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I got a DROID

Friday, November 06, 2009 by Dave Winer.

I had to do it. Went down to the Verizon store in El Cerrito and put down $350 and bought the $99 per month unlimited texting plan. Took it home, fell in love. It really is beautiful. I'm an iPhone user who loves the esthetics of the iPhone. The DROID is different, but also very nice. 

I'm sure there will be annoyances, always are, but the first-time experience is great. 

The web browser display is large enough to be usable. The gestures that work on the iPhone don't work on the DROID. 

I find both the on-screen keyboard and the physical keyboard hard to use. The keys are too small.  

Oddly, when entering text into Facebook or an email, typing is natural and easy. It's only a pain when entering a username or password. I wonder why this is. (Probably has more to do with the operator than anything.) 

The setting system makes sense. There are a few puzzlers. It allows you to format an SD card, but I don't see one. I've read the docs, very limited, but they make no mention of it. 

They just sent me a text message asking me to sign onto their website, but the password doesn't work. Tried 8 times. Asked them to send a new one, they sent the same one again. I'll come back to this. 

Took some pictures with the camera. Example. 

Can't figure out how to get some music onto it. Plugged in the USB cable into my Mac but it doesn't mount as a hard drive. Don't tell me I need to use iTunes -- please! 

Update: Quick podcast review, recorded on the DROID speaker phone using Cinch. A little baseball philosophy thrown in at no extra cost!  

Update: How do I get music on this thing? Tried something dumb, after mounting it on my Mac desktop, I copied the contents of a Little Feat album into a folder I named Music. Let's see if the Music app on the Droid can find it. I launch the Music app and it says Sorry, your SD card is busy. Interesting! Let me try unmounting it. I had to click in the menubar to unmount it, and then boom (sorry Steve) the music app found my Little Feat songs. This is how it's supposed to work. Goodbye iTunes. Forever. 

Update: It plays iPod-size movies, just watched a bit of fargo.m4v. Looks great. 

Update: Second podcast of the day, goes into the way Apple is becoming Google and Google is becoming Apple and why that's good for everyone. Less than 6 minutes. Worth it, imho.