Anyone else impressed with Honeycomb?

[Mac.World]

After jail breaking my iPad2 today and tweaking the the crap out of it, there is no reason to move to Android. I have fallen in love with my iPad all over again.

 

[4DThinker]

It's great that the Apple cult members in here defend the iPad with so much zeal. Apple loves you. You will be well rewarded in Heaven. Keep it up.
I've watched the iPad since it's inception, and know why it is what it is. I've also watched Android appear from nowhere and evolve to where it is right now. Apple has a formula it sticks to, and any company that would have chosen the same formula would be right where Apple is after the same amount of time passes from their starting date. Microsoft is going that route, and they are only 4 years behind. Expect tablets running win8 (or win9 by then) to have the same devoted tablet-using congregation (as the iPad does) in about 4 years.

Android is an alien interloper, ignoring the structured methodical growth of Apple products. Choosing instead to race lustily forward inseminating itself into every native product. Hoping that at least a few of its offspring grow up to be all-stars in their respective fields. It breeds with the little known and the famous leaving bastard urchins, young princes and princesses too.

You could get to an iPad sister with Honeycomb. You would have to strip out the alien DNA though. Cut off the third arm (memory expansion), lobotomize it to dumb-down the UI. No widgets or live wallpapers can be left to confuse the humans. Force the remaining icons to line up top left to bottom right no exceptions. Eliminate those clever but odd on-screen auto-rotating Back and Home and Options buttons for one single fixed hard Home. Hide the file structure, it only confuses the slow. Be sure to flood the airwaves with colorful ads extolling iPad simple virtues. We can't let the naive natives get wind of future tech lest they start another world war wanting it. It may be too late. 😉

4D. 🙂

 

[radiogoober]

It's great that the Apple cult members in here defend the iPad with so much zeal. Apple loves you. You will be well rewarded in Heaven. Keep it up.
I've watched the iPad since it's inception, and know why it is what it is. I've also watched Android appear from nowhere and evolve to where it is right now. Apple has a formula it sticks to, and any company that would have chosen the same formula would be right where Apple is after the same amount of time passes from their starting date. Microsoft is going that route, and they are only 4 years behind. Expect tablets running win8 (or win9 by then) to have the same devoted tablet-using congregation (as the iPad does) in about 4 years.

Android is an alien interloper, ignoring the structured methodical growth of Apple products. Choosing instead to race lustily forward inseminating itself into every native product. Hoping that at least a few of its offspring grow up to be all-stars in their respective fields. It breeds with the little known and the famous leaving bastard urchins, young princes and princesses too.

You could get to an iPad sister with Honeycomb. You would have to strip out the alien DNA though. Cut off the third arm (memory expansion), lobotomize it to dumb-down the UI. No widgets or live wallpapers can be left to confuse the humans. Force the remaining icons to line up top left to bottom right no exceptions. Eliminate those clever but odd on-screen auto-rotating Back and Home and Options buttons for one single fixed hard Home. Hide the file structure, it only confuses the slow. Be sure to flood the airwaves with colorful ads extolling iPad simple virtues. We can't let the naive natives get wind of future tech lest they start another world war wanting it. It may be too late. 😉

4D. 🙂

So what you're saying is that Android gets spammed onto every piece of hardware; that the vast majority of the resulting devices are crap; and that is has a bunch of completely unnecessary things (widgets, live wallpaper) that only exist to entertain to children or the intellectual equivalent?

I agree.

 

[err404]

I used a few HoneyComb tablets at BestBuy yesterday and was anything but impressed. The interface isn't intuitive and it looked pretty bad. I much preferred the TouchPad.

I hope HP has success with the TouchPad. It sounds like there are a few rough edges right now (mostly software), but the potential is there. I'm giving it a few months to work out the launch kinks, then I may upgrade my iPad(1) with one.
HoneyComb is ok, but it lacks design direction. In typical Google fashion, they rushed it out to compete with the iPad (they have admitted this) and need to go back and polish it up. Hopefully IceCream Sandwich will bring Google's A-game to the tablet space.

 

[ZBoater]

i have google earth on my ipad

And you think they work the same on iOS and Honeycomb?

🙄

Ok, I give up.

 

[ZBoater]

So what you're saying is that Android gets spammed onto every piece of hardware; that the vast majority of the resulting devices are crap; and that is has a bunch of completely unnecessary things (widgets, live wallpaper) that only exist to entertain to children or the intellectual equivalent?

I agree.

If you can't find a use for a widget or a live wallpaper, then you shouldn't be talking about intellectual equivalence. Whether it be data usage or weather or news or social networking, widgets allow you to customize your interface to suit YOUR needs and tastes, something iOS users can only dream about.

And yes, I stare at my Live Aquarium LWP all day long. It amuses me... 😛

 

[radiogoober]

If you can't find a use for a widget or a live wallpaper, then you shouldn't be talking about intellectual equivalence. Whether it be data usage or weather or news or social networking, widgets allow you to customize your interface to suit YOUR needs and tastes, something iOS users can only dream about.

And yes, I stare at my Live Aquarium LWP all day long. It amuses me... 😛

My point, proven.

 

[palpatine]

Frankly a raw file system seems to be about the worst way to work with your PDF's. The iPad can clearly perform the tasks you require, you just need to find the right app. I'd recommend a document management app that supports bookmarks tagging and annotations. ReaddleDocs may be a good fit for your workflow (since it had good folder uploading support). You may want to start a new thread specifically geared towards your document management needs.

great advice. thank you 🙂

i will give a try to readdle. too bad it doesn't have a trial version. $5 here, $5 there sure adds up. do you know if it can transfer the folders through tethering, or do i have to do it wirelessly (a lot of data)? i think i will start that thread.

 

[anjinha]

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?

Have you tried using PDF Expert and Dropbox? You can simply copy all your folders with the PDFs to Dropbox and in PDF Expert simply select the folders you want to sync.

 

[ZBoater]

Access to the file system is more than just organizing your files. It lets you operate your tablet more like you do your computer. I'd like to be able to download files from the Internet. Any file. I'd like to upload too. When a website asks me for a file (like a avatar image for a forum), if I'm on the iPad, it's no dice.

Sure, "there's an app for that" only gets you so far. Most users don't care, but I also like to use FTP. But the sandbox iOS makes it's apps play in makes file sharing virtually impossible.

Kids today are growing up with no knowledge of what a file system is, an that is tragic. Many don't know the difference between RAM and disk storage. All they know is how to click on the icons. And what most see as "ease of use" I see as the "dumbification" of the computing experience creating a generation of computer users that will need to call the Geek Squad for the most basic computer repairs.

Sorry, but that's just not "progress" in my book. I know I am in the minority, but I like being able to configure my PC to dual boot, be able to swap out a hard drive, and be able to handle files with Filezilla. Call me old school. 😎

 

[AppleGoddess]

Nope not yet, but give it some time.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Access to the file system is more than just organizing your files. It lets you operate your tablet more like you do your computer. I'd like to be able to download files from the Internet. Any file. I'd like to upload too. When a website asks me for a file (like a avatar image for a forum), if I'm on the iPad, it's no dice.

Sure, "there's an app for that" only gets you so far. Most users don't care, but I also like to use FTP. But the sandbox iOS makes it's apps play in makes file sharing virtually impossible.

Kids today are growing up with no knowledge of what a file system is, an that is tragic. Many don't know the difference between RAM and disk storage. All they know is how to click on the icons. And what most see as "ease of use" I see as the "dumbification" of the computing experience creating a generation of computer users that will need to call the Geek Squad for the most basic computer repairs.

Sorry, but that's just not "progress" in my book. I know I am in the minority, but I like being able to configure my PC to dual boot, be able to swap out a hard drive, and be able to handle files with Filezilla. Call me old school. 😎

Access to the FS, if it's not hidden, will be the thing that prevents 4 year old and 70+ year olds from using Android tablet. You can hand either of the aforementioned ages an iPad and they'll have the basics figured out in just a bit of time. The minute you confront a newbie user with a dialogue saying "where would you like x file saved?" you've lost the type of intuitiveness that makes the iPad sell 4 million a month.

There's a point where in mobile devices simplicity reigns supreme.

 

[palpatine]

Have you tried using PDF Expert and Dropbox? You can simply copy all your folders with the PDFs to Dropbox and in PDF Expert simply select the folders you want to sync.

Thanks for the suggestion! I wish PDF Expert had a trial version. $10 is a lot...

More importantly, though, my understanding of Dropbox is that I have to access it through wifi. My hope was to move files through tethering, because Dropbox has a 2GB limit and I often move far more than that at any one time. It takes a few minutes if I am tethering, but I have no idea how long it would take wireless.

 

[radiogoober]

Kids today are growing up with no knowledge of what a file system is, an that is tragic. Many don't know the difference between RAM and disk storage. All they know is how to click on the icons. And what most see as "ease of use" I see as the "dumbification" of the computing experience creating a generation of computer users that will need to call the Geek Squad for the most basic computer repairs.

Sorry, but that's just not "progress" in my book. I know I am in the minority, but I like being able to configure my PC to dual boot, be able to swap out a hard drive, and be able to handle files with Filezilla. Call me old school. 😎

Sorry, but you are so far out of line that it's ridiculous. First of all, it's not TRAGIC that kids can't use a file system on a computer. People being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery is tragic. Kids having their arms cut off and African virgins being raped by HIV+ men is tragic.

Second, your nostalgia for ancient technology is laughable. Do you know how to use punch cards? Did you ever program an Altair? Oh god, the tragedy! People are always nostalgic for the way things used to be, when in fact the old way sucked. Did you ever have to spend hours tweaking the HIMEM line of your Config.sys? Most people here never did, and the reason is because it sucked and things moved past that.

You may think that you're "cool" because you're old school or whatever, but the truth is you're a dinosaur, and if you keep refusing technology you'll get left in the dust.

 

[palpatine]

Access to the file system is more than just organizing your files. It lets you operate your tablet more like you do your computer. I'd like to be able to download files from the Internet. Any file. I'd like to upload too. When a website asks me for a file (like a avatar image for a forum), if I'm on the iPad, it's no dice.

Sure, "there's an app for that" only gets you so far. Most users don't care, but I also like to use FTP. But the sandbox iOS makes it's apps play in makes file sharing virtually impossible.

Kids today are growing up with no knowledge of what a file system is, an that is tragic. Many don't know the difference between RAM and disk storage. All they know is how to click on the icons. And what most see as "ease of use" I see as the "dumbification" of the computing experience creating a generation of computer users that will need to call the Geek Squad for the most basic computer repairs.

Sorry, but that's just not "progress" in my book. I know I am in the minority, but I like being able to configure my PC to dual boot, be able to swap out a hard drive, and be able to handle files with Filezilla. Call me old school. 😎

i agree that computers, especially apple's os, have been dumbed down and restricted so much that many kids probably have no idea what is going on behind the icons.

but, in the old days very few of us had computers, and even fewer of us were willing to mess around peeking and poking. at best, it was a toy for nerds who got a kick out of fighting grues.

there are plenty of options for kids to go beyond os and play around. apparently, you can even go to a website now and jailbreak your devices by just clicking a button. so, i am not too worried.

i just want to see my files, or find some way to shepherd them safely through iTunes. there are several aspects of the os experience (not necessarily os, but apple policies) that are inferior to the honeycomb one, and lack of control over how my files move around is one of them. that's all. i don't need apple to return us back to the old days of coding it all yourself.

 

[ZBoater]

Sorry, but you are so far out of line that it's ridiculous. First of all, it's not TRAGIC that kids can't use a file system on a computer. People being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery is tragic. Kids having their arms cut off and African virgins being raped by HIV+ men is tragic.

Second, your nostalgia for ancient technology is laughable. Do you know how to use punch cards? Did you ever program an Altair? Oh god, the tragedy! People are always nostalgic for the way things used to be, when in fact the old way sucked. Did you ever have to spend hours tweaking the HIMEM line of your Config.sys? Most people here never did, and the reason is because it sucked and things moved past that.

You may think that you're "cool" because you're old school or whatever, but the truth is you're a dinosaur, and if you keep refusing technology you'll get left in the dust.

Oh please spare me the hyberbole. Are you naturally dense or do you practice? 🙄

BTW, you're really good at it... 😉

 

[ZBoater]

Access to the FS, if it's not hidden, will be the thing that prevents 4 year old and 70+ year olds from using Android tablet. You can hand either of the aforementioned ages an iPad and they'll have the basics figured out in just a bit of time. The minute you confront a newbie user with a dialogue saying "where would you like x file saved?" you've lost the type of intuitiveness that makes the iPad sell 4 million a month.

There's a point where in mobile devices simplicity reigns supreme.

I agree with this. When comparing Honeycomb to iOS this is one of the key differences. You can use it simple or you can go native. I guess the iPad is the same if you jailbreak it.

 

[DeathChill]

Kids today are growing up with no knowledge of what a file system is, an that is tragic. Many don't know the difference between RAM and disk storage. All they know is how to click on the icons. And what most see as "ease of use" I see as the "dumbification" of the computing experience creating a generation of computer users that will need to call the Geek Squad for the most basic computer repairs.

Sorry, but that's just not "progress" in my book. I know I am in the minority, but I like being able to configure my PC to dual boot, be able to swap out a hard drive, and be able to handle files with Filezilla. Call me old school. 😎

I don't think you get what ease of use entails. On the iPad it eliminates the need for any Geek Squad to help those who are not so computer literate. It may be that you, like I, wouldn't need them anyways, but we're more of a minority. The reality is that most people don't care about the things that you like about Honeycomb, at least not enough to buy them.

You may not appreciate the iPad but the majority of tablet owners do. Just like the Xoom is not considered a very good competitor to the iPad, you still prefer it.

 

[Mac.World]

Access to the file system is more than just organizing your files. It lets you operate your tablet more like you do your computer. I'd like to be able to download files from the Internet. Any file. I'd like to upload too. When a website asks me for a file (like a avatar image for a forum), if I'm on the iPad, it's no dice.

Sure, "there's an app for that" only gets you so far. Most users don't care, but I also like to use FTP. But the sandbox iOS makes it's apps play in makes file sharing virtually impossible.

Kids today are growing up with no knowledge of what a file system is, an that is tragic. Many don't know the difference between RAM and disk storage. All they know is how to click on the icons. And what most see as "ease of use" I see as the "dumbification" of the computing experience creating a generation of computer users that will need to call the Geek Squad for the most basic computer repairs.

Sorry, but that's just not "progress" in my book. I know I am in the minority, but I like being able to configure my PC to dual boot, be able to swap out a hard drive, and be able to handle files with Filezilla. Call me old school. 😎

After jailbreaking yesterday, there really is nothing that the iPad can't do, that an Android device can....other than play Flash (really crappily). 😀 and I do like having access to my file system now. And active wallpapers... And folder access manipulation.. And access to sbsettings... And 😀

 

[ZBoater]

You may not appreciate the iPad but the majority of tablet owners do. Just like the Xoom is not considered a very good competitor to the iPad, you still prefer it.

What makes you think I don't appreciate the iPad? That I have some pet peeves with it or that I don't join in on the mindless bashing of Honeycomb? 😉

I've had an iPad ever since they first came out. I currently have an iPad 2 and I love it. I just see it's deficiencies for what they are, and I have preferences for customization and usability that the iPad doesn't meet. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate it. That means I sometimes put the iPad down and reach for my Xoom when I need to do the things the iPad can't.

And vice versa.

 

[nateDEEZY]

While I understand peoples general "so what" about live wallpapers and widgets.. It honestly is just cool.

I guess from my point of view, I find widgets very useful in regards to the OS. Email, weather, feeds and calendar widgets serve as a easy reminder of what's to come and what's to read without in fact having to click an app then exiting an app.

Little things like that IMO would overall provide users with a better experience... Which again is why I'm impressed.

iOS 5 notification is no doubt a huge improvement. Personally, I still think live widgets are "cooler."

 

[radiogoober]

While I understand peoples general "so what" about live wallpapers and widgets.. It honestly is just cool.

Thank you for being honest about it, and not trying to justify widgets as being some amazing time saver that improves your efficiency by a factor of 1000.

 

[palpatine]

i have several quibbles about apple's policies, ios, and the ipad. not enough to go out and spend money on a honeycomb device, but enough to look forward to ice cream sandwich, or some other future iteration.

one of the most annoying things for me with the ipad has been the inability to maintain my folder hierarchy when i transfer files (pdfs) and folders.

i tried out goodreaderusb today and i am pleased to say it does exactly what i wanted. i think someone mentioned it in this thread earlier, and someone also recommended it in a thread i started in the ipad app forum on the topic. thanks to everyone!

now i don't have to buy more apps. i don't have to go through multiple apps (upload to dropbox and then read in goodreader) or rely on wifi. i can just plug in the ipad and move the files over. finally. i don't know why this ability isn't included in itunes, and i don't know why the app isn't included in the apple app store. too bad for apple, because i imagine there are people out there frustrated as i was, but who give up before trying stuff like goodreaderusb.

 

[radiogoober]

Can all of these second-rate OSs please stop with the stupid names? Really? Ice cream sandwich? When does Cheerios come out? Cream pie?

 

[dukeblue91]

Access to the file system is more than just organizing your files. It lets you operate your tablet more like you do your computer. I'd like to be able to download files from the Internet. Any file. I'd like to upload too. When a website asks me for a file (like a avatar image for a forum), if I'm on the iPad, it's no dice.

Get iCab and you can upload your avatar and stuff and also download all you want.