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Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

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51–60 of 231 posts

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#51

Again I run into the issue that Google doesn't seem to release their iPhone apps internationally. I'm in Europe (Iceland, specifically) and I can't download the Google Search or Google Authenticator apps because they're not available in our App Store. Does this happen to people in any other European countries?

I'm not in Europe but they (+ Google Maps) are not available in our App Store.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#52
post #50

Has anybody else tried it on iPhone? Mine only shows a wether card, and a map card showing me the way home now; nothing more. I even tried creating event in my calendar (both Google and iOS calendars) but no card is added. Is there a significant sync delay for Google Now to retrieve information?

Try hitting the refresh button at the bottom, that did it for me.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#53
post #39
post #5

I have a question for our Android-using brethren who've had the opportunity to play with Now. I've read a bit about it over the past few weeks, and I've been excited about a port to iOS, but now that I have it, I'm not sure how or if it'll fit into my life day-to-day. At first brush, all I see is a weather widget. I know there's more to it, but where exactly does the magic happen? What have you done (if anything) to…

Make sure you have search history turned on in your Google account - that's when the magic happens. Also, I'm not quite sure how the iOS experience will be compared to Android - on Android, Google Now can proactively push data to users via the ridiculously powerful notifications system, and the intents mechanism lets it hook into the other parts of the phone seamlessly. iOS' notification center is distinctly less adv…

Looks like it doesn't even use notifications on iOS. That's a big bummer :(

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#54
post #50

Has anybody else tried it on iPhone? Mine only shows a wether card, and a map card showing me the way home now; nothing more. I even tried creating event in my calendar (both Google and iOS calendars) but no card is added. Is there a significant sync delay for Google Now to retrieve information?

Try hitting the refresh button at the bottom, that did it for me.

I did that, and re-opening the app. Still didn't work :-(

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#55
post #5

I have a question for our Android-using brethren who've had the opportunity to play with Now. I've read a bit about it over the past few weeks, and I've been excited about a port to iOS, but now that I have it, I'm not sure how or if it'll fit into my life day-to-day. At first brush, all I see is a weather widget. I know there's more to it, but where exactly does the magic happen? What have you done (if anything) to…

Set a work and home location so that it knows when you really are out and about. Start using G+ if you don't already (eg I got a birthday alert for someone yesterday, via Now, via G+). Set some data in other google applications (Calendar, Finance, etc). All roads lead to Now. (Well, some do)

Imagine how useful intelligently feeding google reader data into Now would be... oh wait, whoops. Aside from whining about Reader being cancelled I am serious that sniffing relevant RSS feeds would be a highly useful feature to add.

I've had it for a few months on my Nexus 7. In summary its travel and shopping push notifications. I had the usual intense short lived "oh that's really cool" reaction and haven't used it since then and its had no measurable impact on my life. Kinda like my relationship with facebook and linkedin and twitter.

In the eternal wheel of IT, where nothing is ever really invented, merely recycled every couple years, this is the reincarnation of the pointcast internet screensaver app from the mid 90s. Back then the complaint was it was spammy and didn't provide real value, so after a similar intense publicity wave quieted, they dried up and blew away with the wind, until now (literally, "Now", get the pun? Yeah well bad pun; bad puns never really go away just get recycled later...)

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#56
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to figure out. I'm assuming it has to use Notifications? update: does not use notifications :(

How does it work on Android? Does it use notifications there?

Yes. When something Google Now finds relevant is available it creates a low priority notification that the user will see when checking the notification pane.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#57

I fell for Google Now when I booted my old Nexus to test test something, and Google Now had read through my emails and showed me a tracking status for a UPS package I was expecting. I was pretty jealous of that functionality, but never convinced to go back to Android just for one feature. Now, I really have no reason. It's also pretty telling of something when more iOS devices have Google Now than Android devices do.

[deleted]

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#58
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to figure out. I'm assuming it has to use Notifications? update: does not use notifications :(

How does it work on Android? Does it use notifications there?

It uses a bunch of different kinds of interaction:

- A normal home screen widget

- A lock screen widget

- A special "drag up from the home button" gesture that can be triggered from any app

- Rich notifications. (As in you can trigger useful actions straight from the notification. E.g. for an event that's starting soon, you can email all participants.)

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#59
post #24

I'm a bit surprised that the iphone version of Google Now beat the Chrome version of Google Now. In my mind, Google Now is about carving out a space on devices where they can actually show high value contextual advertising outside of search. Their pitch to advertisers will be much stronger if they have a foothold on every device. I'm also surprised that this was released before Google I/O. Between near confirmation t…

IMO you're assuming that folks would use Google Now on their desktop browser more than their smartphone. I wouldn't assume that. The data collection they'll get as a result of iOS is FAR superior (+ a bit more relevant for the current cards they're offering).

WRT "Google NOW" on the desktop, read the wikipedia article about Pointcast the dotcom. From $450M to $7M in two years, to zero by the third year.

Its basically the same idea.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#60
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set a work and home location so that it knows when you really are out and about. Start using G+ if you don't already (eg I got a birthday alert for someone yesterday, via Now, via G+). Set some data in other google applications (Calendar, Finance, etc). All roads lead to Now. (Well, some do)

Imagine how useful intelligently feeding google reader data into Now would be... oh wait, whoops. Aside from whining about Reader being cancelled I am serious that sniffing relevant RSS feeds would be a highly useful feature to add. I've had it for a few months on my Nexus 7. In summary its travel and shopping push notifications. I had the usual intense short lived "oh that's really cool" reaction and haven't used it…

I don't think it would be very useful to have RSS feeds in Google Now. I like Google Now because it tells me what I want to know right now, like that my flight is delayed or traffic is bad or here's how to get to that restaurant and you need to leave in 15 minutes. I don't want to know about a new article right now.
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