The Nexus 7 Has Problems Displaying Videos from Vimeo

My friend Jigar, Android developer extraordinaire, has recently been showing me various features of the Google Nexus 7 (2013 version). This time, however, he showed me something...odd  to say the least. His Nexus 7, it seemed, was having trouble displaying videos from the web.

More specifically, the Nexus 7 was having trouble displaying TED Talks and videos on The Verge. As shown in the embedded video, the Nexus 7 displayed a blank green screen instead of the actual content when the device was in landscape mode. Videos displayed just fine in portrait mode. One extra quirk was that the video would briefly return to normal in landscape mode when the device was about to transition to portrait mode.

After some additional testing, we determined that it wasn't all web videos that were problematic (Youtube, for example, worked fine) but just videos hosted by Vimeo. This Nexus 7 runs Android 4.3, so we asked another friend to try the same videos on his Google Nexus 4 that also runs Android 4.3. The videos worked perfectly on the Nexus 4, regardless of the source or the orientation of the device. The Nexus 7, it seems, has some sort of problem that isn't specific to Android 4.3.

Folks, this is a strange bug. I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this one before.

Thanks to my friend Jigar for bringing this to my attention. You can find his posts on Twitter as @jigarhb.

Microsoft's Terrible Surface Commercials

Microsoft recently released a commercial for the Surface Pro. This commercial is in the same vein as the Surface RT commercial released last year.

The commercial is also rubbish.

Why is this? It's because in an attempt to look 'cool', 'hip', and 'edgy', Microsoft has failed to inform the public what its product actually does. This is an especially terrible idea when you are clearly lagging behind the market leaders. What are the market leaders doing right with their commercials that Microsoft is doing wrong?

Apple's iPad Mini commercial takes half as much time (roughly 30 seconds) as the Surface Pro commercial (roughly 60 seconds) to explain twice as much to the user in a more easily digestible format. This particular commercial shows that the iPad A) can let you communicate in real-time via voice and video, and B) comes in different sizes (standard iPad and Mini).

Amazon's Kindle Fire HD commercial has a narrator discussing the various features that the device has, overlaid to video showing people using the device in real-world scenarios. In 30 seconds, the video shows us that you can read books, play games, watch movies, play music, and communicate in real-time via voice and video.

Google's Nexus 7 commercial, at 60 seconds, is the same length as the Surface commercials yet is so much more informative. The commercial shows us a little girl reading a book with her mother, using a drawing app, communicating in real-time via voice and video with her grandmother, playing a video game, and using Google voice search to find out how far away the Earth is from the moon.

What could someone possibly learn about the Surface Pro from the commercial? If they are paying very close attention, they might possibly see that it has a stylus, connectable keyboard, and kickstand. Everything else gets lost in the blur of song and motion. Microsoft's competitors communicate the value of their respective devices in a very efficient manner by crafting short stories that resonate with the viewer. We already know why we want to communicate with our loved ones. We already know that we would enjoy playing games, watching movies, or listening to music. It's unclear why we would want to have a stylus, connectable keyboard, or kickstand.

Ultimately, Microsoft fails to inform the viewer why they should care.