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Really? Have you used it?
I used to think WP was great , until I used it for a while. MS + Nokia, beautiful?
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The Reality Distortion Field is strong in this one. So if I understand what you're saying, android's back button causes users to randomly mash buttons in frothy fits of delirium, yet iOS's back button provides zen like enlightenment and happy endings. Pushing the back button on an android phone, by default ALWAYS goes to the previous activity, or cancels context menus. Of course, it's possible to make the android bac…
I'm actually not biased one way or another - we make apps for both, and I carry a Nexus and an iPhone wherever I go. But it's simple truth: * The iPhone back button always takes you to one, and exactly one, screen. * The Android back button can take you to many different screens, based on where you last were. That's a gigantic difference, and leads to the button-mashing I describe.
For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.
Microsoft won for one simple reason -- the licensing deal for DOS. (Not that it wasn't smart and ruthless and good at executing.) IBM made DOS the dominant desktop OS, and the licensing deal allowed Microsoft to enable clone makers to displace IBM (without displacing DOS). Microsoft's legendary persistence -- fast following rival products and iterating them until they didn't suck and eventually drove competitors out…
"more beautiful than android and iPhone "... talk about burying the lead.
He does just seem to be a genuinely guileless person (in the original, positive sense of that word -- ie, completely honest and without trickery). I love that the guy just says what he thinks.
"more beautiful than android and iPhone "... talk about burying the lead.
Woz has also said in the past that he thought Android would won the mobile wars. As he's still technically an employee of Apple, I bet that their PR team really love him. He does just seem to be a genuinely guileless person (in the original, positive sense of that word -- ie, completely honest and without trickery). I love that the guy just says what he thinks.
Android is a really low bar. I've used several smartphones and the Android ones are easily the worst. It really does feel cobbled together and unintuitive. I call it the platform that makes. Symbian look good. On the other hand it's what I use since Apple has been so hostile to me and friends, and webOS is clearly a dead-end.
Edit: Downvote? so android is a smartphone? The parent was complaining about different smartphones, not different OSes. I think thats a subtle difference.
The anal-retentiveness required to honestly differentiate between navigating an iphone and an android is ridiculous. They both have grids of 4 icons wide. Android scrolls vertically, iphone scrolls horizontally. You touch the icon to launch app. The idea that there is room between android and iOS for a 2nd favorite mobile OS, based upon navigation of app screens is laughable. Either its better than both of them, or i…
There is a gigantic difference in how an Android and iPhone navigate. Develop the same app for both and you will see that clearly. The big difference is Android uses a standard back button for all applications. This leads Android users to end up mashing a lot of buttons at random, to try and get what they want - it's actually quite a bad UI, and it was just translated from the web clumsily. On iPhone, each app has it…
This is seriously one of the most W.T.F. comments I've ever read on HN. No exaggerating.
The Android back button is incredibly consistent, and the only people it causes in any confusion in are people too accustomed to the iPhone, mentally configured to always look to go to the top of the stack. There are a few apps that break the model, but by and large they work perfectly.
On iOS -- and yes, I use both daily with an iPad 3rd gen and an GS II running ICS -- it is essentially mystery meat in most apps. There is no universal model beyond some basic behaviors. As one aside, it is a PITA when you're lounging with the iPad and you have to go to the top to do every navigation.
There is no universe where the iOS model is better, but through completely acclimation.
The irony of this is that, with Android 4.x and the Fragment APIs for scaling UI from tablets to handsets, Android is the only UI system that has sophisticated ways for apps to intelligently arrange their UI elements to fit all sizes of devices, and developers are, as yet, ignoring those APIs.
Android Fragments really aren't useful when A) you can't use them yet because so many users are on older unsupported versions (insert generic "fragmentation" pun here) and B) you still can't smoothly scroll a ListView containing more than a dozen Views or a few text shadows.
Even if you are targeting API levels lower than in 3.x, using the Support Package is a substantial benefit in organizing your UI code and improved concurrency support.
As ever, you can set your minimum API level below the API level to which you build, and test for API availability at runtime, for any API in Android.
"more beautiful than android and iPhone "... talk about burying the lead.
It just works which is an utter shock these days.
(yes I've had a 4s and a number of HTCs)
It also cost literally bugger all - so much so I don't need insurance or a contract to cover the costs.