Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Contemplating the Big Switch

iOS to Android

You know that feeling you get when someone has political views that are the total opposite of your own? You think that they must have something wrong with them to be so wrong about something so obvious.  Well, that's a feeling I get anyway.  I also get that feeling when people say, -- and I've heard several people say this -- "I don't keep any music on my iPhone."

I'm sorry.  What?

My iPhone's role as a music player is easily more important to me than its role as a phone.  I listen to music on it when I run.  I listen to music on it as I nod off on airplanes.  It's how I listen to music in the car when I'm not listening to satellite radio.  But getting music onto the iPhone is supremely aggravating to me. I have always hated having to use iTunes to "sync" music between my computer and my phone.  Why, oh why can't I just mount the phone as a drive and drag and drop albums from the computer to the phone?  Don't get me wrong.  For large libraries, music management software is essential.  I just don't think it should be necessary for getting files of any type onto your phone.

While Android has always appealed to my technical side, because of the iPod I've been an iTunes user since way back.  Also, all of the carrier non-removable bloatware apps and branding have turned me off of most of the Android phones being offered.  So I stuck with Apple.  But, now, Google is selling an unlocked, unskinned, no bloatware, contract-free version of the Galaxy Nexus directly via its Google Play site, and I think I may be ready to switch.

The Galaxy Nexus will work on the ATT network, so I can just take the SIM card from my iPhone, and stick it in the Nexus using an adapter.  I may have to make a call to ATT customer service to make sure I get the full network speed on the new phone, but then I should be good to go.

I'll post my impressions here as I go through the switch.  On some level, it's sure to be traumatic.  Mostly because I like making things like this much more complicated than they need to be.

First example:  For years, unless someone has given me an iTunes gift card, I have bought almost all of my digital music from Amazon.  Amazon's Cloud Player allows you to store music online (this happens automatically for music purchased from Amazon) and to stream it to your device.  It works through Mobile Safari, but there is no native iOS app.  In anticipation of there being "an app for that" on Android, I decided to take advantage of that service's unlimited music storage and to augment my past purchases already stored there by uploading my local music library.  Long story short:  I started that process about twelve hours ago and the uploader tells me that I have seven hours to go.

Slow uploads to Amazon's Cloud Drive are, obviously, not an Android problem, but I'll still be keeping the old iPhone close by, just in case.

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