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My Very Own Protocol Droid

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Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#151

Post by runjake »

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…

Given Steve Job's iconic quote about the stylus, it's rather sort of ironic that the autocorrect UI (eg. close x) on the iPhone is better-suited for use with a stylus than a fingertip.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#152

Post by Irregardless »

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.

If you ever need to move a file of any kind from one location to another, Android makes it easier than iOS. The fact that my grandmother's cat prefers Meow apps over the ability to transfer files doesn't change that.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#153

Post by silasb »

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.

Using Google Maps on my desktop to search for a specific location will pull up that location as a card in Google Now. This is always useful if I forget to record the address before I leave.

Appointments has a nice reminder that you need to get somewhere and it will take X amount of time, so you should leave at Y.

Traffic card is amazingly helpful and surprisingly very accurate.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#154

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

runjake wrote: post #115
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The things that make Siri as useful as it is (which for the record IHMO is not very) is tight integration with iOS contacts, calendars and text messages for instance - all things not in the product when Apple bought it and all things which may ultimately enable the sort of integrated experiences people are saying are great with Google Now.

Seriously, when Apple bought it Siri was interesting and pretty cool, but it's a different beast now. The parallel between it and original Android is fair - they're both evolved versions of something which was acquired.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#155

Post by naner »

DonnyV wrote: post #86
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…

You should try another IDE. Eclipse isn't maintained by Google. Xamarin Studio is very nice. http://xamarin.com/studio

Xamarin Studio isn't maintained by Google either...

Also it'd be nice if the IDE supported the platform languages (Java and ObjC).

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#156

Post by gadders »

mtgx wrote: post #102
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.

Google should just buy Swiftkey. It's pretty great, and I love its Flow (Swype-like) feature, too.

Just buy Swype! :-)

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#157

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

myko wrote: post #61
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea on how it knew? An entry you'd made in your calendar? Scanning your e-mail?

I'm pretty positive this came from Gmail. It also regularly updates me when my flights status changes (delays, gates changed, that sort of thing).

I'm really torn on this. Part of me says "hey, I never [expressly] said you could look at that" and another part is saying "that's really neat".

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#158

Post by RyanMcGreal »

nicholassmith wrote: post #145
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My point is that tens of millions of people think you should be able to manage files on your smartphone, but Apple makes that impossible without jailbreaking and Apple apologists routinely argue by implication that because they don't feel they need it, it's not necessary.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#159

Post by _Simon »

neya wrote: post #47

At first I thought this guy really built his own protocol or something. But upon reading, it seems like it's just a rant about his experience with Android. Disclosure: I'm an Android fanboy (4 HTC phones! 1 iPhone) The sad part is, this is a heavily opinionated article fully about his own experience and it doesn't actually explain why Android is better than iOS yet. For example, he talks about integration issues with…

Apologies for the following rant, but these topics annoy the absolute hell out of me.

That list isn't a list "...as to why Android is REALLY better than the iPhone." at all. It's a list of why you think it is better. I have iPhone and a Nexus S. I despise Android device. It's a Nexus S running Jelly Bean, and I find it to be clunky as hell. I found it to be clunky as hell with Gingerbread too. Why the hell should I have to simply to have a satisfactorily functioning device? Reading into it, there is no guarantee that installing Cyanogenmod will improve things for me either. Of course, these are my opinions and they are worth little to anyone other than me, much like your list of 'facts'. What happened to live and let live? What happened to use the tool that works for you? Why do we have to endure the endless and meaningless pissing contests?

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#160

Post by _Simon »

parfe wrote: post #144
_Simon wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Wow. I may have misread your initial diatribe, but the inference was that you don't use it often. But hey, being rude is the best way to correct me.
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