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Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

For years I was an Android user, loved them. Now I use two iPhones (one is a corporation phone).

I depend on Google Assistant on both iPhones. Siri is getting better and I sometimes use it, but I find it convenient enough to tap the Google Assistant icon on home screen as hit the hardware home button for Siri.

I expect Apple to continue to invest a ton of money in AI, AR, etc. But, Google has some advantages: when I asked for driving directions to the DMV yesterday Google Assistant immediately warned me they were closed. I worked at Google with the Knowledge Graph, and it with superior AI really is a great competitive advantage.

That said, I am never going back to Android phones; I like iPhones and the integration with my iPad and MacBook is useful.

Best of both worlds.

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Apple has hamstrung itself because of their stance on privacy. Most of the operations are done on-device or in some other way obfuscated on the server side.

Google, on the other hand, has no qualms about merging user data in the cloud and can create better results that way. On the plus side, their assistant stuff is uncannily (even creepily) accurate. On the minus side, all your shit is in the Alphabet Database now.

Whether this bothers you or not is up to you. (The generic you, not the 'you' you)

>> (The generic you, not the 'you' you)

That was what "one" was used for originally. "Whether this bothers one or not..." etc [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_(pronoun)

"Whether this bothers [one] or not is up to [them]" ?

What's going on here. The following seems incorrect:

"Whether this bothers [one] or not is up to [one]"

I think the latter is more correct, but the first is allowable now.

> Google has some advantages [..]

Advantages mainly coming from a far reaching disregard for privacy.

Many of them do come from a disregard for privacy. That bothers me, but some people are happy to make that trade-off for better services.

I would suggest that MOST people are happy to make that trade off. At least until your personal information is hacked and taken from googles servers.

To be fair, practically speaking, it's more likely that your "personal information" will be hacked if it is in your possession vs. when in Google's cloud.

In my case, it's not that I don't trust Google's cloud security. It's the unknown third parties they sell my info to's security that bothers me.

Which the market, and consumers’s revealed preference, has demonstrated doesn’t matter one whit.

Apple Maps will tell you the DMV is closed.

Yes, but which DMV?

I kid, but honestly, Google Maps is just so much better.

Apple Maps is used more in iOS than Google Maps. TomTom has been in the market a lot longer than Google.

I feel like you're arguing a different point.

Apple Maps will not even tell me their is a DMV on the reservation. It points to the one in a neighboring town. Of course Apple Maps still mislabels the town I am in, so I guess it is part of a larger problem.

I have the complete opposite experience having just started to use an iPhone7 for work. It's a horrible experience.

Who designs a phone that requires a restart to raise the volume?

Nobody, there is clearly an issue with yours.

Yes I guess mine is broken. There are severe limitations on my filemanager too, it might be related.

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