Charlie Stross on indespensible Android apps.
antipope.org
antipope.org
In terms of the list of must have apps my impression was two fold:
On one hand I was pretty underwhelmed. Maybe Charles Stross's primary use cases are different to mine but there seems nothing that impressive on his list. The office software looks nice (though less impressive is the hoop jumping to get it) but I think most people stopped being excited by document editing on the go way before iOS and Android came into being.
On the other though, thinking about what I have on my iPad and use, there are some nice little things there but I can't say any of them have changed my life or are indispensable to me.
The reality is that the massive bulk of what I do is covered off by the pre-installed apps - browsing, video, reading (where there are solid options on both platforms if you don't like the defaults), maps. Yes I can edit video or mess about with music creation on there, but it's not a great platform for either.
Perhaps it's just me but I wonder if the gap between app availability on the two platforms is a bit of a red herring at this point. It feels like we're still trying to work out what tablets are for, and while app evolution will be a big part of that, right now it's a perceived differentiator rather than one that has a major impact on usage.
EDIT: Removed a snippy last line on the grounds that it was a cheap and undeserved shot at the OP and his replying politely and ignoring it has made me realise I was being a dick.
1. I've seen OS's come and go since CP/M. I don't get all fanboy-ish over them if I can help it.
2. I'm more interested in utility than ideology.
3. (There is always one more point than you expect when you begin a list.) I was trying to call out the less common items I use, not the stuff everyone knows about and sees in every "ten vital utilities for your Android" article on the web.
Likewise, but doesn't this seem like a kind of a crucial fork in the road for consumer electronics technology?
The struggle between Apple (and Microsoft's) walled garden approach vs the Android bazaar seems to me to carry implications larger than previous rounds of this game, particularly when huge numbers of people are about to come online for the first time.
The device you purchase may be able to install apps from third-party sources, but you are still limited to "apps" (not the kinds of hacks and features you find in Cydia for jailbroken iOS devices, except for a few carefully-chosen extensibility points such as "custom input manager").
The device itself is often still locked down, which is why people cheer on companies like Motorola saying they will allow people to unlock the bootloaders on their devices (and then immediately must jeer at them when they find out their device isn't actually on the supported list).
Even at the OS level, the code is only open to a degree: getting patches in (and, to be clear: I succeeded early enough that some of my code is certainly on your device, so I'm not whining because I had code rejected) is painful because so much of the development is behind closed doors with releases to normal developers only happening right before actual product releases.
The result is that if you find regressions in new versions, such as 4.1 (as I recently did: an issue with how bionic's linker handles constructors) the chance that it will be able to be fixed before the release (and subsequent stagnation) is really small (which also burned 4.0: there were issues where multi-CPU APKs extracted the wrong files).
Meanwhile, Google is slowly replacing things that used to be open-source components of the base platform with closed-source "Google experience" apps (which vendors must license and then can't modify): the one that has seemed to cause the biggest stir (based on negative feedback from large hardware partners I talked to at I/O) being how Browser (which some vendors had tweaked to better take advantage of their video drivers) was replaced by Chrome (which, as many people don't realize this, I will point out is closed source on mobile: you can check out the test cases, but not the actual codebase to run on a device).
The result is that this "crucial fork", to some, certainly to myself, feels more like choosing "the lesser of two evils" when faced with a two-party political system: where both candidates are saying 95% of the same things you disagree with, but you have to vote within the 5% they differ where you hope your opinion matters.
Finally, even with all of that aside, even if you largely agree with one side of a debate, once you become a "fanboy" you lose your objectivity: everyone has some things they do poorly or that you disagree with, and to defend a position you have to admit those things to be trusted.
(Thereby, I am somewhat saddened by the idea by the idea this thread started with: that if someone has purchased a product--a far cry from buying into a vision--and then "put a bunch of time into it", possibly even carefully comparing it to alternatives over a long decision period, that they then must like it.)
But I also think that it should be legal to do the kind of hacking you do so I support the method if not the results.
I've been saying this for a long time now. There's a rapidly diminishing return on app market size and the app experience gap between Android and iOS now for the average user is small.
This is less true for tablets, of course, but that won't take long to change if any Android tablet starts making real headway in the market.
And, as formidable as Apple is as an implementor I don't think they're going to be able to keep pace with the much more dynamic Android market as a whole. My 4S already feels like a relic compared to my S3.
Yes I think Garageband is amazing but I don't really use it other than to show people and go "isn't this amazing"...
I remember reading a piece DHH wrote about the default smartphone apps being where it was at was and thinking he was wrong, but I think from a tablet perspective that's where things are.
Curious to know what you like about the S3. I've got a 4S and have played with the S3 and aside from the size (which is a matter of personal preference) I can't say I saw anything on there I was especially impressed by. It's a nice phone (and from a design perspective I prefer it to the S2), just nothing that would make me think about trading up.
1. The pull down menu to toggle wifi/gps/etc is much more ergonomic than fishing around in the settings menu on iOS.
2. Widgets can actually be a lot more useful than the typical clock/weather header. I have quick toggle widgets for alarms, a player widget for music etc.
3. Intents. I can share a picture directly to a dozen different apps, not only the ones with support manually coded into the parent app. I can choose my own default browser, mail client, photo editor, twitter client etc.
4. The photo gallery and integrated G+ uploading is so much better than iOS's photo app it's not even funny.
5. I can block incoming calls and SMS from people I don't want to hear from.
6. I can carry a spare battery if I'm going to be away from a charger for a long time.
7. I have a real choice of browsers and currently Mozilla Firefox Beta is better than Safari or Chrome (IMO).
8. I can buy books directly from the Kindle app instead of playing hopscotch around Apple's stupid rules.
10. Gmail is much better integrated and more functional than any mail client on iOS.
11. Background updating. I don't really think about app updates anymore. They just happen in the background. I can turn this off on a per-app basis if I really care.
12. The play store is a lot more pleasant to navigate and shows a lot more useful information than the iOS app store.
In the last six months a lot of holes have been filled. Pinterest, Path, Flipboard, Instagram etc. I don't really miss any apps from the iPhone.
Most of the rest aren't a big deal for me personally but I can see why someone with different usage patterns and preferences would like the things you list.
That said, I feel like design-wise Android apps are seriously hampered by the multitude of available screen sizes. I have seen too many apps that seem to optimize for small screens and look ridiculously under-polished on big screens. K9 Mail or most Twitter apps for example rely on tiny text in undecorated rectangles. This is clearly appropriate if you want to cram as much information as possible on a tiny screen but looks out of place on a Samsung S3. A gradient and some text color/size differentiation would go a long way there, but look distracting on a small screen.
Thus, I have trouble finding beautiful Twitter, RSS or Email apps for big Android phones. Of course, on iOS, there is not much choice for Email at all...
(If you disagree, by all means tell me about those beautiful apps! I am still searching!)
But one of the things I really like about well-designed ICS+ apps is that they really feel like an integrated part of a task-centric UI and not some over-fetishized designer's extravagance. I think Apple's embrace of skeuomorphism has encouraged a flood of hyper-stylized but not particularly ergonomic apps that each exist in their own little unique aesthetic universe.
For example, I'd much rather look at Tweet Lanes, even though it's pretty much a stock ICS app, than any iOS Twitter client loaded down with drop shadows and gradients and organic textures:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tweetlanes...
If anything I'd like to see a move in the direction of Windows Phone, with an information-centric focus on clean typography and presentation of data.
Stross writes for a living. He needs a good prose editor the way a coder needs a good text editor.
If you're still not satisfied at this point, there's not much that can be done. Looking at any review of Jelly Bean by a major tech blog will tell you they're satisfied with the interface and that it's on par with iOS.
I personally think it's much better compared to a few generations ago, but still has a few more rough spots than iOS.
That's exactly what I meant...my point is that a journalist's (supposedly) unbiased assessment is much more reliable than some random guy's opinion on the matter.
> I personally think it's much better compared to a few generations ago, but still has a few more rough spots than iOS.
I would love to know what some of these "rough spots" are. I don't own any Apple products, but happened to use a friend's iPad 3 yesterday, the first time I was using the device. After hearing so much praise on HN about how the interface was "so smooth", I was rather disappointed to find that basic things like text input and scrolling caused significant lag. Now I'm finding it difficult to take praise of iOS at face value.
There's the pace of technology and then there's the pace of public opinion and there's few things that move faster than that.
For example many still say that iOS is "more intuitive", and that may still be true overall, or perhaps they just say that because Apple has nothing but icons on the homescreen, but there are also a lot of stuff that Android can do them faster and more in a more intuitive way than iOS, like activating Bluetooth, getting the weather, notifications, and so on.
Bought an iOS device some time ago (coming from Android) and I'm still trying to find anything "superior" to Android's UI. It's just a matter of taste.
Pre-emptive counter-snark is something that seems enormously funny to you when you write it, but rather paranoid when you read it.
The title of the linked article: "Gadget patrol: indispensable Android apps" (Emphasis added)
Please do not type in headlines, because you will surely get it wrong. Instead, copy them.
That said, are there any good children apps for Android? I mean apps for toddlers, no questionable "learning apps", just nice pictures that move when you touch them? It's the only thing that makes me think an iPad might be worthwhile to entertain my kid.
http://www.androidauthority.com/samo-coloring-for-kids-app-r...
There is a lite version, but the full version adds some more puzzles and it is very cheap (1$ if I recall correctly).
Thanks for the app suggestions anyway!
I'd say that most tablets certainly would be capable of doing that when it comes to raw power (hey, they're faster than SGI Indys), but the ergonomics are quite odd, which is a problem that Moore's law doesn't solve automatically. And when you're carrying your Android tablet in addition to an iPad…
But hey, there's been online IDEs, a lot of "distraction free" writing environments etc. for tablets, so the line to draw between tablet and laptop usage is obviously a very individual choice. And, well, as an emergency Unix shell connector even I can see the point, and I'm definitely in the "tablets are for consuming" camp.
Pull down the notification area (works from all non-fullscreen apps) and it's right there, next to the settings button. In fact, it's probably the most accessible setting you get on that device.
So .. given that the pitch is "Rotation Locker makes it easy to lock or unlock automatic screen rotation" I've to say that this doesn't make sense.
The app _does_ seem to have a purpose though (with profiles tied to Locale/Tracker - or if you're stuck on an old version of Android). Just not a big one on the Nexus 7.
Edit: Aaah - it seems to only be on the Nexus 7. How odd.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lbe.securi...