Jess and Josh are clearly busy young undergrads, bless their hearts, but jessjosh.com needs some more content for the duration, yes? I’ve taken it upon myself to invent a job for myself as weekly tech contributor. Now I’m no slouch either – taking 15 units and working four days a week – but will attempt to keep this regular and at the very least give Jess and Josh a freakin’ November post. If this becomes a venue for a lazy link dump, so be it.
The Motorola Droid is the tech world’s hottest new child. It debuts the new Android software 2.0 that is supposed to be much improved. Unfortunately Google refuses to allow pinch and zoom in its native apps and they name their software updates after pastries/they will never beat the iPhone. Included is a slide out keyboard, a new free Google GPS app, and a sense of longing and regret that you didn’t just get an iPhone. Seriously though, the major point here seems to be the marriage of a halfway decent big touch screen phone and the very viable Verizon network. ”AT&T sucks” seems to be the only knock on the iPhone that sticks and is not fixable through a software update, so there is definitely a market for this and basically any smartphone Verizon puts out. A nice win here is that the Android OS appears untouched by the usual gloss of red paint, locked-down EVERYTHING, and lack of functionality that Verizon kindly adds to every phone that goes through their door (Moto Q9M anyone?). Motorola generally makes solid hardware and has packed in a processor that matches the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre in power. The only true advantage it holds (and with annual iPhone releases at the beginning of summer immienent, for how long?) is its 267ppi (iPhone = 163) thanks to its dank 854×480 resolution, but there is no way to sync a music library and video playback seems straight Mesozoic. Is Google bowing to the software God that is iTunes? If yes, waiting for a third party developer to plug this hole is very weak for the generally software-adept Mountain View firm. Once the device is deployed and in users’ hands, we shall see if is ineffectual and buggy like the notoriously shitty original Blackberry Storm and a consensus of fail fills in around it. Launched 11/6. $200 (w/ 2 yr contract on which Verizon is about to double the early termination fee)
Apple’s completely touch-integrated Magic Mouse isn’t exactly the freshest of tech news, granted only a few weeks old, but I’ve had one since the first day they shipped separate from the new iMacs (yes, I ordered one an hour after they were announced before even trying it out/seeing it on a computer screen larger than my iPod touch; yes I enjoy Apple products) and love every second of using it. The main impetus for the purchase was the suckiness of the Apple mouse (formerly Mighty Mouse, but this happened, and now a company called Man & Machine making “washable ‘hygienic’ input devices” stakes a claim to the trademark) and its gunk-magnet scroll ball. The former mouse required regular cleaning and lots of faith to remain scrolling reliably. The new one is amazing because it incorporates a momentum scroll that sends you flying down pages with ease (like the iPhone scrolling) with just the touch of one finger on the perfectly friction-y mouse surface. Additionally, two finger side-swiping moves you backwards and forwards in Safari (I have now removed my back and forward buttons from the toolbar), page-to-page in PDFs, photo-to-photo in iPhoto/Aperture, and month-to-month in iCal – all with an amazing “it just works” intuition. Hopefully Apple adds more advanced gestures (three finger swipe down for Expose/Spotlight please!) with future software updates, it kind of hurt losing the middle click and squeeze functionality of the previous Apple mouse, but I am positively declaring this the best mouse ever. $69
Some links
A UsabilityPost About Interface Philosophy and the iPhone
A clip from the new film Objectified incl. Jon Ive, lead Apple designer
An amazing app for Mac users that tweaks Apple’s built-in hidden settings
