Can Microsoft please make a Windows phone after all? Both Apple and Android ecosystems and hardware together are terrible in various ways and don't work well with Windows.
Of course it's not going to work well with Windows. Apple wants you to buy a Mac.
No, because it's part of a defense-in-depth strategy. Sandboxing and isolation is meant to catch what app review misses, without app review people would be attacking those mechanisms directly at a much higher frequency.
Endpoint security is everyone's problem now, because everyone has one or more always-connected devices. The future of computing is a signed, remotely attested path from power-on to user application code, all checked against an allowlist of approved binaries. For most, this will be a good thing.
I really really really hate iOS. It has things that are nice and better than android. But for anybody to think that it is a “complete and integrated” ecosystem makes me … laugh. Like it’s just objectively terrible.
Settings :: Battery :: Battery Percentage
Siri, Keyboard, and Maps gripes granted, but not really what people mean when they talk about "ecosystem", I'm very happy with how I can copy paste between my phone and laptop, and how my homepods and airpods and appletv all hand-off to each other.
Yeah, that would make sense, right? But Apple decided not to include that setting on iPhones with a notch (which is basically all of them these days).
If you use Linux and Android, you can do that with KDE connect. Pretty sure there's some solution for Windows too.
And it does work for people that can accept that. Anyone else? Not really, as you will feel frustrated by the constraints and the tall wall of their garden.
I think notifications are far better on iOS, love using Siri for controlling things/the phone (search is mediocre at best), I like the system sounds and alarms, hate when I have to use my Pixel dev phone's keyboard, etc, etc. It's rather subjective.
The two timers thing though, holy crap that annoys me. I swear they said they fixed that...
Except you have to swipe-then-tap to dismiss them. It's so fucking annoying. That's the biggest thing I miss about Android, just a simple swipe dismisses them.
But yeah, I also uses iOS because I don't want anything Google. In terms of UX, i don't like iOS but I also loathe Android. I currently lack courage, but I think that in some point in my life, I'll just throw smartphones. I'm sad that Firefox OS became this closed KaiOS thing. A hackable dumbphone is just what I need.
Having used cellphones since the 90s, my experiences with Android/Apple phones have been nothing short of remarkable and to be frank, life changing in terms of day-to-day utility.
Apple hardware is top notch, obviously. But I wish the software side was not so strictly controlled, look at the browser picture for example or in-app platforms or the shenanigans with the 30% cut.
Then small nits like:
- the alarm doesn't tell me how many hours to go when I set it
- the orange silent button is an abomination that needs to go. With Apple's focus on not having any buttons I have no idea why it has lasted this long
- the volume settings make no sense in the way that Android's make sense
So basically I'd like some wizard to take both of those phone systems, throw them in a cauldron, stir them together, throw away the slag, and sprinkle in some extra goodness. Ahhh some day maybe ...
Is it ? I'm using a 4 years old $200 phone which suits me just fine, if not for stupid apps requiring more resources for a worst experience. The only reason of upgrade is battery wearing off.
Any Google related issues might be mitigated switching to LineageOS as the hardware is relatively open.
This means that relatively easy wins like throwing a lot more cache on high end phone, are unavailable because instead they are just one of the many customers for the SoC with different priorities resulting in a compromise design.
In an odd turn of events the hardware has exceeded the software in the case of Surface supporting Android on the Duo.
Could you elaborate? Is there any info on that?
The only good thing I could say is that the settings were much simpler and easier to navigate than apple or android phones at the time. But that was really more because there was far less you could change or do in windows phones.
As far as effort put into it, Microsoft spent years pouring money and resources into trying to grow their phone platform. Remember they basically invented modern smartphones with Windows mobile phones--I was using 'real' web browsers on my windows mobile 5 phone as far back as 2006, years and years before the iPhone came out. They spent billions buying companies like Nokia, trying to get more developers on their platform, etc. There were at least two or three complete restarts to the whole platform. There were internal competitors even from the Xbox/game division (remember the Kin?). It just churned and churned and churned despite all resources and money thrown at it--all of it wasted in the end.
That's interesting about Microsoft really trying for mobile. My recollection is that they didn't put much effort into it, but clearly I was just unaware of it. Which is, perhaps, a sign? For all its investment, perhaps it didn't have the right marketing, as I was never aware of Microsoft's efforts for Windows Phone the same way that I am for Android and iPhone.
- Being unable to negotiate with companies like Snap to bring apps to the platform. Often this was because of Microsoft's level of sandboxing which prevented certain types of low level access.
- Other app developers never bothering to even try, despite the perfectly servicable APIs provided and ability to write in multiple languages.
- Google was purposefully obstructive with Youtube's APIs IIRC, which eventually made the Youtube app useless.
I bring up that last point, because it seems like the closer to competitive WP -got-, the more google turned the screws. Thinking very specifically about WP10 here, which really was a Swan Song for the platform; using a Widi receiver to get an ad-hoc windows desktop was pretty freaking cool in 2016.
iPhone came out in 2007, at least in the US.