I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS • Hacker News Board

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#441

Post by ocean3 » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 6:23 AM UTC

tiatia wrote: post #439

sandGorgon wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is this bad? I bricked my phone several times and fixed it. I cannot buy a phone that I can't tinker with (which is i have a Nexus now). I don't understand how inability to tinker is a good thing. Take that argument one step further and it's the net neutrality condition.

I don't think he is talking about the "inability to tinker" but about the "necessarily to tinker". Most Android phones a loaded with bloated crab ware. I have an Android and I made sure before I bought it that it runs Cyanogenmod. I don't like the locked-in systems from Apple but sometimes I miss something that runs out of the box.

"necessarily to tinker" - i suppose is done by tech guys. Normal people would use it as it is. There are so many low-end to high-end Android mobiles sold in India. Most of them don't tinker at all. As long as it does the basic call/browsing/videos/music its fine.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#442

Post by andor » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 6:26 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #63

My main exposure to Chrome web apps is Hangouts on Chrome for Mac and half the time I shut it down and choose to use the native app on my phone instead due to the poor, non-native UI and the battery life impact of Chrome. edit: the other shiny Google Web App example, Google Docs, doesn't work either. In Safari it likes to drops keys, and the last time I used it in Chrome (last autumn), it would either crash the whole…

Every web app I've used has required a painful sign-up process, which is usually where I bail out of the process.

How do you feel about using Facebook or Google accounts to sign into third party apps?

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#443

Post by tuxracer » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 6:29 AM UTC

ryao wrote: post #48

frobware wrote: post #3

Sadly, the web is an accessibility nightmare. If that changes, then sure, I could move too. But there's a lot that modern versions of iOS get right regarding accessibility, stuff that I wish google/android would do too.

I am not a professional web developer, but I used LAMP to make a decent size website using standards conformant XHTML/CSS without table hacks with PHP and MySQL for forms when I was in high school. I wrote the markup by hand, so I made certain to place content first so that 56k modems would load it quickly and web browsers for the the blind would not read navigation bars before the actual content. At the time, I assu…

Modern screen reader software looks at the output of the DOM. It isn't manually parsing raw HTML straight from the server (it's possible 10 or 15 years ago this was the case). So however the browser got that particular text on the screen (directly from a server, or rendered on the client via XHR requests) this is an abstraction most screen reading software doesn't involve itself in.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#444

Post by sandGorgon » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 6:51 AM UTC

tiatia wrote: post #439

sandGorgon wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is this bad? I bricked my phone several times and fixed it. I cannot buy a phone that I can't tinker with (which is i have a Nexus now). I don't understand how inability to tinker is a good thing. Take that argument one step further and it's the net neutrality condition.

I don't think he is talking about the "inability to tinker" but about the "necessarily to tinker". Most Android phones a loaded with bloated crab ware. I have an Android and I made sure before I bought it that it runs Cyanogenmod. I don't like the locked-in systems from Apple but sometimes I miss something that runs out of the box.

I'm not sure if I got that same sense. See, the point about tinkering to get rid of crap is an implicit acceptance that you CAN do this on Android. And even if I had to accept your argument, you forget about a Nexus.

A Nexus is a phone built to tinker - and has zero crapware. An Xperia is also a phone with beautiful Android customization (yet allows bootloader to be unlocked easily).

The 6p is my first Nexus and I have spent the last couple of years running bleeding edge CM. Android encourages opinionated experiences...that is a good thing IMHO.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#445

Post by bendbro » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 6:59 AM UTC

themihai wrote: post #355

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.

Android is far from "freedom". Having to find exploits in order to get root access on your own device is just wrong.

IOS fails the same standard.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/31/software-with-the-most-vul...

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#446

Post by __david__ » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 7:09 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #422

rhodysurf wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its pretty cheap by US standards.

You can get 1GB of 4G and unlimited 3G on Freedompop for $20, or unlimited everything (inc 4G) for about ~$70 on Sprint / T-Mobile.

That sounds good but they seem super sketchy. They want my address, email and IMEI before they'll even show me what plans they have? No thanks.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#447

Post by bendbro » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 7:17 AM UTC

idle_processor wrote: post #417

cylinder wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mod at all, I've got a Nexus 6p and am confident it is the perfect phone right now.

"Perfect" is a stretch. It was one of the better options in its release window, though. One flaw: tough to repair (2/10 on ifixit [0]) which will be fun when the battery starts to go. Another issue: Android Marshmallow (admittedly not Nexus-specific) doesn't play well with AdBlockPlus, and if you want AdAway or another hosts mod, you still need root. Rooting will allegedly break Android Pay, too. [0] https://www.ifix…

Android pay can be activated when you are not rooted, and remains active if you root later. It is trivially easy to root/unroot flagship android devices and you have access to unblemished images from google if you happen to screw something up.

My experience "hacking" my Nexus 5 to enable WiFi hotspots, without paying sprint for the service, required root, and the process took maybe five minutes.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#448

Post by abpavel » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 7:22 AM UTC

"I want the ability to create app-like experiences on the OS with web technology. Very little seems to be happening in that regard as far as I can tell"

I'm not sure why this doesn't sound like a compelling reason for a switch. I find the maintenance aspect much more persuasive. Usually people are paid to do sysops, administering, maintaining and tinkering with OS. It's a job. And handsomely paid at that. Doing the sysops job and having to pay for it, just to maintain your own phone, seems like a bad economical proposition.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#449

Post by alexchantavy » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 7:30 AM UTC

It'd be more accurate to title the article "Why Apple needs to treat Progressive Web Apps as first-class citizens".

It's less about iOS-vs-Android than it is about eliminating friction between the web and mobile apps. I enjoyed this analysis very much but if the article wasn't so highly upvoted already I might have skipped over it due to the title.

Re: I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS

#450

Post by zerohp » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 7:40 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #340

zerohp wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPUs don't have a billion parts. The unpackaged die is one carefully crafted solid.

Oceans have different parts and are far more homogeneous than CPU's. Further individual transistors can break making parts a meaningful distinction. PS: We call them silicon chips, but there are several tiny blobs of different chemicals involved. The process is closer to 3D printing than you might think.

I am aware of how chips are constructed. They are not built of discrete parts even though they are composed of multiple chemical elements. They are assembled through chemical processes that create a unified product through a few hundred steps. They are not an assembly of billions of parts and it is misleading to describe them as such.