291–300 of 543 posts
More messengers - less desire to use them. My anecdata show shift to jabber and IRC for older and more tech folks.
That's what makes hangouts appealing, you can still you your XMPP client. Maybe allo will support it too.
Not sure how common this is, but everyone at both school and work these days shifts seamlessly from mobile to dekstop and back. This has been one of the main reasons we tend to use WhatsApp and Slack, even for corporate communications as silly as that sounds -- because you can type long messages on it on the keyboard/desktop but also have access to it on the go. What I don't understand is -- given Allo had a blank sl…
People keep saying mobile is the future, however, I just can't imagine desktops leaving us anytime soon. If I'm on the go, then sure I want it on my mobile device, but 99% of the time when I'm at work I want quick and easy access either through an app or the browser on my desktop. If a service I use doesn't have a desktop app, then it likely won't receive any of my attention until I'm out of the office.
My point is my strange use-case (an annotated map) was an artifact I could assemble at a desktop from pre-existing bits I already had to hand, but with (current) mobile so many degrees of freedom are removed. Unless someone has (1) identified a mass need exactly the same as yours, and (2) made an app that does exactly that you are out of luck.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not have end-to-end encryption except for replies that begin with '@google'? That should be the best of both worlds.
but assistant is supposed to be reading all the messages in the conversation, in order to provide relevant replies. why not just use one of the many other apps that does provide end-to-end encryption, if it's something you want? Some feature sets are simply not compatible. If people keep insisting on end-to-end, google will implement it and then scan all your replies on either end and send them to their servers after…
They could totally have made assistant run locally, but it's easier for them to run it on a server:
- It saves battery to run big computations on something that does not run on a battery (their servers);
- They can use techniques that require more processing power;
- They can patch whenever and whatever they want, since it's all on-premises for them; and
- And as a bonus, you know what people are interested in and talking about.
Most privacy minded people probably wouldn't install it anyway, it being closed source and by Google, so the few that you send away by this is a small number. And it adds network dependency and latency, but it's a messaging app - you need network connectivity anyway.
So I can totally see why they do it. I can also tell I'm never going to install this Google-run assistant and why I'm going to tell everyone to stay away.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People keep saying mobile is the future, however, I just can't imagine desktops leaving us anytime soon. If I'm on the go, then sure I want it on my mobile device, but 99% of the time when I'm at work I want quick and easy access either through an app or the browser on my desktop. If a service I use doesn't have a desktop app, then it likely won't receive any of my attention until I'm out of the office.
Desktop will always be around. I just think we are moving back to the 80s and 90s where only the "Super Tech" person owned them and the rest just didn't need them. Mobile has replaced a lot of the way people spend time but for my interest and needs desktop is king. I don't watch movies on my desktop (YouTube yes) but I also don't do video editing and data science on a phone.
Also, with the growing trend of 'cord-cutting' i think more and more people are hooking their laptops up to their TVs and watching netflix and youtube that way. Though the trend in that space seems to be pointing more toward curated ecosystems like roku, apple tv, etc.
But i think eventually for pretty much anything else the hardware and software will reach a point where you can dock your phone into some cradle and that will be your desktop environment also - this has been tried and failed many times, but its usually because the performance just isnt there to be competitive with real computers.
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Without brand it's hard to stand out in the crowded messaging space.
Honestly crap like this is devaluing their brand. At this point I have 0 faith that Google will stick to any of their random products (Google Wave, Buzz, Reader, Code, Google+) and therefore I avoid using them.
Not sure how common this is, but everyone at both school and work these days shifts seamlessly from mobile to dekstop and back. This has been one of the main reasons we tend to use WhatsApp and Slack, even for corporate communications as silly as that sounds -- because you can type long messages on it on the keyboard/desktop but also have access to it on the go. What I don't understand is -- given Allo had a blank sl…
Not sure how common this is, but everyone at both school and work these days shifts seamlessly from mobile to dekstop and back. This has been one of the main reasons we tend to use WhatsApp and Slack, even for corporate communications as silly as that sounds -- because you can type long messages on it on the keyboard/desktop but also have access to it on the go. What I don't understand is -- given Allo had a blank sl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People keep saying mobile is the future, however, I just can't imagine desktops leaving us anytime soon. If I'm on the go, then sure I want it on my mobile device, but 99% of the time when I'm at work I want quick and easy access either through an app or the browser on my desktop. If a service I use doesn't have a desktop app, then it likely won't receive any of my attention until I'm out of the office.
Exactly this: I wanted to send an annotated Google Map to someone. I started whilst on a train trip and with a series of silly screenshots (using an offline map app after having my network go up and down etc.) I got about half way done in 20 minutes. I got to my desk and restarted from scratch and got it done in about a minute. Obvious I know. My point is my strange use-case (an annotated map) was an artifact I could…
While this may be particularly true of mobile right now, I feel the above statement is, and has always been, true of software in general.
It's still early days for mobile, despite the amazing capability that's already there. It will get there eventually.
Not sure how common this is, but everyone at both school and work these days shifts seamlessly from mobile to dekstop and back. This has been one of the main reasons we tend to use WhatsApp and Slack, even for corporate communications as silly as that sounds -- because you can type long messages on it on the keyboard/desktop but also have access to it on the go. What I don't understand is -- given Allo had a blank sl…
We can use it in the browser at work just by keeping Gmail open in a tab. No IM applications to install or concerns about whether we're running Windows, OSX, or whatever.
Then the conversations follow when you log off whatever desktop or laptop you're on via the mobile app. About half of us use Android so it either comes standard or you can easily install. The other half uses iOS and unlike iMessage/iChat/Facetime, you can easily use it on iOS as well as Android.
I installed Allo today but so far I haven't had a chance to try it out. Frankly it gives me the same mild annoyance I felt when Facebook broke messaging out into a separate app (and when I just said screw it and uninstalled both).
As much as I use and generally like Google stuff, they drive me nuts with their approach a lot of the time. When GChat/Talk became Hangouts and started integrating Voice and SMS/MMS, it seemed like a move in the right direction, both for them as a company (wanting to be your one stop shop for messaging) and for me as a user (less apps, more seamless integration). Then SMS/MMS was split back off into Messaging, Voice...I haven't really heard much about Voice in a while which is weird because it was one of those things that seemed so promising at one point. And now Duo alongside the pretty great video chat already in Hangouts and Allo alongside Messaging alongside Hangouts.
I get the idea of maybe starting a secondary platform/service/app to see what sticks and what doesn't. At worst they can integrate the good bits into their main product (see: Inbox). But their messaging strategy seems more like publishing Inbox with the intention of just ditching plain old Gmail.