Google Jelly Bean – TechCommGeekMom

With the announcement of the new Windows Surface tablet coming out later in 2012, the new Nexus tablet coming out as well, and the rumors of an iPad mini possibly coming out in the fall, it’s made me think about what this all means in terms of “what device would be best?” especially for m-learning and other mobile applications.

First, I need to clarify that when it comes to technological devices, I’m generally torn. I’m all for having variety and such– it’s what makes market competition possible, but at the same time, each thing has its benefits and place, and it’s like comparing apples to broccoli. It’s no secret that I love my iPad. I got it almost a year ago after owning my iPhone for a couple of years. At the time, my husband retorted, “What do you need that for? It’s just a toy, if anything.” Or IS IT?

When I was doing my graduate studies, all I could think about what how I could use it for my own studying purposes, and I did several projects centered around the idea of using iPads for flipped classrooms or even classroom use, and based much of my experiences of what mobile learning is between my iPad and iPhone. I love the flexibility of the devices, and how lean and mean they are in how they operate. Like many students out there with tablet devices, I read articles and e-books, I wrote up assignments and papers, did my research– did most everything I could with my iPad. The downside? Well, I didn’t have 4G on my iPad, so sometimes having web access was limited, but it wasn’t anything that bad that couldn’t wait until I did have connectivity, or until I got home and could use my laptop or the wi-fi at home. (There are 3G and 4G versions available–I just didn’t want to shell out the extra cash for that ability.) And until I had my wireless keyboard, doing all those papers and assignments could get a little rough.

At the same time, while I have an iPhone and an iPad, I can’t say that I’ve been totally sold on the idea of getting an iMac of some flavor. I love my PC laptops. While the last Apple computer I used was an Apple IIc about a million years ago (be quiet! I was a kid back then–really!), my entire IT existence both professionally and personally has always been on a PC. Yes, I’ve experienced the blue screen of death several times, and had numerous crashes over the years, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed unless the hard drive was dying. Until I got my iPad, my laptop went with me on vacation or whenever I was away from home. Even writing these blog posts is easier on my laptop than using my WordPress app on my iPad. Ninety-eight percent of my online degree was done on my PC laptop– the other 2% was on my iPad. I’ve owned 3 laptops in the last ten years, and had at least two or three PC desktops for years before that. So yes, I’m a devout Microsoft geek as well.

So when I heard that Microsoft had finally come out with a tablet they were going to release, I had to find out more. I thought that it would be helpful to understand what the Microsoft Surface tablet was all about, and was hoping that it would work well in the future for single-sourcing initiatives. I felt like the Microsoft presentation and reviews I was seeing online was just mirrors and smoke, and after three iPads having been in the market now, why a Microsoft tablet now? Was it worth me getting one, as if I were to abandon my iPad for…heaven forbid…something else?

On a recent weekend jaunt to a local mall that had both an Apple store AND a new Microsoft store, I actually asked a Microsoft store employee about the new Microsoft Surface machines, and he said it was rather simple to explain, actually. The new MS Surface tablet was Microsoft’s answer to having their own hardware like a Samsung Galaxy or other PC-type tablet, running on a Windows 8 OS platform similar to the Windows Metro platform used on their phones. The guy had his personal PC tablet loaded up with Windows 8 on it, and proceeded to show me how it worked. In a nutshell, it worked exactly like my laptop, just a few more bells and whistles for the interface. And this, as I was told, would be pretty similar to what my experience would be like with a Surface machine, but with a handy keyboard in the cover. So anything that I was running on my laptop–full versions of Adobe Tech Comm Suite or Creative Cloud, Flare, PC games, Microsoft Office– as long as it all fit on the flash drive inside, or ran off a Flash card or external drive device, you could use it on Surface.

But wait…if Microsoft Surface is essentially just a flatter, touch screen PC version of my laptop, did this make it the iPad killer that everyone (especially Microsoft) has been claiming it to be? At first, I thought it could be. I was thinking that Surface was what I was looking for over a long period of time before my iPad. Sure, there have been other tablet computers out there, but they were always out of my price range and weren’t as powerful as my regular PC laptop. So, a former me that was shopping for a tablet would have loved that. But now, in my mind, I don’t think it’s the “iPad killer”. It just sounded–to me–like it was just a flatter, touch screen version of my laptop, with less storage room and possibly less power. Would it replace a laptop for me? Well, maybe not me, but for the average person who is not a power user, it might be a good alternative for someone else who is less tech savvy. Imagine if all the full features of your laptop were in a convenient package like a tablet, so it’d be easier to bring with you–it would work well.

At first, that sounds great. Just in mobile learning alone, that could be monumental. And that might work better for many people who want the convenience of a tablet with all the power (but less storage space) as a laptop. For some, it’ll be just what they need. But for me, as I’ve thought about it, and debated whether to get one in the future, I decided it wasn’t worth it. First of all, for the same amount of money that this Surface machine is going to cost (if it’s financially on par with iPads, as Microsoft claims it will be)–what’s the point of getting a tablet with little storage space and not as much power when you can get something more powerful–more storage space and higher processor speed–in laptop form for the same price? There doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage in having one, unless you are a person who wants to make the switch, and you don’t do much on your laptop to begin with. Yes, there are some operational advantages, but they are minor. The convenience of a tablet? Oh yeah, that’s definitely a plus, but it seems so late in the game. And in the end…it’s still a PC. You can get this now on a Samsung Galaxy Tab or other PC-based tablet now, for the most part. Maybe it’ll be a slightly ramped up OS, but then again iOS6 will probably be coming out around the same time (more or less), so it’ll be interesting to see who wins the latest Apple vs. Microsoft battle.

But just as everyone is focusing on the usual heavyweights battling it out, Google has been a contender for a while–much more than Microsoft has been. Google has recently announced that it was releasing its new device, Nexus 7, running on the latest Android OS called “JellyBean.” Reports I’ve read is that since this is a full OS, not an abbreviated version like on a Nook or Kindle Fire, it runs more smoothly and robustly. It allows for more Google features like Google Now and Google Play to be used more fully, for example. This leads me to believe that while this is a smaller tablet in size than an iPad or Surface, due to it’s great affordable price starting at $199 (as compared to a “bottom of the barrel” iPad at $499 for the new iPad, $399 for the same in an iPad), it’s definitely a dark horse contenter to come in and steal some thunder. In the end, though, it’s not really in the same category as an iPad or Surface machine. Let me explain.

The way I see it, there are two categories of tablets. The first category is one in which the tablets are almost PC replacements, but not quite. They have the most flexibility due to their ability to do anything from word processing and reports, graphic and image editing, games, video, email, web browsing, etc. They are generally a much leaner version of a PC, not only physically in the hardware, but also in its capabilities. iPads have this down to a science now, whereas Surface will be just a slimmed down physical version of what most people have already.

The other category includes the small tablets. These would be your Nook, Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 and if it actually comes out, iPad Mini. While it has great perfunctory use, it’s not meant to be anything but a basic device to provide basic services. I’ve never heard of doing presentations off of a Nook, or a report being written on a Kindle Fire.

Are there uses in education and business for any of these kinds of tablets? Sure there are. Because of their enormous flexibility and functionality, it’s no surprise that iPads have been dominant in both education and business, and will continue to be dominant. Will the Surface upset that dominance? It might, only because so many are used to using a PC that the learning curve (not that there’s a huge one in learning how to use an iPad) would not have to be contended with, and some might like that full PC functionality over a streamlined one like an iPad. I see iPad and Surface being more productive than the smaller tablets.

Does this mean that smaller tablets don’t have a place in education or business? No, not at all. It can still be used for reading, communication, video and basic web searches– that might be all someone needs.

But from my own personal experience as a student as well as a professional, I don’t see how the larger tablets could lose. The question will be whether educators or business people find the streamlined functionality of an iPad more beneficial or the PC-similarity of the Surface to be more productive in the long run. Hmm…I think I found the topic of my PhD thesis (if I ever do it in the near future)!

What do you think? Let me know the comments below.

(PS–Microsoft or Google– if you want me to try these devices out once they are out, I’m glad to give them a go. 😉 )

In the mobile technology wars, it’s been a war between the technology of Adobe Flash versus HTML 5. This has been a long going–at least in Internet years–battle royale that has been going on for a while, but it appears that a break has finally happened.

Recently, Adobe made the decision to end the support of Adobe Flash in Google’s latest Android OS, aka “Jelly Bean.” The significance of this is huge. To some, this is a surprise. To others, it is not.

Flash has been the driving force of web animation for a couple decades now on many websites globally. It is a huge part of Adobe’s repertoire, and yet… Flash has had a difficult time making it into the mobile realm. Just in the desktop/laptop realm, a Flash player can be rather unwieldy. There seemed to be only one flavor of Flash made for 32-bit machines, and not for 64-bit machines (like my own) which are becoming more commonplace. Flash programming is an art unto itself as well. As much as many employers want people to have Flash backgrounds as technical communicators, I’ve also been told by developers to not bother learning it unless I really was dying to know, because it was rather complex even for the experienced developer to use, and developing Flash was time consuming.

This was all brought to the forefront about two years ago by the late Steve Jobs who said that Flash would not last, and that HTML5 was the future. He believed this so much that all of Apple’s new mobile products supported HTML5 from the get-go, but not Flash. Aaron Silvers reminded me of this when he posted this article from Business Insider, STEVE JOBS WINS: Adobe’s Ditching Flash, today on Twitter. It’s been a huge deal as iPhones and iPads proliferated with HTML5-friendly browsers, and didn’t support Flash, while other browsers for other tablets, like the Kindle, Nook and other Android-based tablets and phones did.

Adobe’s had a hard time with this, as far as I could see. Just for the record, I love Apple products, but I also love my Adobe products as well, so it’s been a tough debate to follow. I actually wrote a case study about it just several months ago about it, entitled, A Case Study: HTML 5 versus Flash, which discussed the history of this debate and what actions I saw Adobe–as a company–trying to make to work within this new environment that was pushing HTML5. At the time of the writing, Steve Jobs had just passed–literally within days of when I wrote my first draft and final draft of the paper–and so much was out in the media about the great Steve Jobs and how he was the mastermind that he was. I still love Steve Jobs, but after all, he was still human and fallible, so I wanted to show how Adobe countered his attacks against Flash. In the end, the conclusion at the time was that HTML5 was the future, but it wasn’t completely NOW (or at that moment). HTML5 needed more development, and in the meantime, Adobe would adjust with the HTML5 revolution with its work on the Adobe Edge product and bringing that capability to its development products, but in the meantime, Flash was still working on most of the machines in the world, and there was no reason to stop working on that as well.

The way I saw it, Adobe’s point was that you don’t just abandon a long standing technology that’s worked so well overnight, just because the next best thing is starting to come along. It’s like abandoning DVDs just because Blu-Ray disks are out. There has to be some sort of legacy transition, and until HTML5 was more mature and used by those other than the developers at Apple, it didn’t make sense to abandon Flash altogether. But in the meantime, time needed to be taken to start working with the new medium and figure out the best way to move forward.

Fast forward to now, about six to eight months after I wrote the case study above. Mobile technology continues to explode on the market, and the race is on to be the dominant technological mobile device with new tablets and smartphones being introduced. RJ Jacquez posted this article that came out today on Twitter: Adobe: Web standards match 80 percent of Flash features. Arno Gourdol, Adobe’s senior director of Web platform and authoring, was quoted at the Google I/O show, referring to HTML5’s capabilities at this stage, “I think it’s close to 80 percent.” Seeing the writing on the wall, it’s obvious, after reading the rest of the article, that Adobe has been making efforts to keep up with HTML5, and make forward progress on using the web standard. Adobe’s not quite there either in keeping up, but it seems that it’s starting to make significant progress in this direction.

So, where does this leave us in the mobile learning world? As I see it, this is another means towards single-sourcing for learning. Flash has been good, there is no doubt. Some of the most interactive e-learning and m-learning sites (depending on your device’s capabilities) have been Flash driven, and so much has been Flash driven for years that Flash capabilities and interactivity are expected. In speaking with my e-learning developer husband about the topic, he said that Flash, while complicated at times, was easier to develop than HTML5, because HTML5 depended not only on new HTML5 coding, but also javascript and jquery much more than before to have content play the same way–or at least similarly–to Flash. From the sounds of things, those similarities are getting closer and closer. How soon will HTML5 be a true standard in the same way as standard HTML has been all these years? Probably sooner than later, but I see it as a big step towards that single-sourcing solution that will help eliminate the idea of problems with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). No one will have to worry whether something will work on an Android, Windows or iOS device. It will just work because they all use HTML5.

This is an important issue to follow, because it’s not the mobile technological devices that need to be watched as much as how they will be programmed and used. Flash isn’t gone yet, but seeing what will happen with it, and where and how HTML5 progresses will be a hot issue for some time to come–so keep on top of this!