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Previously: Technology Is Not Getting Easier!

Forbes published an article today that provides a nice postscript about new devices becoming more complex and cranky. Do iOS Apps Crash More Than Android Apps? A Data Dive is rich with details but the important lesson is that these simple, reliable devices in our pocket crash all the time. It’s not just you.

The details are interesting and the article is loaded with pie charts that break down crashes on mobile devices in lots of ways. (Conclusions: apps on Apple devices crash slightly more often than Android apps, but data from the end of 2011 might have been skewed by the release of iOS 5, which required a fair amount of rewriting for apps to work reliably. […] continued

It’s supposed to be getting easier! After all, smartphones and tablets should be simple to use, right? iPhones and iPads are exposing hundreds of millions of people to Apple’s fabled ecosystem, and for years we’ve been told that everything is easy and intuitive in the Apple world. Meanwhile Windows 7 brings impressive advances in hardware support and security and stability to our computers.

Why does it seem like there are more complaints, not less?

I recommend an interesting article by Farhad Manjoo in Slate: 2011 Was A Terrible Year For Tech. Here are the key points:

“In 2011 nearly every gadget or service that I use on a regular basis picked up new features that made it more frustrating to deal with. […] continued

Most casual photos are taken with a smartphone now. There is something to be learned from a quick comparison of the process of getting photos from a phone to a computer on an iPhone and an Android phone.

It’s a good way to understand why Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

On the phone:

• Install the latest iOS 5 update.

By default, iCloud is turned on and Photo Stream is turned on. If not, the settings are under iCloud. Set Photo Stream to On.

On your Windows computer:

• Install the latest iTunes update.

[…] continued

A new model of phone has been introduced roughly every day in 2011 but none of them have been very interesting.

Until now. Let’s take a look at three big developments in the phone world.

(Fair warning: I do not have any personal experience with any of these phones. They undoubtedly have quirks and limitations and exciting bits that might flavor your experience. Your mileage may vary; it’s all I can do to keep up with the product launches and press releases.)

Apple iPhone 4S

Apple’s new iPhone 4S is a collection of small changes, not big ones: a great camera, a voice-activated assistant named Siri (which apparently is really marvelous), and some welcome file syncing to make it easier to get photos and music on and off the phone. […] continued

You can be excused if you haven’t heard of Spotify yet. For months it’s been a hot topic for music junkies who have been impatient for it to debut in the United States. People addicted to tech blogs have been scrounging for invitations since the U.S. service was opened up last week.

If you have any interest in music at all, you should pay attention, because there’s a chance that this will be the service that becomes your primary source of tunes. In fact, if things go the way some industry insiders expect, Spotify will be a colossal success and after you get used to the idea, you’ll consider giving up the very idea of a library of “your” songs. […] continued

The new service announced by Apple for syncing photos among different devices is one of the most interesting parts of the iCloud package, both for what it does and for what it leaves out.

The idea is simple: each photo you take with your iPhone or iPad will automatically be sent online and then synced with your other Apple devices and your computers running iTunes.

That’s a brilliant (and obvious) solution to the photo problem: once you take a picture, how do you get it to the device where you want to display it? It’s not difficult but it’s not automatic, either. […] continued

Not everything works with everything else.

Your expectations have changed so quickly that you might not have noticed. It wasn’t long ago that most people used a single PC at a single location and were content to leave the data on that computer behind when they left that desk. When you closed Outlook on the office computer, you didn’t expect to open up the same mailbox at home. If you had files to work on at home, you’d burn them to a CD or copy them to a USB drive or email them to your home email address. You might have gotten a notebook if you expected to be mobile but the data on it was still mostly separate from your other computers and devices. […] continued

Everyone might get something useful out of David Pogue’s column today for the New York Times, a collection of tips and tricks for cellphones and computers. Some of them are basic, some won’t apply, but I’ll bet you find a pearl or two that give you an “A Ha!” moment.

Random examples:

• Do you know what the strange pictures are that turn up in advertisements, like the one above? They’re “QR codes” – take a picture of them with a special app on your iPhone or Android phone (e.g. Google Goggles), and you’ll be taken to a web page.
• Microsoft runs a free voice-activated business directory at (800) BING-411.

[…] continued

SUMMARY

Google Tasks is a simple, free way to keep a to do list. If you have a Gmail.com address, you can click here to see a more useful view of the Google Tasks list. You can see your to do list on an iPhone or Android phone by going to gmail.com/tasks with the browser on the phone.

Your to do list is probably on a post-it note or scrap of paper on your desk.

In part that’s because of failures by Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft has always had a “Tasks” section in Outlook but it’s poorly designed out of the box and I rarely see it used. […] continued

Previously:
Sync Files With Dropbox
Dropbox For iPad, Android
Dropbox, Androids, And Security
Dropbox Updated To Version 1.0
Sharing Files With Dropbox

Last summer I put Dropbox on my Android phone, then panicked when I realized confidential documents were unsecured and only a click away on a device that was easy to misplace.

Today I installed a new release of the Dropbox app for Android from the Google Apps market with confidence. Dropbox has added lightweight security that is sufficient for my level of paranoia.

Dropbox was already an essential utility for anyone who uses more than one computer. What’s the next step beyond “essential”?

[…] continued