The Post Netflix Era

We now live in the era of Post-Netflix. I recently cancelled my subscription, primarily due to their price increases. I had been contemplating cancelling the service off an on for a while now, but their price hike made the decision easier for me. In my case, it came down to selection of movies. Even though I like the idea of streaming movies, I was constantly disappointed by the selection of the content available on Netflix. I understand that's not necessarily Netflix's fault, as the media companies who own the rights to those content don't want to make that content available for streaming for the fear of pirating (or possibly just out of greed). However as a consumer who is paying for Netflix, it was disappointing.
The DVD rental portion of Netflix was ok in my experience and really the selection of DVD rentals were sufficient. The waiting period for the more popular/new titles were sometimes frustrating. At least when I used to go to the store, I could time my visit to increase my chances of finding the titles I'm looking for, but when my queue is prioritized along with millions of others, it's a lot harder.
One of the analysts mentioned that the main factor why Netflix forced Blockbuster into bankruptcy was the c-o-n-v-e-n-i-e-n-c-e of renting online. While I agree the convenience has a big part, I believe that it's not the only deciding factor. In fact, I believe there are 3 factors (no surprises):
1. Convenience
2. Price
3. Selection

How much of a factor is any of those depends on the person, and situation. For me, the decision to leave Netflix was mostly driven by 2 and 3. I also find myself rooting for the underdog, so when I see a business getting too cocky and take its customers for granted, I am more inclined to turn away. There are many wall street analysts that believe Netflix will end up making more money because even though a lot of people will leave the service, the ones who stay will end up paying more, which will make up for the lost revenue, and then some.
Well, I have spoken and given my vote by cancelling my membership. I only wish that enough people realize that there are alternatives out there.
So, post Netflix feels a little weird, but I am feeling like a bird out of cage!

Daily Deal offerings like Groupon is not the same as group buying!
I'm constantly surprised that the fury of daily deal offerings like Groupon and LivingSocial and others are thought of to be the same as group buying. I don't have anything against Groupon or LivingSocial. In fact I've used them once, each. In my opinion, the core element of Group Buying is that the price of the product/service is lowered based on how many people are participating in the offering. The more people who have committed to buy something *should* drive the price lower. Obviously there's a limit of how low it can go. Also, it makes a big difference if the offering is a product or service. The caveat being that service offering's price shouldn't be as much affected by the number of participants as it does for products. It takes time and resource to provide service, vs when buying a product scales better with more people.

I'm not surprised to see articles like this one that shows businesses are not that happy with these daily deal offerings. As a consumer, I don't find the daily deal offering to be serving a primary need of mine (to save money on the products and services that I already use). This is why the daily deals are more like display advertisings that I have learned to ignore almost all the time. Oh, how great it would be to have a true group buying service!

I was quite surprised that Android is still not using the GPU available on the Android phones. They're powerful GPU's mind you, and they sit there sucking power. No wonder why the UI is so choppy. I want to believe in Android but I'm becoming more and more convinced that iPhone is and will provide a much superior user interface than Android phones for the next few years.

You don't believe me about Android not using GPU? Check out the (still) open ticket:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

I found out yesterday that my first patent that I had filed back in 1998 was issued in 2002 but the company that I was working at back then did not notify me. That sucks but at least I know the patent went through. It's an interesting patent that I honestly was sure that it would be questioned. It's such a fundamental and basic concept that is used in peer-to-peer networks and other distributed systems. The patent was issued under 6363416.

Follow me on twitter: raminnaimi

HTC's Eris and Android update
I had written about the problem of shared resources before (specially the speaker/mic/bluetooth). To recap, the problem is that if I'm listening to an internet radio or my music (whether I'm listening to it via the built-in speaker or via headphone it doesn't seem to make any difference), and I receive an incoming call, the phone interaction is very chaotic. The music doesn't stop playing, and I hear the phone ringing. I also noticed that sometimes the phone switches to different outputs (e.g. switch the music and phone ring to bluetooth). My initial reaction was to scramble to bring up the app that's responsible for playing the music (by selecting Home then the app) to make the app stop the music, so I can go back home and to the phone application to answer the incoming call. Needless to say I miss many incoming calls. After several frustrating weeks I decided to take a chance and see what happens if I answer the call while the phone is playing my music. As it turns out, at the very last second, the phone does disconnect the speaker/headphone/bluetooth from the music app. I was relieved, but still disappointed that the interaction wasn't very intuitive.

More HTC Eris vs iPhone comparison...

Screen Lock

The screen lock is not very friendly. There have been a few problems that I've noticed:

• It got confused when disconnecting the USB cable that was supplying the power, and disconnecting the headphone jack. I was listening to music so the lock screen showed the streaming music application as a partial background and the lock banner on top of it. Dragging the lock banner to unlock the phone would appear as if I'm dragging the music app's image and it would stop half way down the screen, so it wouldn't let me unlock the screen (it didn't let the banner to reach the bottom of the screen). It was in a wierd state and all I could do is restart the phone.
• Because the phone can get sluggish in responding, the security's unlock pattern can often not recognize my finger motion so it would fail. I gave up on the security pattern but now I'm finding myself pocket-calling often. Looking for an app to provide a simple security lock (not a pattern) is not that simple. I shouldn't have to pay for an app for this. The system/OS should provide that functionality. The free security/lock apps are very disappointing as well. Judging by some feedbacks I read on some of the free apps, it looks like I'm not the only one who's searching for a solution.

HTC Droid Eris vs iPhone

I have been holding myself back from switching to iPhone from my old Samsung phone mainly because I don't want to give up my Verizon wireless' coverage. I've grown to enjoy the vast coverage it provides and although not perfect, it's much much better than AT&T and other carriers. I've had an iPhone that was provided by my work, so I learned about the joys of iPhone and the horrible coverage of AT&T first-hand. Since Android phones became available on Verizon I was tempted to try it, and finally I did.

Here's what I observed:

sporadic responsiveness

Although I saw my iPhone freeze once in a long while, I was able to trace the problem to some faulty app that I was developing or unstable app that I had installed. For the most part, the iPhone is pretty responsive to touch, navigation, and normal operations. If I hit the home button, it'll go to the home screen pretty quickly. Once on the home screen, I can swipe to different pages and I see the response as I swipe with no noticeable delays.

On the Eris phone I have seen sluggish responsiveness many times. If nothing is running in the background, I can hit the home button and I would get to the home screen (although with more delay than iPhone). If there's an app running in the background, it's not uncommon for me to hit a menu or home button and wait 1 or 2 seconds before the phone responds and I end up with what I wanted to do. The phone queues my actions, so if I hit the Home button and the menu button in series, the phone follows that sequence even if there's a delay. It can get frustrating that you have to wait for the response and you may end up repeating a home or menu button and watch the phone go through the actions like a movie.
It maybe that the CPU of Eris phone isn't as powerful as iPhone, but I put the blame on Android. Android has to accommodate for different hardware profiles and provide the best, consistent user interface experience. A lot of my observations can be attributed to this fundamental problem.

Critical Shared Resources

iPhone treats the phone functionality as a very high priority interaction. When I'm listening to music or running an app that is using microphone or speaker or headphone, and there's an incoming phone call, those apps are preempted and the input/output resources are freed. It happens in an instance because I have to get to the phone without any delays or having to take any actions to the non-phone applications.

Android OS doesn't have this concept. It treats every app the same and it leaves the logic of what's the right thing to do up to the app(s) that are running. While this is an easy way out (in the name of an open platform), it doesn't provide for the best user interaction. If I am listening to music (or running an app that is streaming music) and there's an incoming call, my phone rings, music doesn't stop and the UI is asking me what to do with the call.
What are my choices?
a) ignore the call - which is what I have to do in order to get to the music app so I can shut it down/pause it.
b) answer the call - which is ridiculous because there's music playing in the background and I'm trying to speak to my caller.

All in all, I'm not too happy with the performance of my Droid Eris phone. I really wanted Android/Hardware to work as good as iPhone, but so far it's been disappointing.

More to come as I get to write them down.