android

The Complete History of Android

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Or near enough. There are reasons why the earliest days of the phone software will never been told and – this is the bit that interested me – there are reasons why the history has to be written now because soon so much of it will be lost.

Nonetheless, you do have to like Android. I managed about 10,000 words of this 40,000 and it is interesting, I just had little reference: I can’t remember which Android versions I’ve tried, I just have this vague memory of surprised how slow and unfinished they all seemed. Plus the article is very in favour of Google’s apparently very fast development cycles where it sounds to me like a cacophony of trying everything, then trying to fix everything, and just possibly noticing something that happened in 2007.

But the site Ars Technica has been promming ahead about this article and it is the big deal they say: they’ve done a good job and I’m fascinated by the top where they explain why it had to be done right now. Have a read, would you?

Notification: will you marry me? (Y/N)

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Back in the olden days, like thousands and thousands of years ago, you’d propose enough times that someone said yes. And then you were off to the races, if the races were myriad wedding-planning problems.

Back in the not very olden days, like an hour ago, you’d be considered fancy if you had an actual wedding planner. A person. Films have been made about this.

But today, you need your smartphone and a whole category of apps made just for you:

Wedding apps have become increasingly popular in the last few years as millennials begin to wed. “We got Facebook in college, we got the first iPhones,” 27-year-old Ajay Kamat, who co-founded the photo-timeline app Wedding Party, told TIME. “We have an expectation that when we travel or shop or do anything, there are services and apps that will help make that experience better for us.”

These smart apps—which are trying to break in to the $53.3 billion wedding industry—help brides and grooms send invites, organize guests, hire local vendors, gather all the photos guests take, register for gifts and crowdsource money for honeymoon activities. Apps like Appy Couple, Carats & Cake and Wanderable are becoming favorites among savvy couples who want to streamline the logistics associated with events like bridal showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, wedding and honeymoon.

With This App, I Thee Wed – Eliana Dockterman, Time magazine (12 June 2014)

Bet the iPhone apps are better than the Android ones.

This I might jailbreak for: always-on Siri

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I’ve never jailbroken my iPhones: never worked around Apple’s software to get other, unsanctioned apps onto my phones. I look at the whole idea of hot-wiring your iPhone, of tweaking settings and having to exploit undocumented holes in the system and I just think to bollocks with it all.

If you want to get your hands that dirty just to install some game or something, go get yourself an Android phone.

Jailbreaking fans argue that it’s worth the effort because you get much better apps this way. You get all these fantastic apps that Apple won’t allow on iPhones for, you know, minor reasons like security.

Name one app that’s actually worth the trouble.

And while you do, let’s remember that this trouble is not a one-time deal. It is at least every time there is a new update to the iOS software – any update, not just the biggies like moving from iOS 7 to iOS 8. Anything. Get an update, go back to your screwdrivers. And hope that Apple hasn’t closed this particular loophole.

Except.

If I had to name one app that was worth it, I’d pick this. OkSiri brings an Android feature (not available everywhere, not a regular Android feature but available on at least one Android phone) that I would like to see on iPhone. It makes Siri listen all the time. No pressing a button and waiting a mo before speaking to Siri, it is listening all the time. And specifically it is listening for a phrase such as “OK, Siri” that it then recognises as its cue to work.

The website 9to5 Mac that reported on this also reports that it’s flaky and the execution isn’t as good as the idea. But that’s Android and that’s jailbreaking to me.

1Password for Android coming 10 June

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From the official Agile Bits blog:

1Password 4 for Android arrives on Tuesday, June 10. It is an entirely new and full-featured app, built for both phones and tablets!

It is also an experiment. All new features will be unlocked and free for everyone to use through August 1, 2014. After that, 1Password 4 for Android will go into a reader mode, and all features can be unlocked for an in-app purchase.

The best To Do apps for your phone

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I’ve said this from the start of The Blank Screen:

If you have a phone that can run a To Do app, get a To Do app

and

If you haven’t got a phone that can run a To Do app, get a phone that can

The reason is that you need your list with you everywhere and Post-It notes can’t cut it. It’s possible to lose them, it’s impossible not to end up with dozens of the wretched things.

Whereas a phone is part of you and moreover, any task you enter on that phone should then be everywhere. It depends on the app and the phone but, for instance, I’ll dictate a To Do task into my iPhone while I drive and know – know – that it is immediately on my office Mac and immediately on my iPad.

What I’ve been adding in lately is a list of specific recommendations. I can’t recommend phones, I know nothing about Android and if I said an iPhone 5something then you know the iPhone 6 would come out immediately.

But software, I can recommend.

Google any one of the following to find every possible detail plus oodles of reviews – plus in most cases, YouTube videos showing them in action.

For iPhone users

OmniFocus
Reminders (Apple’s own, you’ve already got this)
Appigo Todo
Clear
Wunderlist

For Android users

Any.do
Wunderlist
Todoist

Windows Phone

Sorry, I truly have no clue here and it is not for want of trying. You’ll be astonished how many Windows Phone articles there are about productivity apps which explicitly say they feature To Do software but then don’t. If you know a great Windows Phone To Do task manager, would you tip me off, please? I’m on wg@williamgallagher.com

Running iPhone apps on Android

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It’ll never happen. Google wouldn’t give a monkey’s but Apple would. And I don’t know that I’d want it to happen anyway: it wouldn’t be much of a step from that to having every phone run the same software and then where would we be? I don’t like using Android phones but there’s no question that iPhone has benefited from there being competition. Though plainly Android took nothing from iPhone, nooooooooo.

Still, it could happen in theory – because it is happening today, it is just now just about possible to run an iPhone app on an Android phone:

…six Columbia University students have bridged the gap between the two platforms with something called Cider (via The Next Web). Not to be confused with the other Cider software (for OS X), the Android version of Cider essentially fools iOS applications into believing they’re running on an actual iPhone or iPad.

9to5 Mac

There’s work and there’s work. You would never use this in real life. And I have serious questions about the smartness of university students who don’t know the difference between portrait and landscape: have a look at their video about all this.

OmniFocus clone on Android

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androidfocusOmniFocus – have I mentioned this To Do manager recently? Like, in the last hour? – is solely available for Macs, iPhones and iPads, nothing else. But as of this weekend, there is AndroidFocus: a completely unofficial Android version.

It’s not really OmniFocus, it’s more a quick way to enter or to see OmniFocus tasks on your Android phone. It has fewer features than the real iPhone one and you it depends on your having an account with the Omni Sync Server. That’s free but you get it when you buy a real OmniFocus. So if you are, say, a Mac user with an Android phone, this could be for you. Note that the Omni Group isn’t trying to get the clone removed but it does warn:

An app named AndroidFocus recently appeared in the Google Play Store. This app calls itself “An OmniFocus client for Android”, and can connect to an Omni Sync Server account in order to sync with the OmniFocus database that is stored there. To be clear, AndroidFocus is not an Omni Group product and we are unable to assist customers with using the app.

We believe that you should have control of your own data, and OmniFocus therefore uses an open file format just like the rest of our applications. Customers need to be aware, however, that reverse-engineering sync in the way that AndroidFocus appears to have done can make for unpredictable results. That means it’s theoretically possible that using AndroidFocus will cause data loss which our Support Humans are not equipped or able to help you recover from. For this reason we can’t recommend using AndroidFocus.

Using AndroidFocus with OmniFocus – Omni Group Support Document 

So it doesn’t do a lot and it could well break the next time the Omni Group changes anything or updates anything in the real OmniFocus. Yet still I would be buying this now if I had Android.

AndroidFocus official site and Google Play Store: £4.10 (UK), $6.99 (US)

Boil it down: iPhone users have more money

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I’m an iPhone user. Can I have more money, please?

A report by Battery Ventures – I’ve not heard of them but they’ve a nice website so they must be serious – examined who buys iPhones and who buys Android phones. It’s oddly hard to get the full report to examine but many, many sites are all picking up on coverage of it by Re/code. As am I. The Re/code piece is unusually light on details but its headline analysis reads:

Android Users are More Likely to Take the Bus, While the Frequent Flyers Choose iPhones

Then:

“You would think iPhone users are all pinot-drinking yoga enthusiasts,” said Jonathan Sills, the Battery Ventures entrepreneur-in-residence who conducted the firm’s study. Well, that’s at least partially true.

It turns out more iPhone users do in fact prefer wine to beer. They are also more likely to own stock and to have flown on a plane in the past year. Meanwhile, Android users are more likely to rely on public transportation, describe themselves as religious, have eaten McDonalds in the past month or to smoke tobacco.

Re/Code

I use public transport a lot – I mean, a lot – and it’s certain that the convenience is a big factor. I live in a city, I can do this. But money is also an issue: for me, a car would be a handy indulgence, I simply don’t need it. Would I have one if money were no object? Probably. Not definitely. But probably.

I don’t own stocks, I can’t remember the last time I was on a plane but it’s 50/50 whether it was within 12 months. I’ve never tried tobacco. I have often eaten McDonalds.

I need to buy me an Android phone, clearly.

 

Windows alternatives to OmniFocus

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Pity me. I go around doing workshops about being a productive writer and I've even written a book about it (The Blank Screen: Productivity for Creative Writers, UK edition, US edition) And it all makes sense, it all works – I promise you that and I have such gorgeous tweets and emails from people telling me so – but there is a big problem. It's the To Do list.

When I started this, the problem was that I'm on a Mac and quite a few people go for that there Windows thing. And my To Do manager of choice only runs on Macs. Actually, I say it's the To Do manager of my choice, I think it's more the To Do manager of my heart and soul. It used to be that in a workshop I would put up a slide showing you OmniFocus and where to get it. And then I'd say: “If you know a Windows equivalent, it would be a huge help for me to hear about it.” Or something like that.

But there are two problems now: I can't automatically and easily evangelise OmniFocus because the app is in a bit of a flux as new versions are coming.

OmniFocus for iPhone has already been radically updated and I like it a lot. OmniFocus for iPad hasn't and won't be until OmniFocus 2 for Mac is done. Do you buy now or wait? It's easy with the iPhone version: buy it. It's sort-of easy with the Mac one: buy the current OmniFocus 1 for Mac and you'll get version 2 for free when it's released. But OmniFocus 1 for Mac is hard work. I understand it now and I adore the power, but it took me a long time to get there. Even last year's failed OmniFocus 2 beta was a significant improvement in some key areas so surely OF 2 will be too. So I'd wait for OmniFocus 2.

When you buy any Mac version of OmniFocus, do it from the main Omni Group website itself, don't go through the Mac App Store. As handy as that is, there are problems upgrading for free when you have bought via the App Store.

You have no choice with the iPad and iPhone ones and that's also why I hesitate: the iPad one is already the best of the three, can they actually make it any better? Very likely.

But here's the thing. I have all three versions of OmniFocus and I use them all. But when OmniFocus 2 for iPad or Mac comes out, I'm buying them again immediately.

Because I truly don't know of any other To Do software that is this good.

I ask about that and about Windows and so far so far nobody has ever piped up with an answer during the workshop, during the after-session nattering (possibly my favourite part) or over the many emails I get later.

That's not a scientific or statistically valid sampling of people to call from. For the most part, I don't presume any computer knowledge and I don't ask anyone in advance what equipment they prefer to use. But most festival or university blurbs that describe my talk use one of the many texts I give them and they they invariably include the phrase “make your computer work harder for you”. If you were deeply into Windows software already, or Mac for that matter, I don't think that line would sell the workshop to you. So very broadly, I think one can expect fewer than average power-users in a typical workshop. Which means we can equally expect fewer people to know Windows software well enough to tell me what they've got that is as powerful as OmniFocus.

I know I'm right in all this but I want to tell you that I doubt it matters. I doubt that there is actually an equivalent to OmniFocus in Windows. But telling you that now, six years into this post, feels a bit rich. So let me show you what I've been working on for the workshop I'm doing next week. This is a special limited-number workshop for a specific group of writers that I work with on Writing West Midlands' Room 204 programme. I know them so I have an idea of how they like to work and what kit they use. Many are PC fans and I will ask them for advice but I think it's time I stepped up.

So I've been looking into this in detail. Or at least as much detail as you can without owning a Windows PC. I've checked reviews, I've tried all the online web versions I can find and I've downloaded iOS companion apps. No Android, I don't have the facility to test that nor the patience of Job to go through all the Android permutations.

There is nothing in Windows that is as strong as OmniFocus for Macintosh.

However.

I've boiled it down to a few that have one of the core things of OmniFocus: the start date. Let's just take a second to think about that term and what we'd use it for. If I enter a new task in OmniFocus then I can, if I'm fussed, also give it a deadline date. An end date. If I want to, though, I can also stepm in and add what's now called a Defer Until date. In my head it's still a Start Date. But whatever you call it, OmniFocus uses it and uses it for this one specific purpose: to hide it from you.

It's little short of disturbing. You enter a task, tap in a start date and you're sure you've saved it, you're sure, but you cannot see it anywhere.

That's not entirely true. You can see it whenever you do a review of all your tasks. (Reviews are a big part of Getting Things Done, the ideas behind many successful To Do apps like OmniFocus and yet, weirdly, not many systems include it. Note, too, that the iPhone version of OmniFocus hasn't got reviews either. I truly don't understand why and I think it's a big gap. I'm okay because I just do my reviews on the iPad, where it is a gorgeous system. I do think once you start on OmniFocus you'll buy all three versions, but again, they're in flux. I don't know what to suggest.) There are other ways to find and see this new task but the kicker is that you don't get to see it on your main To Do List. It ain't there. At all.

It isn't there on your list and it isn't going to be there until that start date comes around.

Here's a typical, practical use for that. I'm doing The Blank Screen workshop at the Stratford Literary Festival in May. I've done everything I need to do to get that going, now I don't even have to think about it until mid-April when I'll update and rewrite the presentation. So get it off my list until April. I don't want to see it and I don't want to have to keep thinking “Is it April yet?” (Tell me I'm not the only person who would have to stop to think that.)

Typical, practical and shorter example: if I'm doing a particular job every week on a Tuesday, keep things off my list until the Monday when I need to think about them.

I could talk to you all day about OmniFocus and it would just be cruel if you're on a PC. But if we just and only talk about start dates, then we've got some options here. The following are all Windows apps with web versions that work crossplatform: if there's one you fancy, see whether it has a companion app that works with your phone.

Toodledo
By default, there are no start dates. But go to Account Settings and look for the many fields you can choose to switch on for a task. One of them is start dates and once you've ticked that, every task you enter has the option for a start date.

Appigo To Do
I was a big Appigo To Do user until I found OmniFocus. Since then it's become a little suite of programs including a web client and I'm honestly a little confused over what option gets you what. But as of a few months ago, Appigo To Do includes Start Dates.

It's rather poorly done on the iPhone version: you have no way to realise that this icon is for setting the end date and that one is for setting the start date. None. Do what I did: press everything. When you know which button it is, though, you're set.

Well, nearly. Appigo doesn't have the same control as OmniFocus so it's a touch less refined in what does and doesn't show you. But a task with a start date that isn't today will get separated from more urgent tasks on your list.

Asana
This is team-wide To Do management and that would put it outside my usual sphere of interest: I want to make you, personally and specifically you, more productive. Not companies. I reckon if everyone in a firm is as good as you then that's great, but it's you I'm working with.

It also tends to mean complex. Enterprise-wide software takes some learning and I haven't done that. But Asana promises start dates. It's even an automatic thing. Yet I couldn't figure it out.

There's a line somewhere between To Do apps and Project Management software. I think it might be here.

I'm disappointed that there are no start dates in the best-named To Do software ever: Remember the Milk. Going by the chatter on its support forums, there never will be either. So I'm afraid that means RTM is out for me.

They all are, I suppose: I've said before that you'd need Primacord explosive around my waist to get me away from OmniFocus on a Mac, iPhone and iPad. But there is Primacord, it is possible and I thought – I still think – that it will happen that some day there's going to be a better To Do manager. But it isn't today and it unquestionably isn't on a PC.

Really excellent news for 3 UK users

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The company’s announced free text and data for UK users travelling around the States. I’ve just come back from California and they’re right: my iPhone usage had to drop like a stone for fear of the bill.

I was once lost in France for ten minutes – er, I didn’t just teleport there and get confused, it was the last ten minutes of a trip – and using Google Maps on my phone tripled my bill for the month.

So I love this news. I’m especially pleased because I’m on 3 but it’s great news all round because you know, you just know that other carriers will follow

Details on Cult of Android here:

Three U.K. To Give Customers Free Calls, Texts & Data While They’re In The U.S.