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My Very Own Protocol Droid

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Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#141

Post by delgaudm »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #15
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…

Can you give examples of good stuff you've seen from Google Now that have been a real help to you? Stuff that's genuinely useful rather than just "look at that" cool. EDIT: So far I'm seeing a lot of reasons why Apple wanted to get into maps. A lot of the value add here seems to be navigation related.

Searched for restaurants on Google Maps on my Laptop's Chrome... there were navigation options for each on my phone in Google Now.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#142

Post by lukeschlather »

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…

Google search is also about voice-initiated tasks. Back in late 2010 /early 2011, when voice search was launched, I pulled out my phone and said "Navigate to ." It automatically pulled my friend's address out of my contact book and started turn-by-turn navigation.

Obviously there are things about Siri that are different and better suited to certain tasks. I'm not saying Google search is better, I'm not even saying Google search is a great innovation to come out of Google. I'm just saying Siri is a bad example of something ground-breaking that Apple created.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#143

Post by mberning »

adestefan wrote: post #138
maxerickson wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. To me it really seems to depend on the age of the head unit vs the age of the phone. If they are significantly different then the chances of issues seems to be higher.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#144

Post by parfe »

_Simon wrote: post #130
parfe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>does this guy really do mobile development? Nope. Like my comment said: "Targeting the Mac"

So why do you feel qualified to comment?

I can't tell if you're joking? XCode is not exclusive to mobile development.

File -> New -> Project

See all that fun stuff under listed under OS X?

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#145

Post by nicholassmith »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #98
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.

> Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one. Yet Astro file manager has 35 million downloads. Perhaps you and your peers are not a representative sample.

You're also skewing the point, which is it's a nice option but not a necessary requirement for a large percentage of the user base. Unless 35m is a significantly large percentage of Android users, it's still not something that's an essential feature of a smartphone for a large amount of people.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#146

Post by nicholassmith »

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…

Okay but the concept of files versus the specific application of a file manager are different things. I completely agree that iOS needs to expose file representations better between applications, but I think the very notion of a file manager is still utterly redundant for a large percentage of new smartphone owners.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#147

Post by dagw »

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.

My girlfriend, who on the whole loves her iPad, absolutely hates iTunes for and photo and video syncing. She would be much happier simply dragging her nicely organized folders over to the iPad rather than fighting iTunes.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#148

Post by nicholassmith »

Drakim wrote: post #82
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.

I can understand your point, but too often this sounds like an extremely weak excuse: "So iPhone doesn't have this feature? Good! I didn't want it anyway!". I personally see having more options and choices as a great thing even when I don't personally need those options. Even if I think the default android keyboard is the greatest touchscreen keyboard in existence, I still think it should be possible and easy to use…

Choice is great, my argument wasn't that choice is bad because that's silly. My argument was saying that a feature that a lot of people have no use for is a really big negative against a platform is an incredibly bad point. It's a feature that has inherent personal usefulness for the user, if there's a strong majority that don't have need of that then it's not a negative against a platform when it's functionality for functionality sake.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#149

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

calinet6 wrote: post #104
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is nice, but it's a bit like someone saying "this road is an accident black spot" and you replying "yes, but it's near the hospital".

No, it's a bit like saying "yes, but you can go around it using this free four-lane highway that works great." It's still a shame that your Google GPS told you to take the dirt road though.

In this increasingly strained metaphor the problem is that all the road signs (that is a normal person's default) still point to the black spot.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#150

Post by fr0sty »

xauronx wrote: post #139
rrreese wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

> My coworker tells me his android won't correct "sre" to "are" (as my iPhone will) because it assumes the first letter is correct.

Strange.

I just tested this on my two-year-old HTC phone with android v2.3.4 and it corrected "sre" to "are" just fine.

Any chance your coworker is using a non-standard keyboard (either by choice or vendor caprice)?

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