iSwitched

Long have I been a devout advocate of all that is not Apple, when the smartphone revolution began with Steve Jobs announcing the first iPhone, I already had my sights set on the -now a mere memory- Imate Jamin, I thought it looked cool with its matte black finish and big resistive touch panel with a whopping 240×320 resolution, also the promise of a Windows OS was very appealing.

I went from that to a Samsung F480 that my sister had bought me for my birthday, then to my first flavor of Android with the Samsung Galaxy S2, which I had fitted with a nice amount of custom roms/bios and have some articles on this blog for how to unbrick. It was a nice phone, I absolutely hated Samsung’s TouchWiz and swore not to get another Samsung until they got their shit together. My very next phone was a switch back to Windows Phone with the Lumia 920, which I wholeheartedly loved, but was ultimately let down by the lack of apps, I was not patient enough to stick through with Microsoft, not that that would have done me any good anyway. I stayed with mostly vanilla android devices afterwards, jumping from the Nexus 5 to the Nexus 6, to a OnePlus One, then a OnePlus Two, which were all very pleasant devices to work with, albeit having one common problem though, and it’s not the phones’ problems, and definitely not an Android problem, but it was a personal problem, I had gotten bored of how Android looks and works. I knew it inside out and yearned for a new challenge. I knew what I was thinking but did not want to admit it to myself, or to anyone.

So I set these taboo thoughts aside and stayed the course with my Android love, I bought myself a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, it was praised everywhere as the flagship phone to get with its curved edges and its sexy sleek design. TouchWiz had definitely improved over those 5 iterations, it became snappier, less filled with Samsung bloatware (AT&T made sure to counter that though), and mostly just nicer to look at.

But it was still there… That urge… That need to try something new, Android was becoming stale and there was a new announcement happening in the weeks to follow. One at Cupertino… So I went for it. I bought an iPhone 7 Plus.

Let me give a little more backstory, the only Apple devices I had ever owned were a circa 2009 Macbook Pro, which was fine, but compared to how customizable regular PCs are, it just fell flat on its face, specifically because I do love upgrading and customizing my computers. And a last gen iPod classic, the 160GB one, which still works, and that I still love and consider the best mp3 player to have ever existed. It was fast, it had my entire music library on there, and there was never a place I went to without it in my pocket.

Other than these two devices, I was an Apple hater, challenging the logic of every person buying an Apple device and just wondering why would they ever settle for less? Why wouldn’t they just buy an Android device with the same iPhone coming in year in and year out, with only mild surface changes? It’s like buying Call Of Duty on a yearly basis. What’s the point? It’s the same game.

Make no mistake though, I still feel the same way, the difference between the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 7 is laughable to say the least, it’s an incremental upgrade through and through, and the only noteworthy changes are the missing headphone jack, because that’s what courage is all about, and the new home button.

With that said, let me get back to my experience with an iOS device. Once I got the phone, before I opened it up, I started Googling how I can transfer my texts over from my SGS7 to my new shiny Apple device, this was always a pain for me, I love keeping my texts, I have texts from way back when I had my SGS2 four years ago. All I was able to find was a few dedicated apps that required you to connect to a PC. So I proceeded to unbox my phone first and thought I would get to the text transferring later, to my surprise, Apple already took care of that issue with their “move to iOS” app, installed on my SGS7 and transferred every last thing from that phone to my new one over the course of a couple of hours.

I then spent the next few days with my new phone, I was mesmerized, I wasn’t able to put it down, it was everything I wanted in a new phone, it was sleek, it was intuitive, and most importantly, a complete mystery to me. I had never used or owned an iPhone before, so for me, this was no incremental upgrade, it was a complete overhaul.

I started downloading apps upon apps, and discovering everything my new iPhone has to offer, the camera is stunning, the screen is absolutely fantastic, the force touch feature is something I never knew I’d be enjoying so much, the fingerprint sensor is SO much faster than my SGS7’s was, and man, are those speakers loud!

I will admit to missing a couple of things from my Android days though. I do miss the headphone jack, I don’t use wired headphones on my phones at all, I only use Bluetooth ones for when I go on a run and leave my audiophile music needs to my PC and my work laptop, however my car’s bluetooth is finicky at times, so now the option of connecting a 3.5mm jack into my phone is but a dream, also the ease of syncing an Android watch with an Android device is SO much easier than doing so with an iOS device. Or so my Moto360 would have me believe anyway.

I also miss the myriad of folder explorers on the Android store, there might be an Apple equivalent that I haven’t found but for now, I don’t have one.

And the last thing I miss about Android is that toast notifications aren’t persistent and can be dismissed by a swipe on either side. Apple, take note, don’t give me notifications that block the top part of the screen and that last for minutes on end unless I actively open and then close the notification.

So, there you have it, I love my iPhone, I think it’s a wonderfully built device that’s fantastic for newcomers to the Apple ecosystem, but extremely redundant if you have an iPhone 6 or 6S.

 

Apple’s iPhone 4S vs. Samsung’s Galaxy SII

I’ll be posting a video review this time around as I think it’ll be better at conveying what I’m trying to say, more visual aids = better reviews! (I guess)

Anyway, a couple of things I forgot to mention in the review (seeing how nervous I was, getting better though!)

iPhone’s new notification center is a straight rip off from Android, that’s as clear as day light, so there’s no arguments there, also Siri, as nice as it was, wasn’t actually as responsive as one had hoped, you actually have to give her a few tries before Siri actually understands what it is you want. After digging a little through my GSII I stumbled upon a similar, yet very under developed feature called Voice Talk, with “Galaxy” having also a female voice, and talking to you like Siri, Siri is a bit funnier though, to be honest.

Both phones have front facing cameras, iPhone’s a VGA one, while the GSII has a 2MP camera.

Something was a bit weird on the browser front though, in the video, Engadget loaded faster on the 4S, while when I tried it the first time, I tried loading GSMArena on both phones at the same time, the GSII loaded the page significantly faster, also, YouTube is MUCH faster on the GSII than it is on the 4S.

The UI lag on the GSII, while unnoticeable, will definitely be gone by Ice Cream Sandwich’s release. (it’s like comparing a game running at 30 FPS to one running at 60 FPS, GSII being the 30).

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWNLj8BtmAE%5D

Apple FINALLY offering unlocked iPhones on their website

Apple has always been the mythical retailer that offered everything, all the way from their revolutionary iPods to Macbooks, and iPhones, though it was always the same issue when it came to non US residents who want to buy an iPhone, Apple’s website always sold the carrier locked version, or at least on the main store page, you had to dig deep through piles of tiny text to find how much the unlocked version would cost, and even then I don’t think you could order it through the website, however, as I was reading through Engadget (<3) I fount an article saying that it’s there! I went to the source, and, apparently, it WAS there, priced and everything, and not in tiny text! No! It was getting the same respect as its carrier locked buddy!

It’s nice that the 16 GB model is actually cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S II (running for $700), which is understandable since the GSII’s processor is clocked higher (not significantly higher), it’s a good move on Apple’s side to finally consider overseas customers who can’t get carrier locked phones, it’ll certainly eliminate most of the “Unlocking” scene that’s been going on ever since the first iPhone hit the market.

Now for those of you who were living under a rock for the past few months, the iPhone 4S sports the very same chip that made us love the iPad 2, the A5 processor clocked at 1 GHz, I personally would’ve preferred if Apple had clocked it higher, since most of the competition are well above the 1.2 GHz mark by now, and with Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip on the way, Apple won’t stand a chance unless they release a beast of a smartphone next year. The iPhone 4S also has an 8 MP camera, and it sports iOS 5.

Are you getting an iPhone 4S now that ordering one is significantly easier? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Steve Jobs

I was deeply saddened today by a text message from a friend that read “Steve Jobs has passed away :(” and until I was able to get to my computer, I thought he wasn’t being serious, until I saw the news myself.

Steve Jobs passed away today from his raising health problems, the ones which prompted him to resign as Apple CEO last August, at the age of 56, and with his passing, the world lost a visionary, and a person who has attempted, and succeeded in changing the way we all look at consumer electronics.

Many people, even the ones who aren’t big Apple fans, such as myself, are saddened by this tragedy. Mr. Jobs, you have been an inspiration, thank you.

My condolences and prayers go out to Jobs’ family.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”  –Steve Jobs

The never answered question… Mac or Windows?

This question has witnessed countless threads dedicated to bashing either platforms by fanboys, without actually giving good enough refutations as to why this party says Mac/Windows is better, while I won’t offer a definitive answer myself here, I’m hoping that by the end of this article, I’ll be able to establish concrete comparison points between each operating system.

Let’s start with the most popular claim from the Apple fanboys:

Claim: There are no viruses for Mac.

Refutation: While there aren’t nearly as many viruses out there for Mac as there are for Windows, they do exist.

And for the Microsoft fanboys:

Claim: There are no games for Mac.

Refutation: More and more games are being ported to the Mac, if you open up the Mac App Store, you’ll find Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, for starters, not to mention that every Blizzard release has a Mac version, and the Windows version isn’t released earlier, they’re both released together.

Operating System wise, Windows 7 and OSX Lion… While OSX Lion has just been released not 2 months ago, Microsoft are heading the same direction Apple took, OSX Lion, to me, is Snow Leopard with a bunch of eye candy, and inverted scrolling (If you happen not to own a MacBook Pro, I’m sorry to say, you’ll have to suffer the inverted scrolling), I didn’t notice much difference between Lion and Snow Leopard, except for the newly added Launch Pad, and Mission Control, which are neat, yeah, but make the OS resemble the iOS a bit too much, and I can see that Apple are trying to unify both operating systems as much as possible, but I used to like having my laptop’s operating system being that of a computer, not of a tablet, this however doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, on the contrary; there is a noticeable boost in performance compared to Snow Leopard! Microsoft however, with Windows 8 on its way, is trying even harder than apple to unifying the operating systems between Windows Phone 7/7.5 and our good ol’ Windows, to the point that Windows 8 will be able to run on ARM powered PCs, which will open up a whole new level of budget computers, smart move on Microsoft’s side? Hell yes!

I can now go to my next point, since we’re in the topic of budgets as well, there is no denying that Macs are expensive, but I actually don’t regret getting a Windows laptop with twice the specifications instead of my Mac; because there are some things that set Macs apart, a major point here is of course the operating system, it’s stability is really nice, unlike Windows which without proper care, can BSOD in no time, but that’s for the average user that doesn’t know how to take care of their computer, to whom I actually advise not to get Macs, since they won’t be needing them. Almost all musicians use Macs to record their work, the audio interface on the Mac is really outstanding, which brings me to another point, which is the unified systems that Apple produce, since Apple is the only company that makes Mac computers, you can always expect the same quality from each and every one of their systems, unlike Windows, Microsoft has lots of retailers, Sony, Dell, Acer, to name a few.

Windows PCs however, are always cheaper compared to Macs, and while it’s not exactly true that nothing is developed for Macs, on the gaming front, most games are developed for Windows, the newer games at least, take Battlefield 3 for instance, there are no plans yet for it to be released on the Mac platform, and so far, the PC version will feature the best graphics/performance, with the Xbox 360 and the PS3 versions lagging behind. Another thing for Windows based PCs, is that they are customizable, you have to go through hell to find parts that are compatible with your Mac, and you’ll end up paying A LOT of money for said parts, PCs don’t face this problem though, if your computer starts getting older, you can always update the GPU, your CPU, Rams, what have you! So customization for PCs are always easier.

What I would advise you, if you’re planning on buying a Mac, or a PC, is figuring out what you will be using this computer for, no one will be absolutely right about which is the better platform.