If anybody is wondering what the best mapping/GPS app is out there, I can answer that question for you. Definitively, it is Waze.
Waze is an Israeli company that was recently bought by Google for $1.1 billion last month.
Why is Waze the best one out there?
1. Unlike most mapping apps, they crowd-source their data on traffic, etc from their users. This is extremely powerful. With conventional mapping programs, you'd typically enter your destination and then it'll map out the best route and show you. Some may even give you 2 or 3 options to choose from.
Waze will calculate based on all the users using it, what is the quickest route. They will also re-route you around a heavy traffic jam if they believe its quicker. I've learned to trust Waze when they tell me this other route is faster despite my better judgment saying that it's not.
Case in point - I was at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ over the 4th of July weekend. That Sunday, we were leaving the park at 6 pm. Waze told me to take this back road route all the way up to Outerbridge Crossing which enters into Staten Island, despite us being only 5 miles from the New Jersey Turnpike which goes a lot faster. I trusted Waze and took this unknown back road, which was, by the way, 12 miles shorter than if I took the Turnpike. It wasn't until after I read the newspapers the next morning that I discovered the Turnpike had a 16 mile standstill backup at that precise time that took several hours to clear up. Thanks WAZE!
This is especially powerful in areas where there are lots of users, like on the east coast of the U.S. I can't vouch for its accuracy in the fly-over states though. They also do allow you to make map modifications and I've read that they're extremely active overseas, like in Europe, etc. Will be going to Morocco next week so we'll see if it works over there also. Do they even have iPhones in Morocco???
2. One other feature that I find extremely handy - they have a list of gas stations - and using crowd-sourced information, will give you the gas prices for that gas station. You can pull into the station and update the price if its incorrect. This comes in handy when you can scroll down and see 20 cents difference if you go left at that corner and down a couple blocks. VERY powerful. I find myself checking this often to find where the cheapest is so I can fill up or planning around a fill-up and this can save you a couple dollars if you put some energy in it.
The new Google Maps update supposedly is supposed to incorporate some crowd-sourcing on the traffic aspect, as well as on rerouting you around traffic. I haven't seen this yet as I'm in love with Waze. Will be testing it out though. They likely incorporated this from Waze since they acquired the company.
3. There are other features, like chatting with other Wazers, you can see accidents on a map that are reported by Wazers, and you can even report them yourself, like a traffic jam or an accident, or even (my favorite) police hiding on highways.
4. It has various other features that other mapping programs have, like verbal cues when you need to take a turn or an exit. This isn't unusual. The one thing I love most is how it'll estimate your time of arrival, and depending on your speed, its pretty accurate down to the minute. I took a 5 hour drive down to Virginia a couple weeks ago, and it had the ETA within 5 minutes of when I left. I thought I'd be there an hour earlier because I typically speed, but we still arrived at the time that was estimated. Amazing.
One negative, this app can be extremely draining if you leave it running while driving so make sure its plugged in. Also when you're no longer using it, make sure its shut off or it'll keep running even if you're not driving. They have a button within the settings that will "shut down" the app so it'll reduce battery drain.
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Friday, June 21, 2013
Sarina's Sephardic Cuisine - update
Finally got back the new version.
Not quite satisfied with it. They fixed a lot of the errors, but others are still there.
To be fixed:
Video. We have video of a lot of recipes, but they don't play in the app. We used Youtube to host the videos, but they're not playing. I tinkered with the settings on Youtube, i.e. instead of private, changed to unlisted and they still don't play. We have some videos as public but even those don't play in the app. Need to fix that.
Twitter/Facebook. We're not satisfied with how it interacts. We want the ability to customize the text posted for each recipe. I doubt we can do that, but we're working on this. If anybody has any suggestions of a good standard tweet/facebook post for this, please suggest it!
Search. This is a crucial aspect of the app. Right now, there is an extremely rudimentary filter function inside of each of the eight categories. This means you can search for meat or vegetarian inside of that category only. I can't search across all categories. I'd have to go into each category individually. Not a good idea. Also in many recipes we reference another recipe. It would be very difficult to find those if you couldn't search for it using the search function. And some of these recipes have hebrew or arabic names so it'd look like gibberish to someone who isn't used to that. A more robust search function is a must.
The developer said that they can't do that without upsetting the flow of the app and that they'd get to it in the next update after it went live. There won't be another update if we don't get it right now. I don't want to wake up to a wall of critical 1 star reviews on the App Store of customers complaining about the search function so we're going to insist on them improving it significantly.
Right now, I still think we're on track for release by Rosh Hashanah which comes super-early this year.
Not quite satisfied with it. They fixed a lot of the errors, but others are still there.
To be fixed:
Video. We have video of a lot of recipes, but they don't play in the app. We used Youtube to host the videos, but they're not playing. I tinkered with the settings on Youtube, i.e. instead of private, changed to unlisted and they still don't play. We have some videos as public but even those don't play in the app. Need to fix that.
Twitter/Facebook. We're not satisfied with how it interacts. We want the ability to customize the text posted for each recipe. I doubt we can do that, but we're working on this. If anybody has any suggestions of a good standard tweet/facebook post for this, please suggest it!
Search. This is a crucial aspect of the app. Right now, there is an extremely rudimentary filter function inside of each of the eight categories. This means you can search for meat or vegetarian inside of that category only. I can't search across all categories. I'd have to go into each category individually. Not a good idea. Also in many recipes we reference another recipe. It would be very difficult to find those if you couldn't search for it using the search function. And some of these recipes have hebrew or arabic names so it'd look like gibberish to someone who isn't used to that. A more robust search function is a must.
The developer said that they can't do that without upsetting the flow of the app and that they'd get to it in the next update after it went live. There won't be another update if we don't get it right now. I don't want to wake up to a wall of critical 1 star reviews on the App Store of customers complaining about the search function so we're going to insist on them improving it significantly.
Right now, I still think we're on track for release by Rosh Hashanah which comes super-early this year.
Proof that the iPad is still the best tablet out there
I wrote a blog on June 11th about why the iPad would continue to run circles around all other competitors. You can find it here. Basically I said that as long as competitors priced their tablets at the same price as the iPad, it would be no contest and most people would pick the iPad any day of the week.
If competitors cut their prices and competed on pricing, they might have a chance. Well, another competitor just did that. Microsoft cut their pricing on their Surface by 50-60% - but only for education purposes. The $499 Surface RT will be sold for $199, at a 60% discount. The $599 Surface RT with Touch Cover for $249, and the $629 Surface RT with Type Cover for $289.
This is only offered to school systems nationwide. Microsoft has a long history of providing student discounts for their products, like the long standard discount on their Office suite to college students. This plays into that, however there's probably another reason. They have only sold about 900,000 tablets in the first quarter of this year, which Apple probably does in a good week. This has been compounded by the difficulty of finding them. According to the article above, rumors are that they made nearly 5 million of these, which means they're sitting on huge inventory and need to get rid of it. They can afford to lose money on the Surface. They lost billions on the Xbox for years before turning it into a profit center. This is the luxury that a company with tons of cash has.
They're hoping that school systems will decide to go with the Surface and buy them in large numbers and then their users, school students, will become the evangelists for their product. Will that happen? I don't know, but this is the first sign of a company realizing that they won't compete on features because of the limited number of apps available and deciding to try on price.
I think this is a very promising sign.
Another sign that its starting to begin in schools. The Los Angeles, CA school system just signed a $30 million contract with Apple to provide iPads to students in their district. You can find the Engadget article here. This contract will yield 45,000 iPads in a district that has 640,000 students. Not sure how they'll divide that up, maybe high school students only? These iPads will come preloaded with a course app for their school.
The future I predicted here is almost here.
If competitors cut their prices and competed on pricing, they might have a chance. Well, another competitor just did that. Microsoft cut their pricing on their Surface by 50-60% - but only for education purposes. The $499 Surface RT will be sold for $199, at a 60% discount. The $599 Surface RT with Touch Cover for $249, and the $629 Surface RT with Type Cover for $289.
This is only offered to school systems nationwide. Microsoft has a long history of providing student discounts for their products, like the long standard discount on their Office suite to college students. This plays into that, however there's probably another reason. They have only sold about 900,000 tablets in the first quarter of this year, which Apple probably does in a good week. This has been compounded by the difficulty of finding them. According to the article above, rumors are that they made nearly 5 million of these, which means they're sitting on huge inventory and need to get rid of it. They can afford to lose money on the Surface. They lost billions on the Xbox for years before turning it into a profit center. This is the luxury that a company with tons of cash has.
They're hoping that school systems will decide to go with the Surface and buy them in large numbers and then their users, school students, will become the evangelists for their product. Will that happen? I don't know, but this is the first sign of a company realizing that they won't compete on features because of the limited number of apps available and deciding to try on price.
I think this is a very promising sign.
Another sign that its starting to begin in schools. The Los Angeles, CA school system just signed a $30 million contract with Apple to provide iPads to students in their district. You can find the Engadget article here. This contract will yield 45,000 iPads in a district that has 640,000 students. Not sure how they'll divide that up, maybe high school students only? These iPads will come preloaded with a course app for their school.
The future I predicted here is almost here.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Why the iGrill is man's greatest gift to BBQ's
I consider myself a BBQ connoisseur. I take pride in my BBQ skills and in perfecting specific recipes. I've got years of experience in flare-ups from dripping marinades, and putting grill lines on the steak.
But one thing I've always had difficulty with. Getting the temperature right and knowing when it's done. My backyard doesn't have a lot of light, and I typically BBQ for dinner, so in the spring and fall, it can be dark outside while I'm cooking. It can be hard to eyeball the steak or chicken and it may look ready in the dark, I'll get it inside and on a plate and crack it open only to find its still undercooked and back out to the grill it goes.
My latest specialty is beer can chicken. I've spent the last couple years perfecting it, trying different types of beer with it. My personal favorite is Guinness, but others like a lager which gives it a sweet taste. The directions on the various recipes say to leave it for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. That was always a bit tricky. I found that depending on the size of the chicken it could be shorter. Also, I'm usually cooking for 8, so I usually make two at the same time. There is nothing like pouring the beer into the bowl with the chicken and dipping a fork-full of chicken into the beer sauce. Yummy! I think I'll make that for lunch tomorrow now that I think about it.
Anyway, after a couple of times where I had to perch the chicken back on the grill when I thought it was ready, or it was way overcooked and tasted dry, I decided I wanted to try something different.
I decided to experiment with temperature gauges, and came across the perfect one for an iPhone loving BBQ chef like myself, the iGrill!
They have a device with temperature probes to go into your meat on the BBQ. And it connects to a free app on your iPhone or Android via bluetooth. The app is unbelievable. You can set up timers for various types of meat and when it gets with five degrees of it, it'll give you an alert and you can go get it. It will give you recommended temperatures for your steak for rare, medium, medium rare, or however you like it cooked. Here's a screenshot of it.
I found it stunningly accurate. I could poke the probe into my chicken, set the timer, and walk off. I wouldn't have to check it every 30 minutes letting out precious heat in the grill to make sure it was okay or whether it was ready. I don't have to slice a bit inside to see if its cooked, thereby releasing precious chicken juices. It'd just vibrate my phone and by extension, my pebble smartwatch as well. If you don't know about the pebble, check my prior article about it.
On the right is a picture of the device itself, with the probes.
My conclusion - if you like to BBQ, and want to have a way to measure your meat's internal temperature so you know when it's ready, AND you have an iPhone, this is a must have! I was able to buy it off Amazon for only $79.95.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I have so far, I don't know how I did without this!
But one thing I've always had difficulty with. Getting the temperature right and knowing when it's done. My backyard doesn't have a lot of light, and I typically BBQ for dinner, so in the spring and fall, it can be dark outside while I'm cooking. It can be hard to eyeball the steak or chicken and it may look ready in the dark, I'll get it inside and on a plate and crack it open only to find its still undercooked and back out to the grill it goes.
My latest specialty is beer can chicken. I've spent the last couple years perfecting it, trying different types of beer with it. My personal favorite is Guinness, but others like a lager which gives it a sweet taste. The directions on the various recipes say to leave it for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. That was always a bit tricky. I found that depending on the size of the chicken it could be shorter. Also, I'm usually cooking for 8, so I usually make two at the same time. There is nothing like pouring the beer into the bowl with the chicken and dipping a fork-full of chicken into the beer sauce. Yummy! I think I'll make that for lunch tomorrow now that I think about it.
Anyway, after a couple of times where I had to perch the chicken back on the grill when I thought it was ready, or it was way overcooked and tasted dry, I decided I wanted to try something different.
I decided to experiment with temperature gauges, and came across the perfect one for an iPhone loving BBQ chef like myself, the iGrill!
They have a device with temperature probes to go into your meat on the BBQ. And it connects to a free app on your iPhone or Android via bluetooth. The app is unbelievable. You can set up timers for various types of meat and when it gets with five degrees of it, it'll give you an alert and you can go get it. It will give you recommended temperatures for your steak for rare, medium, medium rare, or however you like it cooked. Here's a screenshot of it.
I found it stunningly accurate. I could poke the probe into my chicken, set the timer, and walk off. I wouldn't have to check it every 30 minutes letting out precious heat in the grill to make sure it was okay or whether it was ready. I don't have to slice a bit inside to see if its cooked, thereby releasing precious chicken juices. It'd just vibrate my phone and by extension, my pebble smartwatch as well. If you don't know about the pebble, check my prior article about it.
On the right is a picture of the device itself, with the probes.
My conclusion - if you like to BBQ, and want to have a way to measure your meat's internal temperature so you know when it's ready, AND you have an iPhone, this is a must have! I was able to buy it off Amazon for only $79.95.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I have so far, I don't know how I did without this!
Thursday, June 13, 2013
iPads, Education, and Kids.
My daughter is a sponge. This is a five year old who can beat my 3-star score on some levels of Angry Birds.
I'm a huge proponent of giving toddlers the iPad. Watch any baby, their first inclination is to touch anything. They'll go to the TV and touch the screen, or this toy or that food. Their second is to taste everything, sometimes with disastrous results.
However, it's difficult to teach a child how to use a computer. My kids just can't get the hang of the mouse and the screen and the cursor. They're always reaching out to the screen to tap what they want to do. I've done that myself a couple times, much to my embarrassment. They'll learn with a computer eventually, but it's just so much easier with an iPad. iPads are the future and I can see one where they'll go to school with nothing but the iPad. Their textbooks will be in iBooks or the Kindle app. Each class will have an app on the iPad for that specific class with their assignments and coursework neatly tied into their textbooks. The thought of this makes me ALMOST wish I was a kid again. ALMOST, but I'm glad I'm an adult. I remember in high school when I'd purposely leave 2 or 3 textbooks at home to reduce the weight of my backpack and I'd look over on a classmates book if needed. No reason to lug around that 20 pound chemistry book if you only crack it open once a week, right? What would kids today need a backpack for if all this stuff is on the iPad?
An iPad feels so natural to kids. If you can get past the "they might drop it and break it" or the "it's too expensive to give to them" then it can pay significant dividends. I personally put a case around both of our iPads. There are some cases that practically make them indestructible, but I use it also and I don't want to have to take it on and off all the time so it's about finding a balance, something that's strong enough for the typical drop, but not so strong that makes it uncomfortable for ME to use it. I find that I will slip the case off sometimes at night when I know they're sleeping to take some weight off if I'm holding it for a lengthy period of time.
Granted, accidents happen. I've had to replace the screen once at a cost of $100 because one of my daughters, (who has since been scolded - no iPad for a week!) got frustrated with it and kicked it to the floor where the screen cracked. Other times, it fell and there's a small dent on the side here and there, but it's still usable. I think the benefits far outweigh the negatives of it breaking. If price is really an issue, get the Mini.
It's clear to me that the future is with the iPad. The knock on it is that an iPad is easy to consume information, not to create it. Nobody wants to write a 5 page paper on the iPad, which I can understand. However there have been many new accessories recently, like keyboards, etc. that make it easier to create content on the iPad. With future generations of the iPads, it'll get easier.
I'm a huge proponent of giving toddlers the iPad. Watch any baby, their first inclination is to touch anything. They'll go to the TV and touch the screen, or this toy or that food. Their second is to taste everything, sometimes with disastrous results.
However, it's difficult to teach a child how to use a computer. My kids just can't get the hang of the mouse and the screen and the cursor. They're always reaching out to the screen to tap what they want to do. I've done that myself a couple times, much to my embarrassment. They'll learn with a computer eventually, but it's just so much easier with an iPad. iPads are the future and I can see one where they'll go to school with nothing but the iPad. Their textbooks will be in iBooks or the Kindle app. Each class will have an app on the iPad for that specific class with their assignments and coursework neatly tied into their textbooks. The thought of this makes me ALMOST wish I was a kid again. ALMOST, but I'm glad I'm an adult. I remember in high school when I'd purposely leave 2 or 3 textbooks at home to reduce the weight of my backpack and I'd look over on a classmates book if needed. No reason to lug around that 20 pound chemistry book if you only crack it open once a week, right? What would kids today need a backpack for if all this stuff is on the iPad?
An iPad feels so natural to kids. If you can get past the "they might drop it and break it" or the "it's too expensive to give to them" then it can pay significant dividends. I personally put a case around both of our iPads. There are some cases that practically make them indestructible, but I use it also and I don't want to have to take it on and off all the time so it's about finding a balance, something that's strong enough for the typical drop, but not so strong that makes it uncomfortable for ME to use it. I find that I will slip the case off sometimes at night when I know they're sleeping to take some weight off if I'm holding it for a lengthy period of time.
Granted, accidents happen. I've had to replace the screen once at a cost of $100 because one of my daughters, (who has since been scolded - no iPad for a week!) got frustrated with it and kicked it to the floor where the screen cracked. Other times, it fell and there's a small dent on the side here and there, but it's still usable. I think the benefits far outweigh the negatives of it breaking. If price is really an issue, get the Mini.
It's clear to me that the future is with the iPad. The knock on it is that an iPad is easy to consume information, not to create it. Nobody wants to write a 5 page paper on the iPad, which I can understand. However there have been many new accessories recently, like keyboards, etc. that make it easier to create content on the iPad. With future generations of the iPads, it'll get easier.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
1 Reason why the iPad will always be better than the competition
If you're offered a Lamborghini Gallardo or a Honda Accord, and they both cost the same, which would you choose?
Intriguing question right? Read on and you'll see where I'm going.
I got the original iPad a few months after it came out, and then when they released the iPad 2, I upgraded to that. I then bought a second one with 64 GB and gave my previous iPad 2 to my wife. I've had that since, about 18 months now and through two upgrades to the iPad 3 and then the "new" iPad.
Ever since the iPad became a sensation, the competition has been playing catch-up. We've had numerous attempts at it.
Here are the biggest competitors, not in any particular order.
Google Nexus 10
Amazon Kindle Fire HD
Blackberry Playbook (no, really)
Samsung Galaxy Note
Microsoft Surface
Now, I know that there are many others, but in my opinion, these are the biggest players so far.
If Google, Blackberry, Samsung, or Microsoft (not Amazon) want my free advice on how to make their product more popular, here it is. PRICING!
Let me say that again, one more time, but louder. PRICING!
All of these priced their tablets, with the exception of the Kindle, at or within $100 of, the same price as the iPad, starting out at $499 which is the base price for a 16 GB model of the iPad. Big mistake. Let me tell you why.
Now, let me ask you my first question again. If you're offered a Lamborghini Gallardo or a Honda Accord, and they both cost the same, which would you choose?
This, to me, seems to be a no-brainer. You'd go with the Lamborghini any day of the week, right? This is the comparison, and until Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and others figure that out, the iPad will continue to run circles around them. Its all about the user experience and the ecosystem with iTunes which is incredibly powerful.
I've seen all of the other tablets, some I've played with, some I haven't... And none can hold a candle to the iPad.
HP had a TouchPad which was a complete and utter flop, so they discontinued it. As a result, Best Buy then cut the price of it down to $99, and they flew off the shelves. You can see the story here. This shows that if priced below the iPad, people will buy it. But when shown two different products at the same price, people will buy the better one every day of the week. Until they figure that out, the iPad will continue to sell extremely well. Especially now that they've come out with the iPad mini which moves the entry price down to $329 from $499.
Look at the Blackberry Playbook. They priced it initially at $499, which I was surprised at. I saw the release, and saw the features, (or rather, lack thereof) and knew it would flop. And it did. They ended up cutting the pricing to $199, but it was so roundly criticized that I seriously doubt they sold many of them. They sold as many in a year that Apple sells of the iPad in a month. If Blackberry had sold this initially at $199, they might have had a chance.
Amazon has a very good product. The Kindle has revolutionized reading e-books for years to come. They expanded it with the Fire, which I thought was fairly decent. They're smart, they're selling it at a break-even price to get it into as many hands as they can, but the app store which greatly enhances the functionality and usage of any given tablet, seems somewhat limited compared to Apple's App store. As long as they keep pricing well under the iPad, they should continue to sell well.
The market is fragmented. However the iPad and iPad mini will still continue to sell well until a competitor undercuts their prices. They will not win on the features. Whether you have an USB slot or a SD slot or this or that is not gonna matter. It's all about pricing.
Do you want a Lamborghini or a Honda?
Intriguing question right? Read on and you'll see where I'm going.
I got the original iPad a few months after it came out, and then when they released the iPad 2, I upgraded to that. I then bought a second one with 64 GB and gave my previous iPad 2 to my wife. I've had that since, about 18 months now and through two upgrades to the iPad 3 and then the "new" iPad.
Ever since the iPad became a sensation, the competition has been playing catch-up. We've had numerous attempts at it.
Here are the biggest competitors, not in any particular order.
Google Nexus 10
Amazon Kindle Fire HD
Blackberry Playbook (no, really)
Samsung Galaxy Note
Microsoft Surface
Now, I know that there are many others, but in my opinion, these are the biggest players so far.
If Google, Blackberry, Samsung, or Microsoft (not Amazon) want my free advice on how to make their product more popular, here it is. PRICING!
Let me say that again, one more time, but louder. PRICING!
All of these priced their tablets, with the exception of the Kindle, at or within $100 of, the same price as the iPad, starting out at $499 which is the base price for a 16 GB model of the iPad. Big mistake. Let me tell you why.
Now, let me ask you my first question again. If you're offered a Lamborghini Gallardo or a Honda Accord, and they both cost the same, which would you choose?
This, to me, seems to be a no-brainer. You'd go with the Lamborghini any day of the week, right? This is the comparison, and until Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and others figure that out, the iPad will continue to run circles around them. Its all about the user experience and the ecosystem with iTunes which is incredibly powerful.
I've seen all of the other tablets, some I've played with, some I haven't... And none can hold a candle to the iPad.
HP had a TouchPad which was a complete and utter flop, so they discontinued it. As a result, Best Buy then cut the price of it down to $99, and they flew off the shelves. You can see the story here. This shows that if priced below the iPad, people will buy it. But when shown two different products at the same price, people will buy the better one every day of the week. Until they figure that out, the iPad will continue to sell extremely well. Especially now that they've come out with the iPad mini which moves the entry price down to $329 from $499.
Look at the Blackberry Playbook. They priced it initially at $499, which I was surprised at. I saw the release, and saw the features, (or rather, lack thereof) and knew it would flop. And it did. They ended up cutting the pricing to $199, but it was so roundly criticized that I seriously doubt they sold many of them. They sold as many in a year that Apple sells of the iPad in a month. If Blackberry had sold this initially at $199, they might have had a chance.
Amazon has a very good product. The Kindle has revolutionized reading e-books for years to come. They expanded it with the Fire, which I thought was fairly decent. They're smart, they're selling it at a break-even price to get it into as many hands as they can, but the app store which greatly enhances the functionality and usage of any given tablet, seems somewhat limited compared to Apple's App store. As long as they keep pricing well under the iPad, they should continue to sell well.
The market is fragmented. However the iPad and iPad mini will still continue to sell well until a competitor undercuts their prices. They will not win on the features. Whether you have an USB slot or a SD slot or this or that is not gonna matter. It's all about pricing.
Do you want a Lamborghini or a Honda?
Monday, June 10, 2013
Reasons why I love the Pebble watch!
Wanted to write this review of my new watch, the pebble, now that I've had it for about 2 months.
For those of who are uninitiated, it all started on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a website where if a specific project can't get enough investors to do it, they'll put it on the website, and if enough people agree to fund it, then the project will get made. Projects can be as varied as a movie or video game or art installation to watches or other consumer products.
Many successful projects have been launched off of Kickstarter. A recent notable one was the Veronica Mars movie.They asked for $2 million, and raised $5.7 million.
Now, there has been a lot of other types of watches that try to take you to a whole other level. Many people have improvised the ipod nano into a watch, which has since been discontinued by Apple.
However, there are rumors of the iWatch coming out this year by Apple, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
In the void, came the pebble. Last year in April, they were unable to convince VC's to fund the company so that they could develop this watch, so they posted it on Kickstarter. It became a sensation. They were looking for $100,000. They had 45 days to get that much to be funded. They raised that in TWO hours! They raised $1 million in 28 hours after Engadget wrote a story about it. They ended up raising a total of $10.7 million from 69,000 backers and had to close the project early. I funded on April 18th. They initially said we'd have them by the summer. They were way off, about 7 months off.
I finally got mine in late March. My wife made the mistake of ordering white - while I got black. I don't think they're even shipping white just yet, so she changed it to a black and received hers a month ago.
Now, here's my review after having it for a couple of months.
1. It allows me to leave my phone in my pocket longer and I'm not constantly checking it every time I feel it vibrate to see what the deal is. It pushes some notifications that show up on your lock screen to the watch. So if you get a text message, then it'll vibrate your Pebble and you can look and see what it is and deem if its important to reply or just to leave it. If you have the iPhone, then it only allows you to do email and text messages, and a handful of other apps, on the watch via bluetooth. My phone is jailbroken, so there's a special app called BTNotifier which is unbelievable for this. It pushes ALL notifications that show up on your lock screen to your watch. This can vary from a notification of rain from the Dark Sky app to an alert from the ESPN app of a game score to twitter/hootsuite/facebook notifications to anything else you have your phone set to.
I ended up turning off the email notifications because it would drain my battery significantly. It took a couple weeks of tinkering with the notifications to get it right. They say 7 days, but I've never seen that. With me, depending on how active my notifications are on a given week, can be 3-4 days. With email on, it'll be 1 day.
It comes in 5 colors, black, white, red, orange and grey. But you can get a GadgetWrap for it for dozens of other colors for a few dollars.
The watch does feel a bit flimsy, however its held up well so far. Its somewhat waterproof enough to wash my kids in the bathtub, but not to go down 100 feet scuba diving. However I did hear about someone who did do exactly that (by accident) and it worked just fine. Not sure I'd test it that way yet though, but its intriguing.
The best thing about the watch is that you can install different watch faces. There are currently more than 900 available on My Pebble Faces. There are even some that are modeled after games, like tetris or caterpillar or others. Some are unbelievable.
Here are a few just to show the capabilities of it.
This is my personal favorite - it shows it using the Star Trek motif. Really cool!
This on the right isn't quite enabled, but eventually will be - which can show the current weather if you program it right, and the time.
This watch gets a HUGE recommend from me for anybody with the iOS or Android platforms. You have to download a free app from both to enable the watch and I hear on the Android side its even better.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Reasons why I like the iPhone and won't switch to Android
This blog is not a techie blog... At least not yet.
However, I will be posting the occasional blog about technology related stuff. My house has, at last count, 5 iPhones, 2 iPads, a couple iPods somewhere in a drawer. But we're all PC people for our desktop computers.
I'm hoping that the new iOS 7 update will be decent. However, even if it sucks, I won't switch to the Samsung Galaxy. I do acknowledge that the OS on that phone, Android, does look real slick. However, we've got hundreds of dollars committed to apps that we've purchased already for our array of iPhones/iPads, and it'd just be too cumbersome to switch. There's something to be said about syncing with iCloud, and being able to download the same app on multiple devices, and pay only once.
While the Android phones do look slick, I'm already committed to the iPhone in a big way, and if I got the Galaxy IV, then I'd be out of the eco-system. I also know some of my favorite apps are not on the Android.
For example, Action Movie FX. This app, if you like action movies, is a MUST for any aficionado of that genre. It is ridiculously simple. You select the FX, (recent FX - Star Trek warp or transporter) take a short 10 second video, then scroll the FX in, and load. Takes 2 minutes and some of them are unreal. Take a look at some of my videos. This playlist has several.
I do wish that the photo stream feature included video, because we like to do video a lot and want to input it into iMovie. Hard to take it on the phone and then put it in the iPad without a huge cumbersome process. I've tried uploading it into dropbox and putting it on the iPad, but its a hassle.
I jailbroke my iPhone (the only one of all five) and with that, increased the functionality significantly. I don't know how I could go back to a non-jailbroken phone now. With the jailbreak, I'm able to put more programs on the lock screen. I'm also able to make the lock screen look different, like fold up rather than slide to the right. There are other programs that allow me to slide up the screen to see the active programs rather than having to double-click the home button. I can also slide from left to right or right to left from one app to another (like using four fingers to slide on the iPad). This comes in real handy and numerous others. It really adds to the customization of the phone in a big way.
However, I will be posting the occasional blog about technology related stuff. My house has, at last count, 5 iPhones, 2 iPads, a couple iPods somewhere in a drawer. But we're all PC people for our desktop computers.
I'm hoping that the new iOS 7 update will be decent. However, even if it sucks, I won't switch to the Samsung Galaxy. I do acknowledge that the OS on that phone, Android, does look real slick. However, we've got hundreds of dollars committed to apps that we've purchased already for our array of iPhones/iPads, and it'd just be too cumbersome to switch. There's something to be said about syncing with iCloud, and being able to download the same app on multiple devices, and pay only once.
While the Android phones do look slick, I'm already committed to the iPhone in a big way, and if I got the Galaxy IV, then I'd be out of the eco-system. I also know some of my favorite apps are not on the Android.
For example, Action Movie FX. This app, if you like action movies, is a MUST for any aficionado of that genre. It is ridiculously simple. You select the FX, (recent FX - Star Trek warp or transporter) take a short 10 second video, then scroll the FX in, and load. Takes 2 minutes and some of them are unreal. Take a look at some of my videos. This playlist has several.
I do wish that the photo stream feature included video, because we like to do video a lot and want to input it into iMovie. Hard to take it on the phone and then put it in the iPad without a huge cumbersome process. I've tried uploading it into dropbox and putting it on the iPad, but its a hassle.
I jailbroke my iPhone (the only one of all five) and with that, increased the functionality significantly. I don't know how I could go back to a non-jailbroken phone now. With the jailbreak, I'm able to put more programs on the lock screen. I'm also able to make the lock screen look different, like fold up rather than slide to the right. There are other programs that allow me to slide up the screen to see the active programs rather than having to double-click the home button. I can also slide from left to right or right to left from one app to another (like using four fingers to slide on the iPad). This comes in real handy and numerous others. It really adds to the customization of the phone in a big way.
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