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

Untitled topic

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 136 posts

Re: undefined

#21

Post by tmuir »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #14
tmuir wrote: post #7

The anal-retentiveness required to honestly differentiate between navigating an iphone and an android is ridiculous. They both have grids of 4 icons wide. Android scrolls vertically, iphone scrolls horizontally. You touch the icon to launch app. The idea that there is room between android and iOS for a 2nd favorite mobile OS, based upon navigation of app screens is laughable. Either its better than both of them, or i…

There is a gigantic difference in how an Android and iPhone navigate. Develop the same app for both and you will see that clearly. The big difference is Android uses a standard back button for all applications. This leads Android users to end up mashing a lot of buttons at random, to try and get what they want - it's actually quite a bad UI, and it was just translated from the web clumsily. On iPhone, each app has it…

The Reality Distortion Field is strong in this one. So if I understand what you're saying, android's back button causes users to randomly mash buttons in frothy fits of delirium, yet iOS's back button provides zen like enlightenment and happy endings.

Pushing the back button on an android phone, by default ALWAYS goes to the previous activity, or cancels context menus. Of course, it's possible to make the android back button do something else with the onPause method, just as it's possible to make that happen in the viewDidUnload method in iOS.

The dropbox and imdb android apps use tabs perfectly well.

Countless android apps use listviews to navigate.

Re: undefined

#22

Post by Zigurd »

The irony of this is that, with Android 4.x and the Fragment APIs for scaling UI from tablets to handsets, Android is the only UI system that has sophisticated ways for apps to intelligently arrange their UI elements to fit all sizes of devices, and developers are, as yet, ignoring those APIs.

Re: undefined

#23

Post by CubicleNinjas »

tmuir wrote: post #21
andrewljohnson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a gigantic difference in how an Android and iPhone navigate. Develop the same app for both and you will see that clearly. The big difference is Android uses a standard back button for all applications. This leads Android users to end up mashing a lot of buttons at random, to try and get what they want - it's actually quite a bad UI, and it was just translated from the web clumsily. On iPhone, each app has it…

The Reality Distortion Field is strong in this one. So if I understand what you're saying, android's back button causes users to randomly mash buttons in frothy fits of delirium, yet iOS's back button provides zen like enlightenment and happy endings. Pushing the back button on an android phone, by default ALWAYS goes to the previous activity, or cancels context menus. Of course, it's possible to make the android bac…

The point is consistency versus relative consistency.

Re: undefined

#25

Post by joesb »

nazar wrote: post #17
andrewljohnson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a gigantic difference in how an Android and iPhone navigate. Develop the same app for both and you will see that clearly. The big difference is Android uses a standard back button for all applications. This leads Android users to end up mashing a lot of buttons at random, to try and get what they want - it's actually quite a bad UI, and it was just translated from the web clumsily. On iPhone, each app has it…

At least you always know where that back button on Android.

The screen of the device is not that big that you won't know where the button is; it's either on the top or the bottom.

Also, if you know where the button is but you don't know what exactly it is going to do, do you really know where the button is?

Re: undefined

#26

Post by radley »

Zigurd wrote: post #22

The irony of this is that, with Android 4.x and the Fragment APIs for scaling UI from tablets to handsets, Android is the only UI system that has sophisticated ways for apps to intelligently arrange their UI elements to fit all sizes of devices, and developers are, as yet, ignoring those APIs.

"Intelligently" yes, but not intuitively. There's a difference.

That being said all of Google's products cater to, and now operate consistently for, a certain mindset. Reluctantly I'll admit that it's possible for a platform to successfully operate using parameters other than intuition-based UX/UI. It just feeeels weird ;-)

Re: undefined

#28

Post by gaius »

DodgyEggplant wrote: post #13
gaius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future will be like the past, because in the past, the future was like the past.

Clever, eh? You must be proud. Still, there is a lesson: The entrenched leaders have harder time to catch-up if they miss , and it's not only MS. These are good news. The future is not like the past because back then MS could easily lag and still take the market later. Now they can't.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: undefined

#29

Post by andrewljohnson »

tmuir wrote: post #21
andrewljohnson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a gigantic difference in how an Android and iPhone navigate. Develop the same app for both and you will see that clearly. The big difference is Android uses a standard back button for all applications. This leads Android users to end up mashing a lot of buttons at random, to try and get what they want - it's actually quite a bad UI, and it was just translated from the web clumsily. On iPhone, each app has it…

The Reality Distortion Field is strong in this one. So if I understand what you're saying, android's back button causes users to randomly mash buttons in frothy fits of delirium, yet iOS's back button provides zen like enlightenment and happy endings. Pushing the back button on an android phone, by default ALWAYS goes to the previous activity, or cancels context menus. Of course, it's possible to make the android bac…

I'm actually not biased one way or another - we make apps for both, and I carry a Nexus and an iPhone wherever I go. But it's simple truth:

* The iPhone back button always takes you to one, and exactly one, screen.

* The Android back button can take you to many different screens, based on where you last were.

That's a gigantic difference, and leads to the button-mashing I describe.

Re: undefined

#30

Post by georgemcbay »

DodgyEggplant wrote: post #2

For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.

Your conclusions are ridiculously wrong. Also you are cherry-picking results to fit them.

Microsoft's "arrive late" model didn't always work in the past (see: Money vs Quicken, et al) and while Microsoft has been struggling to reach traction with totally new (to them) products lately, there is no reason to believe this is due to any sort of sea change in the importance of being a first mover, because there are still plenty of cases in which the first mover is stomped by someone else these days, the someone else just generally isn't Microsoft.

Post reply on HN