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

The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 107 posts

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#51

Post by neilc »

sprout wrote: post #42
cmelbye wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely missed the point of this article, which I find odd because the author clearly explained why he compared Android with desktop Linux. By "Linux on the desktop", he means Linux on regular Joe's desktop, not the hacker's desktop. The author agrees with you that Linux is made for people like you that want/need the extra control, etc, whatever. This is not what the majority are looking for in a desktop distr…

The only reason I don't recommend desktop Linux to people is that explaining ubuntu-restricted-extras to them is too much work. Other than that it 'just works' out of the box and anyone who is currently using Windows XP should upgrade.

anyone who is currently using Windows XP should upgrade

Can we stop this silly meme of calling a switch between two unrelated products an "upgrade"? WinXP => Linux is an "upgrade" that has 0% software compatibility, and requires a massive amount of retraining and reconfiguration. Which is to say, it isn't an "upgrade" at all.

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#52

Post by stretchwithme »

I haven't bought either Android or Iphone.

I lean towards Android when I think about how cool it is to modify the OS to make it do cool things.

But when I think about what product I would recommend to family, I have to recommend the iPhone over Android.

They don't care if its open. They care that someone is ultimately responsible for making sure that its going to work now and that it has a future.

The choices they need to make when they buy an Apple product are few and clear. When I've had problems with an Apple product, Apple Care takes care it.

If there were an Android store, it would be on the back of a semi and would move to a different mall parking lot each week.

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#53

Post by tomjen3 »

That is a retarded argument, and I expect better from marco.

It should be obvious that shipping with a broken copy-past is miles better than shipping with none at all.

The iPhone wasn't good, because it only shipped with great features - it was medicore, because it shipped without many of the features (flash, copy-past, the ability to run multiple programs at the same time) that are needed.

It is much like homework - if you give a great title and fantastic abstract, but zero content you should not get an A.

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#54

Post by samstokes »

xenomachina wrote: post #16
iamdave wrote: post #6

I've always admired some of the things marco writes about, this is not one of them. While article is a depressingly one-sided article (marco's prerogative, totally fine with me), he misses a very big point, that for the sake of full disclosure should at least be expounded upon beyond a dry-wit analogy to Desktop Linux. Android and iOS are moving in two different directions, and have benefits for two different crowds.…

Speaking of having benefits for different crowds: when he mentioned the "why-is-this-here moments" his inability to understand that different people like different things became pretty clear. Why is it so hard to believe that some people may actually want a physical keyboard? Yes, it typically makes the phone bulkier and/or uglier, but for some people the extra utility it provides is worth it. Apple's approach has of…

I don't think he was saying that any physical keyboard is superfluous, so much as that the Droid's keyboard, which is terrible, is superfluous.

Something about the design of the Droid keyboard - the flat keys, the squishy response, odd placements of some keys - makes it much harder to type on accurately than my Nokia E71 whose keyboard is nearly half the size. And the fairly decent predictive / autocorrect functionality of the Droid's virtual keyboard gets deactivated when you're using the physical keyboard, so there's nothing to rescue from typos.

It's actually faster to use the virtual keyboard, so you really do wonder why the physical keyboard is there.

No-one who's used a Blackberry for a while will be in any doubt of the value of a good physical keyboard.

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#55

Post by Zak »

lots of why-is-this-here moments (the Droid’s keyboard, the Nexus One’s trackball)

I see this sort of thing from reviews a lot. The Droid's keyboard is there because there are customers who want it. There are plenty of Android phones without them as well. It's perfectly reasonable that some people want a smaller and more sturdy phone, but I won't buy a smartphone without a real keyboard. The trackball is good for positioning the cursor when editing text. It's faster than arrow keys and much more precise than the touch screen. I am disappointed that they are rapidly disappearing, sometimes replaced by an optical trackpad.

Android is about power and choice. The iPhone is about a great implementation of a specific vision. Both are doing very well in the marketplace. The idea that one is wrong and the other right is almost certainly mistaken.

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#56

Post by scottdw2 »

irrelative wrote: post #22

The hatred of linux on the desktop is terribly cliche, especially on a site targeted towards hackers. Linux on my desktop is the greatest development environment I've ever used, having played extensively with OSX and Windows as well. I can easily install new libraries and "apt-get source" allows me to tinker with existing software easily and immediately build and execute the results. All of the development environmen…

You bring up some interesting points. One question worth pondering, though, is "what does it mean for a tool to be powerful"? Since you brought up VIM let's take text editors as an example.

VIM is indeed a powerful editor. It gives you a lot of tools for quickly editing text. The problems I face, usually aren't related to typing. It's in figuring out what to type in the first place, and where to type it. When dealing with a large code base, the things I need most are code navigation capabilities. What is this? Where is it used? What does the call graph look like? Etc. Is VIM the most powerful tool for code navigation? No. It's far from it. One of the best is a tool called source insight. It's simple, fast and easy to use.

No one will ever tell you are cool for learning how to use it, because you don't have to learn how to use it. It just works. There's no sense of mastery involved. It just works. It brings the information to you, when you need it, in the context it's needed in. That makes it VERRY powerful.

You can say the same thing about a phone. Bringing you information in a way that is efortless and enjoyable is powerful.

It may not be "cool" with the same ubergeek street cred you get from learning VI. But that doesn't mean it's not powerful. Far from it.

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#58

Post by megablast »

cageface wrote: post #31
axod wrote: post #4

Apple is great on day one since it doesn't actually have many features. I'm loving my Nexus One here, which has just been updated to 2.2 :) Different ringtones (Anything you like) for sms/email/facebook, tethering, portable hotspot! Flash? Simply in a different league than iPhone. The early Android hardware sucked, but the N1 is pretty solid. >> The Android ecosystem doesn’t seem capable of producing devices that are…

I had an iPhone for 3 years or so. It was a great device for what it did, but the whole hassle of having to use iTunes. No removable storage. Can't just stuff mp3's on it and use as ringtones. Can't just copy photos off it unless you go through the right software. It's just a PITA. Not to mention the mass of features that are just lacking on the iPhone but you take for granted on Android. Exactly. Mobile doesn't mean…

Makes a lot more sense to everybody, except for the majority of people who still don't quite understand what a folder is.

I agree, I like copying over mp3s and photos, finding out what folder they need to go in, if they have filename restrictions, that sort of thing. I have done that for a long time. I understand that, and find it easy.

What I have a problem with is people who think that everybody wants it that way. Do you not understand that the majority are not like us, do not understand computers, need point and click interfaces? Why does this always come up?

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#59

Post by siglesias »

barrkel wrote: post #18

The iPhone was a poor device on day one. Limited to a poor carrier, it was a poor phone, with only a handful of built-in apps, no GPS, etc. The Nexus One was a quite a nice device from day one, and in my opinion better than the iPhone 3GS. But this is apples to oranges. The way a device is from day one is less relevant when the race is long. What was important in competing with Apple's first move was being first to a…

Poor relative to what? Maybe we need to hop in the time machine and relive what smart phones were like in January of 2007 before asking if you want to stick with such an asinine statement.

Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one

#60

Post by megablast »

xcombinator wrote: post #13

Linux is getting better each year, Android is getting better each year. But MS is getting better each year too, like Apple. The main difference is that MS and Apple improve he overall user experience while Linux and Android center themselves on geeks. Witch is great, for geeks, but not as good for other people. On Linux I can easily record any sound-video a program plays-displays , I can't do it on windows or Mac bec…

Sorry, you say MS is getting better? No. I would gladly go back to Windows XP over 7. The only thing I like about 7 is the taskbar, everything else just gets in the way or annoys me. Why MS feel like shuffling around everything in the control panel every release I will never understand.
Post reply on HN