Meanwhile, on the desktop google music doesn't work without flash installed, and there's no desktop client in sight. Great times.
I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
71–80 of 524 posts
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you aren't worried about provided a first class experience to your iOS customers, then build for Chrome + Android. Although, that sounds a little like "build for IE6 + Windows" 15 years ago. Except that Android is the open one that is implementing agreed upon standards, and Apple is the laggard left behind.
> implementing agreed upon standards Yeah, except most of your users' devices are still running 2+ year old software versions.
No, they're running 2+ year old OSes, not 2+ year old apps.
Just like Windows 7 still runs the latest Chrome despite being a whopping 6 years old, so, too, does Android KitKat run the latest Chrome.
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> implementing agreed upon standards Yeah, except most of your users' devices are still running 2+ year old software versions.
That's a really good point. Do all Android handsets and tablets ship with Chrome now? I'm guessing lots of cheap tablets don't. And I know Samsung used to have their own browser. Do they ship with Chrome now?
KitKat was the first version to ship with Chrome as the default browser, but IIRC it didn't replace the system webview or become auto-updating until Lollipop. Wikipedia shows 70% of Android users on KitKat+, and about 35% on Lollipop+.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history#/media...
I dunno what Samsung ships with, when I was still doing a bunch of mobile web work (early 2014) they used a forked version of Android Browser that was really terrible. Hopefully they've replaced it with something saner. A lot of recent Samsung devices have dropped Android entirely for Tizen, though.
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works. Most Android phones have come with Chrome preinstalled for a while now. That version is automatically updated, just like any other app.
It was enough of a problem less than four months ago that phonearena.com published an article about it: http://www.phonearena.com/news/How-to-change-your-Android-ph... I don't think Chrome is as ubiquitous as it should be. Do new cheap tablets (like the Kindle Fire) even ship with Chrome? New phones from Samsung don't have Chrome set as the default browser (not sure if it's even installed by default).
It probably isn't on the Kindle Fire, no, but neither is the Play Store. It might use Android as its base, but it's not really an Android tablet.
And while I don't doubt there are many variations of Android device without Chrome installed, the devices that dominate the market (Samsung Galaxy and the like) have had Chrome preinstalled for a long time. From a brief Google it sounds like the default browser varies between phone, provider, etc. etc., so I can't say for certain. What I can tell you is that my analytics logs show the vast majority of Android users are running Chrome.
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#75> WebBluetooth (yup, talking to bluetooth devices from JS on a webpage) This sounds like a great new attack vector for the black hats of tommorrow. There are just some things that a web browser should not do. Exposing things that previously required escape from sandbox attacks is one of them.
> There are just some things that a web browser should not do. Exposing things that previously required escape from sandbox attacks is one of them. Why is it any different from an app doing it, though? There will be the same permission prompts etc.
Browsers are a huge attack vector. And Mobile Safari can mark data pages as executable, while apps cannot.
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
with the latest webdev trends it is extremely unlikely this will improve any time soon. There was a time (~10-15) years ago when separation of concenrs and accessibility did matter, now it is just a js frameworks bloodbath.
Some "frameworks" put a ton of work into accessibility. The Polymer team's entire element catalog is accessible with ARIA integration done with assistance from Chrome's dedicated accessibility engineers. We even provide reusable abstractions that make writing your own accessible elements easier, like iron-a11y-announcer and iron-a11y-keys. Accessibility was a big topic at our last Polymer Summit: https://www.youtube.…
Thanks for the link - was really interesting, particularly the introduction which explains why accessibility is so important and the number of people that it touches.
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#77My main exposure to Chrome web apps is Hangouts on Chrome for Mac and half the time I shut it down and choose to use the native app on my phone instead due to the poor, non-native UI and the battery life impact of Chrome. edit: the other shiny Google Web App example, Google Docs, doesn't work either. In Safari it likes to drops keys, and the last time I used it in Chrome (last autumn), it would either crash the whole…
Why would a PWA have a sign-up process when a native app wouldn't?
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#78I did the opposite and can't believe how much better my life had gotten because my iPhone is just a simple tool that I use for communications and don't think about it as a project. With Android, I always wanted to tweak silly things and run Cyanogenmod because the handset firmware was always so bad and vulnerable. On several occasions I'd bricked my phone requiring hours of recovery, or had transient failures of cell…
These things that you mentioned, you didn't really have to do. Buy a nexus, and it's as clean as it gets.
What you're saying is that you left the freedom of your device to jail yourself into simple interface...?
I do agree though, that those samsung/lg/etc phone have lots crapwares + carrier crapwares.
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#79My main exposure to Chrome web apps is Hangouts on Chrome for Mac and half the time I shut it down and choose to use the native app on my phone instead due to the poor, non-native UI and the battery life impact of Chrome. edit: the other shiny Google Web App example, Google Docs, doesn't work either. In Safari it likes to drops keys, and the last time I used it in Chrome (last autumn), it would either crash the whole…
> Every web app I've used has required a painful sign-up process, which is usually where I bail out of the process. Way more friction than an app store install.
That signup process can be made better. Nothing fixes the pains of having to download a large app over a potentially slow/spotty network, sacrifice an unknown amount of privacy, then having to twiddle a variable amount of options to get the thing to stop sending you notifications about every single action or event, then after a week of use, having to re-download the large app again because of updates.
Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
#80And then somebody in management asks why the new app is missing so many features on his brand new iPhone. In fact, all the C-level folks and board members are primarily iPhone and iPad users and none of them are happy that so many goodies are missing. If you aren't worried about provided a first class experience to your iOS customers, then build for Chrome + Android. Although, that sounds a little like "build for IE6…
> If you aren't worried about provided a first class experience to your iOS customers, then build for Chrome + Android. Although, that sounds a little like "build for IE6 + Windows" 15 years ago. Except that Android is the open one that is implementing agreed upon standards, and Apple is the laggard left behind.
> Except that Android is the open one that is implementing agreed upon standards, and Apple is the laggard left behind.
Given that many of these things are potential exploit vectors, I am not inclined to fault Apple for taking its time to implement them.
Also, we are at the point where the standards are driven by a select few companies. If I recall correctly, those are Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. Opera used to be there too, but I doubt Opera does much of anything there anymore and I suspect the same either is or will soon be true for Mozilla given its leadership issues.