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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

Yea, but that OS is everything. They barely make any software outside of it. And it's the best mobile OS by far.

iOS is a toy OS. The notifications alone make it useless for office productivity. The limitations on background processing break, say, Plex or Netflix sync. You can't watch a YouTube video while doing something else. Apps like FB Messenger can't display useful overlays on the screen. You can't even do basic things like set a system-wide default browser.

Android O is light years ahead of iOS.

> The limitations on background processing break, say, Plex or Netflix

You can quit e easily watch Plex (can’t remember if Netflix bothered) in the background while doing other shut with the PIP.

> you can’t watch a YouTube video either.

Which is YouTube’s fault ENTITELY. They are pushing YouTube red to allow for this (which isn’t even available in a lot of countries they advertise it in....)

I said Plex or Netflix sync specifically. Having to keep the app open while a 20 minute sync is going on is bone-headed.

PIP is not available on an iPhone.

>Apps like FB Messenger can't display useful overlays on the screen.

This is a feature, not a bug.

That is something I don’t miss at all from Android after abandoning Android for iOS 3 years ago (Samsung started locking down their phones with the Galaxy S5, decided I wanted no more part of Samsung bloatware and losing the ability to rid myself of it).

Chat heads are a great feature, and of course you can turn them off if you like. iOS doesn't even give you the option to do that.

Chat heads are a terrible feature, and now that you told me I can turn them off I’m going to go do that immediately.

What's your main issue with them? Aren't they just a superior version of the "reply-in-notification" feature of iOS?

The reply-in-notifications go away after I've replied, they don't hang around and cover a portion of the screen all the time. And if I don't want to read them right away, then I've got this thing hanging around on my screen with a angry red number that I don't want to deal with.

They're intrusive, they're obnoxious, they cause performance hiccups on occasion. They're not a superior version of anything.

I had to google it, they look pretty distracting to me, but I'm positive that if they turn out to be very useful Apple will release an API for it.

They haven't in years and I pray every day that it stays that way.

1) The limitations on background processing are deliberate to prevent applications from needlessly consuming battery life/mobile data.

2) It is Google's fault that you can't watch YouTube whilst doing something else. Apple provided an API which third party YouTube clients already support.

You can debate whether Android O is better or not. But I would hardly call iOS a toy just because it doesn't allow for rich notifications.

You can't do PIP on an iPhone.

The limitations on background processing are exactly why I prefer iOS. When something is acting funny, the foreground app is always the culprit, and killing it fixes the problem. I don't want to do any more complicated debugging than that on a four inch touchscreen.

The notifications you are complaining about can be easily, and completely, disabled. In a few seconds. I don't think you've used iOS 11 on a recent iPad, either.

Surely properly done, prioritized, aggregated notifications like on Android are better than no notifications?

I'm talking about an iPhone obviously.

What “office productivity” are you unable to do using iOS? Pretty sure millions of people use it just fine.

What happens when you receive 100+ new email notifications on iOS? I ended up ignoring all of them, missing out on important notifications.

Notification aggregation and priority is table stakes for serious office work.

If you’re regularly getting 100+ notifications you need to setup filters, change your notification settings, or find a new job.

Or you know, just use an Android phone.

Apple zealots are the fucking worst. Your phone makers are too incompetent to implement notifications properly, so your solution is to find a new job.

Just curious, why are you getting 100+ emails at once that you can't filter into a low priority/no notification inbox?

The most common case is overnight with a geographically distributed team.

How does that many notifications help? Isn’t it enough to see a ton of email and open an email client which does all of that aggregation for you?

Of course it doesn't, but Android already does the aggregation for me so that I don't miss important notifications from other apps. It's just a better way of working.

Again, it’s a question of degrees: you’re talking like this is a dealbreaker but it seems like more of an edge case.

I do think it, along with all the other ways iOS is deficient, is a deal breaker. I finally switched to Android after years on iPhone and I can't believe how much of an idiot I was for not switching earlier.

At least I wasn't enough of an idiot to use iMessage and get locked into the Apple ecosystem.

This runs contrary to Apple's philosophy. The user should not have to do anything.

Being a former android user, I see no fundamental difference in how notification are implemented for email between the two platforms.

Have you used recent versions of Android with priority and aggregation? I've found that iOS users have no idea how good notifications are on Android.

Phone makers or phone maker?

> And it's the best mobile OS by far.

And yet Android dominates the market share. I don't think iOS is the best mobile OS, let alone the best by far.

I don't think Android market share is enough of a metric to determine the quality of iOS. There are so many different cheap android phones to choose from, and people do not buy them because Android is a better mobile OS.

I'm typing this from an Android right now, but it definitely feels like iOS is the majority of the high end market and Android completely owns mid to low end. Apples chosen their niche and fills it well, they shouldn't be compared to a generalist in terms of who is best

It's a very subjective thing, really. I actually like my Windows phone, it's the only Windows I have.

Someone above concluded they are a product company and I was thinking 'appliance.' That's not a negative, they make devices fit for function and they, Apple, are remarkably good at it.

I can't think of an Apple product, and I type this on an iPad, that is truly the best in every aspect. However, they surely aren't the worst and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, I think.

I think appliance fits for apple if you use it with the connontations that word had pre 70s. They we're amazing time saving devices and well built enough that they seemed magical. Ive talked to my grandparents and their reaction to using a TV was similar to my reaction to a smart phone for the first time. My gushing over how much time my Roomba saved me also reminded my grandmother of getting a dishwasher

Android dominates because Apple refuses to sell $50 iPhones. iOS app revenues still outpace Google Play, Android is the OS of choice for people who use it like a feature phone.

I've seen that revenue stat mentioned before, but never any evidence that this isn't due to something like Android having free options available for functionality that only paid apps have on iOS.

Name one bit of useful Android functionality that is only available paid on ios. There isn’t any. The average Android users pay far less for their phones, and spend far less on apps, that’s been true forever.

Apple targets only the top end of the market. I’m a mobile developer and that’s why native apps are almost always iOS first. We know our iOS sales will be higher, and these are proprietary apps, not system features.

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