Ipad VS Android? Sort of.

Before I begin this I want to express my heartfelt sadness at the passing of Steve Jobs. Such an innovative genius of a man who will be sadly missed. It's a very sad goodbye to an icon of my life.

I'm really in a tough position here. Either way I go about this I am either a U-turning cunt, or, I hate my own product.

Recently as some of you (IE - none) would have read, I got an Android tablet. The particular model was a Hannspree Hannspad and that will be sort of important as I go on. Any way, I dropped said Hannspad breaking it irrepairably in a completely freak accident. That then spelled the end of that and I was left with the most vile and horrid withdrawl symptons imaginable. Loss of sleep, boredom and sadness to name but a few. It was like losing a personal friend, because that is what it had become in its short life. So it was time to consider either leaving the idea completely or getting another one. I decided on the latter.

At least my £145 and Ryan's £8 hadn't completely gone to waste. Usually when I buy something along these lines it's either hit or miss and very quickly I end up with something that just sits there gathering dust. A Wii and numerous other items over the past couple of years failed to make the grade and I am now stuck with them. I know I could sell them but Ebay isn't an option with Paypal's stoic treating of those who sell things on Ebay. Inanimate objects I have had no problem with but electronics are a nightmare. Phones, computer parts, Ipads ; you name it. Basically I am sad to confess that our world is full of nasty greedy cunts who will fuck you over in a heartbeat to use your product to repair theirs and then use Paypal to force you to refund them, even if they have broken the law.

Paypal are a law unto themselves, who brag about your money being safe with them and insured actually offer no such service. Basically as a friend of mine found out recently (when he got ripped off and a bricked phone returned to him) there is no insurance. Paypal will first try and perform a snatch refund from your account (if you verified it) and if you didn't they will simply put your account at -£ amount and then send a bailiff after you to recover their money. They lose nothing, they leave that down to the seller to do.

So, it's quite obvious to see why I refuse to sell electrical items on there, and why I end up stuck with them unless I find a friend of family member looking for said item. This is all caused by my owning three personal computers that are so powerful and able to perform pretty much every life function that I simply don't need anything else. Pop over to my recent write up about tablets and you will see why I find them necessary.

Any way, let's get into this now shall we?

Firstly the Ipad is better than my Hannspad. That is going to be blatantly obvious because it is a superior product in every way. However, before you accuse me of an unfair and unbalanced bashing of said Hannspad let me just mention that it is also superior to the Motorola Xoom Android tablet also. When Ryan was here his tablet weapon of choice was said Motorola Xoom and I can now say it is inferior due to said reasons.

The Xoom is heavy. Very, very heavy. Infact it was heavier than my Hannspad, making prolonged use very uncomforable. The screen viewing angles on both Android tablets (both the Xoom and Hannspad) were terrible and if you wanted to show a buddy what you were up to (show off that new app or background) you literally had to hold it right in their face. This is somewhat a good idea, because these tablets are a personal device so you wouldn't want prying eyes peering into what you are doing in public, but a real annoyance when watching, say, a video in bed. Trying to hold it in the perfect position to see it properly is a chore.

Now I didn't use the Xoom too much so I can't really offer opinion on the touch part itself, but what I do know is that the Ipad is better in everyway when it comes to interracting with the screen. Ryan will tell you himself how much I growled and became annoyed at the clunkiness of the Hannspad's screen. It required quite a lot of force to get it to do what you wanted it to, so you couldn't prop it up and use both hands to type on it with. You had to hold it in one whilst poking at it quite roughly. The Ipad is also about half the weight yet doesn't creek and feels rather sturdy.

So that's the hardware part out of the way. Let's look at what is important - the GUI or OS.

There are a few things I don't like about either, but I will put across the good and the bad on both. Let's start with the OS used on many tablets -

Android 3.X Honeycomb

My first harsh criticism is the Google Appstore itself. Something it did made me very fucking angry indeed. When I set up my tablet I signed up for a Google account using my Zen ISP email address. I was browsing the store and saw Worms for 69p. I thought "hey, fucking bargain I will buy that" so I clicked buy. At which point a message came up thanking me for my purchase. FUCKING WHAT? where did it get the money from?

After a lot of panic and worry I realised that about a year ago I used Google checkout when making a purchase online (for a computer fan). Somehow Google had stored my credit card information for that long and then synced it with my Appstore account with no warning or even a mention of where it was getting the money from. I could have gone fucking overdrawn - NOT COOL.

Not only that but every time I opened up the store I could just download willy nilly and it asked for nothing. What would happen if you lost the device? well some cunt could simply clean your bank account buying apps.

The actual system of Android is very good though, but the flakey security and way it stores your details are just totally fucking whack.

Apps on Honeycomb are very good, with lots of amateurish stuff on there. I particularly liked an erotic storybook I downloaded free that was full of filthy stories. I'm into that kind of stuff, see. I like how it is laid out and it works rather well, though I did have some issues with apps not working. I also noted that older apps not designed for the Tegra chip it was running did not work very well and were prone to crashing. I guess this is the price you pay on a device that will constantly change and evolve.

Apple Ios

Is better. Sorry, it really is as simple as that. What sucks though is that to create an account for it (and download anything) you must register a credit card. What is annoying about this is that it takes £2.40 from that card to make sure it's genuine (even though it uses Verisign !) and my card of choice did not have £2.40 on so it kept rejecting it. In the end I got there, though.

The OS itself is more dumbed down in appearance, but that's fine. This is, after all, a dumbed down computer so I really don't want piles of stuff to tweak. It runs smoother, apps run perfectly (due to the hardware being the same across the board) and the Apple store itself is very nice. It is missing all of the third party stuff though, and that definitely goes against it. However, as usual Apple really do know how to make an operating system and this is no exception on the Ipad. I have owned several Apple computers, and each one was bought literally for the operating system. Clean, simple to use, no fuss and most importantly it works - unlike Windows.

It also allows for theft reporting, which then nukes the Ios and all of your precious data. This is absolutely crucial on a device like this IMO. It also asks for your password every time you download anything (even if it's free !) and so I must admit I feel far safer in the hands of Apple.

So that pretty much sums it up folks. I prefer my Ipad in every way. Not just because it looks nicer than any Android tablet I have experienced, nor that it is lighter and better quality, nor that the screen is incredible or the sound is fantastic, or that the software is better.

But simply because it is better. Not from a fan boy stance, not from a "I own this so it's better ner ner ner" but simply because in the cold light of day it is a superior product in every way.

This doesn't mean that Android devices are redundant, because they are wonderful things (if you can get over Google stalking the shit out of you) and in most cases they can be considerably cheaper than an Ipad. But the cold fact is that the Ipad is better.