281–290 of 358 posts
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>> 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?
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> looks incredibly retarded when someone holds it up to their ear I care more about my phone's abilities than I do about what people think of me when I'm holding it up to my ear. (Which only happens maybe once a week for me, anyway.)
That's fine. I just hope you don't judge people who use their iPads as a camera. :)
Apple is increasingly making me look stupid, something I couldn't imagine happening when the iPhone first came out. Few days ago I saw a friend of mine unlock her phone using facial recognition. I was amazed. She was surprised at my amazement. I feel lots of iPhone users have similar moments when they see their friends with android use "magical" looking features the iPhone is slow to adopt.
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I'd say 'simple' is almost the penultimate goal of UI design I've run out of time for big swathes, sorry, but I had to comment on this. 'simple' is not the ideal goal of UI design. 'appropriate' is. You want a UI that is best appropriate for the situation. Sometimes this will indeed be simple. Other times it will not be. As an extreme example, could you imagine a cockpit with a single hardware button and a small grid…
Both of your examples are wrong. It is well-known in aerospace industry that cockpit interfaces need vast improvements, and that is actually an active area of research. Pointing to the complexity of an airplane cockpit and saying "look, not all interfaces need to be pretty" betrays a fundamental misunderstanding and/or lack of knowledge about the subject. Second of all, the reason desktop environments are still prefe…
Your other example seems to willfully ignore that features are stripped out of mobile OSs for the cause of simplicity, not because they're 'catching up'. Yes, for things that are solely within programs themselves you have a point, but we're talking about the operating system here. Quickly switch between windows? No. Have more than one thing visible at a time? No. Default input mode allows for quick entry of data? No. I mean sure, your program might be the ants pants, but what happens when the user needs to enter data while viewing another document?
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I haven't read the article but I was an iPhone3 for a year, nexus 1 for a year, nexus s for a year and now iPhone 4S for a year. Things I still miss: I still miss that android apps can download in the background so for example when I wake up I the morning any new podcasts I'm subscribed to are already on the phone. Contrast to iOS6 where I have to remember to manually run the app. Which generally means I only run it…
You sure make a good case for Android being vastly more capable. After that litany, I'm really curious what are the "plenty of things I like about iPhone over Android". Why are you sticking with the iPhone despite your compelling list of Android advantages? I ask as someone who has used iPhone but not Android, is keenly aware of iOS limitations, but likes the hardware.
I like checking out new apps and games in particular. My impression is that more games are released first on iOS and then later Android (or not at all).
Others have complained that the average quality of apps on iOS seem to be higher than the average on Android. That's changing but it was certainly true a year ago. It's less true now.
The UX on iOS is still superior IMO to Android. I guess that's far more subjective. Some people like the back button on Android. I hate it since it's impossible to know where it's going to go.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/18/ux-things-i-hate-abo...
Apparently they've been working on fixing that
http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html
but they require apps to do the right thing (insert fake history so pressing back in one screen always takes you to the same screen). That means there will always be apps that don't follow the rules. iOS doesn't have this issue because it doesn't have a back button.
That's just one example. There's more on that page. The Android team says they are 1/3rd the way there. Not sure how many versions until they are all the way there but I'm definitely looking forward to it.
There's a few issues I'm not sure will ever get fixed. The virtual (home/back/task) buttons really get in the way on games. Playing a game, at least an action game, my fingers slide all over the place. With the current iPhone design it's very unlikely to press the home button by accident but not so on Android (or at least not so for me). I'm sure some players have no problems.
There's a huge accessory market for iOS. Battery cases, Camera cases (lenses), stereos, 20x the case styles. I really wish Google would define some kind of standard for Android docks. iPhone5 broke all of this but I'm sure the market is catching up quick. Of course this is a fragmentation issue for Android but I'm sure someone creative could come up with a solution.
I'm sure there's a few others but that's the few that popped into my head.
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This is I feel like I can't trust anyone on this sort of thing. I had an Android tablet. Widgets are almost universally ugly and useless. "Beautiful Widgets" is a great example of what passes for well designed on Android, and it's ugly as sin and useless.
Did you ever change the theme from the default for the widget? The default is exceptionally bad and mimics the one from HTC Sense (also extremely ugly). Example of it not looking so ugly: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24904191/Screenshot_2012-03-04-21-5...
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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…
The moment you say "fanboy" and/or "cult" in reply to a comment you lose a lot of credibility. " the Apple-spawned fanboy cult" This is a completely meaningless phrase. It's easy to accuse people of this and impossible to prove. Furthermore when you say something along the lines of "you're just a fanboy of company X" the other guy can just come back and say "well you're a fanboy of company Y" and then everyone sounds…
For the record, I have had two android phones. The first got cyanogenmod put on it, not for UI (though it was prettier than stock), but because I was having reception problems and the carrier was dragging feet in upgrading their image (one of the good things about iOS, this one). The second phone runs stock carrier UI, which I haven't changed.
I didn't take the insult personally for me, but it does annoy the living shit out of me when some people say that others should be personally limited because of aesthetic opinion. There does seem to be this form of opinion that because Apple does design really well, that any design choice made is perfect, therefore the default position is 'apple is right and you are wrong', despite apple making some design blunders along the way.
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> 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. For those who want more information on that, http://oleb.net/blog/2012/10/remote-view-controllers-in-ios-... (note: it's a 3-part series). As far as I understand, it doesn't provide for an application "register[ing] itself to handler certa…
Interestingly it seems like Apple is doing something with remote view controllers with their 12 Days of Christmas app, which could imply they're trying to test it as much as possible in a live context.
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Both of your examples are wrong. It is well-known in aerospace industry that cockpit interfaces need vast improvements, and that is actually an active area of research. Pointing to the complexity of an airplane cockpit and saying "look, not all interfaces need to be pretty" betrays a fundamental misunderstanding and/or lack of knowledge about the subject. Second of all, the reason desktop environments are still prefe…
I didn't say the cockpit couldn't have improvement, I said could you imagine running one with a smartphone interface. It's really not appropriate for the situation. Your other example seems to willfully ignore that features are stripped out of mobile OSs for the cause of simplicity, not because they're 'catching up'. Yes, for things that are solely within programs themselves you have a point, but we're talking about…
I don't think the distinction really matters. In this context, you can think of an operating system as a "master app" that has escalated privileges for things such as root-level access to system functions and the hardware.
>> I mean sure, your program might be the ants pants, but what happens when the user needs to enter data while viewing another document?
This soon won't even be an issue, because the data will not have to be manually transferred between documents by a human user.
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You sure make a good case for Android being vastly more capable. After that litany, I'm really curious what are the "plenty of things I like about iPhone over Android". Why are you sticking with the iPhone despite your compelling list of Android advantages? I ask as someone who has used iPhone but not Android, is keenly aware of iOS limitations, but likes the hardware.
I've switched between the two platforms a bit - I had an iphone 3G, a few android phones, and switched back to iOS with iPhone 5. I really like Android but there were a few deal killers: 1) Battery life - pretty much the reason I switched back to iPhone. It doesn't matter how great the software is - if I can't turn on the phone it's useless. I don't know how many times I would be racing to meet friends at night, hopi…
I had an iPhone 3G. I despised the thing. It just made me wait all the time for everything I wanted to do. It was probably the slowest iPhone ever made (bad RAM decisions), but after I left, I'm happy never to go back. Most importantly, I can avoid the iTunes ecosystem now. I can stream my music on my work linux box, off my phone, or any other device I want.
My 4G Xoom dies really quickly with 4g on. it's kept me off of 4g as a technology for at least a year.