Why The Kindle Is Awesome

Posted on by hcetech

I was lucky enough to receive a Kindle at Christmas, and as soon as I got hold of it I fell in love with the small form factor. However, a couple of months have elapsed since then, and I must say: I’ve fallen in love with my little e-reader. It’s not been an instant transition, but in the short space of 56 days the Kindle has moved from a nice little toy to something I Absolutely Must Have at any given moment. Here’s why.

1. It’s super-convenient to buy new books.
This is the easy bit for Amazon to get right, and the reason the Kindle stands head and shoulders above every other e-reader. I should make clear at this point that the Kindle is a rubbish device on which to browse for books: but Amazon are intelligent enough to realise a tiny device with no keyboard and a black and white screen is hardly going to match Waterstone’s for navigability. Just as with the Amazon iPhone app, the focus is on getting to what you already know you want, and thankfully the search suggestions function is extremely effective, so it usually takes no more than five characters on the irritatingly non-QWERTY keyboard. Once you’re looking at a book, it takes one click to download it – no usernames, passwords, addresses or credit card numbers. It’s brilliant, and something only someone with Amazon’s might can pull off.

2. It’s über-simple.
People underestimate how important the simplicity of the Kindle has been to its success. I reckon the new “experimental” web browser is frankly a step in the wrong direction for the device, but hopefully the display’s ineptitude for displaying anything other than books should ensure it doesn’t catch on. What I love is that I can turn off my phone, shut the lid on my laptop, and just read. There are absolutely no distractions, and the limited buttons and functionality mean absolutely nothing gets between me and my book. What really annoyed me about iBooks was that I kept flicking the pages for fun, highlighting words, getting pointless definitions, and changing the font. Reading has to be immersive, and the Kindle makes that possible by simplifying everything down to the absolute minimum. What’s more, because of this simplicity you can smuggle it into church safe in the knowledge it’s not going to ring out and betray your activity. (I feel I should apologise for admitting to reading Robert Harris during a particularly long sermon. I promise I won’t do it again.)
Moreover, that simplicity makes the Kindle a doddle for anyone aged 5 to 105 to use. The only thing that’s not completely intuitive is the keyboard, but I’m glad that they haven’t fitted it with an irritating physical one which takes up unnecessary space, or a touchscreen which seems pretty wasteful and distracting.

3. It’s brilliant on holiday.
I had the pleasure of taking my Kindle on holiday to the US last week. It’s really what has inspired this article, and hammered home what makes the device such a game-changer for readers. On holiday, I get through a book every day or two, and it is kind of inconvenient – not to mention expensive – to fill half a suitcase with paperbacks. The Kindle eliminates all that clutter, and provides you with all the reading material you could ever want, often a hell of a lot cheaper than it would be in physical form, in a device about the size of a CD case. It’s the iPod effect all over again.
What’s more, provided you have WiFi access (which you always do nowadays), you can buy another book if you get a sudden craving. Such are the miracles of Internet access.

4. It blurs the boundary between technology and “tradition”.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, your iPhone isn’t acceptable in church. People don’t whip out their laptops on the beach. My iPad is not acceptable at supper, or so I have been told. But the Kindle is allowed, and used, at all of these locations in space and time, because it’s not the sort of digital flashing interactive technology people know, love – and sometimes resent. Kindles are different from iDevices and PCs because they’re more like a book than an electronic device. I think that’s something that’s helped by the e-ink display. Not only is it black and white, but, crucially, it displays a pretty image of a letterpress or a furled-up newspaper when it’s not being used. This makes it a little more friendly, and a little less “electronic”, to everyone else, and sets it apart from the devil devices which don’t bother displaying anything when they’re on standby. People really just see the Kindle as a book. On my flights to and from the US I read on my Kindle during takeoff and landing. None of the airline staff batted an eyelid – but of course, the phone and the iPad both had to go off for ascent and descent. If they saw the Kindle as a book, that’s good enough for me.

5. The customer service is absolutely incredible.
I should be honest and say I’ve had two Kindles. A couple of weeks ago, the first Kindle’s power button stopped working. It had been misbehaving for a bit, and irritatingly the device was working fine – but it was just stuck in standby. I hit “return my Kindle” on the website, entered my phone number, and my iPhone started buzzing immediately. Predictably, I got treated to some Vivaldi, but 30 seconds’ worth, not the usual hour’s wait for a two-minute discussion. Without further ado, I had a Kindle sent to me next day. The book I’d been reading was back in my hands within 24 hours, and the old one got picked up and returned for free.
Now that’s customer service. I understand that tech can go wrong. Nothing’s perfect. What matters is not that something goes awry. It’s how the company reacts once something has gone awry. Amazon were superb, and for that reason I hold a lot more respect for the device and the people behind it.

So that’s why I love the Kindle. I’d recommend it to anybody who reads. If you don’t read now, you won’t read on it. For those who never immerse themselves in print anyway, it’s as useless as a chocolate teapot. But for all us bookworms out there, it’s absolute bliss. For £89, you just can’t complain.

Why I Left Spotify Premium

Posted on by hcetech

Just before Christmas begun I signed up to Spotify Premium. The reason? I was fed up with the 5-song limit that came with the free Spotify Open, and I wanted to see what having offline copies of music on my iPhone would be like.

When I first started (remember, for absolutely no cost), Spotify quite honestly felt magical. A cornucopia of tens of millions of songs – all for free? Sure, Spotify Open did this, but the adverts, plus the lack of an iPhone version, put a huge great chasm between me and my music.

Instantly I added about 5 albums I’ve either not bought or have on CD but have left in the car, or lost down the sofa in the Abyss Of Many Lost Things. On a sidenote, I believe I am right in saying that everyone has a penny coin, an old iPod mini charger, and a newspaper clipping in their domestic Abyss Of Many Lost Things – perhaps God’s way of telling us what matters…

Anyway, back to the main point of this post. I ticked the “listen offline” box and proceeded to enjoy myself greatly with my new-found library of 15 million songs. So why, you may asking, did I leave this mythical wonderland of all-you-can-eat audible entertainment?

1. Stuff isn’t on Spotify.

This was the most depressing thing that hit me precisely twenty-seven seconds into my Spotify experience. Now 80 was out for Christmas in the UK – but where’s the crown jewel, Moves Like Jagger? I got a pair of Bose MIE2i headphones (which are really lovely, incidentally, especially with the Apple Store Black Friday sale Santa obviously took advantage of) under my stocking, and my first port of call for new audio equipment nowadays is Coldplay’s Paradise, just because it bathes me in a blissful stream of musical gorgeousness and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. No go. Mylo Xyloto is nowhere to be found – instead, some truly awful tribute bands head up the list. Adele? Forget it: you’ll be rolling in the deep void of musical dissatisfaction.

Spotify have a solution, called Local Files. Fine, but why? It’s way too complex and requires I actually go out and buy the album from iTunes. In which case, why not just use iTunes itself? And this moves me on to point 2.

2. Spotify and iTunes hate each other.

Most of my listening happens on an iPhone. Spotify have made an app, which is lovely, except for a really counterintuitive Hide button when you’re looking at the currently playing song. But, and it’s a big but, the iPod app and the Spotify app fight it out for control of the iPhone’s pause button.

Say I’m listening to Now 80 (without a few songs, of course), then turn off my phone for a play or something. On the train journey back from the theatre, I reach into my pocket, press and hold the standby button, wait a moment, then press play to pick up where I left off. No go. Again. I get whichever song happens to be first in my iPod‘s alphabet, usually the Sugababes’ About You Now. Not great when you were listening to Handel’s Messiah. So then you have to pause the song, hit rewind a couple of times inside the app so people don’t get any ideas about your musical taste, head into the Spotify app, wait a painful five seconds while it ascertains you are indeed not connected to the Internet, at which point your old song should start playing. Alternatively, and this has happened once or twice, I get a really random song from my playlists. No idea why.

Fine, you say – disable the iPod app in Restrictions, and put everything on Spotify. But then you get into a palaver with local files not syncing properly, the Spotify app filling up 10GB of space in five minutes because you flicked the wrong switch (a pop-up would be nice before your hard drive is annihilated?), and a really rubbish auto-album detection that puts the godawful Is This The Way To Amarillo in the same album as Robbie Williams (Greatest Hits). When you have 17GB of music, as I do, this is a problem. Also, Spotify losing all songs and needing to redownload after every app update is unacceptable. (I only had one update so it may be a one-off, but still, it’s hardly a great precedent to set.)

I would happily be working away with Spotify right now if – and only if – someone nice built a script to link all your Spotify playlists with your iTunes playlists, so the Spotify app had everything you wanted. Because, at the end of the day, finding the one song top of your play count list in Spotify requires looking for a needle in a 15 million hectare haystack. And this brings me to…

3. It’s actually hard to know what you want.

I’m not sure how I’d redesign Spotify, but with iTunes the mentality is: rip CDs, realise you like a particular band, head to Apple’s store and add to your library. Spotify needs this. Badly.

I reckon Spotify should have a very distinct “Explore” section in which you can see stuff you don’t have in your main library, with a nice green “Add to Library” button for songs you like. Otherwise, you’re just desperately searching for songs with no real ability to group by artist, album, etc.

4. That’s it.

I wanted to love Spotify. I really did. My wallet desperately wanted to suffice my musical tastebuds for just £10 a month. But it couldn’t. Spotify is a Christmas lunch without the stuffing, and a mountain of over-boiled Brussels sprouts. It’s the epic 2008 Wimbledon final… from Henman Hill. It’s so very close to perfection and yet so very, very distant.

If Spotify dealt with points 1 and 2, I’d probably switch back, just to save my wallet from the battering it gets on the iTunes Store every week. But I wouldn’t love it. It would be a Sainsbury’s budget cola. Basically Coke, but the only reason you buy it is money – and everybody knows it.

If Spotify got point 3 – and nailed it – I’d be over to them like a shot, all ties with Apple’s bank account severed overnight (going from me to them, that is). iTunes for £10 a month is what I want, and would pay £15 a month to get if I’m honest. But Spotify at present just isn’t what it has to be to grab me.

I greeted iTunes with open arms and £30 of purchases from what I’d listened to on Spotify. I’ve never been happier. Now, Spotify is where I go to suss out a song… before I buy it from Apple. But if Spotify just got that 15 million songs is not the be-all and end-all of their product, I could cut Apple from the equation.

Please, Spotify. Make the stuffing. Gain my £10. And more importantly, my heart.

Why A 6-Inch Tablet/Phone Just Might Make Sense

Posted on by hcetech

This Christmas, I was lucky enough to have an Amazon Kindle waiting for me under the tree. Ever since they dropped the price to £85, I’ve been lusting after the alternative to carrying half a suitcase’s worth of books every time I head off on holiday. Currently, I am reading that great (but incredibly long) tome, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and the E-Ink display pretty much lives up to expectations. It’s like paper, just thinner, faster and about 6,000,000 times more capacious.

However, there’s something more. There’s something more than just the fact that the Kindle has managed in one fell swoop to supersede the Gutenberg printing press and everything that followed it. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I unwrapped the Amazon boxing (which, compared to everything else I got, is incredibly stressfree to open), and I think I finally hit on it.

About an hour ago I tried to reach out to the Kindle and manipulate its screen like an iPad. That’s when I realised. I gave up my iPad to another member of the family way back in May, because I decided I just didn’t need both the iPhone and the iPad constantly near me. I have my MacBook Air when I need more digital space in which to think and work, and my iPhone when I am out and about. But I think it would be fair to say that I’ve been yearning after some of those Multi-Touch wonders inside a slightly larger package than my iPhone provides.

But the iPad just wasn’t what I wanted. It was too big, and overall strikes me more of a kitchen table device than an out-and-about portable tool. It became a superfluous addition to the array of interfaces between my fingers and the Internet.

Now that’s where the Kindle comes in. I always dismissed those who reckon Apple should build a small iPad, for the very same reasons Steve Jobs used to dismiss them. There’s just no point, I reasoned, in having a bridge between the iPad and iPhone. After all, the iPad itself is a bridge between the iPhone and MacBook Air, and the MacBook Air was initially conceived as a Mac-iPhone cross. Apple, I reckoned, had to stop at some point, or else they’d end up with a product line like Samsung’s: 3749 phones and several million confused customers-turned-iPhone-owners. This was as good a place to draw the splitting to a halt as any.

But now I’m starting to reconsider. Seven inches, I agree, is ridiculous. No-one wants a device worse than a 10-inch but no more practical. But 5 to 6 inches sounds pretty awesome.

I remember when HTC announced the monstrous 4.7-inch Titan back in October. I remember laughing to myself as I shelled out for an iPhone 4S, “Who wants such a hilariously and ridiculously oversized phone?”

Well, now I do.

Don’t get me wrong: I still prefer the 4S. That’s because it’s a quality product in and out, built to perfection, gorgeous to look at, to hold and, crucially, to use. Windows Phone is cute, but for me it still feels like it’s in beta. Android is clunky and awful, and though Ice Cream Sandwich goes some way to remedying this, it’s still way off iOS levels of niceness. Anyway, all the manufacturers will clutter it up with their hideous garnish of “custom UIs”. Sometimes Apple’s closed system has its benefits.

What I would love to see, though, would be an iPhone Maxi. Something like an iPhone, that did everything the iPhone does (ie an iPhone not an iPad). Just bigger.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who’d appreciate such a device (maybe iPhone 5? Maybe?…), but I think Apple ought to take a look at it. I’m still on a 4S because if I were to jump to a 4 or 5 inch phone, it’d have to be an Apple one. I like HTC’s drive and attempts to think outside the box, but the quality, unification of hardware and software and general attention to detail just isn’t good enough for me to jump ship.

And speaking of attention to detail, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. Have a good one.

iPhone 4S, iTV and the Future of Apple

Posted on by hcetech

As I’m sure you have noticed, Steve Jobs tragically passed away just a day after he saw his successor, Tim Cook, present his first ever keynote in the same legendary conference hall that saw the introduction of the iPod – a gadget which was to turn the music and consumer electronics industry on its head. Apple’s main announcement was the iPhone 4S – a phone which looks exactly the same as the 4 but for a couple of black antennae only visible to the most eagle-eyed of reviewers, yet is already the best-selling Apple device ever and will likely smash the Microsoft Kinect to be the best-selling gadget of all time.

When I saw those figures, my jaw dropped. The 4S might be one hell of a phone – my 64GB black one has pretty much nullified my iPad thanks to its speed, the brilliance of iOS5 notifications, and the joy that is Siri. But I can’t help but think that the iPhone 4 of last June was more of a leap forward – it turned the camera from an acceptable point-and-shoot to a replacement for my Cyber-shot, brought in the stunning Retina Display, got the FaceTime ball rolling, and ushered in a new and gorgeous design.

Why, therefore, did the 4S trash its sales figures before the phone even hit the shops? What caused its unprecedented success? Many have suggested that Jobs’ death was a factor, but forgive me for being a little suspicious of this viewpoint: sure, people were moved by his death, and his departure from this world created a Twitter storm, but what are the chances that someone who wrote “RIP Steve Jobs” on a free website would commit to a two-year, £35/month contract as a sign of their respect?

I can’t help thinking that the big feature of the 4S was not to do with the traditional speed improvements that made the 3GS successful – it was Siri. Siri, in case you’ve been living in a cave for the last month, is a company Apple bought in April this year which has now morphed into a talking personal assistant for your 4S, who can do everything from writing text messages to checking the weather to teleporting you into a parallel universe (OK, that last one’s not quite yet ready for the masses). Just as the Wii become the smash hit of Christmas 2006, the 4S has become another product that is so beautifully advertised and marketed that everyone, not just a few geeks in an MIT lab, turn around and realise that they are looking at the future of technology. As Jobs famously said, Apple didn’t bother doing market research for the iPad – a device which has eaten up market share even more successfully than the iPhone and iPod – because “it isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want”. Once they see the future, they’ll flock to it, but it’s not up to them to work out what the future actually is.

However, the 4S poses a deeper question: is this Jobs’ legacy? Was the 4S Steve’s cherry on the cake, his famous “one last thing”, or was it just a humdrum, keep-’em-coming holiday season release? Already, claims have come out that Steve barely touched the 4S because “his time was limited” – instead, next year’s iPhone 5/iPhone 6 will be final StevePhone, filled with all the innovation you’d expect from one of technology’s true greats.

What’s perhaps more interesting is a tidbit found in Steve Jobs’ authorised biography that he had made the final leap with his “hobby” product – the Apple TV. Only this time, he wasn’t talking about a tiny, $99 box which just formed a bridge between the computer and the living room – he was talking about a full-on TV, and after years of experimentation he’d finally “cracked it”.

This really excites me, frankly, because although analysts have been speculating that this would happen for years, nothing’s really occurred. I think two key Apple innovations have now given Apple the ability to usher in iTV (the name they really should always have given to the clumsily-titled Apple TV, even if it does mean negotiating with the British TV channel).

First, there’s the explosion of iOS devices. I know of just one person whose household does not own one of an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. That’s probably the key change since last year. Ever since the iPad was introduced we’ve seen enormous growth in iOS’s dominance. The iPad has a remit very different from its smaller siblings: there is far more of an emphasis on a family device. Take Fruit Ninja’s iPad app as an example: no longer are you just playing against the clock, but against the person sitting opposite you at the table. Most iPads I know rarely leave the house, and are certainly on the kitchen table at peak family times – weekday mornings and evenings and throughout the weekend.

It’s this centralisation of the iPad around family living that for me has made great the most hidden and yet wonderful iOS feature – AirPlay. The key to its brilliance is that it does not present itself in a shiny new app or festoon your screen with alert messages. It’s so simple that five-year-olds can and do get it. When you’re watching a movie, or listening to a song, or viewing photos, or even in iOS5 playing Angry Birds, tap one button and that movie, that song, that slideshow or that game starts playing on your TV. It’s the simple reason why Apple TV is worth ten times its (admittedly light) weight in gold. That simplicity is the “killer feature” TV has been seeking for so long in trying to connect the computer with the living room, and I think it is one of the major points of Steve’s new and simple interface.

Crucially, however, Steve had had enough of TV itself. Apple TV always existed as a box which went alongside your cable box, your DVD/Blu-ray player and the TV itself. But I think the time has now come where Apple must have the confidence to go it alone. TV manufacturers are no longer content with being the company which displays content – they want to control that content. Samsung’s Smart TVs pose a real threat to Apple and Apple TV – if the screen you’re buying is already connected to the Internet, is tightly integrated with social networking sites, and has services like YouTube and Netflix, why bother spending a superfluous $99 for something that really adds very little more to the table? It’s not like Apple to get behind the curve – after all, the reason the iPod was so successful was because it was the first beautiful MP3 player to arrive. No-one could touch it once they’d cornered the market. Considering TVs are bought to last at least three years, Apple’s time is limited if they want to make a big splash with their new TV.

Besides, there’s no way Apple could watch something as slapdash in its execution as the Smart TV take market share. Back in 2007, Apple was a bit-part in the global movie and TV industry. Now, they’re just behind Netflix and Blockbuster in the US and probably at number one worldwide. Everyone uses iDevices, so everyone has an iTunes Store account for downloading apps, so anyone could buy an iTV and get watching in moments.

Apple probably will have to do some deal for live TV streaming, however, and it’ll be interesting to see how they sort the problem out. That’s just about the only unanswered question today. But Apple is no longer the underdog. They’re the odds-on favourite, with the might to secure the deals they want.

Here’s hoping they come up with a special one last thing.

The All-New ChewsNews.

Posted on by hcetech

The all-new ChewsNews is here. It’s completely different from the old ChewsNews. In fact, it’s completely different from anything you’ve seen before.

You tell ChewsNews what you like to read, and it shows you the very latest article from your personalised news feed, in crisp, clear white text. Switch to list view and get a live list of the top stories. Click on any headline to read the news article, but without any of the clutter you’d usually see in a webpage.

ChewsNews is now available online, and is coming to your Mac, iPhone and iPad very soon.

Physics Towards GCSE: Get Revising Today

Posted on by hcetech

Hello everyone!

First off, some news: we are now registered as developers for Mac OS X as well as iOS! We look forward to showing you all the Mac apps we’ve been working on.

In the meantime, have a look at Physics Towards GCSE, which helps you get on track for those exams next year. We wish all those students waiting for results for this season the very best of luck.

We’ll be back in touch soon!