It took me completely by surprise to read about Mint closing down and them moving their customers to Credit Karma, another similar financial planning service in the Intuit portfolio.
I don't blame Intuit for consolidating their brands, but I would have thought bringing Credit Karma features and users to Mint may have been a better option, but perhaps it is about organizations, talent, technology stack, and much more than what we see as outsiders and in my case, as a customer.
I have had data in Mint since 2013 and have been using it as a place where I see transactions from all my financial institutions and a place where I see general trends of my income and expense. I do not use it for budgeting or to monitor my investments in any way. For my use though, what is important is that all my institutions are supported, and I can search for transactions easily.
Once the news broke, I had to quickly start looking for alternatives and I was debating really looking at Credit Karma when through Threads, I found out about Monarch Money. The service seemed quite nicely designed and had a web presence as well as mobile, so I decided to jump into their trial. As I dove into the service, I found out that it was founded by one of Mint's original product persons, so I got some confidence that the service will be shepherded well.
Monarch Money
It was very easy to set up Monarch Money (MM) by adding accounts. Unlike Mint, MM uses third party data connectors like Plaid, MX and Fincity so it was an interesting experience going through the setups - some institutions bounced the authentication to their own mini windows, and some used Plaid's user interface. Regardless, in no time I had most of my recent data in MM and could start seeing some trends and cash flow analysis.
I also noticed they had a Help & Support interface within the app and on the web which created a support ticket on the back end. The response there was meh, but in my attempt to find some answers to questions not on the FAQ, I stumbled upon their subreddit r/MonarchMoney. This was a great subreddit where they acknowledged and welcomed Mint refugees and had a few employees responding to many threads which was a refreshing surprise.
I had exported transactions from Mint and MM had a Mint import feature which I used heavily to bring in the historical data from Mint so that I could start using MM as a true Mint replacement - seeing my income and expenses, over time, and also being able to search for random transactions from the past.
This is where I started seeing a bunch of nuances in these financial aggregation services
Balances for each account are independent of the underlying transactions: MM brings in balances separately from transactions which is good and bad - good because I don't need a proper accounting ledger of gives and takes to make the balance work out (flashback of nightmares trying to balance by desktop Quicken from years past!), and bad because I would never know if there was a glitch in the transactions like duplicates or missing data because the overall numbers would look fine
Brokerages are a beast: Some brokerages do not have transactions at all, some do but I can't import older data, and some can be hacked to get in the older data but may not reflect in any reporting and such. Frankly, because I never used the investment analysis portion of Mint and don't care about it elsewhere, I am fine with it as long as the balances look good and I am able to cross-reference deposits made from my checking account to the brokerages (somehow!)
Some key accounts either did not connect or had issues: My HSA provider Optum Bank did not connect at all so I had to create a manual account and import older data from Mint just to get a placeholder. Similarly, one of the several accounts I have with Ameriprise was missing. And Fidelity kept losing connection every other day. (Optum has since been able to be added but I can't do transactions import, Ameriprise continues to be an issue and Fidelity is resolved by switching providers)
What I like about MM compared to Mint at first glance:
The user interface and design: It is so much more lively compared to Mint. Also, because it is a subscription service, no ads! Wow, such a big difference!
Rules: In Mint, I was not able to created rules based on payee names containing certain characters, it would only set up for the exact name. So if the payee has some type of ID in their name which keeps changing, the rules would never execute. In MM I can do a "contains" type of a rule and it works like a charm!
Additional user: MM encourages co-management of finances and I added my wife immediately so she can participate in the financial management with me. And it works - she sees data and understands it much better than my passive updates from earlier.
Concept of review: All transactions in MM start as not reviewed and I could set it up so whenever there are new transactions to review, that it sends me a notification. This is excellent because I can look at the transactions every other day, review for correctness and update categories or rules if needed and clear them out. I am much more on top of individual transactions now than before.
Batch mode of fetching data: MM fetches data in the background and does it periodically. I like this because when I open the app or website, there is no waiting for refresh, I see the data immediately.
Public roadmap: This was another pleasant surprise - not only is there a section to request new features, but the actual features under planning and development are exposed on their website so we can see what's coming! So good.
What I am waiting for:
Fix missing and problematic accounts: I really need that one Ameriprise account added, and get some stability in certain problematic accounts which keep disconnecting frequently
Some weird duplication: There is an account which seems to be showing data from another account at the same institution and not its own transactions. The balance seems fine and I don't have much activity in that account, so it's not such a big deal but my OCD would sure like the transactions to be fixed
Support overwhelmed: Because of the huge influx of Mint refugees, their support has crumbled to a halt - the main customer support as well as reddit. In the past couple days I have seen some immediate responses when I create a ticket, but it is still something they need to ramp up on and I am sure they will normalize soon
Native Apple Card and Apple Savings Account support: Right now the card data is importable seamlessly by creating an Apple Card account (only from mobile) but there is not even a workaround support for Apple Savings account.
I am a fan so far and even though it is a bit expensive @ $95/year, I would subscribe to it. They have offered a 50% discount for the first year and extended my already-extended trial by another 30 days, so I know they are customer-centric at the core.
Quicken Simplifi
I had forgotten about Quicken since I moved to Mint in 2013 and I was surprised to see their online service Simplifi as a competitor to Mint and Monarch Money. The look and feel drew me in, so I decided to do my own bake-off between MM and Quicken Simplifi (QS).
Setup was similar to MM, but for some reason, the accounts got added more quickly than MM. I am sure it is a perception issue because by the time I started using QS, I had gone through a lot of bumps on the MM journey.
Maybe it's the typeface they use and/or the fact that they have pretty tiles and reports on the main dashboard, but at first glance, QS seemed more attractive than MM. I did the same steps as I did with MM - set up the accounts, and then import the Mint exported data one account at a time. QS, like MM, had a Mint importer that interpreted the Mint csv nicely.
Support at QS has also been impacted by the influx of Mint refugees and they also have a good subreddit at r/Simplifimoney and even though I have seen some employees respond, it doesn't seem like their primary form of support for end customers and instead it is more of a user community. Their actual website user community is very active and because it seems like an older product, there are a lot more articles and knowledge bases to tap into. Their support has a great generative AI-based bot which switches to human messaging-based support medium and that support is very prompt.
What I like about QS compared to Mint is very much like what I like about MM compared to Mint. QS does not do batch fetching so there is an occassional spinning I have seen when it refreshes all the accounts but that's ok. Also, the additional user can only be added from the web and I guess that's a temporary issue. Also, the support mentioned above is a big plus over MM.
One thing that I kinda like with QS is that movement of money from one account to another - credit card payments, loan payments, etc. is like the desktop Quicken experience: it changes the category of both sides of the transaction to the be other account name. So for example if I paid $100 to my Amex from my BofA checking account I would see the check account $100 categorized as "Amex" and the debit in my Amex show as $100 with category of "BofA checking". That's nice because there is no additional information I need on each of those transactions than the fact that it went from one of my accounts to the other. Both those transactions are skipped from spending reports, naturally.
To my surprise, transactions from accounts like PayPal which are transacted ultimately through a credit card also show up nicely where the PayPal transaction is duplicated so one of them can be categorized properly as shopping or whatever and the other represents the transfer of funds from credit card to PayPal to fund the original purchase.
What I am waiting for:
Performance: After I imported the 10 years of data in about 15 accounts, the performance on the web and on mobile has been terrible. It is almost useless right now because every update I make requires about 2-3 seconds of waiting before I can take the next action in the interface. If they don't fix this soon as a step function improvement, QS will be a non-starter for me
Venmo: After I added Venmo, I have not been able to make the sync work. It keeps asking for login credentials and I enter and authenticate and it fails to connect - hope that gets addressed soon
Better "review" notifications: I love how MM sends me notifications for new transactions to review. QS is not as good with the concept of review as a precursor to "finalizing" a transaction and I have a workaround where I enabled the notification for any transaction > $0.01 but would rather see a more seamless interface and workflow
Apple Card and Apple Savings Account: Same as MM comments above
I am also a fan of QS and it is less expensive than MM, so if they make the performance improvements, it will be a very tough call for me to choose between the two services.
I have made the decision to let the bake-off run for a year and decide which one to stop after seeing the progres or lack of during the year.
fwiw, I also tried Copilot Money for a brief second, but didn't even go beyond the trial because they did not have a Mint importer and they did not have a web presence. Also, their apps were only iOS and MacOS so it would have been a stretch. The interface and design was nice though.
Sound off in the comments if you are in a similar boat as me and what your experiences have been.
Goals and North Stars - set good goals based on what you want to achieve as a platform team
Partners and Enablers - build and leverage your partnerships because they will help sell your vision
How to thrive as a platform PM - put all of the above together and see how to succeed as a data platform product manager
Platform PM leader - as you move up and become a data platform product leader, understand what is expected of you, and what you should expect, including some limitations in this role
#Image credit: DALL-E 2 (Twitter symbol burning with a lonely man watching + variation on one of the generated images)
Last night and today, half of Twitter employees were fired by the new owner of the company, Elon Musk. Almost 3,800 people without a job because of no fault of theirs. They were doing good, meaningful work. While there surely was some fat at the company, as is the case at any company this size, I don't think Musk went about it with any real thought process business-wise. If he did, it would have taken a few more months to analyze the value of the various products and teams before he could make a decision.
Anyway, this post is not about the layoffs. I started losing interest in Twitter as a community when Elon finally took it over. It is because he believes that everyone should be heard and that is what he describes as free speech. To him, letting anti-vaxxers say what they want to say is equally important as doctors and medical professionals saying why vaccines are important. Where will he draw the line? Is a Holocaust denier's voice important to be heard? What about a racist? White supremacist?
Bottom line, I can see Twitter becoming more noise and much lesser signal. So I started thinking where else can I go to get a similar experience, and realized there is really nothing that satisfies what I love about Twitter (besides making genuine friends, even if they are online-only although some are also friends IRL).
So what is it that I like about Twitter that makes me somewhat of an addict? It's not doomscrolling. It's not idle surfing which is what I used to do with Facebook when I was active Facebook user. It is a combination of:
Freshness: I often see stuff on Twitter way before it hits a news publication's website. Also, it combines multiple parts of my interests into a single feed so I don't have to whack 15 different moles when news breaks. Sports, entertainment, politics, health and wellness, etc. all in a single feed refreshed 24x7.
Curation: Over the many years I have been on Twitter I have been very selective about whom I follow. I use Twitter Lists a lot and that's where a lot of "others" get shoved, but my main feed is very limited so I can see a lot of what they tweet vs the main feed being a giant firehose of information. By selecting people and companies that I have an interest in, I know I get most of what I need surfaced through them directly and indirectly (their retweets and quote tweets). Rarely do I see something that I should have known that I found out elsewhere vs my feed. Very rarely. (Thank you to the people I follow, you make my experience worth the while!)
Discovery: My recent jobs/positions have made it possible for me to consume Twitter voraciously even during the day. As a result, I see many tweets and as a result, Twitter has replaced my RSS reader for many years now. What I used to do in my RSS reader was discover new content and potentially share it with the world and now that experience is reduced to a single platform.
Access: Thanks to the popularity and "communication protocol" nature of Twitter, everyone is on Twitter. This has made it possible to be one tweet away from the biggest personalities whether they are celebrities in entertainment or CEOs of companies or founders and financiers of innovative companies. I love that many of them engage with their community on Twitter. I am not sure if this could have been possible if Twitter weren't the medium it is today.
Customer support: Often, customer support provided by companies on Twitter is faster and better and more direct than what they provide on the phone or online chat. Some companies have truly done this justice and one example of this is Comcast. Even though it is common to mock the company and their service, I have only had good experience with them on Twitter for sales support as well as technical support.
This combination of benefits is a killer. I am not sure if there is anything that can come close to this experience. There are some promising platforms like Mastodon but I will wait and see if they gain enough of a critical mass. I did the switch a few years ago from WhatsApp to Signal when there was this move regarding privacy policies at Meta but realized quickly that most people I'd like to chat with were not on Signal and stuck around on WhatsApp.
There are other services which provide some parts of this overall experience but fail because they don't provide the others - Slack, Discord, etc. have good community features but I think they are meant to be more like BBS's than a Town Square. Which means the community will be limited by design.
It's kind of ironic but Google+ would have been a great alternative to Twitter - it had a community of all GMail users, it had a feed although it was more algorithmic vs chronological as I remember but I may be wrong, it had Reader built into it for discovery aspects and I am sure if it gained enough momentum, companies would come to it and start providing customer support too.
With all that said, I am not leaving Twitter as yet, but if things devolve and Musk keeps giving the nutjobs an equal presence on the platform, I would be willing to disappear from there and rely on multiple tools to satisfy my needs.
So, what's a good RSS reader these days? What's a good public-y Discord server? Any Mastodon fans? What's a good starting point? :-)
Finally bought a Surface Pro 3, and bought it from the Microsoft Store because it has a generous 30-day return policy. I got the 256GB/Core i7 model mostly to see if there are any downsides to going with the top-of-the-line model.
Our current laptop is getting a bit old and given that our use of the “home laptop” is mostly casual with AutoCAD being the key program that needs to run properly, I thought I’d give the new form factor a whirl before thinking about a proper Ultrabook-style laptop, or maybe even a MacBook Air. The latter is not a religious issue for me, it is just that AutoCAD does have not a subscription for their Mac version, and worse, the Mac version of the AutoCAD LT product is behind the Windows version in terms of raw features supported.
I will write up my thoughts on the device in detail soon!
I have been playing with Excel’s Power View, Power Query (my favorite) and Power Pivot (older but still fantastic) and a few weeks ago someone tweeted something about their twitter archive. That gave me an idea to see if there is any pattern in my tweeting.
So I went to twitter web settings and requested a fresh archive. As a side, how awesome is it that twitter lets you request an archive and that it is ready in minutes. This is a company that could not go back more than a few days in history not so long ago!
Anyway, I brought in all the data from the csv file and put a couple of simple charts together. I’d have loved to share this as an embedded Excel file but because it has all the data, the file is ~19MB and Excel Online can only handle file size of 5MB and below :-(
Anyway, it is interesting to see that my peak twitter was 2012, and for some reason, April of 2012. And as for the clients, MetroTwit, which is still one of the best twitter experiences I have had, very surprisingly dropped to negligible levels after 2012.
Anyway … as usual, there is more insight to gain from the data. I just found these to be the quick and easy ones to look at.
[caption id=“attachment_3601” align=“aligncenter” width=“646”] Tweets by month[/caption]
[caption id=“attachment_3602” align=“aligncenter” width=“646”] Tweets by client[/caption]
I have long had my main address book in the cloud on what is now called Outlook.com’s People app. It not only is my central store of all contact information, it is also smart because it is connected to twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google. As a result, my “master” contact card for any person is smart enough to show me not only what I have for them in my address book but also information that they have chosen to make available to me via any and all of those networks.
So, the central store and federation is a big deal. Coupled with those things, I am able to pull in this address book via Exchange Active Sync (read: 2-way, instantaneous push and sync) on all my devices: Windows Phone, Windows 8, iPhone, iPad, Android.
Needless to say, this has become indispensable for me. I love that I am able to forget about syncing and keeping a master record, and more importantly, not worry about losing that data if I lose or reset a device.
However, the downside is that when something weird happens, it instantly becomes a major cause for worry for me. Like a few weeks ago, my niece’s contact information disappeared from my iPhone. The way I realized it was through WhatsApp; her message showed up without a name and instead, just a nick and a phone number. I looked up my Contacts on the iPhone and couldn’t find her. I panicked. I had no idea what happened. Was I hacked? Was there something I did? What could delete this account? What else was deleted? All these thoughts started circling in my head. The problem of complete automation, I guess.
The good news was that the contact existed on People app on the web, and it also existed on my Windows devices. The phone number though, was missing. Bizarre. I added the number because I wanted to first get back on track and then troubleshoot. For whatever reason, I could not force a sync back to the iPhone. It is supposed to be instantaneous, but it simply did not bring that contact over to the phone! I contacted Microsoft support on twitter and posted on their forums.
Anyway, since it was so random, Microsoft support suggested I just remove and re-add the account on iPhone and see if that resolved the issue and it did. Problem solved, kinda-sorta. It was “solved” for the support team. Not for me. However, I had no idea what may be going on, and no time to investigate. So I ended the chapter there, with slight dissatisfaction of knowing I had not really solved the problem, only worked around it.
Today, I noticed that another family member’s phone number is missing from my phone’s contacts. Again, it showed up because in WhatsApp, her message showed just the nick and the number. I checked the phone, and the contact does not exist, and in this case, the contact as well as the phone number exists on the web as well as Windows devices.
Something really strange is going on with the way contacts are syncing from Outlook.com to iPhone via the “Outlook” account type (not “Exchange”). I am not sure if it is something Outlook.com needs to address or Apple, but I know that I am just not comfortable with the setup I have at the moment.
I have been wanting to test drive Android for some time now. I had briefly thought of buying a Nexus 7 to experience Android as an OS and the Android as an ecosystem in general. For whatever reason, the actual purchase did not happen. Earlier this week, an opportunity presented itself, where a friend was able to loan me his brand new Samsung Galaxy S4 Active device on Thursday and I could put the device through its paces over the weekend.
And I did. The experience wasn’t exactly smooth and the “getting acquainted” period ended up being longer than I expected. After much frustration, I realized Android as I experienced (via the Galaxy device and Samsung’s flavor of Android) is most definitely not for me. Some things that I liked and would love to see implemented in iOS and Windows Phone, but many things that are baffling and plain annoying in Android for me to seriously consider it as a daily driver.
What is there to like
Actionable notifications
I love that I could reply to a tweet directly from the notification center. It doesn't compose the tweet (like maybe the Me tile lets you do in Windows Phone) but it opens the Twitter app directly in the reply window so you can reply and be done with that notification. Rumors are that such a feature is coming to Windows Phone 8.1, and I would love to see something similar in iOS.
Widgets
If you know me and/or have read some of my thoughts on mobile platforms, you know that I love Windows Phone's live tiles. These tiles provide information at a glance for things that you only need to glance at, like top news or the next calendar appointment or the current weather. Widgets in Android do something similar and are very useful in providing snippets of information. I like that, and do miss it in my iPhone.
Screen size
After using a larger screen with Windows Phones for the past few years, I thought the iPhone's screen size would seem small. It surprisingly has not felt like that. So, using the larger screen on the S4 felt good but only for a bit. You will see the same exact bullet point listed under what I didn't like :-)
Choice
It is quite amazing that I can install multiple app stores on the device. I mean, it already comes with two - Google Play and Samsung App Store - but I was also able to install the Amazon Appstore and get some apps from there. There was an increasing sense as I used the phone that Android seems very much like Windows on the desktop from the previous era, and this "choice" is just another example of that. Just like screen size though, you will see Choice listed under things I didn't like.
So much not to like
OOBE
The out of the box experience, which was mostly how I experienced Android in the past (and didn't like at all), made me feel like I am doing something wrong for not "getting" it. I simply didn't understand where to start in terms of using the phone. Swiping to unlock was clear, and tapping the phone icon to make a call was clear. But why are there 4 home pages where one of them is to the left of the one marked with the "home" icon? How to create a new page or modify an existing page? Maddening.
Crapware
There were so many apps that came pre-loaded with the device! The worse part is that most of these bundled apps cannot be uninstalled, they can only be disabled. And because of how the home screen works, "removing" from the home screen does nothing besides deleting *that* shortcut (more on that later) from that home screen.
User experience
Not only was it confusing out of the box, the entire user experience is full of inconsistencies and confusion. These are too numerous to list but some that I remembered:
You can create shortcuts to apps on home screens. That makes sense, but you can create multiple shortcuts of the same app on the same home screen, and even in the same folder on that home screen. There is no difference between an app icon and a shortcut, which means when there are multiple shortcuts to the same app on the same screen, you have no idea why.
For the longest time I had no idea how to disable icons that show up in the system bar at the top of the device. I did not want my email notification in the system bar but despite going into the email app (GMail app, in this case), I wasn't able to find the setting to turn that off, nor was there anything under the main settings. Later, by accident, I realized that the first physical button triggers a menu and when I went into GMail app and triggered the menu, I was able to get to settings and uncheck the notification setting.
Why the heck do apps have a settings screen in-app and also trigger another set of settings via the button? The afore-mentioned GMail app is one big example of this nonsensical user experience, so we can't even blame "Android developers" as a collective. This is Google's own developers creating confusion within their prime app by having some settings exposed via app and some via the button.
I noticed that the lock screen showed a few app icons on the bottom that I could launch directly from the lock screen, but I simply couldn't find where to change that list. Help from the web seemed to suggest it was under Lock Screen settings but I just couldn't find it. Later, I realized I had to change the first setting (lock screen swipe) before I could edit that setting. If I had a PIN to unlock, I couldn't even see how to edit it but it was there by default. This one took a long time to figure out and involved removing my work Exchange account because that mandated a PIN to unlock. This item really frustrated me, more because it was so hard to figure out rather than the actual utility of being able to edit the list of apps.
Speaking of work Exchange account, when I set it up, I was asked to enable encryption. I understand what that means and why they need it, so I went ahead and agreed to that step. I was asked to set up a password which confused me because I already have a PIN enabled for the device. Regardless, I went ahead with it because I did not have a choice. After the process completed, I realized I ended up having to enter that password upon boot, and then enter my PIN to unlock the device. Both iOS and Windows Phone encrypt the whole device by default and keep the user out of this messy issue. I understand technically what they are doing in Android (encrypting only part of the device that needs to be encrypted for Exchange use), but for a common user, this is a hot mess.
Large screen
While a large screen felt good going from the iPhone's screen, it turns out there are more downsides to it than I had imagined. See, I got used to the one-handed use that is possible with the iPhone's size which I simply wasn't able to do with this device.
Choice
While it is cool (and amazing, really) that I can have multiple app stores on the device, the choice expands to all kinds of apps including keyboard replacements. But this choice is actually a huge problem for a first-time user because out of the box, there are multiple apps for Photos, Videos, Music, Messaging, etc. Samsung has duplicated most of the Google apps for these utility apps but Google itself has duplicated what comes with Android like Chrome and "Internet" browser, Hangouts and Messaging, GMail and Email, etc. I would think it would be a much, much better experience if there were a default app associated with each action at the least, but it would be even better if all add on apps are installed by user upon some sort of a prompt after the device is set up. The choice, in short, is overwhelming.
Wrapping up
The device is good but not great. I really prefer the flat edges of the iPhone vs the slightly rounded edges of this device or the even more rounded edges of my Lumia 920. The flatter edges make it much easier to hold the device. The operating system has all the power of what is expected of a modern smartphone operating system, but like Windows XP that was installed on PCs, the OS is full of stuff that a user should not be seeing and the device is loaded with crapware that is seriously unnecessary.
Of course I cannot deny the millions of devices that Samsung has sold and even more so, the billion devices that have apparently been activated with Android, but I can say one thing: Android does not seem like it is something I would enjoy using as a direct consumer of the system. If my next music player has Android built in, and that gets exposed with their iOS app, I don’t care, but I don’t think I have the tolerance or the patience to “work with” Android as it stands today. Now I can at least say this definitively, having experienced the same on (one of) the most popular Android devices.
ps: I realized after the experiment that I did not even care which version of the operating system was installed on the device
As you may or may not be aware, my personal email (with “vanity” domain) is hosted on Office 365. Yes, that business service which charges $6/month for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online. I have had it since they launched the small business and professionals plan.
Since then, Hotmail has gone from being the dull and boring email service no one wants to be associated with, to a beautiful and modern Outlook.com. While Hotmail always provided the ability to use custom domains, I never thought of using that option because it was not a great email service. For example, there was no easy way to connect to it from a desktop email client unless you use Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail. Outlook added a Hotmail Connector but it always felt like a hack. And of course, there’s mobile.
With Outlook.com, what’s nice is that it supports Exchange Active Sync out of the box. No connectors needed. No jumping through hoops. 2-way sync, push support and all that jazz. For free. I have been tempted to move my domain email to this combination except that my mailbox is fairly huge (5GB) and I was not sure if I will be able to move the entire thing and I was not even sure how long it would take.
So I did some quick experiments with my existing Hotmail account and realized that via IMAP, I am able to move my emails fairly quickly over Comcast’s speedy internet connection (and maybe a much better back-end on Outlook.com?). So, I decided to take the plunge and make the move.
I disconnected my email account from my domain on Office 365, “removed” the domain from Office 365’s management, added the same to Live Domains and set up my account there. With some small glitches here and there (my email was an alias on my existing Hotmail account, so I wasn’t able to add it as a new domain email account until I removed the alias), I was up and running with my new setup.
I used Outlook 2013 to connect to my Office 365 account (via normal “Exchange” connectivity) and Outlook.com account (via IMAP). I started moving emails by folders and realized most of the messages were showing up on the web fairly quickly. Except for two very large folders, I was done in a couple of hours. The large folders took a bit longer but not terribly so. Overnight, I was actually surprised that I was done with the email part. What remained was calendar and contacts, both of which created much pain.
I took it for granted that calendar can be moved as easily as email but I was in for an unpleasant surprise when I realized I was connected to Outlook.com via IMAP. That means, no calendar support. I saved the Office 365 calendar as an ics file (was not under “export” but under “save as” in Outlook 2013 - go figure) and imported it from the web. That was easy, except that the “save as ics” step did not save every single event! There was no obvious pattern in what was saved and what was omitted.
Another idea struck me: why not connect to Outlook.com via EAS in Outlook 2013 and then copy all calendar events from one account to the other? Great idea, except there is a massive bug in Outlook 2013’s EAS implementation which does not sync events if you mass-copy them on a calendar. If I did all 350-odd events one-by-one, it would have worked. But I was not in a mood to do that. So the workaround was to simulate an edit across all the events and that is easily achieved with marking them all as a new category. That seemed to trigger a forced sync and I started seeing the events show up on the web. What seemed to be missing was events that I had marked as private, or at least some of those private events. Again, the EAS bug comes to bite me because even after marking them all as normal sensitivity, I could not simulate a sync. At this point I kinda gave up on the sync and re-saved the calendar as ics and imported it from the web. Then, a sync happened that showed up in Outlook 2013. For all the stuff that was not correctly sync-ed, including some recurring events that ended up showing as one-time, I manually went to the web and added/updated. :-(
As for contacts, I moved to Outlook.com as my “single source of truth” for contacts long time ago. I have been pretty happy with the arrangement especially because most of the contact manipulation (adding/updating/deleting) happens on mobile devices and with EAS, I am seconds away from always being up-to-date. Additionally, I have linked my Microsoft account to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and as a result, I have the “master” address book under People on my Outlook.com account. However, there is no way for me to link that account with the new account I created. No sharing, no linking, no sync-ing, and that’s a pity. I was hoping that just like I link a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account with Microsoft account, I could another Microsoft account too. Not to be. So I went for the next best option, which was to export and import. I could export my Outlook.com contacts as a csv but shockingly, when I tried to import, I got a generic error that seemed to indicate that there are some special characters in some phone or email fields somewhere in that csv file. No partial import, no specific error on specific records, nothing. An all or nothing which to me ended up with nothing. In the end, I had to go back to Outlook 2013 and with EAS, I was able to copy contacts from one account to the other.
Despite those multiple hiccups, I am glad to say I am done with the migration much sooner than I thought I would be and most importantly, there were no issues with the email migration. I was afraid of duplicates and missed emails neither of which happened.
I will monitor for a few days after which I am going to cancel my Office 365 paid account but a practical limitation I am facing now is that at work where I prefer to keep personal email limited to a tab in a browser, I won’t be able to see my current Hotmail account and the new custom domain account in a single browser window. With Office 365 account, I was able to because they don’t share the cookie, I suppose, but with both the accounts now running off Outlook.com back-end, I am unable to. It is a pain to have two browser windows open, one of which is an InPrivate window, but I am sure it is something I can get used to over time.
And to finish off, can I just say that Microsoft has made a big mistake calling their webmail service Outlook.com which is very close to their email client Outlook. Searching for solutions to the various problems I had almost invariably landed me on help pages for Outlook the program vs Outlook.com the service. It was quite frustrating. :-(
Just read this post on Medium about backing up your data and I thought the setup was very similar to mine, so I felt like writing one to talk about my own.
My setup consists of:
An HP Proliant Microserver N36L which is a fantastic form factor for this purpose. Over time, I did add a graphics card to it so that I can get HDMI out to connect it to an external monitor for those times when I need to upgrade something that I cannot do over remote desktop, like when I moved from Windows Home Server 2011 to Windows 8 and then to Windows 8.1
The server is also great because in that compact form factor, it still allows for 4 hard drives. I had bought two 1TB hard drives and had let Windows Home Server run them in mirror mode. After I moved to Windows 8, I manually implemented that feature via File History. Not technically the same, but works for me in terms of keeping a copy of my data on a second hard drive in case it fails. Windows 8 also provides me the capability to restore to factory settings or to restore to a pre-determined point, in case I need to.
Since I have enough space on my hard drives, I haven’t deployed my other USB drives. Also, since this setup is in our closet, I also don’t want my wife to one day throw it all out of there :-) It would be nice to use Storage Spaces and make use of all my USB drives as a single shared pool of storage. After all, the server does provide a ton of USB ports on front and back.
I do not need VNC because I use the excellent Remote Desktop which now is available on iOS (and Mac and Android too but at this time I don’t have those devices).
Instead of Dropbox, I use SkyDrive for all types of file sync from and to multiple devices. Like Remote Desktop, the SkyDrive app exists on all the devices I use, and works quite well for me. In addition, on my home network, I have set up a HomeGroup and in Windows, I have set up all Libraries to point to the server’s respective locations (Documents, Photos, Music, Videos, etc.) and made that the default save location. That way, the need to sync is reduced when I am on the home network. Pictures from phones are backed up to SkyDrive from my iPhone as well as my Lumia automatically and show up on the server because of the SkyDrive app.
Finally, the best part: Crashplan automatic cloud backup running on the server, which is set to never sleep. In this way, I have multiple versions of all the files on the server, always backing up automatically to the cloud. I have been able to restore my backed up files on different PCs as and when I have needed to. It does not provide bare metal restore but I don’t need it because of the excellent Reset/Refresh features introduced in Windows 8. In fact, if I wanted to, I could even use Crashplan to do USB backups (it uses multiple “destinations” so cloud is the only destination I am using currently but there is no extra cost to add local USB as a destination).
One issue I have noticed and it comes as a result of using the server not just as a backup machine but also as a media server, is that videos take a long time to stream to tablets or TV. I suspect it is because the processor is quite old and slow and it is the server that is doing the CPU-intensive stuff so it ends up choking a bit. I also suspect the hard drives are a bottleneck as well in such cases. I don’t think I want to invest much into this setup at this point but I would love to see a modern version of this form factor. I haven’t found it yet. Most of the small form factor cases today skip the hard drive expansion slots and as a result make me afraid of losing the low-cost, big-sized storage capacity.
But that’s a separate story. I am just happy I have been able to get to a point where I don’t have to worry about losing my digital memories as well as important papers and hard work from my past several years. Huge thanks to Crashplan for making this happen via their inexpensive and unlimited backup service.
I recently purchased a Dell Venue 8 Pro, an 8" Windows 8.1 tablet running on Intel Atom chip. I bought the 64GB version because I knew my app count (and size) would be high so it would be better to be n the safer side when it comes to storage. Besides, Amazon had a great deal on it, where I got it for $329 instead of the regular price of $399.
I kept the box because I was not sure if I needed another tablet (I have two iPads), or another Windows 8.1 touch device (I have a 27" Lenovo A720 all in one). Surprisingly, I am loving the device and won't be returning it. The following are just some of the reasons this is a great device *for me*:
Form factor: This thing is thin and light! I am talking in absolute terms, not comparing it to say, an iPad mini or a Nexus or a Kindle Fire. I can absolutely hold it in one hand for a long period of time. I was not able to do it with my iPad nor my Surface RT, despite both being relatively light.
Screen size and clarity: I feel 8" screen is great for all my consumption activities and feel it is way better than my phone for quick Office/Excel work. I don't care about the actual resolution, but what I see is pretty darn clear. There was an initial auto-dimming issue which was fixed by Dell via a firmware update.
Windows ecosystem: One may ask why I didn't go for an iPad mini in the first place. The issue is that my home setup is based on Windows. I have a Windows PC (used to run Windows Home Server 2011, now runs Windows 8.1) in the closet with a large hard drive that has all our music, video, photos, documents, etc. This PC is also a part of a HomeGroup which enables it to share all that content easily with other devices in the HomeGroup. With an iPad, I would have to move the files to the cloud, or find some apps which can somehow read data off the network, or maybe trick iTunes into reading all those files as part of its Library. None of those seemed to be as elegant as simply adding a device to the HomeGroup. With my Dell, I have zero issues browsing our entire photo library or even more fun, watching some random old home videos of our kids.
User profiles: I didn't do this until a few days ago, but I decided to add my kids accounts to the device because I realized my "games" area on the Start Screen was exploding in size and I wasn't using any of them. I created two child accounts and added all the apps/games that they would care about on their Start Screen. They love logging in with their own Picture Password and their own game progress, achievements, etc. This is simply not possible, but highly desirable on an iPad.
Win32 fallback: I have not had to jump into the "old" Windows on this device much. Recently though, I wanted to play a DVD (ripped as an ISO, stored on my home "server") but I couldn't. Tried a few apps that promised that functionality but they couldn't do it. Ultimately, I gave in and installed the ever reliable VLC player. I know they are working to bring it in a Windows Store app, but until then, the only option is to use their Win32 application. It worked flawlessly (no surprise) and I was able to stream the video on my device in seconds! Really handy to have that fallback, although the counter point could be the poor ecosystem that does not fill the gap. I believe the issue is DVD playback involves royalties which is perhaps one of the motivations Microsoft had in removing that feature from core Windows 8, and making it part of a "pro pack" on top of Windows 8 Pro which then includes Windows Media Center as well.
Office: Sure, this is not a touch-friendly version, and sure, it is dorky to use Excel on a small device but for quick updates like one or two entries on a common budget file my wife and I share, it is great to have a full version of Office connected to SkyDrive.
Bottom line, this device is actually so useful to me, I have used my iPad even lesser in the past few weeks than before. It also helps that Brandon Paddock (@BrandonLive on twitter) is actively iterating on his Metro twitter app Tweetium. It is a really nice app that works well in Metro, and more so, in portrait mode which is how I use this device most of the time. The official app is decent but Tweetium is way friendlier. Awaiting notifications support :-)
I admit, this may not be the device for everyone, much less everyone in the Windows ecosystem, but boy, at $250 or so, it is very close to a no-brainer.
If you haven’t read why, here’s an explanation why I recently bought a new iPhone. Having spent about a week with it, here are my quick updates on the whole package:
For a company that prides itself in top-notch quality, I have seen quite a few spontaneous reboots on my phone. This will most likely be fixed soon, and for that I will be thankful as compared to Windows Phone updates, but the fact that there are some pretty severe crashes tells me something's not right somewhere.
I am still getting used to the Notification Center. I like it a lot but I am trying to optimize the use of it. Together with some apps that can provide their own notification sounds (like WhatsApp does), I feel one of my bigger complaints with Windows Phone is addressed nicely. Toasts ("banners" in iOS) could be captured in Notification Center so I can always go back and look at what I may have missed. One issue though, some notifications from Facebook app do not get registered in the Notification Center but some others do. I suspect it is a Facebook bug, but it doesn't do away with the problem I have.
I am glad I am finally able to connect to my work WiFi :-)
I am loving TouchID to unlock my phone and to make new purchases. However, it seems like restoring apps previously bought using iTunes password don't work with TouchID so that is annoying.
I am taking a lot of slo-mo videos although that could be only because it is a novelty. However, the huge downside there is that when I share the video via WhatsApp or upload it to SkyDrive, it does not maintain the slo-mo. That's a bummer. I wonder what is the reason, but in the end, I am left wondering how I can easily share with non-iPhone friends and family.
As for my fears of missing key functionality as I move from Windows Phone:
People Hub: Yes, absolutely miss it. My current workaround? Create a private twitter list with all those who I had pinned to my Start Screen, and separately, mark as "Close Friends" in Facebook all whom I had pinned to Start Screen. With Close Friends, I get notification for every post they make, which is somewhat of a compromise to achieve what I could so easily achieve with People Hub.
Haven't missed secondary tiles or camera yet, but have sorely missed the auto-upload of photos AND videos as well as wireless sync/download of photos and videos off the phone to PC. I cannot believe there is no elegant (read: native) solution to offload photos and videos from phone to PC. I know there is PhotoStream that sends photos to the cloud, but it doesn't send videos. Also, there is iTunes Wi-Fi syncing, but it is only one-way from the PC to the phone. I tried Dropbox, Loom and Amazon Cloud Photos but none are as hands-free/worry-free as Windows Phone's native auto-upload and wireless sync features. I really, really hope PhotoStream gets video support soon, even if it needs to detect Wi-Fi so it does not take away valuable cellular broadband bandwidth. More importantly, I cannot wait for wireless sync to PC so I don't have to remember to connect my phone to the PC every now and then.
I will try to update more as I have more solid thoughts/feedback about my experience.
If you know me or follow me, you will know I am a big, big fan of Windows Phone. I bought a Windows Phone 7 device as soon as I was able to (2-year contract was not up until Thanksgiving that year) and have made the move from that Samsung Focus to a Nokia Lumia 800, to my current Nokia Lumia 920.
I love Windows Phone 8 and had written not so long ago about how I do not intend to be swayed by iOS despite some holes I saw in Windows Phone operating system.
Yet, I ordered the iPhone 5s. (I went with Space Grey, 32GB in case you care.) There are several reasons for doing so, and in no particular order, these are:
Notification Center: Windows Phone 8, and especially hardware like Lumia 920 have come a long way from the initial Windows Phone 7. Notably, they have really improved the reliability of push notifications and I have many apps that send me toast notifications. Invariably, I find myself hearing a notification from the phone and not realizing what it was for by the time I pick it up from across the room. Could it have been an ESPN score alert, or a News360 breaking news alert? If it is a WhatsApp message, I know the live tile gets updated, but what if the tile already had a non-zero number? Was it a Twitter mention or a WhatsApp message then? See the issue? With Notification Center, I know those toast notifications get stored and I can always go back and see what happened while I was away. I really miss it now that I have so many apps sending me toasts and since all notifications except text message, email and voice mail have the same sound.
Enterprise features: My new office has wifi everywhere on campus, but they use Microsoft Protect EAP (PEAP) for network authentication, which I couldn't get to work on my Lumia. As I understand, it is not supported by Windows Phone 8 and is not available in GDR2 either. Similarly, our company uses VPN and I do need it occasionally and even though it is not a deal-breaker, I know that with iOS, I at least have the capability to use it.
Updates (lack thereof): Speaking of GDR2, I haven't received the update on my AT&T Lumia 920 yet. I know there are some features I really want to have on my phone that are included in GDR2 and Amber, the associated Nokia firmware. It is an extreme pain to have to keep checking for updates daily and realizing that it is outside of Nokia, Microsoft or your control. AT&T really has no incentive to push the update out. I was really hoping Microsoft changes this with Windows Phone 8 and the "Windows 8 underneath". Sadly, it hasn't happened, and I don't expect that to change.
iPhone hardware: I like the idea of TouchID, especially for buying apps. I also like that they have the motion co-processor M7 which will enable a new category of apps and look forward to being on the leading edge rather than patiently waiting for those apps to make it to Windows Phone a year or two later. Even though I dislike the fact that the iPhone is tall and narrow, I like that it actually has flat edges and not rounded edges like my Lumia. I find that the flat edges help me hold the phone much better than the rounded edges do. Finally, I really dislike the capacitive buttons which create mistaken taps all the time, especially when handing the phone to someone else for taking a picture. The simplicity of a physical, single home button is sorely missed.
Family/Friends: Most of my immediate family (dad, brother, his wife, his two kids), friends and cousins are iPhone users. Needless to say, it would be great if I could iMessage with them and FaceTime with them for free. I know there is WhatsApp and we use that a lot, and I know there is Skype and it is quite pain-free to setup and use, but I have to admit, they end up using "SMS" without knowing it is iMessage and FaceTime because it is in the contact card. I think it is about time I gave up convincing them to be platform-agnostic and just join them.
Windows Phone direction towards low-end: A disturbing (to me, as an enthusiast) trend I am noticing is that Windows Phone is being adopted in large volumes by first-time smartphone users and/or users very sensitive to price. Hence, the popularity of Lumua 520/521. I am afraid Windows Phone engineering team may switch priorities and assume that the current feature set is ok for that user base and the need to focus on the high-end is not as severe. Well, I wouldn't blame them. They need market share at the moment, and the way forward for them in that regard is via the low-end. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for me. If that were the case, I would have been happily using my Samsung Focus or even iPhone 3GS that preceded it. Let's hope that is not true and we see some high-end innovation come to the OS quickly. I am not talking about the one hardware device that is truly innovative, the Lumia 1020, where Windows Phone OS had to be modified. I am talking Notification Center, and Google Now-like features that leapfrog the competition.
Waiting game: I absolutely love Windows Phone. I have waited patiently since Windows Phone 7 first launched, for the "next" release that would fix many things/everything. Even though Windows Phone 8 broke away from Windows Phone 7 in a way that my purchases of WP7 devices became sunk costs, I stuck around. I even bought a Lumia 920 off-contract, with a premium no less, importing it from the UK when it wasn't available in India (where I was living when it launched). Yet, the "Early adopter and enthusiast program" which was publicly announced on stage at the time of Windows Phone 8 platform event in June 2012 is nowhere to be found. As a loyal customer and supporter of the platform, I feel cheated in multiple ways.
What I know I will miss 100% are some of the key features that I really love in Windows Phone 8 and my Lumia 920:
People Hub: I have a few groups of folks pinned to my start screen and I cannot express how useful I find that feature to be. I am able to see my closest family's, friends' and cousins' updates across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all in one place. I would ordinarily not see those updates, most likely, and I do need a plan to handle that in iOS. Maybe create some specific lists and somehow see if I can get notified? I don't know.
Live tiles/Secondary tiles: Many don't like the flipping live tiles, but I happen to *love* them. In some cases like the People Hub, the flipping may be excessive and in others like the Music+Videos tile, it should have been there while it is not, but in general, I like apps that have live tiles for a quick overview of whatever that app does. Weather, stocks, news, People, calendar, etc. are prime examples. In addition to just the live tiles, I like the concept of secondary tiles where I can actually pin sections of apps to the start screen to get even more granular info. For example, in the Bing Finance app I have some specific companies pinned. In Pandora, I have a few of my stations pinned.
Camera, especially low light: I have seen some of the 5s vs 92x vs 1020 photo shootouts and while the 1020 is a clear winner, 92x is very close to the 5s. Except in low-light, where even though the 5s does a good job and especially over the 5, the 92x produces better images. I will miss that.
Having said all of the above, it will be hard for me to switch 100% over to iOS. I do intend to use my 5s close to 50-50 with the 920. I may even take the 920 out when we have dinner plans at restaurants and so on because the low light pics with the Lumia are apparently superior.
Finally, to those whom I recommended Windows Phone, please note that I still stand by the recommendation. I don’t recommend WP blindly to all, so if I told you WP is best for you, I do mean it is.
Over the weekend, I had a twitter conversation with the Wordboxer developers, trying to get them to port their game to Windows Phone. It brought to light an important point about the Windows Phone (and for that matter, Blackberry) app problem: most cool games and apps are being built by small shops or single developers who just don’t have the time to build and maintain more than one or maybe two versions of their app/game. I really hope the Windows Phone (and Windows 8) teams realize this and create ways and means to reach these folks and help them out with the education needed to have them port their apps.
I know with the addition to C++ and support for cross-platform game engines on both Windows Phone and Windows 8, things are easier in terms of porting, but the point is most devs look at market share numbers and shy away from the platform. Of course, the market share going up and reaching some level of respectability (10% in the US?) may automatically help, but until then, Microsoft has a tough problem on their hands. They have to increase sales of devices, they have to attract the big brands and they have to make sure the indie devs also consider Windows Phone, if not at launch, at least soon after.
Small devs really don't have time to develop and maintain code for more than one or two platforms. Even though Windows Phone dev tools are arguably better than anything else out there, and porting is easier with Windows Phone 8, it comes down to resources. Here is a great example of that.
I got an invite to play this game from someone on iOS. As usual, after not finding the game in the Windows Phone Store, I ping the developer twitter account.
Seeing the opening, I ping a good twitter friend and a prolific developer and now a Nokia Developer Ambassador. They can help and in fact, they encourage developers to port their apps.
....but, Windows Phone users are more loyal to the platform and the early adopters tend to support developers who bring their stuff over from other platforms.
My turn to throw some reality into the mix. It is easier to develop/port to Windows Phone because testing involves a finite number of resolutions and device types. Especially if they focus only on Windows Phone 8.
Yup, continuing the reality trend - if they can re-use much of their code then the incremental effort to bring the app to Windows Phone may not be too much, but the upside is huge.
I am not a gamer, but I have an Xbox 360. I got it when Kinect was introduced and when they shifted the focus to entertainment. I am a happy customer, paying for Xbox LIVE Gold, and cannot wait to get the XBOX ONE.
Here is my attempt at using Data Explorer in Excel. I used it to extract Sachin Tendulkar’s runs by ground/location from ESPNCricinfo’s excellent Statsguru feature.
It was such a breeze to bring up the stats, get the URL, import it into Excel via Data Explorer and get running right away.
Then came the complications - there are some grounds like The Oval which are not really cities or locations. Also, there are some places like Surrey that default to US cities with the same name.
With some help from Dan English (@denglishbi) I was able to clean it up by concatenating the opposition name to the ground to at least get the country right.
The next issue was that since I was using the opposition name to derive the country, and since ESPNCricinfo does not distinguish between home and away, or include that as a column, all the matches showed up as “v “. So I had to run two queries on Statsguru: one for home where I then hard-coded “, India” and another for away where I added “, " and .
Then I used “append” in Data Explorer to merge the two data sets and then threw in a Power View Map on top of that data.
Sorry, the sexier part of this experiment, the Power View report is not visible on Excel Web App, so you will have to download it. :-(
Overall, I came away quite excited and pleased with Data Explorer and how easy it is for business users to build compelling analytics. Find more info at the Data Explorer for Excel blog.
Much has been discussed among Windows Phone (and Windows 8/RT) circles about lack of podcast features in the phone and lack of a native app on big Windows.
I am a big podcast listener. Not huge, but I do listen to a few podcasts regularly. In fact, so regularly, that I have formed a nice list of things I would want in an ideal podcast app/service. The reason I put app/service is because we are now no longer in a single device world.
Native apps for my devices: I use Windows Phone, Windows 8/RT and Windows 7. I would like native apps for at least phone and "Windows Store".
Catalog: Big enough, and fresh enough catalog so that I don't have to add podcasts by URL.
Easy subscribe settings: Options during subscribe should include auto downloads, number of episodes to keep, episode delete settings, etc.
Remember played position: For each podcast, for each episode.
Cloud: Sync settings, subscriptions and played positions to the cloud. Configurable setting for syncing on-device episodes to the cloud as well.
Refresh/check for new episodes: Check for new episodes when app is opened, automatically. Also, check on a schedule that can be configured and have a default. So if the default is 3am and 3pm every day, I know when I get up and am ready for my commute, there may be some fresh episodes waiting for me. Same, with a 3pm check for the commute home.
Playback speed adjustment: Must-have for me, at least 1.5x.
Some bonus territory items:
Playback in the cloud: If my subscriptions, settings and on-device episodes are synced to the cloud, I suppose I should be able to play those episodes from the web too. That would take care of machines which don't have native apps, for example Windows 7 or Macs/iPads/iPhone/iPod.
Discovery: Based on what I have subscribed to, and perhaps extending it to my social networks, suggest other podcasts.
Live tiles: I don't care much about getting notified of new episodes, so I put this in the bonus territory. Live tile notifications of new episodes.
Usage notifications: Notify (via live tile or otherwise) me about space used being above a certain threshold, or unplayed episodes going above a certain threshold.
Things I don't care about but I have seen in some apps:
Visual niceties: Like the tape player in the iOS app. Don't care about it since I always lock the phone screen anyway.
Social sharing: I don't share either while listening or otherwise, so I don't care about that feature.
Too much to ask? Is there any podcast app/service that does this already? I think Downcast on iOS comes very close in terms of functionality but they are only on iOS so far, but have expressed that they may look at WP with no real commitment provided. The iOS Podcasts app does not seem to delete episodes after they are finished which is a bummer (either a bug or a feature, but either way, a bummer for me).
None of the Windows Phone 3rd party apps do auto-download yet. There are some in the process of getting released with promised functionality but none generally available yet.
The native Windows Phone feature does not have a manual check for new episodes, and there is no clear understanding when exactly it checks for new episodes. Besides, there is no corresponding app on Windows 8, and of course, there is no playback speed adjustment.
(I must admit, I took this MG Siegler set of posts a little bit too seriously. I had sworn off that guy, but since his nonsense was being discussed by others I follow on twitter, I had to peek.)
First issue I have is why is he concerned that Microsoft actually updated the OS after RTM and before GA? It is a great thing, as I said on twitter. Not sure why it is being spun as a negative.
Second, after Ed Bott brings it up and appropriately schools him on how Windows works within the OEM ecosystem, MG goes out and shoots himself in the foot by arguing (like a kid, nonetheless) that OS X was only updated after it became generally available to the public. Well, that is bad, isn’t it? That would mean Apple let a buggy OS out to the masses and only fixed issues a month or so later.
Oh, and that nonsense about calling Ed an “Apple malware blogger”? Sigh. More childishness.
As you may or may not know, we just relocated from the US to Bangalore. While we wait for our stuff to come (shipped by sea), we are living a somewhat nomadic life. The latest temporary residence happens to be a decent hotel, but before that we spent a few days in a guest house and before that, with my uncle and aunt.
For the past week or so, for one reason or the other, both our iPads have not come out of the suitcase. The kids have started going to school so they don’t need entertainment during the day, there was no wifi at the guest house earlier, and there is good wifi here in the hotel but we have a PC that we use a lot and for quick email triage and Facebook/Twitter/ADN, I end up using my phone more than anything else.
As a result, not only have the iPad not been used, more importantly, they have not been missed. We have not once felt like we would rather use the iPad. The kids used to play random games (dress up Barbie or restaurant manager are current favorites) but they have the TV to entertain them after the come from school. For the past several months I have noticed that my use of the iPad has strictly been Twitter, Facebook and the browser. Between the phone and the laptop, I haven’t needed to get the iPad for any of those uses.
This could very well be because we are not settled into “our house” yet. In other words, if the iPad were there on the coffee table, we would of course pick it up than open the laptop. However, I am seriously thinking, if instead of a laptop, I had a Windows RT “device”, I would be absolutely ok and in fact would prefer it. That would take care of the thin-and-light thing that is lying around on the coffee table, and also fits well as a “better computer” than the iPad when hooked to the dock at the desk. So that casual Excel or Word files that I may need to edit on-the-go, can actually be done without fumbling with pinching and zooming to no end.
The kids have enough “entertainment” options outside of the iPad, and even today, there are plenty of games and game-like apps in the Windows Store to keep them busy (and educated at the same time) so they won’t miss the iPad.
There you have it. I am ready to get a Surface RT to replace my iPad 2. At least one of the two that I own.
Two things happened recently which delighted me and I thank cloud-based services (vs. locally installed apps/applications) for that.
When Office Web Apps Preview released recently, I noticed that they were talking about Excel Web App supporting the creation of Forms, but in the preview I did not see that functionality. I was really looking forward to using it because that was one thing I liked with Google Spreadsheets and wanted to see it in Excel Web App. However, last week as I was playing around with Excel Web App, I saw the “Form” entry in the Insert tab! It was greyed out but it was there and I did not even know it. No announcement, no updates to make, just there. Nice.
This morning, when I went to share an article I was reading using the Bitmarklet from bitly, I noticed that they had updated the UI for the same. Whereas earlier there was too much “noise” on the screens within that Bitmarklet window, now it was streamlined and looked much cleaner. Again, I had to do nothing to receive the updated functionality.
Granted, not everyone is comfortable getting stuff updated without their knowing, and granted sometimes functionality could be removed as opposed to added, but still, having a constantly updated “app” in the cloud/on the web is a thing of beauty. I have a feeling the next version of Office is going down that route with the Office 365 subscription and I may be one of the customers willing to pay a small fee for getting seamless updates for my software.
Wow, time has flown. It feels like only yesterday that I was rocking my Blackberry Curve 8300 (no WiFi) and actually proud of it. I did not buy into the iPhone hype when it was released and stayed out, mostly because my Curve had video recording capability which the iPhone didn’t. Believe me, I took some videos on that thing that I still cherish, bad quality and all.
Instead of doing a normal retrospective I thought I’d pick up random articles written around the time the iPhone launched, and laugh at the ones that mocked the iPhone and predicted its doom, some even before it was released. Hindsight is so beautiful, innit?
Prediction No. 1: The iPhone will be a major disappointment.
The hype has been enormous. Apple says its iPhone is "literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone." A stock-market analyst says, "The iPhone has the potential to be even bigger than the iPod."
Prediction No. 2: The media will blame the execution, not the concept.
Instead, the iPhone is going to fail because its design is fundamentally flawed.
First, the iPhone ignores the main reasons that the iPod succeeded: simplicity and ease of use.
Second, the iPhone crams too many functions into a single box.
Third, users will detest the touch screen interface due to its lack of tactile feedback.
An iPod with just a cell keypad on the back would have been, may still be, a smash hit product for someone. But the iPhone as currently consituted? Forget it.
Because its designers forgot Platt’s First, Last, and Only Law of User Experience Design (“Know Thy User, for He Is Not Thee”), that product is going to crash in flames. Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype’s still hot. You heard it here first.
This one is a great read because all the reasons mentioned in the article are exactly what Apple destroyed with the iPhone. Incredibly, a lot of the same type of chatter is heard now for the TV business, except the bad guys in control are the Hollywood mafia and not the carriers. We shall see how that story unfolds later in 2012.
But then – and here’s my prediction part – something strange will happen. In a week or two the fuss will fade and people will start to realise an important point: it’s just a phone, and not a particularly “smart” one at that. And then people will start to find flaws in it, because let’s face it, version 1.0 of anything is going to have flaws, particularly something loaded with sensitive radios and electronics like a mobile phone.
And finally, there’s the competition. The likes of Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG won’t be idle bystanders as Apple tries to do to the mobile phone market what it did to MP3 players with the iPod. Building a mobile phone isn’t rocket science – it’s much more complex than that. And the traditional guys have been doing it for the best part of 20 years.
It’s hardware, it’s proprietary, so I really planned on keeping my mouth shut about it. But there is one point I have decided to make, one related directly to this beat, which is the real reason I believe the iPhone will, at best, disappoint in the market.
Open spectrum. We don’t have much, and we are nowhere near getting more.
The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.
First, Apple is late to this party.
Next, the mobile-phone industry depends on cooperation with the big networks.
Lastly, the iPhone is a defensive product. It is mainly designed to protect the iPod, which is coming under attack from mobile manufacturers adding music players to their handsets.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. Even in the business where it is a clear pioneer, the personal computer, it had to compete with Microsoft and can only sustain a 5% market share.
What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a “reference design” and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.
It should do that immediately before it’s too late. Samsung Electronics Ltd. might be a candidate. Otherwise I’d advise you to cover your eyes. You’re not going to like what you’ll see.
(Thanks to Kevin Nunez for reminding me about Dvorak’s classic.)
Oh, how the world has changed. “Late to the party” is now Motorola and Nokia. “Carriers control the whole thing” is now flipped over to carriers like TMobile begging to get the iPhone. “Too complex” is now flipped over to the iPhone being the simplest and the most intuitive user interface.
Let’s all use this 5th anniversary of the iPhone to thank Steve Jobs and everyone at Apple who opened this new world up for us, where it’s not just smartphones but mobile, highly-connected devices that help to get work done more efficiently and in more places than ever before.
If you are not aware of the “Blown Away by Lumia” contest, it is the Nokia’s version of “Smoked By Windows Phone” contest started by Ben Rudolph of Microsoft, at the 2012 Consumer Electornics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Nokia took that contest global, and here are some videos of former Miss World Priyanka Chopra competing with challengers with various smartphones and beating them. Quite cool, although she comes off as a bit too chirpy.
Plex, the “media center” software application built for a multitude of devices, has a Windows Phone app now. They wrote up a blog post about it and while I am excited that there is a WP7 app now, it was heartening to see the praise they had for WP7 both from a user’s perspective as well as from a developer’s perspective.
There are so many gems in that post, I felt compelled to not only write this blog post, but highlight a bunch of the gems from the post:
Android phones never managed to capture my interest. They just looked and felt like bad photocopies of the iPhone, and didn’t offer anything new I was interested in, like the ability to install a custom theme that looked even uglier than the default, or download torrents on my phone, or play a Matrix animation in the background, or remove my battery, or spend time killing random processes, or over-clock my CPU, or any other beardy sort of thing.
Fast-forward to this January, I ordered a second hand Samsung device to help with development, and promptly fell in love with it.
As much as Android felt like (poorly) recycled ideas and bad new ones, Windows Phone felt original, well designed, and fun to use.
The performance was great, really smooth in a way iOS is and Android isn’t even in ICS.
The “pivot” and “panorama” UI concepts were fresh and a great way of making good use of a small screen in portrait mode. The typography was clean and brazen.
The integration of Facebook and Twitter made them feel like first class citizens, not an afterthought.
The live tiles on the home screen were a great way to make the phone feel alive.
But the iPhone felt staid, for lack of a better word. I wanted to be able to pin a few email folders to my home screen and watch them update live. I wanted to see all my social updates in a more integrated way. I missed being able to go to a contact (which I could also pin to my home screen), and easily see the conversations (Facebook, or SMS) I was having with them, and recent photos they’d uploaded.
The iOS development environment is quite good, with the weakest link being Objective-C, which has a steep learning curve and feels like it stepped out of the 80s with a cocaine hangover.
Android, oh, Android, I don’t mean to pick on you once again, but your edit-build-deploy cycle is long enough to make a grown man cry, and then stab himself in the eyeballs, and then cry some more. Java is fine, but the surrounding environment and piss-poor emulator makes it much harder to develop for than it should be.
So how is the Windows Phone development environment? It’s scary good. C# is a great language, .NET is a solid framework, XAML is a really nice way to design user interfaces, and the edit-build-deploy cycle is fast.
We were able to write the [WP7] app from start to finish in two months, between two engineers working part time, which is almost an order of magnitude faster than it took for the iOS and Android app.
Related (linked to from the blog post):
58 minutes later an a new wp7 Instagram client is born. I think that's a record for me (but #nuget helped me along the way)
My last thought on Windows Phone is that it’s got all the ingredients it needs to be successful: It’s a fun, useful, well-designed platform, with sexy (Nokia) hardware, and it’s as good for developers as it is for users. It deserves much more marketshare than it has, and Microsoft seems to be making most of the right moves (about time).
Since I use WP7 all day and follow a bunch of WP7 developers on twitter, I am very well aware of all these benefits. I am glad the folks at Plex thought of putting all these thoughts on their blog.
Hope to see many others release their WP7 apps. Are you listening, Instagram?
As you can see, I was a bit skeptical about the Android bit because Verizon Wireless, especially, has sold a ton of Android phones, of all shapes and sizes. Turns out, Android owners don’t quite like their phones/OS. It’s not surprising, most Android phones start out cool (or “not iPhone”) but they deteriorate over time with battery issues, lags, etc.
Windows Phone and iOS on the other hand, have extremely high satisfaction rates, and it shows through these Readers' Choice Awards. Another interesting thing, on AT&T, the Samsung Windows Phones rated higher than the iPhone. Whaaaa?
Regardless, as an unabashed fan of Windows Phone, I am delighted with this!
