PVR Panel 2.1.0 has been approved and is available now. Unfortunately, We had to drop support for Android due to low adoption. Android has many other challenges due to the variety of screen sizes and phone vendors which makes it not worthwhile at this moment.

• App Store

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The latest version of PVR Panel, the app that lets you manage your recordings on the go, should be available shortly in the Google Play Store (if not already), as well as in the App Store later this week or early next week. As announced earlier, an update to the Videotron website caused the application to not login successfully. This has now been fixed along with other minor issues.

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La dernière version de PVR Panel, l’application qui vous permet de gérer vos enregistrements lorsque vous vous déplacez, devrait être disponible bientôt dans le Google Play Store (si ce n’est déjà le cas), ainsi que dans l’App Store plus tard cette semaine ou au début de la semaine prochaine. Comme annoncé précédemment, une mise à jour sur le site Web de Vidéotron causé échec de l’application. Cela a été corrigé avec d’autres problèmes mineurs.

• App Store
• Play Store

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The latest version of PVR Panel, the app that lets you manage your recordings on the go, is available now in the Goole Play Store. This is the first Android release of the application. This version has also been submitted to the App Store for review and should soon be available there as well. This is a minor update version of iOS to fix some issues with manual recording and unlimited internet.

• App Store
• Play Store

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We have been a little quiet recently, but by no means have we stopped working on PVR Panel. With the recent news about iOS7 and ever increasing market share of Android, we have been hard at work to redesign the application from the ground up. So what news do we have?

• Version 1.1.2 Just got approved and it fixes an issue with some accounts where PVR terminals always reported as not PVR capable.
• Working on Version 2.0
  • Completely redesign user interface
  • Support for iOS and Android
  • Improved recording and terminal handling
  • Ability to sort each recording list according to name, time, or default order
  • Recordings now show what channel they were recorded on.
  • Other improvements

Here are some screenshots for you read more

Yesterday, at its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple announced iOS7 and highlighted its new UI redesign and features. Unfortunately, there was almost nothing new or original. Almost every new redesigned element or feature was something that was already introduced by other mobile operating systems already (some years earlier). Worse yet, Apple’s Craig Federighi went out of his way to bash the old design on multiple occasions, and the worst part? Looks like devs will have to do more work to make sure their apps look good in iOS7 while supporting older versions of iOS. So what’s the real story?

Dated design?

Was the existing iOS UI really dated? Perhaps! The UI had not changed dramatically since it was introduced in 2007 and a change was due. But, the main issue here however is not with why Apple redesigned the UI, but how they did it. It is true that a lot of the UI was wasted on leather bound calendars and torn paper notes, but the high detail of the design was on par with Apple’s philosophy and while “dated”, it was not ugly. The new UI, as leaked by 9to5mac, looks cheap. Most of the UI blends to the point that you cannot tell a navigation bar, from a tab bar, from the main content of the page and that is going to be more confusing to many existing iPhone owners. Obviously, the new redesign has not grabbed me and I could go on about its loss of contrast and how depending your choice of background reading some text could be very hard, but I may have already tainted your opinion and there are enough other articles and tweets to get you tainted.

Innovative or Copied?

So, with such drastic changes, how much of what has changed or new features that were introduced is actually new? The answer is very few. It seems like Apple’s Jonathan Ive, while great at designing hardware, is not the most original when it comes to User Interfaces (UI). iOS7 looks like a combination of:

• The Windows 7 blurring effect of elements behind the current window
• The Windows Phone chromatic UI
• Palm OS’ multi-tasking UI
• Android’s new back button, window transitions, and quick access to some features

The final word?

That remains to be seen, once iOS7 has gone public and we have all had enough time to let it grow on us, and there is still time for Apple to actually listen and update some of the shortcomings (mostly icon redesign). The most disconcerting part is that there were a lot of expectation from Apple from the new iOS (and iPhone hardware later in the year), and Apple seems to have missed it completely. And if this is any indication, it is safe to expect an iPhone 5s instead of a major new redesigned iPhone. Sure, you can share files (Airdrop) , and integrate with LinkedIn. There are even live/animated icons (Look at the clock icon in the demo videos online), but Apple did not introduce any major new API for developers to integrate better with iOS at it core. The background services have been improved, but devs can still not provide anything close to HTC’s BlinkFeed for a more immersive experience and that leaves iOS still behind other mobile operating systems. read more

PVR Panel, the app that lets you manage your recordings on the go, has been reviewed, blessed and is now available in the App Store. You can read about it here. Hope you enjoy using it as much as we do and do not forget to rate it in the App Store. read more

PVR Panel, the app that lets you manage your recordings on the go, has been reviewed, blessed and is now available in the App Store. You can read about it and download it here. Hope you enjoy using it as much as we do and do not forget to rate it in the App Store. read more

Yesterday Apple released the  latest beta version of iOS6, and with that the blogosphere went a little crazy over conspiracy theories as to why the YouTube app is no longer part of iOS.  There were lots of speculations, but I think the case is clear cut.  It had much less to do with the history between Apple and Google, and much more to do with Apple’s decision to not include Adobe Flash when the iPhone was released. When the iPhone came out in 2007, it was the first one of its kind.  It was truely the first smart phone; where you could do more than browse WML sites (remember those?) and store contacts with more than just one phone number.  But, Apple had decided that Flash was too resource intensive and it would not be part of the OS.  At that time, nearly 100% of all video on the internet was using Flash and the only way to get around that was for Apple to work with Google to include the most popular video site of the time (YouTube). It is now 2012 and even Adobe has given up on Flash for mobile, not to mention that most video sites on the internet now make sure to support video formats that are compatible with the iPhone due to its popularity.  Case and point, Apple does not need to write a YouTube app.  YouTube works perfectly well through Safari, and if Google feels compelled, it can provide an iOS specific YouTube app. Furthermore, as some bloggers have pointed out, this is much more beneficial to Google since it can now monetize YouTube on iOS by including ads.   read more

The Jelly Bean (4.1.1) update for the Nexus S is finally here. I got the update notification yesterday and I must say that Google has done a tremendous job of turning things around with Android 4.x. Even though the Nexus S is now and old phone by all standards, it is snappier now on Jelly Bean than it ever was with its original Android Gingerbread (2.3.x). Also, one the new features, missing in iOS, is the Google Now (pictured here) feature which shows you weather, traffic, transit, calendar and everything else in one view based on your day’s outlook. I bought my Nexus S about 18 months ago when it first arrived in Canada and while the hardware was good, and I loved the AMOLED screen, the Android OS was very disappointing. Everything from the browser to the keyboard to the unintuitive interface was very annoying; specially coming from an iPhone. After about a month of constant use, I put it aside and never touched it again until Ice Cream Sandwich was available. There are two main faults still that exist with phone (both hardware and software) which I mention below, but otherwise the improvements are night and day. The animations are smoother, the interface is much more intuitive as well as better looking, and it is all thanks to Google hiring Matias Duarte.

Issues prior to 4.x

• Unintuitive application navigation –  The best example for this was google’s own Google Voice app.  Sometimes you could get into say a text chat, and have no way to go back to your inbox sine the back button just closed the app.  There were many other examples.
• Horrible keyboard – Although lots of folks love the swift keyboard and have learnt to type by swiping across the keyboard, I am still old fashioned and like to use my thumbs to type.  The old keyboard besides being inaccurate, also had the problem of the touch keys below it (Nexus S specific).  Since the back, menu, search and home buttons are all touch sensitive, and they are just below the keyboard, you could easily press one of them by mistake and be out of the app you were typing in.  I use the same thumbs on my iPhone and never had this level of inaccuracy.
• Horrible browser – The default Android browser was horrible for HTML5 web apps and was just slow.  I tried many others, including Firefox beta and Dolphin browser, but none were as solid as Safari on the iPhone.
• Overall Stability – Apps frequently crashed or would be terribly slow to respond.  Besides the fact that I have yet to see an app that looks better on Android than it does on the iPhone, apps on Android occasionally crashed which did not help the user experience.

Issues after 4.x

• Keyboard – The keyboard is still an issue and it is pretty much the only one left.  Unless you use a third party keyboard that works well, the default keyboard is still way too inaccurate.
• Browser – While the default browser that ships with Android is still not up to par with Safari, Chrome for Android is a much better choice.  As a second alternative, the Dolpin browser has some  great features like gestures and voice commands that are fun to play with.

  Prior to Android 4.x my opinion was that anyone who bought an Android phone was only doing it to be “different” and not have the phone everyone else has.  The iPhone was by far the better phone.  With the 4.x updates, Google is much closer in competing with Apple so we better see some impressive hardware come this fall for the iPhone 5 (or the new iPhone, if they go with the iPad naming scheme). read more

Apple announced their iOS6, along with OSX Mountain Lion, and bunch of new hardware on Monday. Amongst the new features announced were features that already exist on over platforms but now they do on Apple’s platform as well. Take do not disturb for example! This feature is nothing new, and platforms like BlackBerry have had it for years, so what makes it awesome on iOS? The smart thing that Apple has done is that instead of bombarding folks with a ton of new features that will never get learnt (and thus used), they slowly introduce them so that users’ expertise grows with the platform. Its true that Android lets you configure anything and everything, but half the folks that own an Android phone don’t know how to use half of its features. They are just happy either because they know they are not sandboxed or that they do not have an iPhone like everyone else. Apple created the original iPhone with just the bare functionality needed to make it usable. Granted the whole iPhone design was new, awesome, game changing, and infinitely intuitive, but the actual functionality of the phone was nothing new. This let buys get used to the platform and grows with it as new features came out. So while ‘Do Not Disturb’ is a welcomed addition to iOS6, its not an earth shattering feature….and since its one of only a dozen visible changes to the platform, most anyone who needed the feature will know how to use it. read more