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Google Blindness

marco.org

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Re: Google Blindness

#101

Post by jxdxbx »

Symmetry wrote: post #75
runjake wrote: post #43

Marco's article is so poorly-written, so poorly thought-out, I don't know where to begin. It's really more an article about hating Google as a whole. Google blindness? Or blind hatred for Apple's competitors? Some gems, though: I think it’s unwise to use many proprietary, hard-to-replace services in such important roles, and I think it’s downright foolish to tie that much of your data and functionality into proprieta…

A long time ago back in the 3GS days I was a happy iPhone user, who happened to like podcasts. There were several very nice podcast apps which I liked since they would download everything I wanted to listen to over the night and I could listen to them on my walk to work without having to boot up Windows and sync via iTunes. Then one day after an update all the podcast apps were gone from the Appstore and my phone sin…

What podcast app was ever removed from the app store? There was some controversy before they started being accepted, and then problems with search in the app store. But I'm not aware of any apps that were accepted and then removed.

Re: Google Blindness

#102

Post by jxdxbx »

dictum wrote: post #70
casca wrote: post #11

We're currently in the stage of the Internet where we can choose our feudal masters[1]. Want Google? Fine. Prefer Apple. No problem. Microsoft? Why not. For me, the issue is that people are becoming more entrenched as time progresses. The cost of preparing to switch can be relatively low - pay $8/year for your own domain and it's possible to keep using the same systems you choose today. Yet if the technological elite…

>The cost of preparing to switch can be relatively low - pay $8/year for your own domain and it's possible to keep using the same systems you choose today. Domains are not the only thing you need to take into account. There is hosting, deployment, and keeping things up to date and secure. Take email for example. Google no longer offer free Google Apps accounts, so you have to spend at least $50/year for a single user…

With Hover at least you get a free forward-only email address with your domain, and with Gmail, you can send email "from" any address you have control over, without needing an apps account. So, with Gmail, and with the various first-party Gmail apps, it's a cinch to use your own domain for email without switching providers.

You can do this with Gmail over IMAP as well, though I just use the first-party apps on my devices for the most part. But for the record, if you set up a "Gmail" account on an iOS device this doesn't work; you have to set it up as IMAP and monkey with the settings a bit.

Re: Google Blindness

#103

Post by xradionut »

nimh wrote: post #88
xradionut wrote: post #57

Marco so conveniently forgot the whole debacle of Apple's developer resources and sites being down for almost two weeks.

Which is completely irrelevant in a discussion about the iPhone from a user's perspective.

The original poster is a developer. A developer for Apple platforms. Chances are this affected him and if not, it did affected his peers. Yet he never mentions the massively embarrassing outage...

Re: Google Blindness

#104

Post by skyjedi »

LluisGerard wrote: post #90
Oletros wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the 3rd party Google Voice apps pulled from the App Store

They can pull an app out from the App Store but they never, ever had the ability to remove it from your phone.

really? Never ever? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/jobs-confirms-app-store-kill...

Re: Google Blindness

#105

Post by r00fus »

jinzo wrote: post #44
jmduke wrote: post #21

So I think there are two points that Paul makes: hardware and services. On the hardware front: I don't really buy the notion that Android hardware is up to par with Apple. I realize this is an inherently subjective argument: I've played with my friends' Android phones and I just don't like the way they look or feel compared to the iPhone. On the services front: I think the argument that "Google is an advertising comp…

> On the hardware front: I don't really buy the notion that Android hardware is up to par with Apple. I realize this is an inherently subjective argument: I've played with my friends' Android phones and I just don't like the way they look or feel compared to the iPhone. It's not totally related to this discussion, and I'm not picking on you - but I had to mention this: I have a friend that bought himself a MacBook Pr…

Is it cheap if you replace it regularly?

The Core2Duo Macbook I bought in 2006 is almost as useful (albeit with an SSD now) as it was when I got it. It runs the latest OS and has decent enough graphics.

Most Windows systems just don't age as well (exception being perhaps an Thinkpad, but then again, that's cost equivalent to a mac anyway).

For phones, the argument is skewed by mobile operators as that service cost over a 2 year period greatly exceeds the cost of the phone itself.

Re: Google Blindness

#106

Post by dancameron »

skyjedi wrote: post #104
LluisGerard wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can pull an app out from the App Store but they never, ever had the ability to remove it from your phone.

really? Never ever? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/jobs-confirms-app-store-kill...

Yes.

That link acknowledges a kill switch for malicious apps, which they've never used.

Re: Google Blindness

#107

Post by dkuntz2 »

exacube wrote: post #54
acqq wrote: post #20

One point I'd like to see discussed is written by Bruce Schneier, it made me look at the subject a bit differently than before: If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook. If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we provide copies of our e-m…

As jmduke said, i feel it's pretty silly to compare Facebook to the NSA, when they operate in completely different contexts: the NSA doesn't ask for your permission for the data, while you and your friends are giving Facebook the data. People are angry because the NSA is collecting data on us without consent. while i see the argument for "facebook is using the data in a way that we haven't given our consent for," i t…

Facebook doesn't ask for your permission... Didn't you see the article on their "shadow profiles" a couple days ago?

They also aren't honest with how they use that data either, and they definitely don't "ensure us that no human other than the ones you authorized will ever see said data", there have been several huge incidents about that, including one involving Zuckerberg's sister. They continually break our trust, it's not paranoia, look this stuff up, or pay attention to terminology news..,

Re: Google Blindness

#108

Post by workbench »

null_ptr wrote: post #61
varelse wrote: post #19

GMail and Google Maps were my go to apps on Android for years (since 2009 in fact). They both suck now. Combine that with the brick-like interactivity of my less than 2 year-old Galaxy Nexus and I'm abandoning Android for iOS as soon as my contract expires despite the fact I actually prefer a lot of Android's look and feel. To be fair, my Nexus 7 hasn't quite given up the ghost yet, but now that its successor has bee…

I have a Galaxy Nexus with 4.3, and it's been getting progressively laggier with each update. Changing screen orientation, doing text input or moving the cursor inside a body of text, and opening the running apps list are all mildly frustrating. It's as close to a stock install as you can get, too. It's so disappointing to see perfectly good hardware be so incompetently misused. This phone should fly . So I wonder if…

> not very good developers

Probably this judging by how many years the UI ignored the GPU on that platform.

Re: Google Blindness

#109

Post by workbench »

oscargrouch wrote: post #71

after reading both perspectives you learn that: * you are locked in, no matter if you prefer android or ios * choose you poison? come on, it took years and a lot of effort to take us all out of the nightmare of the windows ecosystem lock in.. so we can fall out in the same trap all over again? and while this is a natural behavior of apple that we should be all expecting, i expected more from google.. because nowadays…

You don't really get a choice about lock in, however you do get to choose if you want your actions, searches, communications and location harvested to build an advertising profile or not.

Re: Google Blindness

#110

Post by workbench »

krazyfrog wrote: post #99
yevy wrote: post #29

I would wager that the reason Marco (and many other mobile entrepreneurs) gravitate to iOS boils down to one line in his post that he doesn't feel the need to defend: "We can make a living developing for it." Android has (roughly) 4X market share but just 1/3 of the revenue compared to iOS. When the per user revenue gap closes, Marco's preference may change.

He already has a version of Instapaper for Android, so he clearly has no problem making money off the platform, whatever little it may be in comparison to iOS.

He's also gone into great detail on his blog about how unsuccessful that has been and if he worked on the port himself (outside company volunteered to work on it) he wouldn't have been able to go fulltime like iOS allowed.
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