I spent significant time personalizing the iPad Mini last night, trying to make it “mine” and usable. I think Mr. W believes that if I gave it more of a chance and really worked with it, I’d see how wonderful Apple products are and jump in his bandwagon and make claims about how Apple truly “makes a superior product.” The end result…the more I use this Apple, the more I appreciate my Android.

Let me point out first that I would not have gotten an Android tablet. I wouldn’t have gotten any tablet because with my Galaxy S3, any tablet would just be redundant to me. But I can see why Mr. W would want a tablet on top of his smartphone, since he needs objects/words to be visually larger in order to be comfortable viewing them. I’m not there. People with iPhones are always amazed at the larger size screen of the Galaxy S3 Android phone. That being said, if I WERE to have a tablet, I think it makes sense to get one of a different system like Apple so that things I can’t get on Android, I can get on Apple. For one, Apple has an app called Stream To Me that allows the Apple device to stream videos, photos, movies from our home PC to the remote device. I’m not sure if Android has something like that, I haven’t really explored it, but hubby’s already spent time and money on the Stream To Me thing so that’s what we used on Allie’s iPad and everyone else’s iPads. (I haven’t been able to test this, tho, cuz I can’t get Stream To Me to work on the Mini presently.)

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten to know Apple better, I’m not any more impressed. In fact, I have new complaints that I never knew about because I’d never spent enough time with an Apple product to know about these shortcomings, until now.
* No “menu” button. I’m not able to bring up submenus and options within an app, which I can do on Android by tapping the menu button or by long-pressing within the app. But I guess there’s no point in having a menu button on the iPad anyway, because…
* No way to edit functions within an app. Are you kidding? There’s no way to modify display options of email (I can’t even find a “delete” option when I check my emails), I can’t modify how my people are displayed in Contacts, I can’t add calendars in Calendar! No, I have to go to Settings, then look for the app I need to modify within Settings, go into those options there, and then hope there’s an option for what I need to do, such as display my Contacts in order by first name instead of last name. I also found out I can’t just “add” a calendar within Calendar (I wanted to get US Holidays to automatically display in the Calendar without having to input all the holidays every year manually); I have to go into…yup, Settings, then select Calendar, and then go thru a couple of more screens to “subscribe” to an existing calendar by entering the website address of the particular iCalendar. It worked, but altho there’s the whisper of some mystical place where one can get many different types of iCalendars to incorporate into a personal iPad/Mac calendar such as sports game schedules, I have yet to be able to find such a list of addresses or menu of calendars I can add. I only found the address of the US Holidays calendar because some random on YouTube posted it (ical.mac.com/ical/US32Holidays.ics, for anyone as frustrated as I was, and I found out it’s case-sensitive *eyeroll*). Which brings me to…
* No “back” button. You know how many screens I have to go thru to get to the spot where I need to enter that calendar address? Let’s count them. Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Add Account -> Other -> Add Subscribed Calendar -> Subscription. Six screens. Six before you can enter that address I gave you up there. If you mis-touch somewhere else on your journey and the wrong screen pops up, all you (or I, as I found) can do is hit the one and only function button on the whole thing, the round “Home” button, to go back to the general “desktop,” and you have to start your sojourn all over again.
Android has a “back” button, not that you’d have to go thru this on Android because you’d just press the “menu” button within the app and voila, all the options for modification show up!
* Basic apps are different, in a suckier way. Apple seems to advocate more commercialism. I can’t play Candy Crush Saga on the Candy Crush Saga app without it forcing me to simultaneously be logged into the social networking site it’s affiliated with, AND it forces me to allow the app to post all my game-playing info on the social networking site. I’d have to litter my friends’ feeds with crap like, “Cindy just gave life in Candy Crush Saga!” “Cindy just mixed a Striped Candy with another Striped Candy!” “Cindy just passed level 164!” I see that all the time since a lot of my social networking friends play Candy Crush Saga and I’ve always wondered why they’re posting all that crap, and now I know it’s because they’re playing on an iDevice and have no choice. I went around and around in a loop pressing “skip” when it requests me to post my game stats on the social networking site, then it’d take me to the game screen but immediately take me back to the “post stats” screen. I deleted the Candy Crush Saga app because it won’t let me play without announcing to everyone else that I’m playing. (I found an option for the game stats to just post for myself and not on public feed, but I don’t to litter my own feed with game crap, either.) On Android, I play the game independently of the social networking site and it just syncs my game with the info there every so often so that I can continue on the same progress when I switch between playing on the PC vs Android phone.
And the social networking app? It wants to announce to everyone that I’m online and available to chat. I don’t want people to know I’m online and available to chat. I have that option turned off on the PC and my Android phone, but I’ve looked it up and there’s NO WAY to turn it off on the Apple app. No privacy. I will not be doing any regular surfing of the networking site via the iPad Mini, either.
* Cumbersome keyboard. Really, Apple? You think if I were typing words, that I wouldn’t need all my punctuation on the same keyboard as my letters? I have to go to a separate keyboard display for an apostrophe, hyphen or a quote mark? You know where it is on the Android keyboard? Apostrophe’s above the period, hyphen’s above the comma, quotation mark’s above the L. To access them, I simply long-press on that key or I press “shift” first. Or I can Swype it, in which case I simply draw to the key when I’m drawing a line letter-to-letter in forming my word and the correct usage would just come up automatically. Swype is not something Apple knows anything about.
* No Flash/videos. I can’t see the videos on this blog in the iPad Mini. I can’t see my own videos on the social networking site either thru the Internet on the iPad or thru the social networking site’s app itself. I think I’m doing something wrong here, since too many people use their Apple products to get on the social networking site for me to think that none of them are viewing videos. But that goes to show how not user-friendly this stuff is to not just WORK on its own because I’ve opened the app. (My Android phone just plays the videos with a tap.)
* Adding Contacts isn’t automatic. I’ve added my Gmail account. It doesn’t just infuse my contacts into the Contacts app, the way it did with my social networking site contacts once I connected with the app? I still have to type in my contacts manually? I thought maybe when I’m in Mail, that my Gmail contacts would just be there even tho they don’t show up in Contacts, but nope; the email address book only has contacts that are in the Contacts app address book. I did not have this problem on Android. On Android, I connected to Gmail, to the social networking site, and my phone service, and Android’s Contacts incorporated all 3 address books into one, AND I can pick how I want the contacts displayed/grouped while I’m IN Android’s Contacts.
* No widgets. The Calendar app icon is sort of a widget because it does show the current date. But that’s it. On Android, I have a widget for my workout app so that the icon representation of the app shows my calorie burn thus far in the day; I have a widget for my calendar so that it not only gives me the day and date, but a preview of the upcoming events on calendar in the next week so I have it at-a-glance without opening the app itself; I have a weather widget that shows the time, current temperature and weather of the location(s) I choose in a pretty picture and a brief word, and to see other preset locations’ weather, I just flip my finger across the widget and it scrolls thru my preset locations. If there’s a way to get widgets on iPad, I haven’t found it. On Android, I can long-press and select “add Widget,” I can hit the “Menu” button and go to “Add apps and widgets,” or I can add the widget within the app itself.

I’m sure there are more things/irritations that have frustrated me that I’m not recalling right now. An interesting angle, tho — a high school friend, Alan, was trying to help me with the Apple calendar issue (altho I’d already found the holiday calendar address by the time he wrote me, telling me the exact same instructions), and he wrote:

I’ve had an Android phone before, and I loved it too, so no biases here on my part. Dare I say it, I consider Android more “techy” than Apple OS… so your inner-geek might be the one revolting against Apple.
The way I see it, I recommend Apple to people I know who don’t like fooling with tech (usually don’t check email much, still write notes by hand, don’t work with computers, etc), and Android to people who are more comfortable with tech.

I responded:

It’s so weird to think my inner geek may be revolting. Geeks are so self-righteous. *sigh* So you think I’m actually upset because Apple makes things too remedial for the control I want? I’ve just been thinking it’s not user-friendly enough cuz I can’t find the options I want for the mods/personalizations I want.

Alan:

That’s exactly right. Apple’s motto is “simplicity”. So they hide the customization rather than inundate the non-techy people with it. It’s still there, just gotta look for it. Which is why I disliked the Mac when switching from a PC. But once you figure out their M.O. It all makes sense.

And then my lightbulb:

Then I don’t understand why all my geeky friends love Apple.
Oh wait…is this why they jailbreak?!

Mr. W’s Apple everything is jailbroken. Same with other techy friends’ iDevices. Mine is not. My mom had someone jailbreak her iPad but had so many problems with it (she’s not a techie) that Mr. W restored it back to the original form. I don’t have to jailbreak, or “root,” as it’s called in Android, my Galaxy S3 because everything I want to customize is offered in built-in options already. To this day, I still occasionally accidentally find a menu or option on my Android and I’d think, “I didn’t know about this! It’s genius!” Or sometimes Allie does something and when I get my phone back I’m like, “What’s THAT? I didn’t know I could have that!” I don’t want to jailbreak the iPad, I don’t want to be some sneaky techy pirate, I just want my stuff to function in a way that I think they should function without my having to rewrite the software for them.

OH. One hardware thing. Why does the iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone all use super-exclusively-sized charger heads? So Apple can make more money selling connectors, chargers, adapters, accessories like radios and speakers that the device is supposed to dock into? You know what I charge my Galaxy S3 Android phone with? At home, the charger it came with when upstairs, the USB charger/cord for the Galaxy S (1st generation) when downstairs by the computer, the USB charger/cord for the KINDLE when at work. Yes. They’re standard. Apple has always been about building their own exclusive monopolistic bubble (hence, iTunes for everything, no open-source apps unless jailbroken). So now I have to take the iPad’s charger everywhere.

Best thing I can say about the iPad Mini right now? It’s beautiful. There’s no shortage of accessories on the market to play dress-up with Apple.

See?