I’ve been in Amsterdam a few weeks ago and the weather was pretty cold; although I did not have the same crazy adventures as my previous trips to Holland (if we exclude the hotel), I did see something that really impressed me: the absolutely frozen canals. Here one shot:
When I read the news on twitter from TechCrunch I just thought: finally! It seems like centuries since the iPad has been introduced by Apple and probably the very first day it was out everyone was looking for a Facebook app. That’s not strange: the tablet is the perfect device for such a service. What do you use it for? Definitely not to work, since you’ve a computer for that; the iPad is the perfect companion for your trips, something you can carry everywhere to watch photos, read news and surf the Internet.
Facebook falls directly in these three categories (although the news in there are mostly random status updates from your friends), so everyone was looking for the day when this app would be released; and the day has finally come. There have been rumors for months about it: today’s announcement looked like another, a sort of “yes it’s coming soon” announcement, since the AppStore was still showing the old version 3.5 for iPhone only. However, after a few minutes, the store got finally updated: the app is around 10MB big – not so long to download it even with my superslow connection – and the very first impression is very good.
Created using HTML5, Facebook for iPad allows you to do everything you could not do before using the iPhone version (which also looks ugly on the tablet, if I can say): the main screen shows you the News Feed with the new sections as in the website and a right column for the chat; the bar on top gives you quick access to Friends requests, Messages and the so-loved Notifications; additionally, a new button is used to open a left column which looks very similar to the one you have on the website, with your Favorites, Pages, Groups and Apps.
Browsing Facebook with the new app is way faster than the website, although you don’t have all the features: you can for example share with your Friends Lists, but you are not able to edit them (e.g. I can’t add someone to Close Friends or Restricted). According to the official page of Facebook you are also able to run your apps, but right now I do not see any except Friends and Photos.
Browsing photos is very nice: you’ll see something similar to the galleries you are used to on the iPad and you’ll see high resolution pictures that you can easily comment. Notifications are also there and looks to use push – but we’d need iOS 5 to really appreciate them. One thing I am not sure I like is the way notifications are handled: when you click on the icon on top, a list of notifications appears – so far so good; however, clicking on one of them shows the post in the right column instead of opening it in full screen; I noticed even that if the left column is open, the right one doesn’t shop up correctly.
Considering this is the very first version, I’d globally say I like it, at least as a first impression; of course, there are more things they can do to make it really great – and they could probably have everything ready, with all the time they had to release it – but it’s a good start. Now, let’s just wait Google’s reply: hope they won’t forget the tablet world so long. The social network war goes on.
Yesterday was the day everyone was waiting for; well, at least the day every Apple fan was expecting more than they’d wait a son. It’s always interesting to watch their keynote: despite what non-Apple fans say, I do not have the idea that Apple never innovates; on the contrary, even if their products are not always the top in terms of hardware (nor price), they have a great ability to sell you a technology that probably already exists, but nobody pays attention at.
The big day came after months of rumors: anyone was forecasting different things, from the voice recognition to the new camera, from low end devices to a full integration with Facebook; what almost everyone was sure of, however, was that Steve Jobs Tim Cook would have shown to the World the new iPhone 5. Now, the device is called iPhone 4S, and it’s still better than the previous one; I agree that calling it “5″ would have been too much for what they introduced new, but I also believe that many people are disappointed; most of them just because of the name, unfortunately.
The device is definitely a great one: its voice recognition (named Siri) looks amazing from the demo (well, my 1995 Nokia’s seemed great as well from demos, so should see it in action) – although it won’t be available in Italian for a while – the camera is impressive with an f/2.4 aperture and a set of software/hardware enhancements that would make it one of the best on the phone-market, the CPU has been upgraded.
So, what? This time the word innovation was definitely not on the plate; the new iOS is improved a lot - taking lot of features from Android, yes, but this is part of the game – but you don’t need a new device to run it; I was quite impressed when they started to talk about a new greeting card service: come on, we’re talking about amazing features and you propose me a 25-year-old idea? Totally disappointed this time, Apple. I always preferred Android, but it’s good to see new features coming out, since the more Apple innovates, the more competitors create great devices to win the war.
But what do we have now? This interesting comparition table from Talk Android shows a comparision with the device I currently own – a Samsung Galaxy SII – with the new iPhone 4S: there’s really nothing particulary amazing in the new device. The voice recognition is amazing, but Android’s is great too and supports even more languages; also I do not think it’s a feature most of the people would really use in real life: a wonderful support for people who can’t easily use the phone otherwise, but would everyone else just going around arguing with their device? The same I can say about the camera: yes, specs are impressive, but the quality of my phone is impressive as well. And Apple-fans’ usual comment is: “this device came out X months later, that’s why it is (almost - they can’t admit it) better than the iPhone”; what’s your comment now? This came out half a year later, what does it have to scare Samsung, which is ready to release their next model too?
I’ve already seen lot of disappointed comments about this last announcement; if you love Apple and do not have an iPhone, this is definitely a great device and it’s worth buying; if you have an iPhone 4, I believe the only reason to upgrade is to throw away money (in that case, I can give you my PayPal account); for everyone else, take a chance to look at the Google Episode event next week, where Samsung and Google promise great announcements. Hoping they won’t disappoint us as well.
