if anyone serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there my servant will be also… john 12:26.

There’s a difference between serving and following – the net result that the Lord wants, is not the service, but that we be with Him.

It’s easy to serve and serve and be very mechanical about our service, but following requires us to keep looking at the Leader, willingness to change our direction to follow the Guide, and frequent self examination to fully enjoy being in His presence.

 iOS

• Auto correct is very good. Auto learns new and frequently used words.
• Auto complete appears but only on frequent or recently used words, and only one word is shown.
• Selecting text, cut, copy and paste is the best of all platforms. Very intuitive. Text magnification is smooth and helps place the caret at the right place. Certainly the best.
• The ‘keyboard’ sounds gets a bit annoying after a while. Good thing it can be turned off.
• Keyboard layout is wide and uncluttered unlike Android’s which looks very ‘crowded’.
• If you tweet a lot, the ‘#’ key is quite unreachable. You need to hit ’123′ key, then press-and-slide to the ‘#’ key on the top row.
• Text entry on iOS feels very natural and easy.

 Windows Phone

• They keyboard when background set to dark and light.

• Autocorrect is as good as iOS5. Auto learns new and frequently used words. Gives you the option to save words by offering a ‘+yourword‘ among the auto complete word list.
• Auto complete is also very good and shows a list of 3-5 words depending on length of word being typed.
• Layout is well spaced and supports tap-and-slide to get capitals and numbers easily.
• When enabled, keyboard makes different types of soft ‘bopping’ sounds when typing which differentiates between keyboard taps, auto corrections or symbol selection.
• There is even a special keyboard that lets you select a list of smileys.
• Tap-and-holding the ‘.’ key provides a useful ‘quick access’ list of ‘- ! : ? .‘.

• There is no magnification when placing the caret using finger. You have to tap and hold a word (like iOS5), and a caret appears above the word you’ve tapped. Then you have to drag your finger below the word to bring the caret unto the word and drag your finger to place the caret. It works fine, but doesn’t feel as intuitive as iOS5. (See video below where I demonstrate this)
• Selecting text does not provide magnification either (not necessarily a bad thing!). Tapping a word will select it – this is faster then iOS where you have to double tap a word. The selection will have a caret which you have to tap and drag.
• Copy and paste, while it works fine, feels unpolished. After a text selection is done, a ‘copy’ icon appears above the word. If you tap it, a ‘Paste’ icon appears, not above the word, but above the keyboard in the autocorrect list area. Feels disjointed (press above word to copy, press above keyboard to paste).
  There is no ‘Cut’. To emulate a Cut, when text is selected, you have to tap the ‘copy’ icon, then press ‘<–’ on the keyboard to delete the selected text.
• All in all, keyboard layout and text input in WP7 matches iOS in nearly all aspects, except for the rather ‘raw’ implementation copy and paste (and no Cut!)
• See the video below for key text input functions.

Conclusion

Text entry is on WP7 and iOS is on par with each other, with WP7 winning in some scenarios by a hair because it has quick access to symbols.

In Jesus name.
Amen.

- Tozer AW, Pursuit of God, Chapter 2.

Windows Phone 7

iOS5

Windows Phone 7 is the new kid on the block as far as mobile phone operating systems go, and as the new kid, many are interested and are unsure of it stacks up with the ‘big boys’ like Apple iOS and Android (pick your flavour).

I’ve been using both iOS5 (on an iPhone 4) as well as Windows Phone 7 (WP7, on a HTC Radar) for about 3 months now and would like to share some impressions about how Windows Phone compares to iOS. Yes there are many comparisons out there, but most are little more than expanded press releases and don’t come from actual long term usage. I hope to share with you what works, and what doesn’t. What Windows Phone does well, and what it doesn’t do well.

This series won’t be a hardware review, although the two devices are pretty much equal on specs:

1. iPhone 4 – 5 MP camera BSI sensor, 1GHz processor, 512MB memory – top of the line phone release in 2010.

2. HTC Radar – 5 MP camera BSI sensor, 1GHz processor, 512MB memory, mid range phone released in 2011.

Since this post is mainly focused on showing how the new WP7 does stuff, you’ll probably see more screenshots and videos of WP7 interface than of iOS, this is partly due to the fact iOS has been around so long, many people already know how it works, but so few have even seen a WP7 interface at work.

I will not attempt to pitch WP7 above iOS, or the other way round, you will find that there are some things which iOS does really well, and there are some things that WP7 does very well as well. I’ll try to cover the common usage scenarios and how doing the same activities on both phones differ from each other.\

Hopefully, if you’re in the market for a new phone, this will help you make the right choice. You’ll see that the cheaper WP7 devices can really match, and even out do what an expensive iOS device can do.

Right now I have this on my comparison list:

1. Text input – text entry, cut copy paste, selecting, editing text.

2. Messaging – differences between what you can / cannot do

3. Shell look and feel, navigation and notifications

4. Contact management

5. Media management and playback.

Is there something you’d like to see compared between iOS and WP7, let me know in the comments!

While polishing our car last weekend, I was reminded how easily dirt that’s not quickly washed gets embedded into the paint (especially obvious on white cars!). Just washing with soap was not enough, I had to apply some vigorous polishing to get ‘some’ of the dirt marks off. If I had washed the car a little more often, I could have avoided a whole lot of effort (and had have a ‘whiter’ car).

It brought my thoughts to how our own spiritual lives that is so easily tainted by sin. Sins unconfessed, can easily form habits that easily embed themselves into our life and will require more work to get rid of.

Thankfully our Lord is a powerful One and can help us overcome even the hardest habits, but it may take longer and involve more struggle.

It’s important we not neglect the regular confession of sin in response to which the Lord cleanses us from sin. Regular examination of self before the Lord bring ‘dark’ thoughts and intentions into the light and repentance and confession keeps those sins from getting a foothold in our lives.

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us [our] sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.