Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Behind Enemy Lines


So after being bogged down on the Iphone 3G I finally decided I needed a change.  As hard as it was to switch from my beloved Apple product that goes hand in hand with my MacBook I decided to switch allegiances to the Android technology and purchased the Motorola Atrix 4G.  Now I will not go into all the neat bells and whistles that this phone does (it can double as laptop, go run and tell that homeboy), but however this blog is to focus on some of the bigger aspects of what happens when you GO BEHIND ENEMY LINES and try to run Android technology on an Apple Macbook (cliff notes version: it's frustrating at first).

The biggest problem was the fact of trying to download all the music from my Apple Itunes to my phone.  It would be great if it worked just like the Iphone and all I had to do was plug into my computer and Itunes recognized I needed music, however this was not the case.  Instead I had to download the Android version of Itunes, Doubletwist, which acted as the 3rd party vendor and got the music from my library and openly obliged to letting me sync music on my phone.  I stress music because all of my Itunes movies and videos have the dreaded DRM on them and I am now looking at ways to transfer video over.
After what seriously took 2 hours to finally load music I was satisfied with my switch and all was right in the world.

Perhaps the biggest aspect of this phone that I like is how open the Android app market is compared to the App Store of Apple.  One of the best apps actually came installed on my phone and it is Social Networking.  With this app I can look at all recent posts from both Twitter and Facebook (Myspace as well if I had an account) and comment, like, or retweet messages.  However the drawback to this is not being able to do a status update.  Even with that I find this app very easy to use and I like how it combines both of the major social networks that I am on and lets me stay up to date instead of switching between the two.

Also, when I was in the AT&T store and purchased my phone one of the first things I was able to do automatically on start up was register my Twitter and Facebook accounts before continuing on to the home screen.  To me, this moment showed just how far society has come with social networks.  Just a few years ago to stay up to date through mobile devices you had to use the browser to check in, then came apps, and now phones are already installed with software.  This is comparable to automobile features, years ago electric windows were an added luxury, then slowly overtime it became the norm in production.

It seems as phones continuously evolve, so will their ability to keep us in touch with our social lives.

1 comment:

  1. Whatever Scott, go ahead and hook up your Myspace account, I know you still have one.

    ReplyDelete