
Google is making better apps for the iPhone than for Android - digital55
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/8/12109832/google-apps-iphone-android-motion-stills-gboard-search-hangouts
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rogerbinns
I'm convinced that people at Google don't really use their own Android apps
much. There are fundamental obvious problems.

Two examples - "Play" Music puts a lot of effort into not playing. Anything
less than a perfect network, or having played a song or two seems reason
enough for it to stop. Comically the most common thing we see is an error
dialog about errors streaming, that popup on the times it does start playing
successfully.

The other example is Keep. I last made a change on desktop 3 days ago. Today
outside the store I started the Android version, where it proceeded to show me
the most recent items I added in the unticked section, but ticked. Ticking one
of them then moved it to the ticked section, and caused another relayout where
the content was bizarre, followed by another relayout about 10 seconds later
that was correct. I've also had the ui lockup when there is no network
connectivity, which seems a rather fundamental programming error. You
shouldn't need network to tick an item in a shopping list!

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justin66
The funny thing about Play Music is that the early versions were really solid.
I streamed mp3 from my Google account while driving all the way from Chicago
to Cleveland back when I had a Nexus S 4G, and Sprint's network was not what
you would call perfect.

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chrisper
Isn't The Verge biased and very pro Apple? At least that's the stigma I read
online that The Verge is basically Apple News.

EDIT: Maybe instead of downvoting, just prove me wrong.

~~~
wanda
I think, as a rule, the burden of proof falls first upon the claimant.

You have made a claim with no evidence to back it up, only hearsay.

This is why so many who frequent HN include citations for even trivial
comments.

~~~
chrisper
Well, I was asking if that claim I read online is true or not and if it should
be considered if The Verge is biased or not. That is all I tried to do!

~~~
mwfunk
If you're getting downvotes (none from me), it's likely from exasperation that
anyone is even bringing this up in the first place. Read comment threads on
the Verge where people complain about bias- they almost always appear to be
written by toxic high school kids who draw way too much of their self-image
from which gigantic corporations their parents have bought their devices from.

The comments on the Verge used to be at least a little better than those on
Engadget/Gizmodo/etc., but they've mostly devolved into the usual prepubescent
Markov chain noise floor that article comment threads on the internet always
sink to in time.

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smt88
From my limited mobile development experience, this probably has a lot to do
with the same old story for Android: fragmentation, and the fact that iOS is
tailored to a limited set of hardware.

Less time fighting the platform means more time to make a great app
experience.

~~~
melling
iOS 9 adoption is around 90%.

[https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_9](https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_9)

That makes software development much easier. ios 10 will reach the same
adoption level by this time next year.

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invig
This is a direct result of the Android API's being fucking bizarre.

It's been quoted that they expected Android development frameworks to be built
on top of them, so they didn't make them developer friendly - but they also
reach up so far (see the Activity / Fragment nightmare) that it's complicated
to make a development framework on top of them.

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mrmondo
I tried an android for a couple of weeks recently, I tried it using the
"Oneplus 3" as it was good bang-for-buck and ran the latest software with
plenty of grunt. Hardware wise the unit is lovely, not as high build quality
as my iPhone 6s+ but not nearly as bad as the Samsung Galaxy S3 I had tried in
the past. The OS looked pretty... at first, then I started installing apps and
it very quickly felt messy. I noted that the general 'quality' of android apps
felt quite poor. Nothing seemed to integrate very well, if at all and a lot of
apps felt like they hadn't been maintained for quite some time despite being
the 'the best option' available.

I had a go at disconnecting my from the clutches of google first by trying not
to sign into any of their applications and disabling all the information
reporting in settings, I felt like y was a bit like how iOS was back in the
iPhone 3G days when you had to root the phone to do half the things you
wanted.

I then ended up flashing a custom rom that was pretty much stock, but without
the good stock apps, I had to install the google App Store and create an
account which I think is fair enough because I couldn't be bothered dropping
custom downloaded apks and using that dreadful android transfer tool from my
laptop which seems to work 4/5 times you plug your phone in, but like a lot of
the apps in the ecosystem - felt very 'javaish' (pun slightly intended).

Anyway, I'm going to wait for Fedora or similar to becoming installable on the
device then use it as a mini server / portable desktop because android just
feels so fragmented and I can't help but feel like I can't trust the platform
or the company that created it.

Hardware wise the OP3 felt like it was design with more care than any other
Android phone I'd spent any fair amount of time, I love that it uses a USB-c
port but was disappointed to find that it was actually only USB 2.0.

~~~
chrismcb
I use both ios and Google's stock Android. I would say they are both just as
"messy" although it seems like I can integrate with other apps easier on
Android than ios. Perhaps you were running into issues with non stock is?
Perhaps you need to find better apps as well. The video editor I use on
Android is better then on ios. Fb on Android is almost as good, although the
app wont upload HD video. But really there are pros and cons of both,
especially now that I can use swipe on ios.

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nextos
I'm hoping Android without Google takes off, and we can get a good ecosystem
no matter whether GApps are good or not.

~~~
Jackneill
I'm hoping sailfishos takes off.

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Zigurd
They don't give a lot of directly comparable examples. Hangouts, for example,
might not be getting a lot of development love right now with Allo and Duo
being prepared for launch.

~~~
zastrowm
Hangouts isn't a good example to pick apart. The iOS app usually gets updates
sooner than Android; it's not just a recent thing. Wifi calling, voice
messages, redesigns all came first to iOS and then later (or never) came to
Android.

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droidist2
Them and everyone else :)

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grawlinson
Is anyone surprised? Google tends to release some products/services in 'beta'
mode and some of them tend to get abandoned or go on life support before
having the plug pulled. Having said that, a lot of their offerings have an
immense amount of polish and I'm grateful to be using them.

