Steve’s Tech Journal

I abide by the wisdom that competition fosters greater innovation, honing and improving approaches and efficiencies in just about any domain.    It’s one of the things that moves mankind forward, and has led to the incredible productivity gains of the internet age.

But at times standards races, or de-facto standards races, can be a downright pain.    Take VHS vs. Betamax — unless you were wealthy and bought both you had to pick one of the two, and then too bad if the movie you wanted only came out on the other side, and what’s worse, you watched your investment in Betamax media become worthless if you guessed wrong.

That’s where I feel I am right now with the iPhone vs.  Android.    The good news is that technology has come far enough that I think I can finally ditch the whole Microsoft email tool-chain that used to be necessary to use a blackberry, which was the only way to get reliable on-the-go email, contact, calendar access in the earlier part of this decade.    

I’ve got a g1, I’ve been testing it with a personal gmail account, and it works well.  It’s got a good email client with push email from gmail,  and contact and calendar synchronization work well over the airwaves.    I haven’t found the equivalent of the MS Outlook “task” objects, but I’m only occasionally good at entering todo information so I can live without it.    There seems to be a decent and growing set of apps, including things like ssh clients, rss readers (integrated to google reader — bloglines your days are numbered), camera, txt messaging, google maps with gps.   The browser is good and reasonably fast, and you can use iphone.facebook.com (since the ill will felt by facebook to google has thus far prevented a native facebook app).   The g1 feels solid and I can type reasonably well on the slide out physical keyboard.  T-mobile has good coverage (for me) and a reasonably priced plan whereby for $80 I can get enough voice and unlimited data and up to 400 sms/mms messages a month.    And, a whole bunch of vendors signed onto the platform so we’ll be seeing interesting new and better devices over the next 18 months.

This all makes for an unequivocal win from my current Microsoft / blackberry platform that I’ve been using: it costs significantly less on a recurring monthly basis, covers all my current bases, and provides significant additional capability.  

But … should I pick VHS?     I’ve not yet brought an iPhone into the house to play with — it’s one more 2 year commit to another carrier to do so.   But, there’s 8.5 million of these things sold — it’s mainstream.   It fully integrates up a Mac toolchain that not only includes personal productivity apps, but also includes world-leading media integration for photos, music, videos, etc.    Pal Manuel has his photos organized in iPhoto, and can show anywhere anytime on screens ranging from his iPod to his iPhone to his 50″ plasma with appleTv.  You see new apps advertised everyday — truphone, zagat, all sorts of twitter apps, and even adds on TV for things like the app whereby you shake the phone to get restaurant suggestions.    Since in part my decision is a family decision, the iPhone has some significant extras for the budding teenagers in the house.   All with the Applely know-how to make things intuitive and easy for the non-geek.   There’s some drawbacks though.    I’ve tried to type on the touch screen, and my fingers are a bit big — so it will be a slowdown for me.   And, there’s the Apple lock-in.   Yes, everything’s integrated, but there’s tight DRM on it all and you have to pay and pay — google has a more open approach that is aligned with my philosophy and in the long run will create a richer and better platform.

Ahh well, it will be settled by Christmas (unless I really over-agonize here).  I’ll keep you posted.

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