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Hangouts for iOS

itunes.apple.com

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Re: Hangouts for iOS

#61

Post by zefhous »

untog wrote: post #48
zefhous wrote: post #38

Not a great first experience on the iPad for me. 1. Launch app in landscape. Oh, I guess they don't support landscape orientation for signing it. That's annoying. 2. Change orientation to portrait and sign in. 3. A dialog requesting to send push notifications appears — in landscape orientation ( http://cl.ly/image/2t2P0X3f2H2Z ) — but I'm still holding it in portrait and the rest of the UI is in portrait as well. 4.…

That screenshot you show would surely be an iOS issue, not an app-specific one?

I think their app isn't handling orientation changes properly. I signed out and tried it again and I can consistently reproduce the bug.

If I am signed out, the app will never launch in landscape orientation. If I am already in landscape orientation, I can sign out and see the login screen in landscape as I should. However as soon as I rotate to portrait, I can no longer get back to landscape.

As an iOS developer, this definitely seems like a problem with the app itself and I've not experienced this elsewhere.

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#62

Post by tene »

sneak wrote: post #57
cremnob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deleted it after I found out it requires you to have a Google+ account. I guess I shouldn't have had my hopes up considering it's called Hangouts.

Yeah, they can't seriously expect to compete with FaceTime and Skype adoption rates if they continue trying to force users to engage with their terrible social feature crap just because they want to make video calls. Then again, Google's playing a very long game here with Plus (and Android, and self-driving cars, and a zillion other things). Who knows if it'll work out in the end. What I do know today is that it's ra…

Can you make Skype calls without a Skype account?

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#63

Post by mikeash »

sneak wrote: post #57
cremnob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deleted it after I found out it requires you to have a Google+ account. I guess I shouldn't have had my hopes up considering it's called Hangouts.

Yeah, they can't seriously expect to compete with FaceTime and Skype adoption rates if they continue trying to force users to engage with their terrible social feature crap just because they want to make video calls. Then again, Google's playing a very long game here with Plus (and Android, and self-driving cars, and a zillion other things). Who knows if it'll work out in the end. What I do know today is that it's ra…

FaceTime requires an Apple ID and Skype requires a Skype account, so I'm confused, how is requiring a G+ account any different?

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#64

Post by FreeKill »

marbletiles wrote: post #52

So there's no presence/status notifications? I'll miss that when this hits GMail.

Agreed, that's easily 50% or more of what I used google talk for. It was a way of knowing when people were back at their desk and could be reached to discuss something. This new solution is more like SMS messaging, where you send off a message and just hope they are there and respond right away if it's urgent.

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#66

Post by viraptor »

mikeash wrote: post #63
sneak wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they can't seriously expect to compete with FaceTime and Skype adoption rates if they continue trying to force users to engage with their terrible social feature crap just because they want to make video calls. Then again, Google's playing a very long game here with Plus (and Android, and self-driving cars, and a zillion other things). Who knows if it'll work out in the end. What I do know today is that it's ra…

FaceTime requires an Apple ID and Skype requires a Skype account, so I'm confused, how is requiring a G+ account any different?

Google+ wants to integrate everything and that can cause problems if you use their services for important things. I'm still refusing to link my primary gmail address with a Google+ account after the big issue with name verification. My name is very unamerican so until I move everything important off of gmail, I won't join g+.

I know they promised not to do that anymore, but they hold too much data right now to trust them without any access to support.

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#67

Post by heyheyhey »

marbletiles wrote: post #52

So there's no presence/status notifications? I'll miss that when this hits GMail.

You can vaguely tell that someone is online by their icon being a bit brigher but it's a terrible solution.

This just tells me that they want the Hangouts app to be straight up texting app as opposted to an instant messaging app (like Gtalk). No obvious feature of seeing people online and no concept of a "buddy list."

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#68

Post by myko »

zefhous wrote: post #38

Not a great first experience on the iPad for me. 1. Launch app in landscape. Oh, I guess they don't support landscape orientation for signing it. That's annoying. 2. Change orientation to portrait and sign in. 3. A dialog requesting to send push notifications appears — in landscape orientation ( http://cl.ly/image/2t2P0X3f2H2Z ) — but I'm still holding it in portrait and the rest of the UI is in portrait as well. 4.…

To be fair to Google, Apple did break rotation in lots of apps in iOS 6. Though the fix isn't that difficult and I'm surprised that new releases are running into this.

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#69

Post by mcintyre1994 »

sneak wrote: post #58
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than number 3, this seems to match hangouts, assuming it works as they say (in a way iMessage doesn't seem to for you). The killer missing feature for me is SMS though, a vast majority of people cannot use Hangouts for the vast majority of their conversations because of the Google+ requirement.

One of my biggest hopes in life is that someone with good project management experience puts something up on kickstarter to build really really good clients for a federated videochat/messaging system (could even be based on xmpp) for every single major platform (osx, windows, android, iOS, WM, html5/browser) so that we can finally ditch all these terrible walled gardens (SMS, Skype, FaceTime, iMessage, BBM, Google Ta…

This is what I was hoping Hangouts would be, almost. There's a couple things there I wouldn't expect Google to do, and that I wouldn't miss too much. But you're right, Apple is close and I just wanted Google to do exactly what they've done, without the complaints people have with syncing (which is something Google are awesome at anyway) and across devices. They came so close, but lack of SMS means it's not really uniting anything. It's just another option for a way to communicate with some, but not all people. So close, but so far.

Re: Hangouts for iOS

#70

Post by mikeash »

viraptor wrote: post #66
mikeash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FaceTime requires an Apple ID and Skype requires a Skype account, so I'm confused, how is requiring a G+ account any different?

Google+ wants to integrate everything and that can cause problems if you use their services for important things. I'm still refusing to link my primary gmail address with a Google+ account after the big issue with name verification. My name is very unamerican so until I move everything important off of gmail, I won't join g+. I know they promised not to do that anymore, but they hold too much data right now to trust…

You seem to have the workaround already, though: make a separate account. I'm not going to argue that it's a good thing that you need to do that, but it doesn't seem worse than having to e.g. sign up for a separate Skype account to use Skype.
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