Thoughts on (an)Droid after 1 month
I've had my droid for a touch more than a month now, so I thought I'd give some general thoughts. I'm just going to shoot from the hip here:
What's Good:
- Google Voice - I had to go back and edit this article because I almost forgot about this one - that's how well it's integrated into the system. My GV number is effectively my Only number right now. I'm saving $20/mo because I don't need text messaging from VZW anymore. Like everything else, it occasionally glitches, but otherwise, it's integrated almost flawlessly into the system. I am seriously impressed by this.
- The Keyboard - thank god for the keyboard. I'm still not comfortable with the on-screen keyboard, though that's primarily because no matter how good the on-screen is, the physical is still better. It's not a great keyboard, but it's a keyboard.
- Multitasking - The #1 reason I went with the Droid over the iPhone, and one month on, I'm convinced I made the right choice. I listen to Pandora Constantly, and I can do anything else I want while doing so. Eat it, iPhone.
- Widgets - I wouldn't have thought so, but the widgets are really nice. I've got twitter, weather, mail, to-do's, and my calendar all visible on my home screen at a glance, and I can toggle Wi-Fi, GPS, screen brightness, and airplane mode all from one of my home screens.
- Customizability - Speaking of home screens, I swapped out the default Home app for Home++, which does just a bit more than Home. I also removed the standard camera noise, so now it doesn't sound like I'm shooting someone when I take a picture
- Easy Root - I rooted my phone in 5 minutes, and 4 of those were spent downloading the patch.
What's Bad:
- The Camera - like, biblically bad. I didn't expect much, but unless you're in broad daylight, don't expect to take a picture. I've yet to figure out why this thing insists on closing the iris when the frame's already black. It's awful.
- App Selection - Don't let anyone tell you different. It's not an iPhone, so it's not what Every App You'll Ever Want is developed for (There's a few reasons to expect that not to change anytime soon either). There's a lot of good apps - Pandora, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter clients, all the critical stuff - and there's some really cool Droid Only stuff - Google Goggles is awesome - but it's Not an iPhone, and that's annoyed me more than once.
- Touch Screen - The screen is gorgeous, but I'd back up what that test showed - the Droid's screen has some serious precision problems. This is part of the reason why the On-Screen keyboard is so bad.
- It's Buggy - I knew this going in, but it's not a totally polished system, and it shows. I've also gotta believe the iPhone apps crash a bit less than the Droid variants, if for no other reason than that they've sold as many as they have. I'm pretty accustomed to beta software, but somehow I get the feeling I wouldn't have a Droid if the iPhone was as buggy - the market wouldn't have taken off.
- Apps can only be stored in internal storage - I've got a 16gb sd card, but all my apps have to be crammed into the internal memory. Not a huge problem so far, but apparently it's holding back a few big name developers.
Overall:
Would I buy it again? Yeah, definitely. I've got my nags with it, but overall it's a really impressive piece of hardware (and accompanying software). It's instantly become an extension of my daily life and it hasn't really pissed me off, and that's saying a lot - I'm not normally charitable towards gadgets.
Do I regret not getting an iPhone? Sometimes. The app problem can't be overstated - it's the number one reason I wish this phone had a piece of fruit on the back. Until the multitasking issue gets fixed, though, there's absolutely no way I would switch, especially now that I've used a phone that has it.
Final Thoughts:
Ultimately, while I'm a big fan of my Droid, if the iPhone gets multitasking, I'm going to have a hard time not switching. The arguments about open development aren't enticing to me - the apps I'm missing on the Droid aren't coming out of big shops, they're mostly made by startups and small firms, so whatever you want to say about 'iron fists' and 'walled gardens', I'll tell ya - from outside the garden, it looks pretty welcoming in there.
Just let me run two apps at a time, dammit.
Mac OS X Tip: Use a solid color background of any color
I've been annoyed by the inability to easily set a solid color background since I started using OS X. Apple ships a couple "Solid background" png files, but they're without fail Not the colors I want.
Turns out, there's a nice, easy way to get a solid color background of your choice that doesn't involve making a new image for each color you want. OS X supports transparency in PNGs used as wallpaper, showing the desktop color through the transparent parts. If you use a small transparent PNG and set it to "Center", you'll get a solid color desktop, and you can change the color using the color picker next to the "Center" pull-down.
I've conveniently attached a 128x128 totally transparent png file below:
Right-click above me!
Save this file to your "Pictures" folder, open up System Preferences, pick Desktop & Screensaver, select the blank picture, and choose "Center" from the orientation pulldown menu. A color selection will appear to the left - click it, and select the color you want your desktop to be.
Simple, but this has been periodically bugging the hell out of me for about a decade now.
Note: This is based on a tip on MacOSXHints, found here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021002055217828
Using Apache2’s Digest authentication
I finally got Apache's Digest authentication, and since there's a serious dearth of information online about getting Digest working, I decided I'd write up a bit. It's not difficult, but I've had far more trouble than I should have, and most of that's due to nonexistant documentation.
Why Digest?
Standard HTTP auth sends the password in plaintext, which is generally bad. On sites with an SSL cert, this is less of a problem, since the traffic is encrypted to begin with, but on smaller sites, it's a lot of overhead to set up SSL.
Digest authentication hashes the password before sending it - it's an MD5, which isn't great, but it's also not your password flapping in the breeze, so to speak. It's a good intermediate step to make sure you're not transmitting plaintext passwords anywhere.
What's the drawback?
There's a very small performance hit, and it's not as easy to set up, but the biggest drawback is that you have to rebuild your apache users file.
So how do I do it?
Digest is very similar to standard Apache access configuration, with just a couple changes.
- Make sure you have digest enabled - if you have shell access, type:
a2enmod auth_digest
otherwise, in your httpd.conf or apache2.conf file, include the line:
LoadModule auth_digest_module modules/mod_auth_digest.so - Create your new Digest authentication file. At the shell, type:
cd /var/www/
htdigest -c .digest Internal Admin
Note: This code creates a user named Admin in the realm "Internal" - we'll get to realms later.
You'll be asked for a password, and then asked to confirm the password. - Create your .htaccess file in the directory you want to protect - in this case, we'll assume it's http://(yourdomain)/Private:
BrowserMatch "MSIE" AuthDigestEnableQueryStringHack=On
AuthType Digest
AuthName "Internal"
AuthDigestDomain /Private
AuthUserFile /var/www/.digest
Require user valid-user
The first line is necessary to make Digest work for IE6. IE7 seems fine.
AuthName is the realm you chose earlier - Digest allows you to make multiple "realms" to protect different directories.
Also, note the AuthUserFile line - Apache docs swear that line should read AuthDigestFile. It shouldn't.
That's it - you're using Digest!
The code is interchangeable anywhere you'd normally use standard Apache password auth, and you can use all the other normal .htaccess commands as well. It's just a mildly more secure, and horrendously documented, alternative to standard HTTP authentication.
Apache.org: Authentication, Authorization and Access Control
Apache.org: Apache Module mod_auth_digest