Three hours into the automatic app downloading, only one app was installed. When I tried to look at the progress with the others by tapping the apps icon at the upper left corner of the Apps screen or the download icon at the upper middle-left, the one that had installed (an hp 15c emulator) from Vicinno Software) grabbed the focus and told me that an update was available. Eventually, I relented and let it do the update, figuring that it was blocking all the other app installations. The upgrade went on for twenty or thirty minutes. Eventually, I hit “uninstall” and ran into the same situation with the next app in line. This doesn’t seem to be a problem with the apps themselves, but with the Android OS, or, more likely, with the Google Play server.
It turns out that closing the Google Play app actually makes things go faster, and you can see the apps downloading if you drag your finger down from the top of the home screen. However, it doesn’t remember successful downloads, only failures, so you can’t keep track of how you’re doing if you set the device down and go do something else. Also, the downloads appear to stop for long periods of time, seemingly randomly.
I left it plugged in overnight, and in the morning, all the apps except for Beautiful Widgets and HD Widgets appeared to have been downloaded. Of course, none of them were configured, and I spent a long time entering user names and passwords.
There was another OS update, to Android 4.3, that had downloaded overnight. What’s that all about? I thought the Nexus 7ii shipped with 4.3. I guess not. I installed the upgrade. I configure an Exchange email account, thankful that I had a properly configured Nexus 7 to use as a guide, because the setup wizard always fails for me, and the manual configuration screen is pretty cryptic.
I think all the delays in downloading are probably mostly due to Google Play’s typically lethargic performance – if you’ve got the time, we’ve got the server – and not to any inherent speed limitation in the tablet. I downloaded the two MIA widget sets, and both downloads failed a couple of times before they completed properly. I even had looong delays when uninstalling apps. Google Play has had these problems for years. I don’t know why Google can’t fix them; it should be a matter of assigning more servers to the job, which is something Google has shown that they have the ability to do in other areas.
Any Android user spends a lot of time getting the opening screens to look pretty. Partially, it’s driven by all the choices available. Apple users don’t have any choices except for icon arrangement on the screen and folder assignments. Partially it’s to see the look on iOS users faces when you unlock your Android tablet. Whatever the reasons, I’m no exception, and I spend an hour and a half getting thing looking good. When you’re moving icons around the Android screens, especially when you’re moving them from one screen to another, there are a lot of swear words. It’s especially difficult when using a stylus. This is something that Apple has figured out really well, and I don’t know why it’s such a struggle on Android.
There’s one bit of retro cleverness on Android 4.3. On 4.2, when you turn the device off, the screen fades to black over a period of a few hundred milliseconds. On 4.3, It collapses vertically to a white horizontal line in the middle which then fades out, kind of like the way some CRTs (remember them?) behaved when you powered them down.
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