Quote: "I'm not bashing iPhones here (I'm not nearly as anti-Apple as I used to be); I think that iOS is a very intuitive and beautiful operating system, and the hardware it runs on is generally of stellar quality. But in terms of functionality and price (and value), the Android is generally the winner."
That
used to be my mindset, but I'm actually
more anti-Apple than I used to be. Back in October 2012, Mum and Dad both bought their first tablets: gen 3 iPads. Sure, the gen 4 was coming out in a few days, but the gen 3 did everything they wanted and was considerably cheaper. At the same time my brother and I both bought Google Nexus 7s - our first tablets, and our first decent Android devices (previously we'd been using Creative Zen Touch 2s, which were pretty crappy). We have a fairly rich uncle and aunt and they both live in a posh, upmarket house on the coast at Lennox Head. They went to climb Mt Everest and gave us their house for two weeks (of course we had to babysit their ancient, dying Labrador, Murphy, and try to keep her alive until they got back - many unpleasant trips to the vet). We had an amazing time; we've never lived at the coast for 2 weeks before. I mean, we'd stayed with Nan and Pa many times and they also live just outside Lennox Head, but never for that long and with that much freedom.
Kym and John also left us their Nissan X-TRAIL (for you Americans, that's not pronounced cross-trail, it's pronounced ex-trail.... the normal way you pronounce an X by itself), which was ok but not a great car (despite being insanely popular), so we drove around in that and our VW Mk 1 Golf Cabriolet (very rare in Aus), and obviously our Land Rover Disco 2. We went swimming in Lake Ainsworth (which Dad calls Lake Anusworth) and at the beach (just over the road from the lake)... and OH we took an entire family-worth of pushbikes in the trailer when we went down there (7 bikes), so we cycled into Ballina.
And that brings me back to the tablets. We cycled into Ballina on one of the 14 days we were there, the whole family (except Mum who's not a huge fan of pushbikes). We rode into Ballina Fair and to Dick Smith's, where we'd told Mum to come with the Land Rover and the trailer (we weren't gonna ride all the way back to Lennox
), and went into the store. We'd been there a couple of days ago, so we knew they had the Nexus 7s in stock, but we were only really joking that we wanted to buy them. After thinking about it for a while, my brother and I had decided we actually wanted to get one each, but we didn't have enough money. Luckily, every year we both get offered casual work at PhotoCreate, a factory in Glen Innes producing various things with photos sublimated onto them (mugs, t-shirts, teddy bears, keyrings, fridge magnets, etc., etc.), and we managed to convince Mum that it was sufficiently likely that we'd get the work this year that we could buy the Nexi now and pay her back later.
So when we rode into Ballina on our pushbikes, we just sort of waited around for Mum to come get us (after phoning her of course) and hoped that she would come bearing money for Nexi purchases. She did, and we rode home holding two beautiful Nexus 7s (16GB of course). The first thing we did, obviously, was to charge them fully, but while testing out the pure awesomeness of those tablets we discovered 009 Sound System's With A Spirit song, and now that song (my ringtone on my S3) always reminds me of that awesome holiday.
While we were down there, Dad's birthday came around. He was turning 50 and had said specifically that he did NOT want anything done for his birthday. In the end, however, he decided he was so set on getting an iPad that he made us (as in, Mum) buy it for his birthday. After that Mum saw how cool they were and wanted one as well, so she reluctantly (Mum is our accountant and bookkeeper) bought one. I have no idea how she managed to pay for all these brand new expensive electronic devices.
So now they both have and still frequently use gen 3 iPads, but having used them for a couple of years I can say I genuinely hate Apple. Their software (iTunes) is HORRIFIC, and the way they lock down their iPads is just ridiculous. Dad and I were so sick of trying to get music and videos onto the device with iTunes that I said I'd try jailbreaking it (it was well out of warranty by that point) so we could access the filesystem through Windows. Well, it turns out even then you still can't. Utter crap, they are. I mean the hardware's amazing, and they're tough as, but... argh the horror stories I could tell you.
So when (if) Dad's iPad finally dies, he's said specifically many times that he'll not be buying an Apple product again, and will go Android. I'm hoping that by that point there'll be some properly good Android tablets, because even the Nexus 10 wasn't spectacular. I'm hoping (no, assuming) that the new Nexus 10 (whenever it comes out) will be a brilliant tablet, and that'll probably be what Dad gets.
Haven't written a post that long for quite a while now.
