I’ve had my new HTC Wildfire S for a few days now. So how does Android compare to iOS (I’ve got an iPad and iPod Touch)?

The Phone

The phone is definitely at the “entry level” end of the market, but the camera is usable, the screen sometimes correctly detects where I’ve poked my finger and is quite bright. The battery life is dire, it’s brand new and hardly makes it through the day – I would guess this is a combination of Android’s architecture and the phone itself, but who really knows. The build quality isn’t great – I’ve already got a tiny chip out of the casing from just leaving it in my bag, and there’s barely a mark on my two year old iPod Touch.

The winning quality is really the price. On Talk Mobile, I get 1Gb of data 200 mins, 200 txts for 12 quid: stunning. That’s just £288 which can’t be much more than the phone cost to produce.

Android

I’m a big fan of iOS, but I’m not a real fanboy of any platform – I use Windows, OS-X and Linux, and like them all. In the premiership, I want all the teams to win – at least until Saints get back into the league. I’ve voted for most of the main political parties and will probably complete a full house next time around. So where Android lacks the fancy animations of iOS and doesn’t feel as squidgey, it takes a more holistic approach. Thus, when it finds two contacts with the same name, it asks you to associate them. You click a link in one app, and it takes you seamlessly to another. You log into Google from a completely new app, and it doesn’t ask for your password. You end up in some strange app, press the back button and you’re back in the previous app. This integration seems to go pretty deep, hinting at fathoms of API coverage. I really want to get into programming Android; I suspect the learning curve will be significant.

So in summary, another good OS to choose from.

I just bought my first mobile! I’ve had a couple of other pay-as-you-go mobiles for emergencies, but they rarely get switched on. This is a proper smartphone, with a real contract and no need to learn predictive texting (I bet successfully on never having to learn that horrible technology). This one has the benefit of being only £12 a month, and because Android can be used as a mobile wi-fi hotspot, I can use it with my iPad. I love it when you can kill several winged animals with a single projectile. Now, on with the hacking.

Computer security is a bit like climate change. Everyone knows it’s a problem, but it doesn’t affect them. I just did an online training course today about what not to do with your computer. One question was so dumbfoundingly out-of-date that it is worth repeating. It asked what I should do if a black dot appeared on my screen, a clear indication that I had received a “computer virus”. Now, I don’t know if most people realise this, but if your computer gets infected with malware nowadays, it is most likely to financially motivated, and not at all in the malware author’s interest to notify you via a “black dot”. My company should have been warning me about social network based attacks, such as this one.

Also, Apple has convinced many mac users that they are more secure than Windows users. This is not entirely accurate. Now, back in the ’90s just after I installed Windows XP, I got a worm within 5 seconds. I knew exactly what I’d done wrong – I’d plugged the network cable into the modem directly and not into the router – had I been more careful and plugged it into the router, I’d have had firewall protection, which Windows XP lacked. Guess what, OS X ships with a very powerful firewall, but it’s disabled by default. One interesting titbit from the article:

The UNIX design came from a time when security was less of an issue and not taken as seriously as it did, and so does the job adequately. Windows NT (and later OSes) were actually designed with security in mind and this shows. Windows was not such a target for malware because of its poor security design; it is because the security functionality was never used.

I don’t mind which platform I use, they’re all pretty insecure. The weakest link is the human being.

I thought it would be a great idea to copy all my RAW files into a single directory. Then I changed my mind and thought it would be better if my RAW and JPG files were all together. Instead of trying to work out where the files came from manually, I made a quick script. Continue reading »

I want to be able to send someone a package containing a Python script and the bare minimum for them to run that script on Windows. In Perl, this is quite easy, I believe you can just send your script with perl.exe. This is how I did it in Python. Continue reading »

I’m really impressed with Flipboard, an app which really uses the capabilities of the iPad to deliver a novel and compelling reading experience. It manages to make your facebook and twitter feeds look like they were designed by a skilled magazine layout editor. I can see it being controversial as it also strips out all the adds. Makes me glad to be an “elitist” iPad owner.

I just scared the heebee-jeebees out of myself by innocently trying to use a shortcut in eclipse to copy a line into the clipboard. Instead, it turned my whole screen upside down! As a commenter on stackoverflow said:

Presumably flipping your screen upside down is not something you want to do often (unless you’re a vampire/bat).

Quite right.
In the end I found exactly what I was looking for in google code.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a flawless Operating System upgrade. Windows 7 was no exception. After endless reboots and failures, I gave up in the early hours of Saturday night (yes, I was having that much fun). In the morning with a clear head, I found the right google search, enabled SATA AHCI, disabled USB at during one of the reboots, and hey presto – success.

Why did I install Windows 7? Well, not just to get the shiney window borders, it was mainly to try and help my PC come out of sleep. Fail. Still doesn’t work. As a last resort, I grit my teeth, pull on the rubber gloves, and upgrade the BIOS. Yup, that was the problem <groan>.

First impressions? Shiney, a bit more usable, and wierdly, everything seems bigger; I think that’s because of the chunkey borders. Now, on with the install… <deep breath>.

I’m a bit of a Google fan, so I installed their latest operating system in a VM. I downloaded the torrent (Virgin Media seem to be blocking your web access for even a legal bittorrent download), and with a few mouse clicks it was up and running. Here’s a screenshot…

There’s not much to say about it really – it looks like the Chrome browser, and that’s pretty much the whole OS. It should boot in seven seconds and will only run on special hardware, slightly larger than a netbook.

…by rechargeable batteries. And this guy has lots of use for rechargeable batteries.