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My Very Own Protocol Droid

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Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#111

Post by mikeash »

calinet6 wrote: post #100
mikeash wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is not "voice search". Siri was very much an innovation when it was originally released as a standalone app, and was still ahead of the game when Apple bought it and integrated it. Google certainly may be ahead now, but to compare Siri to plunking what you say into a Google search box is just wrong.

Sure, it was innovative back before Apple bought it, but what Apple did to Siri was basically dumbing it down to the level of plunking things into a Google Search box. Google Now really has improved things a lot.

The most useful parts of Siri for me are time and location-based reminders, locating friends, and alerting me when a friend goes somewhere. All of this was in Apple's version of Siri, and as far as I know isn't duplicated by tossing text into Google.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#112

Post by mattmaroon »

whichdan wrote: post #21

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

If I'm not mistaken, Verizon charges you that $60 + $40 for each phone. So for just a solo user, it'd be $100.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#113

Post by corresation »

justinph wrote: post #70

I guess android works pretty slick if all you do is stream from the cloud. But, if you want to sync music with the phone it's a disaster. The Google-supported way is for me to put MP3s in a folder? Really? And some of the android phones (like the flagship nexus 4) don't support transfer via USB? Really? I have to do it via slow-ass WiFi and a third-party program like doubletwist? Total disaster.

if you want to sync music with the phone it's a disaster.

This was indeed an Achilles heal of Android three years ago. Now it is a complete non-issue for the majority of users, and iTunes is becoming as much an albatross as a benefit.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#114

Post by Semaphor »

M4v3R wrote: post #48
parfe wrote: post #7

> Twenty years of using Macs conditioned me to think, “well, that’s the Apple way.” It’s such a small price to pay for such a user-friendly device. Another Stockholm-syndrome patient cured! I recently took over a prototype project targeting the Mac. XCode is garbage. OS X itself actively works against improving your workflow. It's Apple's way or, well Apple's way. iOS is built to keep the user in a padded cell (aka W…

> XCode is garbage Once in a while I see an argument like this and I wonder - does this guy really do mobile development? For the better part of last year I was into Android development, in Eclipse. If XCode is garbage, I don't know what Eclipse is. Resource-hogging, buggy monster with seven heads with shit on them, probably. I could list annoyances of Eclipse that got me for hours. On the other hand, in last month I…

Never worked with XCode, but I can't understand why anyone would like Eclipse. It might be powerful but it's also buggy, slow and complicated.

Besides that I'll just repeat what was that here and what's said in pretty much every discussion mentioning Eclipse: IntelliJ Idea.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#115

Post by runjake »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #59
lukeschlather wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling Siri innovation is revisionist history. Google had voice search nearly a year when Apple launched Siri. Also, Apple bought Siri, they didn't invent it. Based on the interactions I've had with Siri/Google search (I have an Android) there haven't really been any innovations in the space since Google introduced voice search. It's useful, but imperfect.

If you want to be picky about that sort of thing Google bought Android, they didn't invent it.

If you really want to be picky about that sort of thing, Android wasn't even a pseudo-Blackberry OS-looking, D-Pad-controlled OS when Google bought it.

In other words, anything notable about Android today was created at Google, from the kernel up to the UI to the frameworks to all the little features all these Android "switchers" are raving about.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#116

Post by ryanhuff »

Irregardless wrote: post #103
xauronx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "their auto-correct is garbage" The last three people who switched from iPhone to Android asked me what was wrong with Androids auto-correct and why it didn't "work". They ended up having to install a third party keyboard to get anything they could stand to interact with.

Autocorrect is one of the most common complaints I see about the iPhone. Whether it's professional reviewers or normal users, there seems to be a consensus that the stock Android keyboard and autocorrect have now surpassed their iOS counterparts. I'm not sure what your friends were doing or which phones they had, but as others have said, Android at least offers you the ability to switch keyboards if the stock keyboar…

I am an Android user, and I complain about the autocorrect (and keyboard) frequently. Maybe the iPhone would be the same for me, but others appear to breeze through typing on the iPhone, while I encounter a constant stream of backing up to fix typos, etc.

And regarding third party keyboards, how about Google do a good keyboard that doesn't require installing a third party app? Is that too much to ask? It seems like an important enough feature to do right instead of abdicating responsibility to others.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#118

Post by Semaphor »

justinph wrote: post #70

I guess android works pretty slick if all you do is stream from the cloud. But, if you want to sync music with the phone it's a disaster. The Google-supported way is for me to put MP3s in a folder? Really? And some of the android phones (like the flagship nexus 4) don't support transfer via USB? Really? I have to do it via slow-ass WiFi and a third-party program like doubletwist? Total disaster.

> And some of the android phones (like the flagship nexus 4) don't support transfer via USB?

What? I have the Nexus 4 here and I'm 99% sure I transfered files over USB in the 1h before I installed a custom ROM. Additionally I've never heard that complaint before.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#119

Post by whichdan »

agscala wrote: post #110
whichdan wrote: post #21

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

The Verizon plan is actually listed incorrectly. If you have a smartphone you have to pay an extra $40 for "line access", which brings Verizon to a whopping $100/mo.

Wow, and here I was considering switching to Verizon to save $10/mo. Fixed.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#120

Post by platz »

zmanian wrote: post #108
Irregardless wrote: post #28

There's no doubt Apple is playing catch-up with Android these days. Siri was their only real innovation in the last 3 iPhones, and Google leapfrogged it within months. Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to implement a decent notification system, their auto-correct is garbage, there's no file manager, you can't set a default browser (or default anything, for that matter), there are no widgets, no app shortcuts, no custo…

Key Pieces of history in the Siri vs Google Voice Search - Siri is a commercial spinoff of a DARPA AI project called CALO which was primarily designed to help the military handle information in the form of MS Office documents/Outlook email. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/siri-do-engine-appl... - CALO was an almost 10 year project run out of SRI but executed primarily at Stanford,Berekley and the University…

Amazing history, thanks!

    Siri is a commercial spinoff of a DARPA AI project
Interesting example of how a substantial innovation (like Siri) yet again does not come from a private company, but from a R&D or such funded project without a short-term capitalist adgenda. Also I'd bet that this fact is largely unknown; this I'd understand is also characteristic. -- No wonder we're having problems getting public funding for "actual" new tech.
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