Adventures in Tech

Twelve years ago, when I bought my car, my decision criteria were simple. I wanted a car that is fun to drive, had good reliability, and was gas efficient; traits that were missing in my prior car. I did not put a lot of weight on the technological innovations the car had; I was happy with a good navigation system, a CD player that held multiple CDs, and a backup camera that made parallel parking easier. At the time, almost all car manufacturers provided undifferentiated versions of these capabilities, with minor tweaks to the user interface, which made my selection a lot easier. Over the years as the technology advanced, these originally innovative features started to feel obsolete. It was almost impossible to upgrade the hardware with newer and faster components, and software did not have a better story.   Only if either had issues or bugs, did the manufacturer offer an upgrade, through vehicle recalls or maintenance, or through map update CDs on a yearly basis, that captu...

I have been an iPhone user for about 4 years now, but have recently been frustrated with the poor battery life on my phone especially with relatively moderate usage--I use the phone for the occasional phone-call or text message, and use it primarily for work emails. I grew tired of having to charge the phone multiple times per day, and started to look at other options. My coworkers have been pleased with the battery life on the Samsung S3, so I decided to give it a try. I went to the AT&T store, and upgraded my phone. Before I did, I looked at the iPhone 5, and while it is a beautiful design, I thought its screen size is a big disadvantage compared to the Samsung. My first impressions with the Samsung were not very positive: the usability is inferior to the iPhone, and things were not as intuitive or as consistent. However as I continued to use the phone, I discovered a lot of features that in my mind overshadowed the usability issues, and the phone started growing on me. Fi...