Cruising the Stratosphere

What a time to be alive! 

Right now we are witnessing the attack on our Democracy by a president has the lowest integrity that we have ever seen. We are also witnessing a Congress GOP that is toting the line of complicity along with him. There have been a few to speak out against the insanity, but only a few and only for so long. The others are just towing the line and doing his bidding. It makes you wonder why they are doing it. Who is paying them? Where is the leverage that is causing them to be a part of this heresy? It is there somewhere. Even with the threat of losing the midterms elections for those of them that are at risk of losing their seat, we are still seeing a surprising sense of fortitude in continuing the push of their tainted agenda. 

I really hope that we see a wave of Blue in the Midterm elections take over many of these red states. The country desperately needs to shut this agenda down.  It is doing nothing except to hurt the country and the lionshare of Americans. It is sad that we have allowed this craziness to get this far, isn’t it? Or maybe this is how the churning of Democracy works: the ruling party gets to run with their agenda for as long as they can and of course, there are the death cries whenever they are called to task for the things that they have been getting away with. I know that when we look at history, maybe it’s true that the Dems orchestrated unfair practices when it comes to seeking justice in regards to President Bill Clinton and his affairs while he was in office. However, when we compare notes of what he was doing while sitting in The Oval with what Mr. Trump is doing, is there any comparison? If we were to put the charges side by side, would we see that they are of the same caliber or are they drastically different when it comes to the crimes committed? Are there crimes on both sides or is it a case of bad judgment and behavior with the first and actually real, true to life crimes with the second? Which president is accused of crimes against the United States and stands in violation of the Constitution? I think we know which is which.

We live in a surreal reality to say the least. I wouldn’t even think it was true if you told me of this in another space and time from our collective past, and yet it is. 

I think that for those who lived through the Nixon Era as adults and saw first hand what was happening to our Country and what that crisis put the Nation through will not be fooled. It’s interesting that a lot of Trump’s base consists of people who, indeed, did live through Nixon Era politics and it’s my bet that they are not fooled. I think a lot of them believe that they were sold a bill of goods and a large majority of those voters are having ‘buyer’s remorse’. I think that we have already seen evidence of that by the flipping of many seats already in this past year in our Congress from Red to Blue. I sincerely hope that we, as Republicans and Democrats, going forward will work together and create National Policies that benefit our Country, strengthen our Democracy improving the lives and families of all of us and Restores our Democratic standing on the World Stage. 

We need to do it fast. This populist agenda and extreme right-wing movement is taking a wrecking ball to our Constitution and our American Way of Life: Our Democracy is at stake. Nothing less. 

 I can say that I am still happy to have made the decision to give pure Android a hearty try. I love it. Yes, despite the fact that I have always heard from Android users that you "can do more" with Adroid over iPhone, I find out that, alas, it Is True. It may not sound like much to iPhone owners out there and there may be many that could give a care about the fact that Android gives the user access to file system heiarchy and storage in the device, but believe it or not this comes up more times than you would think. There were many times that I would think, "if only I were on my computer right now I could do ______________ with ______________." Those days are almost totally gone. With Android I can do the file conversions On Device rather than jump on my MacMiniServer to transcribe a file to an accepted format for my iPhone. There are ocassional times where I would want to download and save a voicemail on my iPhone in order to share or manipulate the file in some way and I never could. Once again I would have to get on my computer to truly pull those audio files off of my iPhone. With Android that's as easy as eating ice cream. Or maybe you want to change the source location for a file on your phone, just like you can on a computer. Well, with iPhone, you can't actuallly do that TRULY. You may be able to copy a file from one location to another, but you can't change the source location, which can be irritating. I did feel ocassionally technically hamstrung with iPhone. I no longer feel that way.

Yes, the Nexus 6 requires a bit more hands on involvement (because the device is two years old in technical design) to keep it running super smoothly, but I am happy to oblige and frankly, I am technically bent anyhow. Funny, how that sounds like a genetic condition that you'd want to be rid of, but it's not and in this case it's very helpful. Every so often, I've chosen to wipe the cache partition of the device's storage to maintain the overall computing speed of the device: a small price to pay for all the freedoms that I enjoy.

I am currently awaiting Google's Pixel XL that is set to arrive tomorrow and I imagine that this device will wipe away any kind of extensive user involvement required in order to maintain it's speedy operational style......at least for a while.

There is nothing that makes me pine for iPhone. In fact, I don't pine for it at all and the only places that I reflect about iPhone is in the system UI (Cocoa and what not) and the springiness of the apps. That's it. Google's AI is more advanced and conversational than Siri and yes, I have come to use the AI a lot and Google's services are, as you would expect, better integrated into the phone from the Floor up and that is extremely pleasing, smooth and luxurious for the user.

I would say that the grass is not neccessarily 'greener' on the other side of the 'fence', but it is certainly Just as 'Green'.

RAM--

One thing that I have noticed here with my Nexus 6 running Android N (NPD56N), Developer Preview 4, is that since this phone has 3 gigs of RAM I notice that web pages are cached for longer despite having a lot of other apps open in the background. What this means for the average user is that you can go back to a webpage to the work you were doing without the page totally refreshing and wiping out your current progress, whether that be a form that you are filling out or picking up in the exact place in a video that you were watching in Chrome or whatever. It's very nice. When on an iPad, I have always had to be careful when multi-tasking not to stretch iOS too far (,i.e. go back to the app that I want) to keep the information persistent (and then switch back to the app where my current focus lies), otherwise the OS will drop the cached info and when I go back it refreshes the page and wipes all the progress I have made. I have noticed this the most in Safari. I have always attributed this behavior to iOS not having more RAM. I am not sure if this is the 'complete reason'; it probably is not. I am not a programmer and so I do not know the inter workings of these particulars when programming, but what I can tell you is that it is nice not to have to be so timid when traipsing around the apps on your device, multi-tasking from this process to that.

Battery Life--

Battery life is better on iPhone 6S Plus, for sure, but if it's between certain enhanced abilities on the Nexus versus a longer battery life with more curtailed actions on the iPhone, I will gladly suffer having to be battery conscious over not being able to do what I want to do. The Nexus with Stock Android behaves more like a computer where you can get apps from wherever you want, not that you will, but you can...and that's a nice feeling.

App Store--

Why can't iOS have a security toggle that allows you to 'get apps from other sources' or something similar to the way that MacOS handles that issue? Why do I have to go the route of Jailbreaking the device or the long way around of installing a 'profile' for each app developer that has an app that I would like to run? There is an easier way to do this. It's not that I mind installing security profiles, but why does the process have to be so arduous?

Messages--

Now this is something that Google needs to nail down. There have been a lot of supposed solutions with nothing really taking care of the thing: Hangouts, Messenger, etc. Can we have One App that handles all of our messaging needs kind of like iMessage does for iOS? Apple 'sandwiches' the phone number and the Apple ID to create this cohesion (out of sight) for the user. Did they copyright the process? Probably. Is that why Google has not done something similar with the phone number and your Google Acct.? Even within Hangouts all this is separated for the user: SMS, MMS and just plain ol' Hangouts. The user has to choose which he/she is going to send. They have to be conscious if their user is an iPhone user or Android and choose the correct channel. This is ridiculous. Hopefully the Allo app that Google is about to release will change all this. We'll see. One thing if for sure: Messaging needs to be simpler on Android. The user just needs to type, add media if they want and send to one user or many, period. Yay, for iOS. You do this perfectly.

...On with more testing......

Ciáo!

I didn't set out to want to 'jump ship' on the iPhone. I am a proponent of iOS and the iPhone and have been eversince the iPhone 3G. But if I am honest, I have never really given 'Pure Android', i.e. Google's Android Experience--The Nexus line of phones and tablets--a true go. I am doing that now and it actually started out as an accident because I bought the Nexus phone that I am currently using in order to support some software that I was potentially going to need for some work. Well, the work fell through, but I still have the device.

What initially brought me to giving Nexus and Google's Assistant (Google's AI), which feature set I happen to use quite a lot in iOS through Siri, was the fact that the Google AI is able to do a lot more for the user than Siri can currently do for iOS users. I've heard a lot of people say that they don't use the Assistants all that much on either side of the OS fences, but I do and their penetration into our daily lives is only going to increase as the technology becomes more and more integrated into the products and services that we use everyday. Google has let their AI out of the bag quite a bit more than Apple has let out the leash on Siri. How this translates for me is in the simple helpfulness of everyday tasks. Google Now is able to help me, while Siri politely tells me, "I'm sorry Sean, I cannot do that". When has this happened? When I am asking Siri to turn down the volume on my Bluetooth connected speaker system while I am washing dishes in the kitchen. Siri cannot help me with this, but on Google's AI with a Nexus phone, the assistant is happy to oblige (having access to the device's settings controls). This is something that is off-limits for Siri. Siri can create or turn off alarms, and Bluetooth but that's about it when it comes to asking for help with device settings. Google's AI also has contextual awareness when conversing with you. This is huge. It means that when you ask an initial question with "Ok Google" and then once you have the answer, you follow up with another question about the subject matter in the question, you will not have to reiterate the subject matter in the phrasing of the second question---Google will understand to what you are referring and just give you the answer. This is so much easier. Talking with Siri is sometimes similar to talking to someone with mid-stage Alzheimer's or Dementia. I'm sorry for the analogy, but once you start using Google's AI on a Nexus device, you'll quickly understand the feeling that I'm referring to here.

Pure Android operates more like a computer where you have free reign to change granular settings for individual apps and what they have 'permission' to do or access in regards to your device. With iOS you have to accept the app permissions as a whole packet when you instal the app. You cannot go back and change a permission or two to disallow this or that or accept this or that action. With Android you can change the permissions either initially by disallowing the permission request from the pop-up when the app opens for the first time or by opening the permissions list in app system settings (main phone settings under apps>*app name*>permissions) later. I'm not sure if earlier versions of Android were 'sandboxed', but I'm running Android N developer beta on my Nexus and Google says that this system is. The Nexus phones are also encrypted by default now. That's nice in my estimation. Why? Because you can leave app permissions as they are (and Be Sure and Read Them Prior to Install) and as long as you only install apps from the Google Play store (and keep 'Allow Apps from Unknown Sources' toggled "off" in Settings>Security) with high ratings, you should be secure. iOS makes it so that you don't have to think about any of this and there's something to be said for that, but it's a trade off: (Oversimplified) Plug and Play with a Choosy Assistant or Complete Control (hands on the wheel) with the attention that requires)) with an Integrated, Higher Security Clearance Assistant.

 Afteryears with the former, right now I'm enjoying a prolonged test drive with the latter.

Note/Disclaimer: I am technically minded and so I love having more of hands-on approach with my technology. It's certainly not for everyone. If you are the kind of person that gets 'mad' at your devices when they will not do this or that for you then perhaps iOS is better for you on the whole. If, when something is not working like you expected it to work OR like it has 'always worked' in the past and you find that 'interesting' and then put on your 'Tech Sleuth' hat and get down to figuring it out with a kind of excitement, then maybe you would enjoy the experience of Android, which both allows you and your apps more free reign, but also 'can' require a little more of your involvement.  

If you've had an issue enabling this feature on your iOS devices, you're not alone. I, personally, found that my second iPad Air 2 was not able to make these phone calls over LTE when my iPhone was off or not near me. I had followed AT&T's directions to a 'T' and still, I was not able to make it happen. All the settings on my iPhone 6S Plus and iPad Air 2 were exactly as they requested and yet it was not working.

If you are like me, you've probably thought, "Well, that's okay. Apple's 'continuity' Feature is enough for me. After all, that allows calling on the iPad when the iPhone is nearby and both devices are on wi-fi, which for all intents and purposes is going to cover most use-case scenarios."

Well, fortunately you don't have to settle for that. Number Sync allows you to make calls on iPads and Apple Watch as well as Mac OS X devices (when all devices are running the correct version of the OS AND when they are on the compatible list ) when the phone is off (or away from you) and whether or not the iPad is on Wi-Fi. Note: for the Watch to work, you have to be in a 'known' wi-if network zone, i.e. you have to have used the watch and phone together in that same place in the past while the phone was on that wi-if network at that time, otherwise the watch will not have that network in its 'know network' list in its software. Before you ask, no, there is no way that you can look at that list on the watch or edit it.

So...the one detail that was missing in AT&T's instructions was that when you turn on wi-if calling on the secondary device (tablet), IT MUST BE ON WI-FI when provisioning the wi-if calling. To me, this was not necessarily common sense (, to you, it may be). I had my device on LTE through the whole process, thinking that it was the LTE Network that was provisioning this Number Sync feature and had nothing to do with my personal wi-if home network. Alas, I was wrong. I had turned all the settings on, but still the process was stuck on this last 'provisioning step' on the iPad. I turned the features all off and started over again on the iPhone and iPad. Finally, it occurred to me to flip on the wi-if on my tablet. The moment I did that, everything clicked into place and the provisioning was complete. I then tried the feature on all devices, turning my iPhone 6S Plus off and making a regular phone call with my iPad Air 2 on LTE. It worked seamlessly. I also tried it on my Apple Watch since I was at home and my Network would be a known Network to the Watch. Also, that worked seamlessly as well.

Yay. Success.

I hope this little detail might help some of you that may have been stymied by this feature to find resolution like it did me.