I'd even be happy with a native iPad app, as long as it supported some of the 'desktop only' features like Shared Circles.
I'd even be happy with a native iPad app, as long as it supported some of the 'desktop only' features like Shared Circles.
I got the Galaxy Nexus on release day. Upon trying to visit a G+ post that was linked here (the one about Goog making some guy's daughter cry), it consistently crashed the browser. Every time. Within seconds of load, clearly while doing js gymnastics. A friend with the same phone reproduced. Previously I had seen occasional G+ page crashes or hangups on a 3.0 tablet (TF101), and had a pretty dismal experience with G+ pages on 2.x, but this was outright killing the browser on every single attempt to load it. Whatever the problem was, it didn't go away until several days ago. And while it may no longer crash, G+ is still stupidly sluggish in the browser.
All of this on Google's new flagship ICS phone. Why would I put time into engaging with G+, when it seems like they're drunk on javascript bloat and have no one minding the shop on actual end-user experience? If people will have a terrible experience or need to download a dedicated app to view my posts, that's a critical fail. Nevermind these "big improvements'. Get the basics done right first, goog.
For all the UI's clean, minimalistic pretenses, it's ultimately a hog underneath. If there is no adult supervision on the G+ team to prevent this mess happening, because after all people should just download the app or something, then again, I'm inclined to steer well clear of it.
Regardless, there are simple features (shared circles for one) that only work on 'desktop' that need support on mobile.