61–70 of 139 posts
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I'm one of those people who gladly use an iPhone with mostly Google apps (namely Chrome, Gmail and Maps). My little experience with Android has always been negative. The only real annoyance with iOS is you can't set Chrome nor Maps as default applications.
I'm in the same boat. My dream device would be iPhone HW with Android software. I like Android's flexibility, the replaceable home screen instead of the list of apps, the Intents system that lets you replace an app handler with another (Chrome & Maps for example), the much better notification system... I have an iPhone now (because work), and it took a few months to stop grumbling, but I definitely appreciated the ov…
Android is a giant tracking/ad/malware machine. It’s far too permissive to applications you install on it. My most recent negative experience were pop up ads that the Peel Remote started showing on my home screen. Peel remote is one of the force installed applications that Samsung’s touchwiz installs. It’s like Windows 95 with OEM bloatware, but worse.
It's rather sad that Google needs to pay Android makers a fee for installing it's apps, given how Google gives away source code that makes Android exist in the first place. On the contrary, Apple's ecosystem is completely closed, app cut fairly high and non-negotiable at 30% and app store rejections arbitrary at best and blatantly anti competitive at worst. In the name of user centricity, their platform places arbitr…
The fee Google's paying is for these established phone makers to distribute Google apps to a large market. The deal Google made with these companies is probably not as simple as "I open source Android You distribute my apps for free" although these two things seem like a trade-off from a developer perspective. It seems, to distinguish itself from Apple's ecosystem, Android advocates for fair competition and its "openness". Google will get unfair advantage to all the other Android app developers if they get to distribute their app for free across Android devices.
The truth is, unless they are all Richard Stallman, all these companies open source stuff as a business strategy rather than from a pure good will.
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> Google's changes in search shifted much of the traffic that went to smaller sites to larger, more established sites. Ones where the cost per impression/click are higher for Google. Do you have a reference that Google detuned their search for profit purposes? I'm happy to believe that Google did do evil, but I would like some evidence. This kind of change sounds short sighted.
>Do you have a reference that Google detuned their search for profit purposes? That's not what I said at all...I was saying their costs were higher as a result. They detuned it to reduce the number of low quality sites appearing in Google search results. I am speculating on one particular side effect that had. I have no proof, because only Google would have the data needed to prove that.
Interestingly Google Search results have degraded heavily over the years, and for many topics almost entirely consist of bullshit SEO sites and arbitrary-keyword-generation sites (http://foo-shit.com/freude-des-schadens = automatically generated page about "freude-des-schadens").
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I'm in the same boat. My dream device would be iPhone HW with Android software. I like Android's flexibility, the replaceable home screen instead of the list of apps, the Intents system that lets you replace an app handler with another (Chrome & Maps for example), the much better notification system... I have an iPhone now (because work), and it took a few months to stop grumbling, but I definitely appreciated the ov…
Samsung hardware has blown Apple out of the water for the last 3-4 years. I want Samsung screens and form factors with iOS. iOS is what makes iPhones great! Android is a giant tracking/ad/malware machine. It’s far too permissive to applications you install on it. My most recent negative experience were pop up ads that the Peel Remote started showing on my home screen. Peel remote is one of the force installed applica…
No one familiar with the impressive lead in mobile CPU design Apple has carved the past few years would ever make this claim. It's far more than just iOS making Apple's iOS devices great today.
You're wish for a better display is definitely valid though, and arguably gets granted at the end of this month.
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Sure, and the AFA has a pro-developer and pro-consumer side by reducing fragmentation. But I think it's important to understand that the open source aspect of Android is a small part of the story in practice for device makers. The narrative that Google is just "giving it away for free" is naive at best for the very reason you state: they're a profit-driven megacorp.
I'm not naive, but everyone takes the OS source code and platform for granted, and asks, "what else can I get"? It's obvious that Android has enabled and continues to enable an ecosystem of hardware companies to thrive. These companies have tried repeatedly to build their own software, but with NO commercial success. Imagine a world with an Apple like Android, Google owning the software, closed sourced, walled, yada…
Google doesn't need to make money off hardware or software, it's an ad company. Yeah sure they'll just go and remove themselves from mobile ads market because laughable penalties EU apply on them.
But probably when this was brought up during the project at Google it was dismissed as "bikeshedding". Or in this case, perhaps, "boxshedding".
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Your average end user who requires things to be simple is never going to install their own apps outside the approved, simple channels.
There are multiple thriving app stores in the global android market
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On Android 6 at least, double tapping the home button brings up the camera immediately.
I'm thinking more of the hardware lag, especially the horror stories of the Nexus 6 and to a lesser extent Nexus 5X.
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I'm one of those people who gladly use an iPhone with mostly Google apps (namely Chrome, Gmail and Maps). My little experience with Android has always been negative. The only real annoyance with iOS is you can't set Chrome nor Maps as default applications.
I'm in the same boat. My dream device would be iPhone HW with Android software. I like Android's flexibility, the replaceable home screen instead of the list of apps, the Intents system that lets you replace an app handler with another (Chrome & Maps for example), the much better notification system... I have an iPhone now (because work), and it took a few months to stop grumbling, but I definitely appreciated the ov…
It's called the Pixel 2.