Anyone else impressed with Honeycomb?

[aristobrat]

Anyways, here's to hoping the Andriod tablet market pushes Apple to faster product update cycles and a better tablet OS.

Honestly, Apple's yearly upgrade cycle, where devices have been getting at least two major OS upgrades during their product life cycles, seems a lot reliable to me than Google's sporatic OS upgrade cycle, where you have no guarantee that your "Android" device will even get one major update (because that decision is ultimately made by the company that made your devices hardware, not Google, the company that makes the OS).

but Apple's gotta do something if they want to keep the tablet market for the next 18 months.

The whole goal is to make money, right?

When Android gets the majority of tablet sales, you still have to consider that Android tablet revenue is subdivided between HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Archos, Acer, Creative, Dell, Viewsonic, Toshiba, and a ton of other Android manufacturers that you've never heard of.

It would be very unlikely that any one Android hardware manufacturer will ever outsell Apple in the tablet market, even when the total of Android tablet sales exceeds iPad sales.

Just like with computers. HPs marketshare is far bigger than Apples, but Apple pulls in way more revenue. So who cares who leads the market?

 

[err404]

My mum uses Windows Explorer. 'nuff said.

I have no idea of the technical competency of your mother, but good for her.
However; in my (also anecdotal) experience, I am rarely able to walk a non-technical user through a task as simple as finding the time stamp of a file under windows\syetem32 without them becoming frustrated.

 

[thelookingglass]

I have no idea of the technical competency of your mother, but good for her.
However; in my (also anecdotal) experience, I am rarely able to walk a non-technical user through a task as simple as finding the time stamp of a file under windows\syetem32 without them becoming frustrated.

I agree and I don't think it's access to the filesystem that people want. If I never have to look at Finder or Windows Explorer ever again, I'll live. And happily. What I want in iOS, though, is for apps to be able to freakin' share files so that, for example, I can tap on a doc in Dropbox, have it automatically open in Docs To Go, make my edits and then have it automatically sync to Dropbox when I close the doc. On my first Android device, I spent literally 10 minutes trying to figure out how to access Dropbox through Docs To Go. Then I realized that I don't need to do that at all. I can simply open a document through Dropbox and not have to go through the extra steps of opening the same file in different. This is how it should be if we're talking ease of use.

And don't even get me started on the inability to attach files to emails without having to create a new email from scratch or the inability to attach files from the browser. I haven't seen any improvements in this respect in iOS 5. Love what I've seen of iCloud and the rest of iOS 5, but basic functions still appear to be missing for some reason.

All that said, I would never part with my iPad.

 

[Bluemeanie1976]

You seem to think a lot of popular things are stupid from what I've read in several threads. I hope you're not in marketing

Well, I sort of agree with him. I have dashboard on my macs... I never use them, at all. I have clocks on the ipad. I never use them, except when I need an alarm. Widgets are the sort of thing people seem to want, but never really use them much.

 

[palpatine]

You may not want to believe this, but the majority of computer users have little-to-no idea what they are looking at when they open a file explorer. .

It isn't a matter of faith. I don't know the majority of computer users. I have not seen statistics about their habits. I do know that I am frustrated on a daily basis by apple's "bold" move to "hide" my files from me. Sure, if I have just a couple of files it's no problem.

But, try moving several hundred from your computer, opening each folder so that good reader can get it, and then spending time organizing that mess into folders in good reader. As far as I know, it doesn't allow me to put stuff directly into it's folders or move folders. A simple task that apple has "boldly" prevented me from doing.

When android has a superior PDF reader, and something equivalent to the iPad in terms of specs, I may buy one. I'm tired of apple's various restrictions (number of apps in a collection, flash can't be turned on when needed, files can't be accessed via file tree, I can't get rid of stupid apps like the memo pad, etc.). If I wasn't so awed by the iPad and os handling of PDFs and various other tasks I would have changed already.

I don't know if I am in the majority or minority of users. I just know I want to do simple stuff like organize my files, watch a movie on amazon, or use a bt mouse. Is it so much to ask?

 

[vrDrew]

I think this "access to the hierarchical file system" is vastly over-rated. Why the heck do most people need to look at the HFS?

Have you taken a look at the "Windows" file folder on most PCs recently? Mine has well over a hundred thousand files it. Most of which I have no idea what they do, why I need them, or why they have the arcane names that they do. I - quite literally - couldn't tell the difference between a vital resource file and a malevolent rootkit virus. And neither could most other people.

Even over on the "Documents" side, things aren't much better. The user constantly has to remember if photographs go in "My Documents", "My Pictures", "Dowloaded Files", or in one of a couple dozen other places. You have to remember which program can open GIF, or JPEG, or TIFF, or WMV, or AVI, etc. etc. etc.

I just looked at a couple of Apps on my iPad: Garageband and Pages. BOTH of these programs made it amazingly easy to see when I'd last modified documents. No "right clicking" and choosing "Properties" like you do a PC.

And thats the thing: MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW about the "right click" and "properties" shortcuts. And most people not only don't "need" to go digging around in a HFS - they don't want to.

 

[Bluemeanie1976]

I DO thi k that apple should have a communal 'my documents' type bit, so you can upload from the browser, or whatever. But access to a whole bunch of files and folder, not really required.

 

[palpatine]

I think this "access to the hierarchical file system" is vastly over-rated. Why the heck do most people need to look at the HFS?

I don't rate it high or low. I don't know what most people do. As I said, I don't know most people and I haven't seen anyone with statistics about this mysterious group of people who pop up everywhere. All I know is what I want to do. I have thousands of PDFs in hundreds of folders. I don't want to dig through them. I want to copy and paste. This is a five second process with an external hd (besides transfer time) and a drawn out day-long process with the iPad. I want to gouge my eyes out just contemplating it. But, thanks to apple's boldness, I can enjoy the freedom of knowing exactly where all of my files are and exactly how miserable it is going to be for me to move them.

By the way, I see no reason for this to be the case. Hide them. Fine. But, make it a choice for us to view them. By removing the choice, apple sours the experience.

Why no folder hierarchies? Why no bt mouse? Because apple says so. I find that very hard to stomach, and hope android pushes apple to remedy this. I love os. I love the iPad. I don't love apple's insane restrictions.

 

[palpatine]

I DO thi k that apple should have a communal 'my documents' type bit, so you can upload from the browser, or whatever. But access to a whole bunch of files and folder, not really required.

What does it have to do with required, when we are talking about removing a feature? The stupid memo app isn't required but I gotta keep that on my device. Why does apple have to hide our stuff from us to improve our experience?

 

[Carouser]

I don't rate it high or low. I don't know what most people do. As I said, I don't know most people and I haven't seen anyone with statistics about this mysterious group of people who pop up everywhere. All I know is what I want to do. I have thousands of PDFs in hundreds of folders. I don't want to dig through them. I want to copy and paste. This is a five second process with an external hd (besides transfer time) and a drawn out day-long process with the iPad.

Wait, what? What kind of work are you doing? Why can't you just dump all of your pdfs into one folder and affiliate it with iTunes through iBooks? Why can't you manage those pdfs (in one folder) through a document/bibliographic manager instead of allocating them to hundreds of folders? Using folder structures to manage massive quantities of files like this makes sense only for the roughest distinctions (Music here, Pictures there, PDFs over there). I'm curious what your scenario is.

EDIT: What do you mean, 'hiding your stuff'? There's just different varieties of representing data and interacting with them, it's not like there's some true level where you can see everything on your computer where it actually is which then gets pasted over with an arbitrary OS aesthetic.

 

[palpatine]

I have approx. 20,000 PDF (some ebook) documents, and I add somewhere between 10 and 50 to my collection every day.

At the lowest level the PDFs are sorted into folders according to author. Some authors have only one or two, and prolific ones might have several dozen books and articles.

I think it would be quite unwieldy to have all of them in one folder. But, more importantly, I tried that. The files outgrew my hard drive. I moved everything onto external hard drives and divided them into folders like this so that I could put the essential stuff on my computer's hard drive. It is difficult enough to select dozens or hundreds of folders to move over for a research project, and thousands would just be impossible.

As for bibliographic software, I use it, but embarrassingly I only have a few thousand items recorded. I can't keep up with the stuff I acquire, and frankly, I prefer to limit that kind of data entry to the most essential stuff I might actually use in a publication.

I called it hiding in response to an earlier post by someone else, but more accurately I would say apple forces me to go through iTunes, which destroys my file hierarchy, and forces me to rebuild it every time I move stuff over to the iPad. If apple enabled me to directly access good reader on my iPad, and I could copy and paste directly, then the problem would be solved.

Do you have any suggestions?

 

[aristobrat]

I don't know what most people do. As I said, I don't know most people and I haven't seen anyone with statistics about this mysterious group of people who pop up everywhere. All I know is what I want to do. I have thousands of PDFs in hundreds of folders.

I agree that there should be an easier way for you to do it, but I don't need to look at statistics to know that "moving thousands of PDFs in hundreds of folders" is fairly out there when it comes to things people do with their tablets.

I have a feeling that with the implementation of iCloud and how apps can natively store data there, there's likely to be more thought put into file access/management in the (hopefully near) future.

 

[palpatine]

By the way, here is a link to the system I use to organize everything.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1154151/

It has worked really well for a long while (various iterations over the years), but it isn't perfect, and apple's iTunes gatekeeper has limited its effectiveness in terms of the iPad. Any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.

 

[palpatine]

I agree that there should be an easier way for you to do it, but I don't need to look at statistics to know that "moving thousands of PDFs in hundreds of folders" is fairly out there when it comes to things people do with their tablets.

I have a feeling that with the implementation of iCloud and how apps can natively store data there, there's likely to be more thought put into file access/management in the (hopefully near) future.

You'd be surprised

Many of my colleagues have similar problems, and some just avoid the iPad altogether, and read on their computers for now because of the hassle. I know several people with terabytes of PDFs that we share amongst one another at conferences. Data transfers take a long time, and three day conferences are too short to get it all done

 

[thelookingglass]

You'd be surprised

Many of my colleagues have similar problems, and some just avoid the iPad altogether, and read on their computers for now because of the hassle. I know several people with terabytes of PDFs that we share amongst one another at conferences. Data transfers take a long time, and three day conferences are too short to get it all done

Goodreader allows us to mount your iPad like a hard drive over wifi. Problem solved.

 

[palpatine]

The cloud seems exciting, but I have low expectations. I have too much data to move around.

But, if it does lead to a more rational (traditional) file organization, then I will be very happy. It's not rocket science. Any bureaucracy, any office, and any home runs this way with hierarchies of data (surely all have boxes of stuff left over from our last move lurking in the closet--labeled and organized perhaps, but never used). It's centuries old, and apple isn't doing us any favors by replacing a system that works with iTunes

Perhaps with cloud they will have an excuse to re-evaluate.

 

[palpatine]

Goodreader allows us to mount your iPad like a hard drive over wifi. Problem solved.

Interesting. I'll give it a try. But, transferring several gb of data over wifi seems rather laborious. Still, it beats reconstructing everything from the ground up.

 

[err404]

... I have thousands of PDFs in hundreds of folders. I don't want to dig through them. I want to copy and paste. This is a five second process with an external hd (besides transfer time) and a drawn out day-long process with the iPad...

What your asking for doesn't quite make sense given the design of iOS. The iOS file handling philosophy is different from traditional OS's. All accessible areas of the file system are distinctly associated to an application. There is no area for generic storage. Fortunately there are many apps that will allow you to organize your files in the legacy manner you are suggesting. GoodReader, Dropbox, AirShare... You can store your docs in the app of your choice and view them in any applicable app on your device.

Personally I use Dropbox for my PDF repository. I can save docs locally if required or just download them as needed. Alternately you could FTP to Goodreader and still preserve your file structure.

BTW - I agree that Apple has quite a bit of work left to do in this area. As of right now the docs are cloned when they are exported to another app instead of referencing the original file. This can make editing files more difficult than is necessary.

 

[s15119]

Off Topic

Nope, not impressed nor interested. But I'm sure folks on Honeycomb forums would be happy to discuss it with you.

try

http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/honeycomb/

Here we like to talk about the iPad.

Have a nice day.

 

[Carouser]

[snip]

Ok, this is a long one, bear with me.

You are accumulating 10 to 50 docs per day. If you plan to read these, you never will. If you are even going to read the abstract, you also have time to put an entry for each into bibliographic software. If you can't keep up with that, I can't see what you do have time for when you do a research project. Or perhaps you are doing a project sufficiently important that you could hire someone to do this for you.

My advice?
- Get an external multiple-TB HD for under $200.
- Talk to a professional librarian or data management professional about whether you need to be accumulating this many documents for your research projects. You might only need to accumulate fewer through better searching at the front-end.
- Look at bibliographic management software, a lot of it will semi-automate the data entry by punching in the DOI/ISSN numbers. Then, you will be able to keep all the stuff in the one folder. When it comes time to grab a number of docs for a research project, there will be a few options available to you depending on your biblio software, but sorting them by hundreds of folders is only going to cause you to lose ground in the long run. With the right workflow you would be able to run a query, grab those pdfs in about 10 minutes from your master folder, and copy them to a goodreader folder or equivalent for on-the-go work with iPad.

I use Zotero; it's very very good but I'd advise looking at comparable software from other companies just to see what fits. Zotero keeps track of when you've added an item to your library, you can rename pdfs from within Zotero, you can tag items, put them in collections, connect multiple items to each other, etc., without altering the files in any way.

What any biblio software does is separate storage from organization, and it makes organization a function of searches you run. You can have all files from 2011 in one search, all files by Jacobs in another search, and more besides, even if they overlap, without having your storage structure mimic your organizational structure. The file system is the bottleneck, management software is the solution.

Or get a Mac. I'm not saying this to be rude. The iPad can't do everything, esp. technical requirements like yours. I don't even know whether it should - tablets and desktops can coexist, it's not a dig at either to recognize this.

 

[nateDEEZY]

I have absolutely no experience using a Honeycomb tablet, and the only things I know of it are from reviews.

A lot of the points people made against Android OS are what I've read in reviews.

Is the Xoom a real competitor to the iPad? Absolutely. In fact, it outclasses the iPad in many ways. Still, the end user experience isn't nearly where it needs to be, and until Google paints its tablet strategy and software picture more clearly, we'd suggest a wait-and-see approach. Honeycomb and the Xoom are spectacular -- unfortunately they're a spectacular work in progress.

Apple has had over a year to develop a Tablet OS. Android, not sure how long they've had to develop, but with the current direction they're heading I'm very impressed.

 

[Carouser]

Apple has had over a year to develop a Tablet OS. Android, not sure how long they've had to develop, but with the current direction they're heading I'm very impressed.

Actually, Apple has had decades to develop a tablet OS, just like everyone else.

 

[nateDEEZY]

Actually, Apple has had decades to develop a tablet OS, just like everyone else.

OK.

 

[Carouser]

OK.

What's with the eyeroll? Nobody was stopping anybody from developing a tablet. When evaluating a tablet, I look at what is actually on the market, not what might occur down the road in some fictional future. Am I supposed to give Android some leeway and say 'it's better than it is' because they were late to the party? I have no idea what your point is.

 

[nateDEEZY]

What's with the eyeroll? Nobody was stopping anybody from developing a tablet. When evaluating a tablet, I look at what is actually on the market, not what might occur down the road in some fictional future. Am I supposed to give Android some leeway and say 'it's better than it is' because they were late to the party? I have no idea what your point is.

Apple debuted the iPad with iOS 3 with it's current future heading towards iOS 5. Is that suppose to mean Apple has taken decades to develop it's current line of tablet OS as well as it's competitors? My discussion was based solely on the OS and how impressive it seems. I'm not asking you to evaluate tablets here, or what might occur down the road in some fictional future. I'm not asking you to give some leeway.