My Very Own Protocol Droid • Hacker News Board

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#131

Post by mintplant » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 3:50 PM UTC

notlisted wrote: post #107

nicholassmith wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one. A feature that you think is critical is a feature that is critical for you . The refrain that iOS suffers from a lack of file exploration or drag and drop of any kind of content is based around the assumption that everyone wants that. Most people don't.

Well let's broaden this, there is no concept of files on the iPhone, and yes, you DO need them. Example: try attaching an excel sheet you received from a friend to another email. Example: the powerful Android "share" mechanism --the sole reason I have several iPads but switched to Android for real work (ie on my phone). Share is not limited to a bunch of "friend-aware" apps, but every app can register themselves as a…

Honestly, "Share" is one of the most brilliant features Android has. Great example of something potentially minor (built-in "social sharing") becoming massively useful through extensibility.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#132

Post by lifeisstillgood » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 3:51 PM UTC

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #11

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

Ok, (s)he lists four reasons why Android beats iPhone, my reactions to the four were: 1. Meh 2. Meh 3. Holy shit, they are going to take over! Hail our new overlords. 4. Meh The Android is aware of it's environment and consequently can take personalised action, and is allowed to by product makers. I swear undying loyalty oh masters

1 and 2 are in the realm of bug fix / minor enhancement. 4 very much depends on where you are in terms of both how much deals cost and how they're structured and what that money means to you but in any case it's not killer. 3 is definitely the most interesting one though it still doesn't feel enough like magic to sway me just yet. Basically it's worked out that he wants to go home and at that point has behaved the wa…

It's the idea that a computer has a comprehensive view of an environment - location, personal owner, last purchase made, next appointment. At what point will it remind me to take my pills, call the doctor, ring the lead I met who just twittered something relevant.

Agent technology is going to be huge - as long as it can be standard interface agreeed somehow

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#133

Post by zmanian » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 3:54 PM UTC

platz wrote: post #120

zmanian wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google has a structural advantage over Apple and MSFT in natural language.

Apple has plenty of cash to buy Nuance to integrate Voice Recognition technology but lacks the management bandwidth.

Microsoft Research has done a lot of path breaking work in natural language recognition but MSFT management seems to be actively hostile to their R&D group.

Google has natural language features in all their core product areas and management that prides itself on dog fooding their own R&D.

I'm a Google shareholder for these reasons.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#134

Post by trotsky » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 3:56 PM UTC

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…

virgin mobile usa is $35 (-$5/mo for autopay) = $30 for 300 minutes/unlimited texts/2.5g data, sprint mvno, data speeds are rather poor though.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#135

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 3:56 PM UTC

roc wrote: post #109

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.

Siri isn't about voice search. It's about voice-initiated tasks. Sometimes that's search, but sometimes it's a reminder, or a calendar appointment, etc. The innovation is in that distinction and in the context awareness. [1] And that truly is innovation. Regardless of where it came from. If/As Siri is expanded, it's going to become a Big Deal. And Google's going to deliver something similar. Something beyond literal…

[deleted]

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#136

Post by rrreese » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 4:01 PM UTC

xauronx wrote: post #51

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…

> "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.

I have an iPhone and iPad and one of my top 3 complaints is how garbage the auto correct is. It's not just auto correct, it's how you have to hit the tiny [x] on the suggestion to dismiss it. The [x] is to small, its not near the keyboard, and on some web sites, clicking but missing can have unexpected results.

I also have a bunch of incorrect spellings that I have accidentally added - I can't edit remove these though.

I've been seriously considering getting an Android and this along with not being able to change the default email client and browser are the main reasons.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#137

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 4:02 PM UTC

nicholassmith wrote: post #62

Irregardless wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Default will depend on which phone you get, but there's no shortage of great free ones in the market (Astro and ES File Explorer, for example). Also, Android phones work just like a USB drive if you want to drag and drop files then access them from another computer later. You can store anything you want and create your own folders, unlike the iPhone where you can only sync certain media types through iTunes. That's w…

Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one. A feature that you think is critical is a feature that is critical for you . The refrain that iOS suffers from a lack of file exploration or drag and drop of any kind of content is based around the assumption that everyone wants that. Most people don't.

> Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one.

Even my mother has a problem with that on her iPhone. I installed her Dropbox and hooked up some of her apps on the same phone to the same account so that apps can share common data. Otherwise you have apps that take pictures and you can't mail out those pictures etc.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#138

Post by adestefan » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 4:04 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #68

mberning wrote: post #27

They are still in the honeymoon phase. I've been through it twice before with Android phones. Also, in regards to point #1, I never have this problem with my car. Sounds like more of an integration issue with the headunit in the car rather than the phone.

Still, having good integration with a wider variety of vehicles/head units seems like the sort of thing that could reasonably be described as an advantage.

Some units work better with iOS and some with Android. It's really hit or miss.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#139

Post by xauronx » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 4:05 PM UTC

rrreese wrote: post #136

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.

I have an iPhone and iPad and one of my top 3 complaints is how garbage the auto correct is. It's not just auto correct, it's how you have to hit the tiny [x] on the suggestion to dismiss it. The [x] is to small, its not near the keyboard, and on some web sites, clicking but missing can have unexpected results. I also have a bunch of incorrect spellings that I have accidentally added - I can't edit remove these thoug…

Really? I've not had any issues with the autocorrect. I agree that dismissing the auto correct can be annoying sometimes. I intend to hit the X and instead hit the word, so it corrects to that. However, I can type complete nonsense, a row off, and it figures it out. My coworker tells me his android won't correct "sre" to "are" (as my iPhone will) because it assumes the first letter is correct. This is a top of the line android device (not sure what the model is though).

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#140

Post by veeti » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 4:05 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #74

M4v3R wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

qt 5.1 comes out this month, you can write qml interfaces targeting both ios and Android, and qt creator isn't garbage!

No, please don't. Android app design is already a gigantic clusterfuck where half of the apps still look like they're stuck in 1995 and using a non-native UI toolkit isn't going to help.

And this is coming from a huge fan of Qt and a KDE user.