I have been iAssimilated

In the summer of 2010 I wrote extensively on this blog about selecting a smart phone and why I chose Android over iPhone.   Now it's two and a half years later and I'm making the decision again and this time it came up iPhone.  Today I bought and activated my iPhone 5.

Thanks, Google

Ironically, it was Google that made the transition feasible.  My biggest issue with iPhone was a poor or nonexistent Gmail client, especially lack of multi-account support, because maintaining and monitoring multiple Gmail accounts smoothly is important to me since I have a personal Gmail and one for Cat Angels, where I volunteer.  I  did not find iOS's built-in mail client adequate to the task because, while it tried to simulate Gmail's threading, the threads don't include the sent emails unless you copy yourself on everything, and it lacked capabilities like an ability to mark multiple emails at once for an action like archive or move to a folder.

Well Google just put a new Gmail app in the iTunes store and it is better than the one on Android, including with built-in multi-account support.  Google also dropped a Maps app into the store that is as good as if not better than their Android version, and solves the most glaring weakness of iOS. They also updated their Youtube app.  With all that put together, Google solved all of the major issues I had remaining with iOS and enabled me to make the switch.  I'm not sure that was their intention... but their good work on iOS apps makes it easier to switch from their operating system to Apple.

iTunes Albatross gone

One of my biggest iPhone complaints was that you had to use iTunes to do any maintenance or even activate the phone. I wrote a blog entry back in March complaining about it.   Well Apple must have heard lots of complaints about that because shortly after that, with I think iOS 5, iOS devices became capable of updating without requiring iTunes. Even better, I've also noticed on my new iPhone that even while the phone is synching with iTunes, it's still usable and no reboots or multiple backups are required.  So Apple has made major strides in this area.

Not new to iOS

I'm not a newbie to iOS, I've had an iPad 2 since they first came out so that made it easier for me to monitor developments in iOS land.  I tried all the new Google apps there before making the switch.  I already knew the strengths and advantages of each operating system and said for a long time,"if only Google and Apple would just settle their differences and get good Google apps in the iPhone, that would be the best of both worlds." And that's what happened.

Why abandon Android

After two and a half years with Android I was getting very familiar with its weaknesses.

Flawed Memory Structure

The biggest weakness that started hitting me in recent months was the memory structure. Android phone memory is split into two parts: on-board and SD card.  You can put a big SD card in your phone and have room for gigs and gigs of pictures and music, but the onboard memory is much smaller and not upgradeable.  Most of the apps on an Android phone have to live in the on-board memory, and some of them can't even store their data on the SD card.  Facebook was a particularly piggish offender here.

My phone had 400M of on-board memory and a 32G SD card.  And that 400M was filling up.  This means that even though I hadn't even filled half of my SD card, I was out of memory on my phone.   I was constantly getting messages that my memory was low and I was always having to clean out caches  or delete apps to keep my phone running.  And while Android's app manager has a "move to SD card" button, that was frustratingly greyed out on almost every single app. Bottom line, I had 20 gig free on my SD card but my phone was out of memory. That's just stupid, and it's not a flaw you notice until you've had the phone a while.

I know that Android phones being sold now have more internal memory... looks like 2G is the new standard.  But that's just pushing the problem down the road as apps continue to get large and continue to not be able to use the SD card.  In a year or two, that will probably be inadequate as well.  By contrast, with a 64G iPhone, you have 64G available for everything... apps and data.

I also know that there is a semi-hack to move apps to the SD card.  But I don't find it acceptable to have to install two development kits (Android and Java) just to change one setting on the phone and make it do what it should already be able to do.

Inconsistent phone ecosystem

When I started looking for a replacement for my Evo, it became clear that if I went to any non-HTC phone, and maybe even a new HTC phone, I would be starting with a new look and feel and a different enough feature set that the transition from one Android phone to another had potential to be just as annoying as the transition from Android to iPhone.  So why not reconsider the iPhone?

Killer Apps

As a private pilot, there is one iOS app I depend on immensely: Foreflight.  And there is no Forelfight for Android, and never will be.  The Foreflight team is too small and doesn't have the resources to do multiple platforms... they are iOS only, and that's their business model. It's resulted in a top notch app that's become essential on the cockpit, but you gotta be on iOS to play.

I have it on my iPad and that's what I use in the plane and during preflight, but seeing how handy it is for my pilot peers to also have it on their phones is really eye opening.  And as a side benefit, Foreflight has a better weather radar presentation than any other app, including The Weather Channel, WRAL, etc.

By contrast, there isn't a single Android app I can think of that isn't also on iPhone, and usually the iPhone version is better than the Android version...including Google's own apps!

Physical build quality

The physical build quality of Apple devices is head and shoulders above everyone else.  My HTC developed the following problems in the two and a half years I used it:

• The spring broke on the kickstand, so it always stuck out
• The plastic around the button on the top started cracking
• The batteries required replacement every six months.  They just didn't last. 
• And worst of all, the charging port became unreliable.  It got loose and the micro USB could easily fall out or be knocked out by a cat walking by it on the bedside table.  I'm not the only one this happened too either, talking to other HTC phone owners and googling finds this is a common and well known problem. It's pretty frustrating to wake up and find out that the phone didn't charge last night like I expected it to so I start the day with 10% battery instead of 100%.  By contrast my wife and I have had various iOS devices (iPod, iPad, her iPhone) and none of the connections on any of them ever came loose.  

Before that I had a Blackberry whose cursor wheel and keyboard started failing after one year.

Could another Android phone be better built?  Maybe.  But I know the Apple phones are very well built and the reviews I've read of other Android phones don't give me the impression they are as well made.

So how was the transition?

The transition was much easier than I expected.  Before buying the iPhone I took the SD card out of the Evo and copied its contents onto my PC where iTunes is running.  I pointed iTunes to the music and picture files in that copy, and they all imported seamlessly and were put onto the iPhone on the first synch.  I was able to get my ringtones back without having to buy them after finding these instructions on the internet.  I bought Downcast for $2 to manage my podcasts, so I don't need iTunes for that.  Because I used Keepass for my password vault and it's supported on both platforms, moving that data was a snap as well... just import the key file into iTunes from the HTC's SD card and it went on the iPhone automatically.

Bottom line: within 3-4 hours of getting home with my new iPhone, I had everything moved and everything set up like I wanted.. and that was while multitasking and doing other things around the house too.

Now to learn more about iCloud and do I want to use it....

The superconference scheduling solution

The problem with superconferences

I've always thought that superconferences suck.  They don't have the cohesion and frequency of  play as smaller conferences.  In my opinion the ideal conference size is 9, because then you can play full round robin in football and full double round robin in basketball.

12 is the absolute maximum.  In a 12 team league with two six-team divisions and one protected rivalry, you'll play every team in the other division that isn't your protected rival twice every 5 years. That's really  pushing it.  If a hypothetical college student can get through his whole standard four years in school withoug his football team playing another football during that whole time, they aren't really in the same conference in my opinion.

Now the ACC, Big Ten, and SEC are going to 14 teams.  In a 14 team league with two divisions and one protected rivalry, you'll play each non-protected rival in the other division twice every six years.  That sucks. That's not a conference.  Not to mention how messy basketball gets.

The decision makers don't care

That said, the train has already left the station.  We are headed toward superconferences.  The reason we are headed that way is because of TV money.  The university presidents and boards of trustees couldn't care less about the fan considerations I listed above.  So we have to find a way to make these unwieldy leagues work.

The solution

Ironically, the solution to this problem is to grow bigger.  That sounds conterintuitive, but hear me out there.

For football: 16 teams divided into four quadrants. 9 game conference schedule.  Every two years the quadrants rotate like this:

• Quadrant A and Quadrant B form one division, and Quadrant C and Quadrant D form the other division. 
• Two years later, the divisions change to AC and BD.
• Two years later... lather, rinse repeat. 
• Also, each quadrant plays two teams from the quadrant it will never be paired with, rotating every two years. So for example, quadrant A plays two teams out of quadrant D in years 1 and 2, then the other two teams out of quadrant D in years 3 and 4

If you do the math, you see that everyone plays everyone else at least twice every four years. That's as close to ideal as a superconference will get.

What about protected rivalries?  There are no protected rivalries.  You design the quadrants properly, so that important rivalries are within the same quandrant.  Yes that means that important rivals will never play each other in the league championship game... but really, how often has that actually happened in the real world with today's league setups?

You may also ask.. .wait, didn't the WAC try this and fail? Yes they did, in the 1990s.  But they didn't fail because of the quadrants.  They failed because they diluted their product with inferior teams, plus they had teams that were as far as 3900 miles apart making travel costs prohibitive for a relatively low-revenue league.  I don't think a 16 team SEC, Big Ten, ACC, or Big 12 would have those problems.

Plus one more thing: the quadrants looked awkward in the 1990s because they were being compared with 9, 10, and 12 team leagues.   Now the point of comparison is 14 team leagues, which are awful. Against 14 team leagues, quadrants look pretty cohesive.

What about basketball?

OK, since I"m an ACC fan I guess this needs to be addressed.  The biggest problem with today's ACC and other superconferences is the unbalanced schedule.  With the 16 team league, you actually solve that problem. Simply play a 16 team league schedule, with a full single round robin plus ONE protected rival that you play home and home.  So in the ACC for example those protected rivals would be pairs like Duke-UNC, UVA-VT, GT-Clemson, Miami-FSU, NCSU-Wake,  etc.  It's much more balanced than the 14 team setup with 18 league games that the ACC is contemplating,  where each team has ten one-play rivals and 4 two-play rivals (one of which is constant and three of which rotate), resulting in some schedules being much easier than others.

And by the way, the Big East has shown that a 16 team basketball league can be pretty damn good.

Mazda Miata vs. Mini Roadster

In 1996 I bought a new Mazda Miata.  I owned it for 16 years but last month I put it into a guardrail on a wet day and it was totaled.    The damage wasn't that great (happened below 30 mph on an on-ramp) but the car was old enough and valued low enough that it was totaled.  So it was time to find a replacement convertible.  I have a 1998 LS400 as my daily driver, so this is strictly a fun car which gives me different standards than usual. I started out with a large field and eliminated several cars just thinking and researching it  for various reasons:

• Used BMW E46 convertible:  Almost impossible to find with a manual transmission.  Too much car for a sunny day toy.  Sketchy reliability and expensive to own. If I bought one at the price point I want, I'd be getting it just when it starts needing expensive repairs and replacements
• Volkswagen EOS:  has more space and is a nice car but in my opinion, Volkswagen + complex top mechanism = disaster waiting to happen. Plus it has a pretty flexy body structure and is underpowered and expensive for what you get. 
• Used Miata: lots of them out there but hard to find one that's what I want, in good shape.  Also the previous generations are smaller inside (I was starting to feel that in mine that wrecked) and as I get older the act of putting up the top from inside the car gets harder. Since I kept the last one 16 years and will probably keep this one long term, a used one already has some time used up and closer to being a jalopy.  The newer ones that have the hardtop I want all have automatic transmissions and nearly-new prices on the used market. 

So I was down to a Mini Convertible and a Miata hardtop.  After a trip to the Mini dealer and some test drives I discovered the Mini Roadster and quickly decided it was a better contender than the Mini Convertible.  The Roadster has more trunk room, and when the top is down it doesn't block the bottom half of the view out the back like the convertible does.  Plus the roadster is designed so that the trunk access is not affected when the top is down, which is a virtue the Mini convertible lacks.  The only thing the Mini convertible brings that the Mini roadster doesn't is a back seat, which in a Mini is of zero value in my opinion.

So I found myself deciding between the Miata and the Mini Roadster. Here is my comparison.

Price: of course it all comes down to options and configuration but they are both high 20's to low 30's vehicles well equipped, and both have some flexibility on price.  This is a wash.

Exterior Appearance, top up: The Miata looks great, it all fits together.  The hardtop is body colored and works well with the shape of the car, with lots of glass.  On the Mini, the only top available is a black soft top which doesn't go well with any color except black. Plus the Mini top has a lot of black cloth and not enough glass so it looks even worse, especially from the rear, and it looks tacked onto the car. Advantage: Miata

Kinda awkward looking with the top up. 

It all fits together with the top up

Exterior appearance, top down:  They both look pretty good with the top down.  I think the Miata looks slightly better but not that much better.  Draw.

Nice looking with the top down

Also looks great with the top down

Interior appearance and ergonomics:  This one is no contest, the Miata by a mile.  Like all Minis, the Mini Roadster has a Fisher Price clown car interior with a pie plate speedometer in the center of the dashboard and a bunch of toggle switches that are randomly placed with tiny, cryptic labels.   Behind the steering wheel is a completely useless "openometer" that purports to measure your cumulative top-down time (why?) and a  tach that you can't really use because its top half is  blocked by the steering wheel. Even though the steering wheel is adjustable the instruments move with it so you can't adjust the steering wheel to make the top of the tach visible. Mini clearly knows the center speedometer is useless because there is also a digital speedometer in the tach, where the real speedometer should be.  But I don't like digital speedometers.   In my opinion, the speedometer should be where the tach is and the tach should be where the openometer is. The Miata on the other hand has a very well executed traditional layout, all the instruments you need are right there in front of you and the steering wheel is adjustable separate from the instrument binnacle, everything is clearly labeled and the switches are big enough to easily use. 

Seriously, Mini?

That's more like it. 

Comfort:  The Mini is a more comfortable car.  It has more interior room and wider seats that are more comfortable and also there is more room in all directions: more legroom, more room between the driver's knees and the steering wheel, more space in the footwell, more headroom with the top up.  The Miata has aggressively bolstered sport seats which isn't how I like it. Other than that the seats are nice and the steering wheel feels nicer than the Mini.  The Miata has non-adjustable lumbar support that is too aggressive for my taste.

Powertrain:  The base Mini has a 121 horsepower engine, which is underpowered.  For about $3500 more you can get the S level which has 181 turbocharged horsepower.  All Miatas, including the base models have 167 naturally aspirated horsepower.  Both cars rev nicely, but I'm not a big fan of turbocharging and since it costs extra to get the oomph the Mini needs, the Miata gets the nod on this count.  The 6 speed manual transmissions in both cars work and feel nicely, but the Miata's is slightly better.  When I was test driving the Mini, I nearly backed into the car behind me at a stoplight because I was in reverse instead of 1st gear.  This wasn't a problem on the Miata, because its shifter is  more precise than the Mini, plus the Miata shifter feels better with a nicer leather covering, and a nicer shift motion, and clicking into gear better.  Advantage Miata. 

Driving experience: The Mini has a nice driving experience, but the Miata's is better.  The Miata is a purpose built rear wheel drive roadster designed for that mission from a clean sheet, while the Mini Roadster is adapted from the regular Mini platform and is front wheel drive.  Minis are fun cars to drive, but the Miata feels more like a complete put together roadster package. Both cars have relatively stiff suspension and noisy tires. They are, after all, sports cars. 

Practicality:  This has some overlap with interior and ergonomics, but the Mini is a more practical car.  It has more room, a bigger trunk, and a passthrough from the cabin to the trunk so you can reach into the trunk from the seats.  This is a nice feature, especially in a small cabin with limited storage.  Both cars are designed so that the top being down has no effect on the trunk space or access, which is something that much bigger and more expensive cars haven't been able to accomplish. Kudos to both Mazda and Mini for that.  My brother has an Infiniti G convertible and he says that when the top is down, you can get a ham sandwich in the trunk -- if it doesn't have lettuce.  I looked briefly at a Volvo C40 convertible and with the top down you can't even get to the trunk.    Both cars have cupholders but the Mini also has a styrofoam tray in the trunk right behind the door to the cabin that you can put ice and drinks in and reach from the cabin, which is pretty cool.  If I had to take a multi-hour road trip in one of these cars, I'd want to do it in the Mini. 

Top operation: Both are pretty easy.  The Mini comes standard with a manual top, but it has gas struts so when it's down you push a button and it pops up for easy grabbing and putting up.  It's easier than the manual top of the Miata, which I can't really operate from inside the car without shoulder and back discomfort because you have to twist around and dig down to lift it up.  The Miata hard top is simplicity itself, just push a button and it goes up or down in less than 15 seconds.  I didn't try the Mini's power top, didn't think it would be necessary since the manual top is so easy, but I assume it's just as easy as the Miata.  Slight Mini edge simply because its manual top is easier than the Miata's manual top. 

Options availability and flexibility:  This is a well-known Mini virtue.  You can get a Mini just about any way you want it with any combination of colors, accents, and options in just about any configuration. By contrast, the Miata is packaged like a typical Japanese car: it has a few colors,  very few interior/exterior color combinations, and a few option packages to choose from and even that is less flexible than it sounds. There are three Miata option packages and two of them require each other so there's really only  two configurations: no option packages (good luck finding one like that) and both option packages (the vast majority of them are built like this). The third package (appearance package) doesn't interest me and not many have it.  The option packages of course include unrelated options, for example bluetooth phone and xenon headlamps are both in the Miata Premium package.  Want one option? Take them all or live without. Advantage Mini.

Technology: Mazda is a few years behind here.  Bluetooth phone is only available on the very top end Miata, with a premium package.  Neither bluetooth music nor a USB port nor navigation are available from Mazda on a Miata at any price, though it does have an aux port to plug in the headphone jack of your iPhone or other music player.  The Mini has options for all those available on all levels of the car, plus it has Mini Connected, which is an iPhone app and interface that seems pretty cool -- if you have an iPhone, which I don't.  Advantage Mini. 

Reliability/Cost to own:  My last Miata was pretty much bulletproof for 16 years. Mazda has that reputation and it's confirmed by sites like Truedelta and Consumer Reports.  Mini reliability seems to be sketchier and and those sites also confirm that reputation. Mini also appears to be expensive to repair and maintain when things break which isn't that surprising since it's a BMW product. Advantage Miata. 

General Style:  I've heard the Miata called a girl's car, I assume that's because it's cute.   Whatever, at my age and happily married stage in life I don't care. I like it as long as I can get a manual transmission.   On the other hand the Mini has a wing on the back that rises at 50 miles an hour and goes back down at 30.  I hate that, is anything dumber than driving 40-45 through town with a wing up?  It's totally poseur/dorky and you can't turn it off.  Well it better be poseur, because if the Mini really needs a wing to have decent grip at 50 mph, something is seriously wrong with the chassis.  Advantage Miata. 

Final decision: I decided on the Miata.   Reliability is important to me and Mazda wins there.  I live in the sticks and getting a car to a shop to be repaired is a real logistical undertaking, plus the only Mini dealer in town is about as far away from me as you can get and still be in the Triangle area.  Miata's inferior interior room and comfort did give me pause but it's still a significant improvement over my first generation Miata and I lived with that for 16 years.  Plus I took a Miata on a two hour extended test drive and found that the cruise control goes a long way toward ameliorating any comfort problem, since on boring roads I can put it on and move/shift my legs around.   On fun roads the car seems to get bigger.  I also don't like Miata's technological inferiority but the fact is I'm not buying a phone accessory.  I can use the bluetooth phone and plug my audio jack into the aux port. It's not ideal but it's workable.  I don't need nav because my phone has it and I usually drive to places I already know. 

If I were choosing between the two for a daily driver I might  pick the Mini because of its better comfort and practicality.  I say "might" because I still don't think I could look at the Mini's dashboard and instrument panel every day.  I've read on various car blogs that you get used to it, but I don't know.  It's that bad and may be a deal breaker for the daily driver case.  However I have another daily driver car, so that point is moot.  I'm buying a toy and the Miata is a better toy.  It's more fun.

That said I don't dislike the Mini.  I chose a Miata for myself, but I'm glad Minis are on the road, and seeing one on the road usually makes me smile.  For me, Minis are best enjoyed looking at them from the outside.

iTunes: a huge albatross on Apple devices

Having both an Android phone and an iPad I get to experience both platforms' advantages and disadvantages.  I recently got a big reminder of a big disadvantage of Apple devices: iTunes.

I recently tried to buy an app in the app store that requires the gyroscope in my iPad 2.  The install failed because the app couldn't recognize the gyroscope.  A little googling revealed that this is an iOS bug and an iOS update would be required to fix it.  This is what had to happen to accomplish that:

1. Plug iPad into the laptop and start iTunes
2. Wait a few minutes for iTunes to recognize the iPad
3. Wait about 20 minutes while iTunes synchs the iPad 
4. Select update iPad software in iTunes.  iTunes then informs me that it must be udpated before it can do this software update on the iPad.
5. Update iTunes.  This includes a several megabyte download and about 20-30 minutes of updating.    Oh, and this update requires the laptop to be restarted so...
6. Restart laptop
7. Restart iTunes, again plug in iPad and wait for it be recognized
8. Select update iPad software in iTunes.  iTunes warns me this may take over an hour, and whatever you do don't interrupt the process.  Oops, check the laptop battery, better go get the cord and plug it in since the above steps have used so much of the charge that it may not last for the whole rest of the process.
9. Watch the 45 minute download of new iPad software to iTunes. I wrote most of this blog entry while waiting for this. 
10. As part of the installation of the update, iTunes first backs up the iPad, even though it just did it in step 3 above and absolutely  nothing has changed on the iPad since then. This is apparently  not a smart backup because it takes just as long as step 3 did. 
11. Finally, the update is applied to the iPad. 
12. After the update is installed, the iPad is restored to factory settings and reboots
13. iTunes restores the iPad from the backup created in step 10.  About 20 minutes here. (note that when Android updates, it leaves the user data in place and no back/restore is required)
14. Now on the iPad, I am prompted to manually restore my location services setting, my Apple ID (hope I haven't forgotten the password!), my birthday, agree to  terms and conditions (even though I already had to agree to them to download the update in the first place)
15. I'm counting this as a separate step than the above because it involves new features that the previous iOS didn't support so seems reasonable to ask me to set up or decline: iCloud, backup to iCloud, and "find my iPad" service.  Finally my iPad is ready to use again. Phew, the better part of a weekend morning is gone!  Oh, and my iPad desktop icons have all been moved, thanks Apple!

Oh and by the way you better have ensured the iPad had enough battery power left to complete this process, because the iPad doesn't charge when plugged into a PC. 

By contrast, this is how I update the Android software on my Evo:

1. On the phone, click "update" to the push notification that pops up when an update is available
2. The phone downloads the update in the background, when on wifi, to avoid using up the data plan. If I leave a wifi spot it pauses the download and resumes again when back on wifi.  While the download is underway, can do other things on the phone.
3. After the update downloads, respond positively to the prompt to install it
4. The update installs, phone reboots itself, finished.