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Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

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Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#71

Post by alexbrooks »

detaro wrote: post #31
anaisbetts wrote: post #10

> ...on my home screen on my Pixel 4... > Things like fluid scrolling... Well, yeah. It's not exactly apples to Apples to compare your 2022 iPhone to an Android phone from 2019. On my Z-Flip 4, Tusky has no problem hitting 120Hz scroll. That being said, I can't disagree with his larger point when it comes to many commercial apps - design teams are all iOS and ship designs that aren't Android-first or even Android-adj…

Tusky is just fine on my 2017 mid-range Android phone...

Some people just can't see it.

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#72

Post by jgruber »

ryandrake wrote: post #43
jgruber wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like asking for “measurable criteria” for evaluating a movie or novel or song or painting. It’s art. I will offer another quote from Kubrick: “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.” If you don’t think apps can be artistic works, it’s no wonder you don’t understand what I’m trying to express.

I suppose our fundamental difference is over whether these apps are best compared as tools or as works of art. When I evaluate and compare tools, in addition to cost, I'm looking at things like speed to perform key tasks, ease/speed to navigate the UI, reliability, error rate, user mistake-rate, latency, accuracy, feature discoverability. Does it effectively do what it says on the tin? And are these attributes greate…

Why should developing the feel of an app be any different than the feel of a game. That’s what good apps are like. It’s like you can play a good app as much as you use it. All good tools and instruments in history have been crafted like this.

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#73

Post by robin_reala »

howinteresting wrote: post #56
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #9

does ios allow web browsers to have ad blocking extensions? because that's literally the only thing that will ever matter to me about the difference between the platforms

Only if you use Safari (which means you can't sync your data if you use a browser on a non-Apple OS), and all of them are significantly worse than uBlock Origin. I don't know if any of them even have anti-adblock blocking to the quality level that uBO does.

That’s not true; I use Firefox on iOS and have Firefox Focus as a block list provider.

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#74

Post by howinteresting »

robin_reala wrote: post #73
howinteresting wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you use Safari (which means you can't sync your data if you use a browser on a non-Apple OS), and all of them are significantly worse than uBlock Origin. I don't know if any of them even have anti-adblock blocking to the quality level that uBO does.

That’s not true; I use Firefox on iOS and have Firefox Focus as a block list provider.

Non-Safari browsers can't use third-party content blockers. It's a shitshow on iOS.

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#75

Post by howinteresting »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #63
MBCook wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a trade off though. Having those abilities shouldn’t do anything to prevent Android apps from being just as good. All it should do is enable Android to have even more good apps. So when both platforms are capable of making an app, such as Mastodon, why does the disparity exist?

> why does the disparity exist? I explained why. For an app with few users, it sometimes takes longer for open source to catch up. > All it should do is enable Android to have even more good apps And it does. It has far more and far better apps than iOS (maps with navigation long before iOS, ReVanced, better voice assistants, driving mode apps, better in-call abilities, better keyboards, better system-wide adblockers…

To be fair Chrome on Android kind of sucks because it doesn't have built-in adblocking or extension support.

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#76

Post by howinteresting »

jgruber wrote: post #42
hellisothers wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An iPhone from 2019 (which my wife has) still scrolls very smoothly. I assume he isn’t talking about refresh rate, he is talking About jerkily scrolling because the developer is making blocking calls on the main thread or re-rendering already visible elements. I also experience this on my Android test device.

Correct. I am not talking about frame rate.

Well, I am. If you buy a $600 Android phone today, you'll get much smoother scrolling than if you buy a $600 Apple phone today. Your assertion is just false when it comes to phones available today.

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#77

Post by howinteresting »

armadsen wrote: post #59
yellow_lead wrote: post #30

> years ago my friend Brent Simmons wrote about why he chose to create apps exclusively for the Mac, despite the Windows market being so much larger: >> One of the reasons I develop for OS X is that, when it comes to user interface, this is the big leagues, this is the show. What?

He was writing in the context of Windows vs Mac 20 years ago. At that time especially, the overwhelming majority of people who really cared deeply about UI design used and designed for Macs, despite the overall small size of the Mac market. For some evidence of design’s importance on the Mac (and now iOS), Apple has been awarding Apple Design Awards for many, many years. Winning one is considered by Mac/iOS designers…

[dead]

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#78

Post by ckoerner »

MBCook wrote: post #50
akmarinov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvioulsy Gruber is extremely pro-Apple He's also been showing his age quite a bit, being against a lot of recent developments, like being anti-remote work.

> like being anti-remote work. I don’t remember that at all. Can you provide a link?

I think this is the article they are referring to.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/04/apple-remote-wo...

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#79

Post by aetherson »

whynotminot wrote: post #54
aetherson wrote: post #2

Look, it's a blast from 2012, when iOS partisans were fond of claiming that the fatal flaw with Android was lower number of niche, low-audience apps or low app quality or something. It feels like these 10 years later, we should have some some pretty solid intuitions about how much of a competitive advantage this actually is for iOS.

Seems like a pretty big competitive advantage? Isn’t iOS actually gaining market share?

iOS is indeed gaining market share. It seems pretty clearly to be temporally unrelated to any app store advantages, which probably peaked 5-10 years ago.

To be clear, I think that the availability of niche apps is some kind of competitive advantage for iOS. But not a particularly big one, and probably less of one now than it was a decade ago.

The recent rise of iOS market share in the US probably has a lot to do with the wealth spike created by the pandemic, which advantages a marginally more expensive product. The other place I'd look is iPhone cameras vs Galaxy cameras, though honestly I'm not sure how good Galaxy's cameras are since I don't like Samsung's Android dialect.

Re: Meanwhile, over in Androidtown

#80

Post by jedikv »

jgruber wrote: post #62
MBCook wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like being anti-remote work. I don’t remember that at all. Can you provide a link?

I am not “anti remote work”. That would be absurd (and, personally, hypocritical). But I strongly believe that remote work isn’t good for some teams, and for some roles. No remote work for anyone: bad policy. Everyone on every team can work remote: sometimes a bad policy. That’s my position. A lot of people who strongly feel they should always have the option of full-time remote work object to that.

The objection was to you telling Apple employees to shut up and never question Apple authority. And then pulling some mental gymnastics that Apple is 'special' with not being remote friendly
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