The Droid 2 and X have already been pegged for March 2011 EOL (end-of-life) status.

Here in MI, you can't find a Droid X. Everywhere is sold out.

If this report is true, that's the frustrating thing about Android: you get a scarce phone one month, and a few months later it's completely phased out.  Pace of innovation, or another symptom of Android fragmentation?  How much longer can carriers keep you locked into a two-year contract when the landscape is advancing so quickly?

Makes used phones, sans contract, much more appealing.

Update on the iPhone 4 reception situation.

This morning, I went to the Novi Apple Store and spoke to a technician, bypassing AT&T completely (from whom I ordered the phone on launch day).  I explained my problems, how I more or less hated the iPhone 4 and its unreliability made the phone unusable for anything other than novelty.

Karl, my tech, seemed to understand my story completely.  He ran a few diagnostics on my iPhone 4, saw my problem, and quickly offered to swap out my phone for another.  I agreed.  Truthfully, it was the only solution I was willing to accept, as I have tried a ton of other quasi-solutions that are posted all over the web.

Curiously, the phone he gave me was something he called an 'engineering' phone, one he claims has been tested very thoroughly to ensure it's a error-free device.  It came out of a hard-shelled black plastic/composite box, and Karl said each of them ship in two other padded boxes to ensure safe travels.  In his words, it's a 'known-quantity' unit.  If I have problems with this, they'll likely be a result of the AT&T network, software or a drop on the other end of the call, but ostensibly not because of this particular iPhone 4 unit.  These phones, he told me, more or less eliminate hardware issues from a diagnostic equation.  At the very least, they represent a clean hardware slate.

(The new phone also is likely a product of a later manufacturing build; i.e. it's not a day-one launch unit.  Could Apple have been tweaked in manufacturing since pre-launch?  Possible, but who knows?)

I've no idea yet if this phone will wind up being an improvement, but I'll say this: Apple has always taken care of me as a customer.  Would Motorola do the same thing?  Could they?  One might argue that a Motorola Droid X wouldn't be dropping the calls like an iPhone, so support wouldn't be necessary.  Perhaps.  But that's missing the point.  When I've needed support from Apple, I've gotten it.  Every time.

So, we'll see how this goes.  If the problem persists, I'm afraid it'll be time to move away from the iPhone and AT&T.

On any given day, I drop 2-4 calls on my iPhone 4 with AT&T service.  Today, on the way into the office, I dropped 5.  The phone was resting in my car's center console, so I can't even blame the Death Grip/Antennagate fiasco.

I can just say there's something inherently wrong with the iPhone 4 -- at least the very early production units I and a few friends received on launch day.

My mobile phone is my only phone.  It needs to work.  And I have reached my breaking point.  The iPhone 4 is the worst 'phone' I've ever used, and AT&T won't do a thing about it.  'Get a case,' they say, completely ignoring the fact that I don't touch my handset when I'm in the car.  (I use Bluetooth.)  Regardless, they'll do nothing -- not even a clean exchange of my iPhone 4 for another.  Apple just tells me to deal with AT&T, because I ordered it through them.

This past weekend, I spent some quality time at a Verizon dealer with the Droid X.  What shocked me was my immediate impression: for the first time ever, Android has become a true competitor to the iPhone.  This is a watershed moment: all previous Android versions were clunky and slow and felt built with baling wire and duct tape.  Android 2.1, running on the Droid X, was nice.  Very nice.  Not as polished as iOS, and the hardware wasn't up to Jobs/Ive snuff, but it was quite nice unto itself.  Put another way: it wasn't shit as some would have you believe.  And Android 2.2 (Froyo), announced at the 2010 Google I/O, is right around the corner.

I'm very seriously thinking of moving off AT&T/iPhone to Verizon/Droid X.  I'm an ardent Google user anyway -- cue up the lock-in drums and Skynet fears -- and the integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, Gtalk, Maps and other Google-based services is compelling.

I'm looking for real-world stories of those who have made a similar move.  Are you happy with the Android OS?  Do you have a Droid X specifically?

Any and all comments welcome.  Do share.

I mentioned in my iPad review that the machine needs a print subsystem ASAP, and what do you know? The latest rumor is that direct printing (via Bluetooth and/or WiFi) will be part of tomorrow's iPhone OS 4 announcement.

Again, as I said in my review: improvements to the iPad will move the device in the direction of today's modern laptop, not away from it.  It's 'tweener device' state is its beta state that's all about driving adoption.

Many people have been asking me for my iPad review, presumably because the glowing, over-the-top hyperbole that the mainstream outlets have gushing out their maws has been (a) read several times over already, or (b) met with some degree of skepticism, and they're now looking for a more real-world review from your average Joe on the street.

So, here goes, in no particular order.  I'm going to get a bit of cognitive dissonance out of the way first, so if it seems like I'm harshing on the iPad too much at first, read the whole thing.

(Also, I'm intentionally going to avoid the whole closed v. open debate, brought to a head by Cory Doctorow's screed, which I found to be quite off base for someone so typically astute.  I might tackle that later.)

Let's get back to the title of this post.  When I say 'caught between two worlds,' that's the overall feeling I have when using the iPad.  Some of this feeling is intentional -- remember Steve Jobs's slide that shows the iPad shoehorned in between the iPhone and laptop? -- and some of  it seems the unintended consequence of birthing a device that is simultaneously incredibly fucking good and brand new with no usage baseline whatsoever.

Examples:

I find myself wanting to get my calendar information, which is stored in Google Calendar, into the iPad's Calendar app.  But then, why?  The browser is fantastic, and its size and resolution encamp it firmly in the company of desktop browsers.  So, I fire up Google Calendar in Safari, and there she is, resplendent.

Caught.

I punch in an address in Maps and marvel for longer than I should at the gorgeous display and utterly massive improvement it represents over the iPhone's app of the same name.  I want to get some directions out of the app, but then I realize I can only email the link somewhere.  I can't print, because there are no print drivers or print subsystem.  My mind wants to do what I'd do with a 'main' machine, but I can't because the OS doesn't yet support certain desktop functions.  It's a mobile device that makes you want to work on it like a full computer.

Caught.

I took a bunch of campy pictures of my son as he tore through the house at just under Mach 1 to find his Easter eggs, and I want to get them on the iPad quickly and easily for viewing and light editing.  As of now -- with no USB ports and no commercially-available camera connection kit -- I can't, so while my mind says Yes, I want to do this work on this iPad because I enjoy it, I can't.  I have to use my MacBook Pro.

Caught.

There are other examples, but you get the point.

Read the rest of this post »

A conversation I have every month or so. Fellow iPhone users, this is our pickle.

Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons) on the iPad backlash, penned before the Apple press conference:

Because there is going to be one, trust me. This device isn’t as obvious as iPhone. It’s kind of subtle. Which means that those of you who have done the spiritual work to prepare for it will be fine, but those who haven’t done the work, well, they’re probably going to miss a lot of this at first. So you’ll see some noise about who needs this thing, it’s just a fancy desk ornament, and so on. I am telling you this now so that you can be ready for the harsh voices and they won’t hurt you when you hear them. Just let the negativity pass by you. Do not engage with it or try to fight it or argue with it. Step aside, and let the dark energy flow away.

Humor put briefly aside, my casual observation of blogs, forums and Twitter suggests the hating on this thing is unbelievable.  I see two camps emerging: one that gets it, one that doesn't.  At this point, the former seems considerably smaller than the latter.

Oh, but before we get started, there's also this: MS shill Paul Thurrott already pronouncing the iPad a failure.  Which he did before the keynote was even over. I needed to get that out of my system right from the get go.  John Gruber, be sure to file that one away for your early 2011 Best of Claim Chowder post.

So, moving along, I'll never quite be able to digest the hyper-reactionism and knee-jerk judgementalist attitudes of the Apple fanbase.  It doesn't matter if Cupertino releases the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad: if the device right out of the box isn't saving puppies and importing Russian brides automatically for lonely geeks, it's called underwhelming.  Today's backlash against the iPad reminds me of Slashdot's now-famous October 2001 reaction to the first-gen iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

The iPad does most everything mainstream users want: email. Web. Gaming. Photos. Video. Books. Music. Not to mention the idea that you get to buy into an established software ecosystem of nearly all of the apps already sitting in the App Store.  The iPad, via the new iWork, also allows a new way to create content, not just consume it.  And nearly everyone is ignoring the value of the iPad SDK, which will give rise to iPad-tailored apps that will be phenomenal using such a large multitouch surface.  It weighs a pound-and-a-half.  Its battery will do 10 hours of video.

(Quick note regarding the lack of Flash: stop complaining about it.  Flash sucks in many cases, and with YouTube and Vimeo moving some of their videos to HTML5 + h.264, Apple is throwing its considerable weight around in web policy-making. They don't like Flash, and never will.  Deal with it.)

There's even a docking station and mechanical keyboard for the iPad, a peripheral category that Apple has long eschewed as worthy accoutrements for its products.

Reading between the lines, you can tell Apple brass has big plans for the iPad, way, way beyond what most of us (including yours truly) is seeing.  But I'm shocked at the amount of discontent I'm seeing from people who, apparently, needed a front-facing webcam so badly that everything the iPad does is rendered useless without one.  You Skype that much, do you?  Really?  Really?

But it continues: people are calling it 'underpowered' (despite reports to the contrary) and whining about a lack of Verizon support and (inexplicably) calling it nothing more than a 'giant iPod Touch.'  Hard for me to believe that so many people are missing what this thing represents (have they even seen the video?), especially once the other shoe drops.

And that other shoe, of course, is media deals.  With studios. With more publishers.  With magazines and periodicals.  With academic textbook houses.

There's a reason this isn't shipping for 60-90 days, and it's not all because of tight supply chain or violent outbreaks in Chinese factories: it's the ecosystem needs to bake a little more.  If you don't think you're going to see some interesting iPad announcements between now and its commercial release, think again.

I suspect we'll see the same pattern of naysaying, pshawing and predictions of how Win7-based slates or Android tablets or whatever will beat the iPad at its own game.  Until, of course, it starts dominating the market, creating new application classes, and putting competitors in the dirt.  Then everyone will get it.

Palm, RIM, Symbian and Windows Mobile fans: you know what I'm talking about.  Don't you?

Todd Wasserman, reporting for BrandWeek:

By opting for these tin-eared retorts, AT&T does nothing but set itself up as a foe to consumers. At a conference in New York in early December, CEO Ralph de la Vega responded to charges that AT&T’s iPhone service was slow by turning condescending. “The first thing we need to do is educate consumers about what represents a megabyte of data,” de la Vega told reporters—this while floating the idea of charging heavy users more than others.

AT&T’s position seems to be that consumers are consuming way more data than the company had expected and everyone just needs to chill until the company can recover from this inconsiderate overuse. When the conceit is that ass-backwards, no amount of spin is effective.

If there's one company whose reputation has been steadily slaughtered over the past two years, it's AT&T.  The malign is deserved: I have followed the blogs, Twitter conversations and press releases as much as the next gadget/tech geek, and to me it's plainly clear that AT&T hasn't learned any lessons from brands who have had their business practices change due to consumers leveraging social channels.

But it's even worse than that.  They view iPhone users as the problem that led to their damaged brand, not their shoddy network to begin with or nearly flat capital expenditures since the iPhone's inception.

As a realtively new AT&T customer (who joined simply because of the iPhone), the vibe I get is that they believe it's easier to milk this iPhone thing -- however long it goes in exclusivity -- for all it's worth than it is to listen to your customers, address negative feedback, and build out your network to accomodate your users happily using your product.  AT&T had a chance to become something special, pehaps even to vy for extentend exclusivity, but instead chose to treat the iPhone deal as a racehorse: flog it as hard as you can until it dies, keep the share price at a decent level, get your bonuses, and move on to what's next.  That sort of myopia will be part of AT&T's enduring legacy, especially when they could have built a race team and made their customers their fans.

When the iPhone opens up to other carriers in the US, AT&T will see a hemhorraging of subscribers like never before.  Given how I drop at least a call day with AT&T, I will likely be among them.

Enjoy your early termination fees, Mr. Stephenson: they're the last vestige of what could have been.

 

Tim O'Reilly, reporting just after the Nexus One press event:

News from the front: a possible turning point for Android. I've been a huge iPhone fan, but after using the Nexus One for a few weeks, I find so much to like that I'm close to the point where Android might be my first choice. While I may yet go back to my iPhone, I'm conflicted.

As an iPhone user who was impressed with the Motorola Droid but not enough to consider ditching my iPhone for it, the Nexus One already has me thinking that Apple better bring its biggest guns to the 2010 mobile web fight. While Twitter is ablaze about how the Nexus One is the iPhone killer, I think that's premature: anyone who's been doing this a while knows that Apple has had good G2 on this for a while now, and the next version of the iPhone (slated for the now-traditional June/July release) isn't going to concede much to today's Nexus One.

Should be interesting, but all speculation aside, it's time to remember this: when smart companies compete, customers always win. It's a beautiful thing.

(Via @khurtwilliams)