Rotten Apple vs. Short Circuiting Robot…Part 2...Battle of the innards

From where we left off, I think I made a solid case for why the iPad 2 is not good a tablet as the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 and most Apple fanboys would beg to differ. Now I offer you part 2, dissection of the core of these devices, the operation systems.

 UI vs UE

The iOS user interface and user experience are much too plain in my view. The app icons, app animations and home screens on Apple’s beloved bore me. Maybe if the added live wallpapers and icons that weren’t all shaped the same maybe I’d enjoy looking at an iPad when it comes on. That said, Android Honeycomb on the Galaxy isn’t without isn’t flaws. The slow transitions between home screens are at the core of the OS. Even its successor is just as terrible. Apart from the laggy and buggy-ness of it all, resizable widgets that can provide you with info about what you get if you open the app reduce time spent by even running it. I love the many keyboard styles you get from Android and loath the ‘always in CAPs’ iOS keyboard, confuses me. When I’m in lower case I want my keyboard to say that.

The only thing Google needs to refine is the look of the OS. Haven’t had the chance to handle a Jellybean device, my concerned could already have been answered.
Apps and App Store
iOS has more developers on board, so they get more apps for the iPad by default and apps are rightly optimized for the screen size.  Android, not far behind. Only problem is the platform fragmentation has resulted in ugly smartphone apps landing on tablets taking up the entire screen with huge gaps in the real estate taken. FAIL by Android here and they claim fragmentation in the OS does not exist which in itself is a problem. I’ll dedicate a post just to fragmentation and what it means.
On the respective App stores, Google Play (as it is now known) trumps Apple’s App Store in more than one way for the Zambia-centric tablet user. Firstly, there are no iTunes accounts that can be opened to originate from Zambia. You have to claim to be from Botswana or some other spot on this planet. Secondly, payment modes. Only credit cards allowed. Need a paid app, find a friend with a credit card to buy it or jail break it to side load paid apps.
Enter Google Play. My Google account is enough. I can link it to my Xapit card or link it to a pay-pal account. More freedom for me.
OS Updates
The winner here is iOS, can’t escape it even if I tried. Apple is the master at pushing out OS updates. That is helped by not needing as much carrier approval as other OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and having little to no fragmentation on iOS. On the Android end, they must be the worst. Android 4.0 is nearly a year old and its successor 4.1 is now floating around and the Galaxy tab in my possession still sits on 3.0. I cannot not understand why Google does this time and time again. At the core of it, fragmentation, caused by Google allowing each and every OEM to do what they please with the OS. Arrgggghhh!!!!!
In conclusion, software wise, the galaxy edges it 2 to 1. For some, what I have noted counts for zilch. To quote Neo in ‘The Matrix Reloaded’, “The question is choice”.