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My Very Own Protocol Droid

37signals.com

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Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#161

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

timrichard wrote: post #32
myko wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance to convince your family to move to Google+ Hangouts? They work great on iOS devices and having multiple people in the chat is great.

Thanks, will try out the iOS client..... We tried chatting with the Google+ Hangouts browser plugin, but at the time the performance didn't quite match Facetime on one-to-one chats when bandwidth was scarce.

My experience of hangouts is video is slightly jerkier (though in a controlled way if that makes sense - it felt like a deliberately lower frame rate rather than just breaking up), audio is more solid.

On a poor connection I'd go with hangouts over the alternatives at the moment. It's not perfect but I prefer the trade offs.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#162

Post by justinph »

Semaphor wrote: post #118
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.

The android file transfer app does not work with the Nexus 4. At least, it doesn't if you're on Mountain Lion. Same goes for doubletwist. The Nexus 4 only supports USB MTP mode, not USB MSC (mass storage) mode. I think other newer phones are this way too.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#163

Post by prof_hobart »

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…

Don't know if I'm doing something wrong with Android, or whether it's just because my phone is currently restricted to ICS, but I find the notification system appalling compared to iOS.

On iOS, I get a notification and (if I choose to make it appear there) it pops up as an alert on my lockscreen which then goes into a list of alerts since I last unlocked my phone. If any of them interest me, I swipe over it from the lockscreen and it takes me straight into that app.

With Android, I get nothing on my lock screen at all. What I do get, once I've unlocked my phone, is a little icon at the top telling me that the app wants to tell me something. I then have to pull the notification window down to see what it wants to tell me, at which point I can tap it to get into the app.

I have installed "iPhone Notifications" on my Android phone, which helps a little - at least I get a pop-up message on my lock screen - bit it's still some way behind what I'm used to on iOS.

Custom keyboards - thank god for that on Android. I found it almost impossible to type on the stock keyboard, whereas I've rarely had a problem with the iOS one.

As for settings, again I personally find iOS much clearer on this.

Everything is clearly not rosy in the iOS camp - I certainly miss widgets/live desktop when I'm using my iPhone for instance, but many of the other "issues" you list are subjective at best.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#164

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

eloisant wrote: post #75

Wow, 37signals is pretty lagging. In my company I've seen the ratio iPhone/Android reverse as it reversed in the global market share.

37signals are primarily North American so North American market share is more significant than global. They're also pretty well paid I'd imagine so you're likely looking at high end market share.

High end, North America, Apple is still kicking butt. Also worth noting that for North America over the past 12 months Apple's market share grew faster than Android's and Android's market share dropped in both January and February this year.

Installed user base overall still favours Android (about 70m to 50m against iOS) but I'm not sure it's reasonable to say that there has been a "reverse".

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#165

Post by nicholassmith »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #158
nicholassmith wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For starters I'm not an Apple apologist. I use Apple products but I'm fairly critical of them. You don't have to be an apologist to have a specific opinion, and it's reductive to consistently frame counterpoints as "just another Apple apologist excuse". That's often what's bandied about, from both camps. So for the purpose of this discussion apologist, sheeple, iSheep, fandroids and so on should be verboten.

Second, if file management was a feature that people were crying out for in droves they'd either not be buying into iOS or they'd have created such a furore that Apple would have implemented it. Apple has responded to platform criticism by implementing the functionality as iOS has matured, they've just cherry picked what they're implementing to deliver the functionality that has a benefit to the most people. Aside from the obvious missteps like Newsstand or Passbook anyway.

If people want to manage files on a smartphone that's fantastic, there's a platform for them. Why is it a negative point that there's a platform that has a different opinion? It's not, there's a wealth of choice from smartphone players now.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#167

Post by joelackner »

Taylorious wrote: post #99
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…

I would suggest going with straighttalk. $45 a month unlimited everything and it uses AT&T networks. I always have a signal. I would suggest going with a good unlocked smartphone to take advantage of it (I went with the Nexus 4). In fact, you can buy a whole years worth of service at a time and it averages out to like $42 a month... not a huge savings but I just like having my phone taken care of for the whole year.…

they have some devices that use the verizon network, too.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#168

Post by cytzol »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #158
nicholassmith wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not quite - it shows that they think you should manage files on your Android phone. iOS is designed to hide files, but Android has always had it as an option, which is represented in its interface.

Back when I used Android (owned a Nexus One which broke), I had to manage files all the time, because the individual apps didn't do a good job of it. Instead of having a centralised place for photos, I just dragged photos to /sdcard from my computer, and looked at them that way. When I had to put music on my phone in a hurry, I did the same, and navigated to them in the file manager instead of having it in the music app. I had a bunch of Markdown files that were there, too, whenever I synced manually. Now I can do all that without having to worry about where the files are, using iTunes and iCloud.

Since then, every time I've seen someone have to open a file manager, it's to do a job an app could have done. That's why Apple doesn't want to include one - it gives users more functionality, but makes app developers lazy. It's the same reason they haven't decided to include a stylus: it's technically more precise, but would just cause developers to think "don't worry about finger click targets, the user has a stylus".

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#169

Post by Drakim »

nicholassmith wrote: post #148
Drakim wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the iPhone isn't just lacking in one or two options. It's a very locked down platform in several ways. I have a hard time applying your argument of "a lot of people have no use" when it comes to something as fundamental as being allowed to run an app or browser that Apple does not like.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#170

Post by cytzol »

timrichard wrote: post #19

I've been true to the Droid since the G1, and recently offloaded certain duties from my Galaxy Nexus to an iPod Touch 5 (needed for Facetime, popular with the family). When using iOS, I really miss the Intent subsystem. It seems like every app seems to offer different and restricted sharing choices (implicitly asking why I possibly wouldn't be using Instapaper...) [1] I wouldn't be surprised if this is the next Andro…

> It seems like every app seems to offer different and restricted sharing choices... Apologies if there's something I'm missing here. I'm fairly new to iOS.

Sadly, you really aren't. The current, not-even-officially-recommended way to share data in between apps is to have one register a URI handler, such as omnifocus://, and another be able to detect that such a handler is there and provide a "Send to OmniFocus" button if there is. It's not great, is it? It's up to app developers to tell each other what their URIs are.

The new "Send To" screen on iOS seems to have been designed for extensibility, even if it doesn't actually offer any. Fingers crossed.

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