Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 161 posts

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#151

Post by runjake »

Xuzz wrote: post #90
runjake wrote: post #46

Here's a list to start off with: Any home screen widget, because you can. ConnectBot PDAnet (no shady jailbreak needed) Barcode Scanner My Tracks Swype Google Navigation Google Voice (better than the new iPhone version) Layar Scripting Layer 4 Android Google Speech To Text (Voice Search) Slide Screen Chrome To Phone Dropbox (whoah, not limited by a weird file sandbox!?) Whatever system software that allows you to mou…

I'm not sure what's so "shady" about jailbreaking: the processes is very streamlined, and while you can find malicious software, the Cydia Store is about as curated -- if not more -- than the App Store.

Shady == replacing a system framework with your own hex edited version, poor source code, and installing .git dirs on end user devices. You should really examine what those jail breaking apps you use do. It's ugly.

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#152

Post by YooLi »

gazrogers wrote: post #143
YooLi wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the post? He doesn't phrase it at all as an iOS is better than Android argument. He's saying it's interesting that as large as Android is, why there isn't any good 3rd party apps exclusively for it. There are no "I must get an Android phone so I can run this" apps.

"I must get an Android phone so I can run this" apps, such as Swype (since the discussion only includes iOS and Android), are excluded from the argument by Gruber.

Of course, that's an edge case. That's not a critical mass app. You aren't going to go to the mall and hear a someone talking about swype for android.

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#153

Post by nochiel »

lukeschlather wrote: post #150
nochiel wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gruber seems to make the assertion that a platform only has worth based on its exclusive 'killer apps'. He goes wrong there and never really recovers. Android's strength is not its suite apps, it's its flexibility." It is baffling how you managed to read the article and still evade his point even though he addresses your rejoinder directly. Gruber says, "At this point, I’m guessing, Android fans are ready to exclaim…

>People don't choose Android because of its superior applications but because of its perceived flexibility/hackability. Developers don't see the Android app market as particularly profitable. I think you've hit the crux of the flaw with Gruber's argument: developer profitability does not have much bearing on UX as those in the proprietary app developer community might like it to.

It's not developer profitability per se but the appearance of developer profitability (among other things) that I think he was trying to get at. He says,

"Developers complain, not without merit, that the iTunes App Store is rigged toward low-priced apps. But the Android Market seems rigged toward no-price apps."

He posits that there is a significant qualitative difference between the most popular, exclusive, third-party applications in the iOS market and those in the Android market with the former providing a superior experience. Are you saying that this isn't true? If we admit it is true, then how do you account for it?

"Turn the table and we could be here all day running down the list of high-quality, interesting apps which are exclusive to iOS."

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#154

Post by Xuzz »

runjake wrote: post #151
Xuzz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what's so "shady" about jailbreaking: the processes is very streamlined, and while you can find malicious software, the Cydia Store is about as curated -- if not more -- than the App Store.

Shady == replacing a system framework with your own hex edited version, poor source code, and installing .git dirs on end user devices. You should really examine what those jail breaking apps you use do. It's ugly.

OK, well, I actually wrote part of a few of them, and they do none of that.

First, "replacing system framework with your own hex edited version" -- no. They do patch the kernel, but they exploit it at startup and do dynamic patching using dynamic methods that work on any version. There is no hex editing. For adding to frameworks, they use a similar method to LD_PRELOAD on Linux. No in-binary patching ever happens.

Poor source code? If you mean "not much is released", that's wrong, for example comex posts his kernel patching code at http://github.com/comex shortly after every release.

.git directories? No idea where that comes from.

So, here's what a jailbreak /does/ do: it evades the codesigning mechanisms on the device, and installs a file that does the same on boot. It then injects some code into the kernel, which does dynamic patching to remove the code signature verification checks. After that, it untars a basic *nix setup, with GNU coretools and the Cydia application, and moves the built-in applications to the larger partition (to make space for additional system components). Want to install a "tweak"? It installs MobileSubstrate, a tool that loads itself into processes via DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES (similar to LD_PRELOAD on Linux), and then injects whatever other packages you have installed using that. This allows dynamic patching of whatever we want, and you don't hex-edit or modify a single binary.

So I'm not sure where you got that impression, but it's pretty much patently wrong.

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#155

Post by Locke1689 »

dejb wrote: post #148
Locke1689 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's specialized computation -- not that difficult to understand. The iPhone certainly isn't my development environment, either.

> It's specialized computation No it's not. The whole purpose of having an app store is to make it more general purpose. Why should anything be 'off limits' just because the device is small? Why is this not obvious to you? > The iPhone certainly isn't my development environment, either. .. and it never will be. But you added the word 'development', not me. I prefer to decide how I can use my computation devices and w…

You said main environment. I am a developer. The development environment is my main environment. I don't play video games, I rarely go on Facebook -- my computer is for reading and writing code and things having to do with code.

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#156

Post by dejb »

Locke1689 wrote: post #155
dejb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's specialized computation No it's not. The whole purpose of having an app store is to make it more general purpose. Why should anything be 'off limits' just because the device is small? Why is this not obvious to you? > The iPhone certainly isn't my development environment, either. .. and it never will be. But you added the word 'development', not me. I prefer to decide how I can use my computation devices and w…

You said main environment. I am a developer. The development environment is my main environment. I don't play video games, I rarely go on Facebook -- my computer is for reading and writing code and things having to do with code.

> You said main environment. I am a developer.

So did you actually think that I was making a point about you specifically? That brings egotism to new levels.

The point I was making was an analogy (hence the use of the word 'like'). It was that just as a console platform is a toy-like version of a desktop one, so is the iOS platform a toy-like version of a proper mobile platform.

You seem to be arguing that mobile computing isn't important enough to warrant the same sort of open ecosystem that exists in the desktop world, that because you can't personally envisage ever developing on any mobile system that a toy like platform is the best way. This strikes me as extremely short sited for 2 reasons. Firstly it shows zero consideration of how others might want to utilise their mobile devices now. And secondly it shows no thought as to how mobile devices may evolve in the future. There are many possible technological breakthroughs that could have you using your mobile device as a primary development environment in the future.

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#157

Post by brown9-2 »

PostOnce wrote: post #122

Being able to point my phone at a sign written in a foreign language and having it translated into English instantly is not only a killer app for me, it blows my mind that we've gone from no cellphones 20 years ago to this. I can also point it at the sky and know which star I'm looking at, or at the cover a book, not the barcode, and have it tell me the lowest price nationally. It can tell me exactly where on Earth I…

Being able to point my phone at a sign written in a foreign language and having it translated into English instantly is not only a killer app for me, it blows my mind that we've gone from no cellphones 20 years ago to this.

For those of us that don't use Android - which app is this?

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#158

Post by georgemcbay »

brown9-2 wrote: post #157
PostOnce wrote: post #122

Being able to point my phone at a sign written in a foreign language and having it translated into English instantly is not only a killer app for me, it blows my mind that we've gone from no cellphones 20 years ago to this. I can also point it at the sky and know which star I'm looking at, or at the cover a book, not the barcode, and have it tell me the lowest price nationally. It can tell me exactly where on Earth I…

Being able to point my phone at a sign written in a foreign language and having it translated into English instantly is not only a killer app for me, it blows my mind that we've gone from no cellphones 20 years ago to this. For those of us that don't use Android - which app is this?

I would assume he is talking about Google Goggles, which IIRC is also available as an iPhone app these days.

Despite the availability of that particular app on iOS, the immediate availability of any Google mobile app on Android (without having to wait for the long delays that plagued Google Voice, etc) and the integration of them all is the killer Android app for me. Having things like Android Car Mode and Voice Search out of the box and having them all work together is really nice, and while you can get similar functionality out of iOS by piecing many apps together, it isn't quite the same seamless experience.

YMMV depending upon how much you consume Google services. Android certainly suffers on the games front and is a second class citizen for other types of utility apps from non-Google vendors.

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#159

Post by georgemcbay »

YooLi wrote: post #152
gazrogers wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I must get an Android phone so I can run this" apps, such as Swype (since the discussion only includes iOS and Android), are excluded from the argument by Gruber.

Of course, that's an edge case. That's not a critical mass app. You aren't going to go to the mall and hear a someone talking about swype for android.

I actually have heard random people I do not know discussing Swype in public. It is actually a fairly big deal for hardcore texters (read: people ages 12-22 who use cellphones).

Re: Where Are the Android Killer Apps?

#160

Post by gcb »

StavrosK wrote: post #128
cheald wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a part of the Cyanogen 6.1 ROM which enables me to listen to FM radio via the dormant-on-stock FM transceiver in my Nexus One. I specifically denoted that it was available via Cyanogen because it is the exception.

Ah, my Desire has a Radio app, so I don't need to root it for that either... Do you know if there is a compelling reason to root an Android phone? I haven't found anything I can't do yet, and the phone is close to supplanting my computer (especially with Swype/Swiftkey, K9 email and Skype/Meebo).

Complex SSH tunnels.

Better 2g fallback.

Touch screen fix, for nexus.

Hosts file editing.

Post reply on HN