Sliding between Apple OS’s and Android

A Mac user and an Android slider

Due to these of increased use of mobile computing devices such as the iPhone, iPad and also Android devices, it is not surprising that many computer users are finding themselves computing on the move. This could be a good thing that you are spending less time sitting at a desk and getting out and about enjoying the world. During the summertime here in Catalonia I work at a campsite and because of this I do spend less time sitting in front of my iMac anyway. I still want to do some computer-based work such as posting to social networks, recording audio and video and where possible also do some writing. I am still incredibly fond of my iPad and I find that I carry it around the house most of the time. There are so many things that I can still do with a mobile device while I’m sitting down on the sofa or even when I am standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil for a cup of tea.

 

For the last four years or so I have been using the iPhone as my always on my person, carry around computer and the latest one was the iPhone 4. I would have liked to have bought the iPhone 5 but it was way out of my price range and so for one year I had to opt for something that was less than the latest and greatest of the smart phones. I use dictation of the lot on my iMac and it is only natural therefore that I want to use dictation also as much as possible on my mobile computers. It was possible to a certain extent to do dictation with the iPhone 4 using the DragonDictate application and it actually worked quite well. It did seem to be a little bit of a hassle to have to swap from one application to another doing the copy and paste of any text I created. So this year I decided that it was time to upgrade to something more suited to my needs and the Galaxy S3 by Samsung was the one that I chose.

I did an Andy Inhatko

The well-known writer for the Chicago Sun Times recently ditched his iPhone for the Samsung Galaxy S3. He is generally a very intelligent writer and commentator on the Apple side of things and so was quite a surprise for a lot of people. He even wrote a three-part article on his website detailing all of the reasons why he made the change. My own reasons for going with the S3 are quite simple, in that I wanted a phone with a larger screen. I wanted a phone that would do Siri like functionality, a phone that I could talk to and interact with in that way. It was time to have something more modern than the iPhone 4 and to be honest the iPhone 5 didn’t really make the grade. I could have waited until the autumn of this year and gone for the next Apple iPhone, but I seriously doubt that there is going to be anything that is will be a big step up from what is available already.

I find now that when I go back to the iPad to do things while I’m in the house there are one of two things that I miss from the Android system. Most missed item from Android when I use my iPad is the keyboard, I use the Android Swift Key alternative keyboard which is absolutely amazing and quite phenomenal in its ability to predict not just the word that I am presently typing, but also the word that follows. I can often type in one whole complete word with just one tap. I’m also finding that the dictation service is better than the dictation service that comes with Siri. If it makes a guess at a word and it is incorrect then I get more options to change it to make it the word that I wanted.

I do find that I am often tempted to carry the Android phone around the house to use rather than the iPad, but that is mostly due to weight considerations. On the other hand, I do think that I could also be tempted by the new Nexus 7 when it arrives. I don’t think that I would want to get rid of my iPad there are still some applications on there that I would really miss. The video editing applications such as iMovie and Pinnacle for iPad would be sorely missed, as would the text entry application Drafts.

Sliding between the two systems

I have found that the easiest way to slide between the two is for me to use a Google email address as my main email address whereas before I was using and iCloud one. I do it this way because on the iPad I can get to my Google email and Google plus just as easy as if I was using it on the Android. I haven’t found it so easy to connect up to the iCloud email through the Android Galaxy S3.

By using Dropbox I have access to all of my files and I have found an app which is called Draft which has some similar capabilities to the similarly named Drafts that I use on iOS. Draft isn’t as good as Drafts, but it is at least workable for the things as I do most often, such as posting to the social networks. So any writing that I do on the iPad I can get to on the S3 and continue working and because I’m using markdown it is quite simple for me to send work in the other direction also.

Whatever application I’m in when using Android, I have excellent sharing facilities which are better than on iOS. I get the option to make a temporary or permanent choice of which application I want to use when doing a particular type of share.

I have been a big user of Audioboo for the last few months and the application on the Galaxy S3 is not anywhere near as good as the one on iOS. This is a big disappointment but considering the Android app is a beta application there are good possibility is that it will improve considerably over time. I have found an audio editing application Audio Evolution Mobile which isn’t quite as good as Twisted Wave on iOS, but is a multitrack editing solution which does the job.