I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS • Hacker News Board

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#481

Post by kuschku » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

smadge wrote: post #427

jodrellblank wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An item that can't be maintained is a light pattern. It is a demonstration of confidence in good design and engineering; longevity for as long as an item is useful, but no longer. It is in the interests of the user to do away with the costs and complexities of making something maintainable and the consequent obligation to do maintenance . This only doesn't work well because once something reaches a reasonable 'end of…

When my teeth start to rot I get them fixed at the dentist, then start to maintain my teeth by brushing them. If I get a wound on my arm, I wash it and apply bandages, not finalize my will and kill myself. When your toilet gets clogged, you plunge it, not buy a new toilet. When your carpet gets worn out you replace it, not tear down the whole house and buy a new one. If the RAM on your computer fails, you buy new RAM…

The computer I’m using now is from April 2012, last upgraded in 2014.

The computer I used before that was from 2006. Which is now in use by my sister.

Both of them have been unmaintained (except for automated updates of Kubuntu) since first installation.

The same I expect from phones. And from washing machines.

My family’s microwave has been bought and unmaintained since 30 years ago, and that’s what devices should provide:

A literal lifetime of working without maintenance.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#482

Post by Grishnakh » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

xoa wrote: post #182

Grishnakh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find an engineer willing to argue in favor of non-maintainable equipment, he's not a true engineer, but some failed engineer who's moved over to management and is more interested in profitability than in users having a quality product that allows them to keep their TCO low by being able to maintain it themselves (or by an independent professional) and keep it for a long time instead of throwing it away early.…

>There is, quite simply, NO good argument in favor of non-maintainable equipment, unless your goal is to increase profits. As a universal assertion, particularly in the realm of products intended for personal mobile use by the general population, this absolutely and utterly wrong. The fundamental core issue is that many forms of maintainability require dead matter, simple as that. Take removable vs non-removable batt…

I disagree. You can call this "moving the goalposts" if you want, but I don't think it is. You seem to be basically be claiming that something is only "maintainable" if you can easily disassemble it down to the smallest component; I'm not arguing for that at all.

If there's an actual engineering reason to reduce maintainability (e.g. it improves performance), that's a worthwhile consideration. What I'm talking about is when a product is made intentionally non-maintainable, or maintainable only by people with service tools which are non-obtainable, solely because it increases profits. There's no good reason for this.

Now, for your battery example, I don't think that even applies. From what I've read and heard, most "non-replaceable" batteries are actually completely replaceable, it's just not so easy to do and requires a bit of skill. "Maintainable by a service technician with some common hand tools and half a brain" does not equal "non maintainable". I've seen tons of videos on YouTube showing non-professionals how to take apart their phones and replace those "non-maintainable" batteries. It's not like the things are epoxied in there. And you're right, you can save a bit of space by going that route; it's an engineering trade-off.

My example of something that's deliberately designed to not be maintainable (by the end-user or someone not employed by or affiliated with the manufacturer) would be a car that requires regular service, but where it can't be done without connecting a laptop to the car and using an extremely expensive software program to really do nothing more than tell the car the oil has been changed. This makes it impossible for the customer to do the service himself, or have an independent mechanic do it unless that mechanic is willing to shell out the money needed for that tool.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#483

Post by Grishnakh » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 2:36 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #269

Grishnakh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find an engineer willing to argue in favor of non-maintainable equipment, he's not a true engineer, but some failed engineer who's moved over to management and is more interested in profitability than in users having a quality product that allows them to keep their TCO low by being able to maintain it themselves (or by an independent professional) and keep it for a long time instead of throwing it away early.…

> If you find an engineer willing to argue in favor of non-maintainable equipment, he's not a true engineer And probably not a true Scotchman either. I mean, obviously only a failed engineer would ever propose not maintainable products -- everybody should use old maintainable razors for example, and not (recyclable) disposable ones. /s

Oh please. It's not engineers who propose non-maintainable products, it's the marketing and business people who make those decisions. Engineers just carry them out.

As for razors, that's a terrible example. Gillette is famous for the whole "razor and blades" marketing scheme, which obviously was invented by a business person seeking to maximize profit. Disposable razors are a bad idea all around (and they're not recyclable easily; recyclable things don't have metal and plastic merged together so they can't be separated): they perform terribly and are wasteful and cost more over time. The only thing they're good for is if you left your razor at home while traveling. I like old DE razors personally, but even a modern razor is "maintainable": you can replace the cartridge heads. You can't replace the individual blades because there's no feasible way of making a blade assembly that small, with that kind of precision, where an end-user can replace the blades individually, and besides the plastic part of the blade-holder isn't very much plastic anyway. This example is just silly; it's like claiming a car air filter is "unmaintainable" because you can't wash it out, or you can't separate the paper pleats from the plastic frame. That's just dumb. As long as the filter is fairly easily replaceable, it's OK for the filter (a consumable) as a whole to be a disposable product.

I am not arguing for things to be made so they can be easily disassembled to their smallest components.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#484

Post by coco1989 » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

_kp6z wrote: post #70

I 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…

Exactly Kev. Android is like having a phone that feels like it has holes in it and thorns - its like an overgrown backyard like oh I should pull up these weeds.. I should work on this fence.. My iphone is like a smartphone.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#485

Post by mswiss » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

npunt wrote: post #372

lallysingh wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, there are reviews - on the internet - for mechanics and dealer service departments. And really, anyone able bodied can change oil.

In college I changed my oil and filters. It was a pain getting under a car a few inches off the ground, disposal was tricky, and I had to spend time cleaning up nasty gunk. I also could only do it when the car had not been driven recently. The fundamental problem with changing your oil is that it involves oil. I saved $30, at the cost of an hour of my labor. As soon as I had a job, that equation didn't make sense.

I did the same thing on a late 90's 3 series throughout college. A pair of car jacks or rhino ramps makes the job way easier. Also if you take your oil to pep boys they'll dispose of it for free. Either way I'd still do it if I didn't live in a city. There's something nice about maintaining your things, it brings pride in ownership.

I now have a much newer car (that I probably don't need since I don't need to drive to work and live in a city) and no garage so I pay for oil changes. On the college car I knew how everything fit together, I took everything apart to fix it multiple times, I changed/ upgraded/ retrofitted things in their to make it more enjoyable. On my new car I can't really do those things without more complicated tech. It definitely changes how you view the object. Both are fun "tools" but one was my fun tool the other isn't

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#486

Post by Retra » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #476

zerohp wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware of how chips are constructed. They are not built of discrete parts even though they are composed of multiple chemical elements. They are assembled through chemical processes that create a unified product through a few hundred steps. They are not an assembly of billions of parts and it is misleading to describe them as such.

Part does not just mean discrete object. The lower part of that beam is damaged. pärt/Submit noun 1. "a piece or segment of something such as an object, activity, or period of time, which combined with other pieces makes up the whole." 2. some but not all of something. "the painting tells only part of the story" You might be thinking of Component, but even that's arguable. CPU's often contain nonfunctional parts so e…

This discussion isn't about parts, components, or any other pedantic segmentation of matter; it's about the consumer's ability to perform maintenance.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#487

Post by jshelly » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 3:24 PM UTC

These statements and arguments are so pointless these days. Use whatever you prefer and be happy.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#488

Post by xigency » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 3:42 PM UTC

S_A_P wrote: post #202

Im not sure what it is about articles like these that bother me so much. Is this guy some hacker hero that I should know? I dont care what the platform is, and this is nothing to do with iOS vs Android. I really cannot stand this "why I quit x" type of blog post. Is there a reason this guys opinion matters more than anyone elses? I know I could just ignore articles like this, but it does happen to be staring me in th…

It doesn't seem like you've read the article because the author does ask for improvement for Apple's support of web applications and specifically criticizes their blatant and ignored backsliding over the past 9 years.

This article is specifically on professional reasons to use a development platform, and really has hardly anything to do with personal preferences.

This guy is a hacker hero, and he is one that you don't know.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#489

Post by xigency » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 3:49 PM UTC

jarjoura wrote: post #12

I think apps are in a lull right now because most were abandoned and left users feeling jittery about pouring their lives into them. Also few apps spent the effort to take advantage of working offline. If I'm in the subway, I'm basically unable to use anything except games. Although the last couple of games I couldn't play because they were trying to connect to an Ad server that would fail and so the game wouldn't pr…

That's the interesting thing about PWA. They can be web applications that don't require internet access.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#490

Post by pmarreck » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

taesu wrote: post #78

_kp6z wrote: post #70

I 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.

> Switched to Android from iOS (with reasons)

> Switched to iOS from Android (with reasons)

> Counterargument is: But you didn't try this specific Android device.

Sort of "moving the goalposts," is it not?