Apple, Google, Smart Tech
Going Google
OK, so the past several years, I’ve been an advocate of iOS and the subsequent devices Apple brought to market (iPhone, iPad, TV). Just recently though I’d been looking for something a little different, especially for the ageing (and not so flexible Apple TV). My first flurry into Android was the Nexus Player.
UI, nice. Side load apps, yep (to a working degree…). It’s early days, but I’m both very pleased and incredibly frustrated with it. It’s great that I can ‘cast’, but for us in the UK, the ability for native apps is so lacking it’s almost unbelievable. BBC iPlayer, probably the most consumed media service here in blighty is nowhere to be seen? It’s available on FireTV, a forked version of Android, it’s available on NVidia Shield (android again), it’s even on the Sony (Android) TV, so it’s not a technical issue. Licensing, surely not???
Let’s look at the Google’s own apps for it. Photo’s; Fantastic app for the phone and tablet, cross platform capability, ability to cast (again), but no native app??? Yes, I can side load, but why nothing native. If I simply wanted to cast from my phone, I would have opted for the Chromecast???
The list goes on somewhat, but what concerns me having moved for this particular device is that it’s starting to look like Google TV (V2), or dare I say it, a ‘hobby’ product – Apple anyone…
That aside, I’ve continued to take the plunge and dismiss my Apple devices one by one, and in the main I’m pretty pleased. There are always going to be some pro’s and con’s to each device type and I fully expect that.
My daily driver is now longer the iPhone 6, but the Samsung S6 Edge. Aside from Touchwiz, of which I’ve tried to ‘hide’ by opting for the fab Material Theme this thing is excellent. I’ll be writing more notes on my experiences on the transfer as time goes on, but for now; I’m pleased with my choice, although I have to be honest and say I’d wished I’d held off a little longer now that I know the new Nexus 6P is here.
What’s interesting is my new car also supports Android Auto. As any enthusiast would, I’ve hooked this up and tested it. Again, whilst I fully appreciate it’s an early system, but there are definitely pro’s for using this (maps and music being the obvious), but I have to say, you can tell it’s a fledgling solution, as quite often it’ll just kick you out for the fun of it, and what gives for not being able to select an album, or even the curated playlists that Google provide directly on the phone?!?
Maybe just really lonely. Maybe I just want to be alone. Maybe loneliness is the only way to make that happen. Like having two pairs of eyes and just seeing the same thing. Seems like such a late hour.
Among the other things Fibonacci introduced to the Western world was a sequence of numbers discovered by 6th century Indian mathematicians. In that sequence each number is the sum of the previous two numbers – and it would later be named the Fibonacci Sequence. Using the numbers geometrically will create a logarithmic spiral. In case we didn’t lose you yet, we can actually show you that spiral – because it’s prominently placed right on the hood of the A9.
