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I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

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Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#301

Post by johncolanduoni »

angli wrote: post #199
scarface74 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me when Android users say that the answer to fleeing a walled garden where one company controls the hardware, the software, and the app store is by buying a phone (a Nexus) where one company provides the hardware and software and if you want to stay safe, only use their app store.

I'm an iPhone user myself but I understand this impulse. Having safety and compatibility sorted out for you really is an important time-saver and convenience. However, when you want to do something that isn't part of the manufacturer's plan there's only one way to go. I probably wouldn't sideload many apps, but when there's one app that makes my life easier and app store rules prohibit it, I'd really appreciate the f…

> I probably wouldn't sideload many apps, but when there's one app that makes my life easier and app store rules prohibit it, I'd really appreciate the flexibility.

Apple relatively recently removed the requirement to pay for a developer account to compile and run apps on your own device. You can pretty much sideload apps like you can on Android, just with the added requirement of re-signing them for your device specifically (which is IMHO a nice security feature). A lot of the app store rules are enforced by human review (e.g. only being allowed to use background execution for certain things), not the sandbox itself, so you have a comparable amount of flexibility (one thing I still really miss is the ability to do JIT and dynamic code generation).

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#302

Post by rnovak »

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.

a simple interface that WORKS, absolutely.

I tried in February to switch to the Nexus 6P. I literally had to restart it TWICE on day one. How is that even reasonable? for 650 dollars, that's a joke.

I'll get downvoted to hell, but I really don't care, iOS just works (tm), and I'll take that over custimizibility any day of the week.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#303

Post by Myrmornis »

_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…

Me too. I switched from Android (Verizon HTC One) to iPhone and shit just works, e.g. VPN. I wasn't able to use a stock Google phone without vendor crapware. But the market being flooded with devices suffering from crapware is in some sense a valid criticism of "Android" as a product isn't it? At least that's how it seems to end users who might not have the sophistication to avoid crapware and who don't understand that Android is a platform rather than a product.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#304

Post by dhimes »

mrcwinn wrote: post #235

The argument seems to be that app developers aren't doing very well on the app store, and you're looking to the free and open web as the place where vast sums of money will be made? For the vast majority of these apps, I beg to differ. The web plays by the same rules as the app ecosystem: it's very expensive to monetize, unless of course you are creating value for someone who has money and minimal friction when payin…

Thank you for a comment that actually speaks to the content of the article. Unfortunately it's buried under people commenting about their thoughts as a user. Which may be to the author's point: Apple's suppression (intended or not) of the web-app ecosystem has helped make the iPhone experience the (apparent) gold standard in mobile. [Note: I'm just summarizing- I don't know because it's all I use.]

But I empathize with the author's view. In fact, let's not ignore the fact that some companies that have perfectly useful web pages have dreadful iPhone apps, and in those cases the web experience (even on the phone) is superior. But when you think of the ideal, you are correct and native wins.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#305

Post by babuskov »

xd1936 wrote: post #153
babuskov wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A short google search for "Nexus 10 sound" would show you that it isn't uncommon at all. See how many people commented in these threads:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/0CDPXvY...

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/nexu...

http://androidforums.com/threads/nexus-10-volume-wont-work-p...

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#306

Post by vjeux »

I want to clarify some points on React Native. Unlike what is commonly said, my goal with the project is to make the web better.

A fundamental problem with the web as it exists right now is that as a "user", you cannot go one level deeper when you want/have to in order to provide a good experience. There's a big list of things like customizing image decoding/caching or extending layout part of css that is encoded in the browser and cannot be changed in userland.

The way to solve your problem is to convince a browser vendor to implement a solution, then all the other browsers to support it and wait for years such that your userbase can use it. This loop is extremely long and involves a lot of conflicting interests and having to support it forever.

The idea of React Native is to provide a subset of the web platform and hooks to drop down lower whenever you want to. For example, as a user you can use which behaves like a web and be done with your day. But, if you want to use another image format, or manage your image cache differently then you can implement it and provide a component to the end user.

The advantage is that each app can start building and experimenting with its own low-level infrastructure and replace pieces that the default platform doesn't do adequately for the use case they are trying to solve.

Now, why is it good for the web? Since React Native primitives have been designed to work on the web with a small polyfill ( https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web ), there's now a concrete way to improve the web platform without being a browser vendor. You can prototype with your ideas on React Native and when you figure that one is actually good, now start the process to ship it to the entire web platform. Kind of the same way you can prototype your js transforms with babel and then push them to tc39 to make them official.

If React Native is as successful as I want it to be, the web platform is going to supports all the use cases that only React Native can provide today and we can just rm -rf the entire project and use the web.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#307

Post by mostafaberg »

guelo wrote: post #255
mostafaberg wrote: post #152

>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 r…

> 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" Slack built a very successful chat app on top of the desktop browser.

Where's your argument ? You can make the worlds best services/apps in the web browser, that doesn't mean it's the de facto.

Also a chat app or any of the other fancy webapps we see here does not fit into the definition of a web browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#308

Post by MrMullen »

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…

You need to factory reset your device or maybe even reinstall the OS. I had the same issue with my Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2nd gen) and after doing factory resets after the update to 5.1.x, it was like I had a new device.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#309

Post by CamperBob2 »

harshreality wrote: post #237
lake99 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It must either be maintained or treated as disposable. While I agree with this, I understand where Swizec's comment is coming from. I have a few business acquaintances who have been automotive engineers for 30-40 years now. They have an excellent idea of how their cars work. And yet, they rue that earlier, they could open any broken car and get it to run. Now, there's not much they can do to fix their own cars. Pre…

> Pretty much all they can do when they see a blinking light is take the car to a mechanic. Why? Don't they have OBD-2 readers?

OBD2 doesn't tell you much, in a lot of cases. It might identify a loose gas cap or a broken plug wire, but for everything else that can wrong on a modern car you need the manufacturer's proprietary scan tool and a subscription to their online service documents. These cost thousands of dollars, needless to say.
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