 is lying in a drawer at home, where it serves as a rarely used backup and loaner device. And were it not for Cyanogen Mod, it wouldn’t even be doing that – it would be on top of my desk, holding down some papers.
When Samsung decided not to offer anymore updates less than a year after I bought it, I swore I’d never buy another phone that didn’t come with security updates rolled out in a timely manner and an operating system that’s current for at least a couple of years. This isn’t about being a fanboy for anyone; I’m an agnostic, through and through. It’s simply a matter of security and longevity for my devices and the software they run. And that’s my verdict: the S6 is a great phone all around but Android and Samsung fall short on the most basic requirements for a connected device that holds vital data. This is where all comparisons should start and end.
Microsoft has finally announced an in-house tablet that might just do what my iPad, despite being a great piece of technology, can’t: bridge the gap between entertainment device, e-reader and business tool.
A while ago, I was looking at a post by the Apple fanboys over at cultofmac where they were knocking Microsoft yet again. What they fail to account for (as do many others among the Apple fanboys for more or less sponsored reasons), is that half a million apps is about 499,988 more than I really need. I own 2 laptops, a desktop gaming rig, a Galaxy S, iPad 2 and iPhone 4. Guess what: on both my iOS devices and the Android phone, I use at most a dozen apps 99.9% of the time. As long as those apps do their job well, I’m fine. Except that they don’t, because they don’t have MS Office and my iOS devices are only fully functional with a jailbreak.