Having been an Android user for 10 months or so, I’ve decided to call it a day; quit; move on.

Here’s why:

As many carrier-provided Android users have found out, their handsets are hamstrung by a combination of carrier-provided ROM, woefully small internal memory and the inability to delete stuff you don’t want.

The first problem I had was with the apps, thoughtfully loaded on to the phone for me by my carrier, Orange.  Facebook, I concede, might be useful to one or two people, but not to me; in addition, there were demo versions of Monopoly and Uno. Seriously. Orange also thought it would be fun to to provide their own browser and own maps application, too. Quite what makes them think their branded apps would be better than the stock Android versions, is anyone’s guess. The thing is, I didn’t ask for, want or need any of these things, but because they’re burned into the ROM, I was unable to delete them. Imagine buying a PC with demo versions of software installed on it and you weren’t allowed to delete them. So much for open.

Although I could (and did) download alternative browsers, keyboards, SMS app from the Android Marketplace, I soon found I’d run out of space on my 4gb phone.  Of course, it’s not a 4gb phone, it’s actually a 148mb phone stuffed with bloatware I don’t need and can’t delete which happens to have a 4gb SD card installed in it. Even with the modest number of apps I’d installed, I was forever seeing the low-storage warning, clearing down temp files and generally having to babysit a phone!

Oh, and here’s a fun feature for a handset: when the internal storage does fall too low, it rejects SMS messages and for added hilarity, it doesn’t even display the phone number of the sender so you know who to get back to; it just refuses the message.

Then there was the Calendar app, which would frequently crash back to the home screen when I tried to scroll through my agenda  or do something out of the ordinary, like create a new appointment.

There were problems with GPS signal acquisition too, which, even outside, could take up to 15 minutes; 3g signal acquisition wasn’t much better and always seemed to be balanced on a knife-edge.  There were the random lock-ups, shutdowns and reboots. The camera app would helpfully Force Close when I hit the shutter button, and occasionally leave the LED flash lit up until I power-cycled the phone.

This was all before 2.2  had been released, so I was prepared to wait it out on the promise that Froyo provided the ability to move and install apps to the SD card, and offered all manner of stability and performance improvements.  The Orange-supplied version of Froyo did make the phone more stable – the shutdowns and reboots were much reduced (but not eliminated) – but the GPS and 3G problems persisted and it turns out not all many apps can be moved to the SD card so I still couldn’t move the preinstalled bloatware off the phone.

After further reading, I installed the Cyanogen Mod, which combined with App2SD, offered the ability to move any app to the SD card. The installation was remarkably straightforward and without a doubt, CM is vastly better than any ROM supplied by Orange. The phone was more stable still than the Orange Froyo and the screen much more responsive (pro tip: if you’ve bought an Android handset, then I’d recommend the first thing you do is wipe whatever your carrier has landed you with and install CM instead).

Good as CM is, though, it’s still over-encumbered with crap like Facebook, an FM radio and a default Twitter client, which wouldn’t be so bad, but because they’re deemed to be system files, still can’t be moved to the SD card. Once again, I was reduced to deleting the apps I wanted to run, while apps I don’t need are taking up valuable system space. Yet more further reading revealed that you can bake your own ROM, and remove the components you don’t want, but at that point, I thought, “Screw it; this is just too much work for a phone”. And I jumped into walled garden of the iPhone.

Sure, the notifications aren’t as good as Android; it’s not as customisable as Android, but all 16gb of storage is available for me to use how I want; there are no apps installed that I haven’t chose myself; there’s no lag on the camera; the calendar app actually lets me make appointments; calls are clearer; 3g signal appears to be stronger and the GPS works… indoors!

To me, the iPhone vs. Android argument isn’t about open vs. closed any more, it’s about what works and for me, the iPhone is what works.

For an organisation that prides itself on the crisp, uncluttered design of it’s homepage, the rest of Google’s offerings look almost thrown together. Buzz is no exception; compared to Friendfeed or Amplify, Buzz looks raw and unstructured, and I find myself shying away from using it because it’s not easy to look at.

Today, I noticed a little bit of a change – multiple items shared by the same person used to be stacked, slighty askew, on top of each other like a deck of cards; now they’re simply listed underneath the most recent item in the batch:

It’s a small change, but anything that tidies the presentation up and makes the feed easier to scan is a step in the right direction.

Am I being overly critical?  Does Google have a long way to go in the “beautiful software” race, or does function beat form every time? Let me know in the comments!

Another key selling point [according to Microsoft]: if you choose to use Google Apps, your formatting may be screwed up when you inevitably have to work with others who are using Microsoft Office. When all else fails, turn to FUD.

This isn’t FUD.  When it comes to collaborating with Microsoft Office users, Google Apps (and Zoho Writer, for that matter) do screw around with formatting.

Like many people today, I’m looking for work, so I’m sending my CV/résumé out several times each week to recruitment agencies.  Most recruiters and job sites will insist on having CVs sent to them in Word format, so I have to export my document as a .doc file.

And there’s the problem: a document that looks fine in Google Docs can be all over the place when it’s saved as Word document. Inconsistent tab- and line-spacing; random hieroglyphic characters in place of bullet points; disobedient font sizing are just some of the problems I’ve encountered.

It would be great to be at a point where I could simply share a link to my CV with a recruiter, a job site or an HR department, but we’re not; Microsoft’s Office document formats are still what most businesses use today. My CV is usually my first means of introduction to a prospective employer, so there’s just no way I can afford for it to look untidy – it would be like turning up to a job interview with breakfast down my jacket.

If there’s one feature that cloud-based word processors absolutely must get right, it’s making sure that exporting to the most widely-used document format works faultlessly.

Before I go any further, I want make one thing clear having been glued to Wave all day: I think Google Wave is awesome; it is the future of email and collaboration.  The thing is, it’s too far ahead of it’s time, and that’s what will hold it back from large-scale mainstream penetration, which is why Outlook is safe. For now.

I don’t want to add to the blogosphere’s echo-chamber with my own review of the hows, whys and wherefores, so instead:

• For a good taster of the technology behind Wave, I’d recommend taking a look at this article,
• If you’re after more in-depth info, straight from horse’s mouth, then the Wave developer wiki is the place to go.
• And, for a good example of how forward thinking organisations like SAP are already looking to leverage the collaborative power of Wave, take a look at the video embedded at the bottom of this post.

Again, let me be clear: I think Google Wave is awesome; it is the future of email and collaboration. The interface looks just like Gmail, except it feels slicker; this might have something to do with the Google Web-Kit front-end, but I’ll leave smarter people than me to comment on that. By way of a quick fly-by, you get your folders on the top-left, contacts on the bottom left; Inbox in the middle column; Active message (“wave”, in parlance) in the right-hand pane. New waves (messages) appear in your Inbox, just like any other email program, except, when you look closely, they’re changing. All the time.

The unread message count (circled in red) is incrementing, and new text creeps across the subtitle of the waves.

This indicates changes, made in realtime, to that wave; or new “blips” (new conversation strands) being added. Realtime, on-the-fly collaboration is quite something to watch – updates, edits and annotations appearing and changing as quickly as you can visually process them. The power of this platform hits you like a, well, like a wave crashing against the shore. Once more, lest you forget my feelings, I think Google Wave is awesome; it is the future of email and collaboration.

Ok; it looks nice; it’s feature rich and it’s generally pretty darn cool. So, why do I say Outlook is safe for a while?

I’m reasonably attuned to dealing with a realtime feed (thanks to Friendfeed), but even now there are times when I do need to hit the pause button. If I take off my rose-coloured, early-adopter geek glasses for a moment, and, instead, put on my “project manager with too many projects” glasses or my “HR advisor in the middle of a round of mass redundancies” glasses, imagining the volume of data that “regular” users are expected to act upon every day, Wave turns into a tidal surge.

Although it’s been described as email on steroids, I actually think Wave falls short right now. It’s too noisy. Where Wave does land some heavy punches is against Sharepoint – which, by the way, is a great product, if so-called implementors would take the time to refine it beyond its out-of-the-box install – creating FAQs, procedures and wiki-like pages was never, easier, more dynamic, or downright fun.

However, if I were to introduce Wave to a “regular” business with regular users as a replacement for Outlook today, those users would Freak Out. Look at today’s version of Outlook – it gives those stressed-out users the tools to control their Inbox; they can prioritise their actions and activities based on keywords, filters and search terms. (Once more, I think Google Wave is awesome; it is the future of email and collaboration.) With Wave, I can’t do that; it all pours in. What’s lacking at the moment is control and filtering of the of the incoming feed.

Yes; I understand that Wave is a preview right now, but, Wave was introduced to the world as “email, invented today”, and as such, it needs to demonstrate to decision makers in “regular” businesses that it can live up to that promise.

One last time, I think Google Wave is awesome; it is the future of email and collaboration but until Wave can give users the same sense of control, management and prioritization of their Inbox that Outlook does, I reckon Outlook is safe; but not for long.

(Footnote – my grateful thanks to Steven Hodson, whose recent post, inspired my use of the “emboldened point emphasis” in this article)

For time and again, the company has proven that despite all its talk, its offerings are as unreliable as those of any other service provider.

I do sympathise with Om and everyone else who has put their trust in Google to run their email, but we need a reality check here. Just because Google has seemingly infinite resources, it doesn’t make them immune from the kind of challenges that face IT departments in companies, large and small, all over the world.

Anyone who’s provided, implemented or supported IT services for any length of time will tell you that, no matter what risk mitigation/platform resilience measures you put in place; no matter how well you test your changes ahead of implementation; no matter how thorough your change review process, every now and then the technology will fail, something will screw up and service outages will occur.

As Om himself offered in one of his previous posts, following the last Gmail outage:

1. Get used to outages. Why? Scale forces history to repeat. As the Internet matures, we expect it to operate more smoothly, so outages make it look like you’re falling behind. But outages can also be a sign of that very maturation. Companies will learn to avoid them, then as the whole thing scales up and grows more complex, it will happen again. There will always be outages, inside the cloud and out.

I couldn’t have put better myself.

Hot on the heels of the news that Google is about to expand on their efforts in the social networking services space, with the goal of out-Facebooking Facebook, the news that Microsoft is waving their cheque book around isn’t really news. This is Microsoft at their most predictable:

• identify a space they want to occupy
• identify a company who is already doing great stuff in that space
• try and buy them before someone else does

In this case, buying Facebook outright might not be an option. Yet.

That might change when/if Google do publish an API that would enable open and cross-platform access to the social graph. Microsoft may feel that they have little alternative but to dangle a big enough carrot in front of Mark Zuckerberg to ensure they don’t lose any more ground to the mighty “GOOG”.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, social networking, social graph