Covered Topics

Please see the list of the topics I've covered. It's located near the bottom of the page. Thanks for stopping in!!

Friday, September 14, 2018

A Serious Question for Android and Apple iPad Developers

This is a serious question and I'd like a serious, straight answer from someone directly involved in development of Apple iPad/iPhone and Android platforms.

I've owned Android phones for several years. I've owned an iPad for a little over a year. I love them both, albeit for different functions. And I use them productively every day. But I also have a major beef with both systems: NEITHER device has a DECENT file manager app for sorting one's photos or other files into folders for organization and quick retrieval. ANY other platform I have ever used - Windows, Mac OX_X, LINUX ALL have decent file manager apps whereby one can create a folder and stuff it with whatever files you need/want in it. That way you do NOT simply have a HUGE folder with every file you have ever created in one huge mess that you have to sort through whenever you want to find a particular file. On my laptop I have folders such as "Lake Cabin Summer 2016", or "Industrial Rectifiers", … that I stored photos to so I can rapidly find them. [Who wants photos taken at your friend's lake house mixed in with industrial rectifiers?] But not so with my Android phone or my iPad. They are all in one HUGE PILE that I have to sort through whenever I want to find one picture. I use the camera on my Android phone on a daily basis at work to document how something is wired or assembled before I tear it down for repair - or for that matter, how it looks when I'm done. I also have pictures on that phone I have taken on family holidays, as well as of stuff I'm doing in my home lab or the work I'm doing restoring an old Chevy truck I recently acquired.

What has happened though is that when I want to show somebody a picture of something I did a couple years ago in my home lab, or if I need to pull up something I did weeks or months ago at work, or I want to show a buddy at a social gathering what I've done on my Chevy, I have to thumb through DOZENS or even HUNDREDS of photos I've taken since then to find it. For such an otherwise useful device, this aspect is a royal PAIN to deal with.

WHY CAN'T you folks give us a simple and usable FILE MANAGER so we can organize the photos we take on our mobile devices???? A simple drag and drop of the photo [or any other file] to a folder of one's own making would help so much. Heck, I'd PAY a few dollars EXTRA for my devices to have this functionality!

Inquiring minds wanna know.

Two Major Windows 10 Annoyances

In December of 2016, I bought a HP laptop with Windows 10 on it. One of the things I quickly found out about Windows 10 is that they have removed many of the adjustments or tweaks I used to be able to make. One of these is being able to schedule WHEN or IF an update was applied. This was useful to me for several reasons: One was that I'd usually wait a couple weeks to be sure that whatever update being pushed didn't cause major issues - if it did, at least the "early adopters" found out the hard way rather than me. Another reason I liked being able to set my own schedule is that when I need my computer for writing a major paper for school or doing a report for work, it's awfully nice to NOT have the computer tied up installing an update when I need it. Alas, with this latest version of Windows, Micro$oft decided it knows better than I do when and how I should use my PC.

Tonight, I planned to work on some online homework for a college class I am taking. When I opened the laptop, instead of being greeted by my desktop photo and a functioning computer ready to work, I found a green screen with a circle of dots spinning around and the message "Working on Updates 45% Don't turn off your PC. This will take a while". NOT what I needed to see when I'm working on a deadline!!

The second thing that I found very annoying is that when I bought this laptop, it was fast - NOT blindingly super fast, but nice. But within 6 months - after a couple minor software updates from Micro$oft, the thing had slowed down A BUNCH. Adding more RAM helped some, as did installing and using a free app called "CC Cleaner". One can do a Google search for this and find it easily. But it still is a pale shadow of what it was when I brought it home that first evening.

I originally got this because I needed something less expensive than a $1500 MacBook Air, but I'm thinking I'd sooner make payments on a credit card bill for a MacBook than put up with this nonsense. Even if I forked up $800+ for a better laptop, if it isn't an Apple I'll STILL be putting up with Windows and Micro$oft.