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An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

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Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#261
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Launching other apps can be done by any app right now, but the app package needs some info saying the app is able to handle a certain data type or open a certain URL protocol. I am an Objective-C developer and I love the SDKs on the iPhone, but I am just so tired of Apple's bullshit regarding using our devices the way we want to. I'm tired of waiting for them to enable basic features like phone number black/whitelist…

"I'm tired of waiting for them to enable basic features like phone number black/whitelists." Keep in mind that's a basic feature for you , not necessarily for all . I wouldn't use it, so I'd prefer Apple to work on X/Y/Z feature instead. Feature priority is hard to work out at the best of times, because no matter what gets picked someone will be disappointed.

My long term interest is in Android, but I switched to an iPhone a year ago to follow that ecosystem, too. The first thing I did was buy three call blocking apps from the App Store, none of which worked at all. After reading all the horror stories about the vaunted App Store approval process to protect innocent iPhone users from bad apps, I realized it was all marketing FUD. When an app has 99% bad reviews, all saying "doesn't work" and it stays in the app store, that is Apple fraud.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#262
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think that 'allows customisation' and 'defaults that work well' are mutually exclusive for some reason. Note that I was responding to your characterisation of personalisation, which was essentially "give people the ability to personalise and they make it ugly!". Yes, to you. Not to them. I've also never really understood the toddler argument for 'well-designed'. 'Simple', sure, but not 'well-designed'. We…

>> You seem to think that 'allows customisation' and 'defaults that work well' are mutually exclusive for some reason. Well often they are, especially in a complex piece of software like a phone OS. Customizability requires trade-offs which may affect usability or performance. More often than not, software that allows skinning looks butt-ugly in the default setting and integrates poorly with the rest of the system (t…

> I'd say 'simple' is almost the penultimate goal

penultimate = second most important ("next to last")

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#263
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone. Good grief, you speak of personlisation like it's a bug and not a feature. I personally hate the iOS window-dressing. You have this sleek-looking bit of hardware, but the OS looks plastic and Fisher-Price, with safe and chunky buttons to give to your kid with no sharp edges. Th…

I Just changed to Android yesterday. The first thing I missed was the polish of the iOS. I looked up how to switch applications and all I got was "10 best task switcher apps." I don't have time to evaluate three, much less ten task switcher apps! All I've been able to find is if you hold down the main button and then scroll to task manager, you can get to one. I like customization, but Apple's defaults were better fo…

You should just be able to hold ("long-press") the "home" button to pull up your task list.

(I don't think that "double-click this button on a platform with no concept of double-clicking" counts as well conceived, personally.)

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#264
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are quite beautiful homescreens and widgets for android. You don't have to use them but i would say that iPhone users are just missing out on something. Sure, you are used to just take what Apple gives you and praise that but i couldn't.. I want high customizability and i love to change the entire phone setup when i get bored by the current setup.. or try out a new home screen once in a while. It's painle…

Those two examples... wow . A cluttered, unusable homescreen (is a ridiculous 3D cylinder of icons really an option?) and a weather widget where most of the text is unreadable.

Check out http://mycolorscreen.com/ for a better idea of what Android can do. Those are all actual homescreens, not Photoshop mocks.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sake of clarity, both bothers me, but it's the fact that a trivial UI implementation detail can be patented and monopolized I consider fundamentally wrong. That someone can build a 1 billion dollar beast on top of that, what any decent software engineer can do in a matter of days, just makes it so much worse. Some people have a rather mellow attitude to it all and simply say "Don't hate the player, hate the game"…

Firstly there is nothing trivial about it. The concept never existed before the iPhone and it is absolutely not intuitive that it is how list scrolling is supposed to work. It's unquestionably distinctive to the iPhone. Secondly what a software engineer can do in a matter of days is a ridiculous and pointless measure of anything. I could build Google's original search engine once I knew exactly how it worked. It's th…

> The concept never existed before the iPhone and it is absolutely not intuitive

The USPTO disagrees: http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/10/patent-office-tentatively...

"In a non-final Office action the USPTO has declared all 20 claims of Apple's rubber-banding patent (U.S. Patent No, 7,469,381 invalid [for prior art and obviousness]... A finding of anticipation is a determination that there was no inventive step at all."

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm tired of waiting for them to enable basic features like phone number black/whitelists." Keep in mind that's a basic feature for you , not necessarily for all . I wouldn't use it, so I'd prefer Apple to work on X/Y/Z feature instead. Feature priority is hard to work out at the best of times, because no matter what gets picked someone will be disappointed.

My long term interest is in Android, but I switched to an iPhone a year ago to follow that ecosystem, too. The first thing I did was buy three call blocking apps from the App Store, none of which worked at all . After reading all the horror stories about the vaunted App Store approval process to protect innocent iPhone users from bad apps, I realized it was all marketing FUD. When an app has 99% bad reviews, all sayi…

Developer community demanded Apple reduced their ban hammer swing, they did. They get a lot of crap that slips through the net because of it, however when complaints are made they seem to respond, the problem being a review isn't a complaint. Well, the problem being Apple isn't draconian enough now really.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#267
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Android still doesn’t give you bouncing lists and scroll views It used to be in Android until Apple made it a 1 billion dollar lawsuit and banned everyone else in the universe from implementing it. Those bouncing lists. 1 billion dollar. And Apple is not a patent-troll. No siree.

are you suggesting there is a mobile os vendor that isn't a patent troll? goog spent 12bn acquiring a failing company just to patent troll

And the last time Google took someone to court over one of its patents was...

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You seem to think that 'allows customisation' and 'defaults that work well' are mutually exclusive for some reason. Well often they are, especially in a complex piece of software like a phone OS. Customizability requires trade-offs which may affect usability or performance. More often than not, software that allows skinning looks butt-ugly in the default setting and integrates poorly with the rest of the system (t…

>> but also because it isn't all that interesting to (I assume) most smartphone users. I'd argue the fact that the iPhone case market is so huge is evidence that most users love customization.

Or that they don't like broken phones?

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My long term interest is in Android, but I switched to an iPhone a year ago to follow that ecosystem, too. The first thing I did was buy three call blocking apps from the App Store, none of which worked at all . After reading all the horror stories about the vaunted App Store approval process to protect innocent iPhone users from bad apps, I realized it was all marketing FUD. When an app has 99% bad reviews, all sayi…

Developer community demanded Apple reduced their ban hammer swing, they did. They get a lot of crap that slips through the net because of it, however when complaints are made they seem to respond, the problem being a review isn't a complaint. Well, the problem being Apple isn't draconian enough now really.

I just want to confirm my understanding of the argument you are making: Because Apple backed off a bit on the huge list of things one cannot do with an app, they now have a pass to approve apps that, by definition, cannot ever work on their platform, and can be demonstrated to not work at all by ... trying to use them?

Maybe I'm missing the point of your comment.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#270
post #6

I agree with what the article says about sharing data between applications, this really is one of the biggest pain points of iOS right now. Fortunately, it looks like Apple will finally address this in the future, iOS 6 already has infrastructure in place to allow for remote view controllers that (in theory) should allow any application to register itself to handle certain data and events. Right now seems to be only…

Yes, inter-app communication is a major difference for developers. On iOS, apps will say "Supports Twitter and Facebook" and the developers have hand-written the integrations; on Android, the app integrates with whatever the user has installed and the developer does no work at all to integrate with any specific service or app. So it's a win for developers as well as users.

Twitter and Facebook is integrated at a OS level with iOS. A few lines of code gets me access to the user's accounts (with their permission of course).
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