Author: Marc

Six months on, my Kindle thoughts

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It’s been around six months since I stopped reading paperback books and moved to the Kindle. My reasoning behind doing so was not so much environmental concerns (I’m sure an electronic reading device isn’t exactly green to produce and keep charged) but convenience and hopefully a better reading experience. Having all your books on you, being able to synchronise your place with other devices (phone, tablet) for those occasions when you forget your Kindle and find yourself wanting to continue your book, and being able to adjust the size of the text.

Wi-Fi only would have been enough

I opted for the more expensive 3G option thinking I might take advantage of the free 3G to browse the web or buy books when I am out and about. I have rarely needed or wanted to do this. When I’m at home I can use the Wi-Fi, the same goes at work. When I’m on holiday there’s usually no shortage of Wi-Fi available (in Lisbon even the tour bus had free Wi-Fi!). In those situations where there is no Wi-Fi, frankly I can wait a few hours to purchase the next book. Oh and the web browser isn’t particularly useful, not when you have a smartphone in your pocket at least.

A better reading experience

In all honesty I can say that the Kindle is a more enjoyable reading experience than a normal book. Yes it lacks that woody aroma, and you never get to see the cover artwork in it’s full colour glory – but as someone once said, you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover anyway. Being able to make the text bigger and control the line spacing really helps. Some books that were 900 pages long with a 8pt text size would have put me off in the past, but with a Kindle you don’t really pay much attention to how “fat” a book is, all you see is that percentage indicator gradually creeping up. The built in dictionary makes it so easy to lookup words that I actually learn a lot by looking up words I didn’t know instead of simply inferring what the meaning might be.

It’s still a gadget

Of course there’s no getting away from the fact that these things cost a lot of money, and the books themselves aren’t really that much cheaper than their paper counterparts (thanks somewhat to the UK VAT laws, which mean digital books are subject to VAT, but traditional paper books are not). Taking a expensive gadget everywhere isn’t always an option, and you’ll probably want to buy a case for it. Oh, and PLEASE don’t do what I did and put the Kindle in the same bag as a bottle of sunscreen (yes, the case was a good investment!).
However, that said, I think the benefits outweigh the negatives and my Kindle had survived trips to the beach. I’d definitely recommend a Kindle.

I did it, I bought an iPad

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I have been tempted by the iPad for a while now, it seemed to offer the power of a laptop without the inconvenience of a laptop. A long battery, yet always connected and always on. I knew full well about the downsides and I didn’t expect to be typing large documents on it, but for browsing the web, checking email and chatting on instant messenger it seemed perfect. So was it?

Not prefect, but very good

The iPad 2, despite considerably lower specs than my laptop on paper feels snappy and rarely do I have to wait for anything to happen. Unlike a laptop, there is no fan – so I feel comfortable leaving it on my bed, or on the carpet knowing I’m not to come back and find it with fans whirling while it melts. The device seems durable, whereas the iPod has a an easy-to-scratch surface, the iPad won’t get scratched under normal use.

Lack of apps

One thing I have found is the lack of iPad specific apps. It’s still quite a new platform, so I can forgive app developers slightly – but the big hitters such as Spotify and Audible still make you use the iPhone versions of the app, which only work in portrait mode and look pixelated. The keyboard layout is also different for iPhone apps, which is rather confusing. While I can type pretty fast on the iPad, the lack of any blogging software as good as Windows Live Writer means I still prefer to fire up my laptop to write anything substantial. An iPad version of Google Chrome would be nice, or at least a way to sync your Google Chrome bookmarks easily (it can be done now, but involves using a 3rd party service and isn’t worth the hassle in my opinion).

Quality not quantity

Having said all that, the apps that come with the iPad are of a very high quality. The Mail, Calendar and Contacts app are very impressive. I was surprised Apple didn’t include an alarm clock and weather app, seeing as there is one available for the iPhone but it’s not a big deal as 3rd party apps have filled the gap.

For casually browsing the web or responding to emails, iPad wins. Booking a holiday? Then I’ll want 30 tabs open at once, and the iPad isn’t good at context switching. Overall I am impressed, it really does fill the void between a smartphone and a laptop. Tablets won’t replace laptops in my opinion, but they will take on many of their roles relegating laptops to the more comprehensive tasks.

Highly recommended.

Why the JavaScript obsession?

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If you’ve read anything on the web about technology recently you’ll know that many technology pundits and enthusiasts are claiming that HTML 5 and JavaScript are the future of computing. Even Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon with Windows 8. But is it? Yes it has the benefits of being open, easy to learn and cross platform – but is it the best tool for developers? I’m not so sure, and I think JavaScript is the weak link. There is no compiler to warn you you’re doing stupid things, no way to enforce variables to be declared final or even to be of a particular data type. The extremely loose nature is a benefit when trying to learn it, but when you’re working on a project with thousand’s of lines of code it can get tricky. Want to rename a variable? I’ve yet to see an IDE that can refactor JavaScript the way Eclipse or Visual Studio can with Java and C# respectively.

Maybe I am showing my ignorance here, but it seems to me that JavaScript might be great for small scale projects, but would I choose it for a large enterprise system over Java or C#? Is it popular simply because it happens to be the only scripting language almost guaranteed to be available on any device, rather than because it lets developers write elegant, maintainable and scalable code?

Appcelerator is a tool I’ve been using recently to develop an iPhone app. It’s actually quite good, if not a little buggy here and there – but their central premise is that you can reuse your web skills and code JavaScript instead of Objective C. However, all you borrow from the web is the syntax of JavaScript, since there’s no DOM, no JQuery and instead a bunch of custom components. It’s a nice tool, and will surly get better over time, but I do sometimes wonder why they chose JavaScript as opposed to Java as their supported language.

This reminds me of when “RAD” was big in the mid-nineties, Visual Basic was the future (remember, in VB there was the variant data type that could be anything). A few years later Java was the future, with its strict enforcement of OO practises. Now it’s swung the other way with JavaScript and Ruby be touted as the way forward. What will be next I wonder?