Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

joreteg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 524 posts

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#151

Post by Grishnakh »

Roritharr wrote: post #138
Swizec wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars also followed this pattern, come to think of it. I remember my dad complaining all through my youth about how the more modern that cars get, the less serviceable you are. That in new cars you need special computers just to tell them that yes, you did fix the problem and the car can stop complaining now. 10 years later ... man, if I have to even think about opening the bonnet and poking at something, I assume t…

>Maintainability is the feature of unreliable equipment. I want to see a two hour debate on that by top engineers from several industries because that seems to be one of the big questions of our time in regards to product development.

If you find an engineer willing to argue in favor of non-maintainable equipment, he's not a true engineer, but some failed engineer who's moved over to management and is more interested in profitability than in users having a quality product that allows them to keep their TCO low by being able to maintain it themselves (or by an independent professional) and keep it for a long time instead of throwing it away early.

There is, quite simply, NO good argument in favor of non-maintainable equipment, unless your goal is to increase profits. This doesn't mean we should go back to the days of carburetors and points; modern cars are extremely reliable and actually highly maintainable if you have the right equipment, but there's no reason they can't make the computer-based service tools publicly available so that anyone can service them themselves. They keep that software and those interfaces secret to increase profits.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#152

Post by mostafaberg »

>I don’t know about you, but the idea of having a fully capable web browser in my pocket was a huge part of the appeal.

A: Both iOS and android have fully capable web browsers, I'm not sure what's missing here ?

>I’m talking about stuff that QA should have caught, stuff that if anybody at Apple was actually building ? apps this way would have noticed before they released.

A: They do pass QA, that's why features are removed

>One quick example that bit me was how they broke the ability to link out to an external website from within an app running in “standalone” mode. target=_blank no longer worked.

A: Thank god apple no longer allows that, how do you expect a tiny screen to have popups and switch web browser views when you click links ? this is a very bad UX.

>We were running a chat product at the time, so anytime someone pasted a URL into chat it was essentially a trap.

A: I'm not here to judge your decisions or why you did it that way, but IMHO a chat product doesn't really belong in a "web browser"

>The message from Apple seemed clear: web apps are second-class citizens on iOS

A: Exactly, and it is that way for many good reasons.

I see you've mostly switched to android just so you can continue developing webapps, that's okay for you, but it's not a really good reason at all. Don't be like the people who where bashing apple when it decided to remove support for flash player, because that's one of the reasons the web has become the way it is today, i'm not an apple fanboy, i also did the switch from iOS to Android after around 7 years too.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#153

Post by xd1936 »

babuskov wrote: post #148
taesu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things that you mentioned, you didn't really have to do. Buy a nexus, and it's as clean as it gets. What you're saying is that you left the freedom of your device to jail yourself into simple interface...? I do agree though, that those samsung/lg/etc phone have lots crapwares + carrier crapwares.

Don't buy a Nexus. I have and it's a huge disappointment. I had a perfect Nexus 10 device running KitKat. And then it keeps nagging to upgrade to Lollipop, so I did. Ever since that, it runs every application slow as hell. If you allow the battery to run out, prepare for pain. Once you fill up the battery and it restarts it will start "optimizing" all installed applications. I have about 80 applications and this take…

That sounds like a list of uncommon issues. My company's Nexus 10 runs Lollipop really well...

Maybe something went poorly with the OS update. Try a factory reset and see if those issues are still happening?

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#154

Post by gramakri »

_kp6z wrote: post #70

I did the opposite and can't believe how much better my life had gotten because my iPhone is just a simple tool that I use for communications and don't think about it as a project. With Android, I always wanted to tweak silly things and run Cyanogenmod because the handset firmware was always so bad and vulnerable. On several occasions I'd bricked my phone requiring hours of recovery, or had transient failures of cell…

Linux user chiming in. This reminds of the people who complain about running Linux :-) When they run linux, they start tweaking all sorts of things: trying to run wayland master or run Arch (which is a great distro if you know what you are doing). And more often than not, they come out frustrated. Then the proceed to claim how awesome Mac is since everything just "works".

So yeah, I totally get what you are saying :-)

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#155

Post by Synaesthesia »

Apple have actually been always pretty excellent with Safari performance and features on iOS. They were impressive from the start and they have kept pace with Google with regard to JavaScript performance overall performance has usually been class-leading, rendering too. Ok they're missing WebRTC right now and workers, but I'm pretty sure WebRTC will come soon and workers too at some point.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#156

Post by WildGreenLeave »

cheeaun wrote: post #31
itp wrote: post #7

Wow. I'm a long time Android user and probably pay more attention than most, and I had no idea web apps had gotten quite this nice. Currently the only web app / web shortcut I have installed is the HackerWeb app[0], which is nice but clearly not taking advantage of all of the functionality it could. I "installed" Flipkart Lite and the Voice Memos demo app to see the state of the world. Clearly it's possible to build…

Hi! Creator of HackerWeb here, just wondering what kind of additional functionality that you're expecting?

I have tried multiple Hacker news native application, and I didn't like any of them. I, however, love your Hackerweb web app. Its clean, simple and fast. And it feels like a native app.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#157

Post by sethd »

taesu wrote: post #78
_kp6z wrote: post #70

I did the opposite and can't believe how much better my life had gotten because my iPhone is just a simple tool that I use for communications and don't think about it as a project. With Android, I always wanted to tweak silly things and run Cyanogenmod because the handset firmware was always so bad and vulnerable. On several occasions I'd bricked my phone requiring hours of recovery, or had transient failures of cell…

These things that you mentioned, you didn't really have to do. Buy a nexus, and it's as clean as it gets. What you're saying is that you left the freedom of your device to jail yourself into simple interface...? I do agree though, that those samsung/lg/etc phone have lots crapwares + carrier crapwares.

Clean as it gets? That must not be a very high bar. I bought a Nexus 7 once and it came with an HP Print services app that could not be removed. I would be willing to bet that would be classified as crapware by most users.

This is the main reason I stuck with iOS, even the the "pure" Android experience the Nexus line is supposed to offer is tainted.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#158

Post by marincounty »

Swizec wrote: post #102
stcredzero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is that you left the freedom of your device to jail yourself into simple interface...? Actually, this is a pattern that many products follow, as they evolve from a newly tinkered thing pioneered by enthusiasts to a mature consumer device. There is much more "freedom" in 80's and 90's audio equipment. (And markedly higher build quality. Bargain stuff I bought as a teenager is now lauded on ebay as t…

> Cars also followed this pattern, come to think of it. I remember my dad complaining all through my youth about how the more modern that cars get, the less serviceable you are. That in new cars you need special computers just to tell them that yes, you did fix the problem and the car can stop complaining now. 10 years later ... man, if I have to even think about opening the bonnet and poking at something, I assume t…

I'm still with you father on modern vechicles. Yes--the engine light comes on, and I can read a PID trouble code on many vechicles.

The fault code is not always the problem. It's just not that simple to fix a modern vechicle. I pull a generic pid of XXXX, but maybe, around 30% of the time it's just that error code.

Manufacturers have scan tools that read there products very well. Much better than my Snap-on 2500mt. I can't buy their tools, nor will they sell their priority information to most mechanics.

So, working on vechicles made after, I say, 2000 is really getting hard.

So hard, I believe most vechicles made in the 90's will become collectable? Why--they have less do-dads, and Emmission sensors.

It gets monumentally difficult if your trying to get a vechicle to pass CA Emmission tests.

I thought OBD2 would make working on vechicles a breeze. I have not found it to be the case.

I have found buying a new vechicle is a lifelong relationship with the dealership; at dealership repair prices. I think manufactures did this on purpose. "Get them to buy your vechicle, and keep them coming back?" A sales tatic that software companies have been relying on for years now? I still remember buying Lightroom 1 at $199.00, and thinking that's all I will spend. What a deal?

I actually foresee a bunch of bricked, by failing emmission tests, vechicles in the near future.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#159

Post by Grishnakh »

douche wrote: post #98
nostrademons wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KitKat was the first version to ship with Chrome as the default browser, but IIRC it didn't replace the system webview or become auto-updating until Lollipop. Wikipedia shows 70% of Android users on KitKat+, and about 35% on Lollipop+. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history#/media... I dunno what Samsung ships with, when I was still doing a bunch of mobile web work (early 2014) they used a forked versi…

My Samsung S4 came preinstalled with some off-brand default browser that was worse than terrible. Hopefully they have gotten their act together by the time I'm due for an upgrade this fall.

Who cares what it came preinstalled with? My S4 was automatically updated to Android 5.1 and comes with all the stuff that 5.1 normally comes with. I also installed Firefox as my default browser there.

Why bother to upgrade to another phone? The newer phones (except the S5) aren't any better. I love my S4. The only thing I'd bother upgrading to is an S5, since it's waterproof, and still has a removable battery.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#160

Post by ryao »

takno wrote: post #123
ryao wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A malicious app must be installed before it can run and is likely vetted by the maintainers of a package manager or App Store. A webpage running JavaScript simply runs with no inspection from anyone. Also, a malicious party usually cannot inject code into an installed app. Injecting it into a webpage you visit is far easier. Ad/tracking networks have been used for that. There is the possibility of a MITM attack if al…

The Javascript has to request permission for each type of device access on first use, which is a lot better than the ask-for-everything-on-install model that older versions of Android use. Service Workers also only load over HTTPs. Generally xss attacks are prevented by the permission being granted to the domain of the script which is trying to use the service. If you are uncomfortable that any given site will be pro…

> The Javascript has to request permission for each type of device access on first use, which is a lot better than the ask-for-everything-on-install model that older versions of Android use. Service Workers also only load over HTTPs. Generally xss attacks are prevented by the permission being granted to the domain of the script which is trying to use the service.

If you are going through an app store, the app has been vetted. If that misses something and it is later found, it gets pulled. There is the possibility that you will never encounter the bad app by virtue of being one of the ones who would have installed it using it after it was pulled. On iOS, there is the possibility of signature revocation providing protection to disable it after it is downloaded. With a website, there is no such protection.

Plus, web servers are rarely patched and often exploited. Anyone who allows a website to use WebBluetooth effectively opens themselves to the poor security practices of the other end. Even without that risk, there is also the risk that an ad/tracking network is not used in a cross site scripting attack to gain access.

> If you are uncomfortable that any given site will be properly secured you can always deny them the permissions just as you would decline to install their app, except that the website can offer you a degraded experience, where the uninstalled app will offer you nothing.

If all users thought the way I did, WebBluetooth would never have been proposed. The reason being that WebBluetooth could be used to exploit other things even if the web browser's implementation has no exploitable bugs. If WebBluetooth becomes widely used, Black hats will have a field day with the users who do not know.

They need not even compromise a web server of a site that has a legitimate application for it. They might just ask users of some other site that they trust to enable it as few users ever say no to such prompts (or prompts in general).

Post reply on HN