

Charlie Stross on indespensible Android apps. - AndrewDucker
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/09/gadget-patrol-indispensible-an.html#1

======
Tyrannosaurs
The tone of the article is odd. The introduction is borderline hostile but
from the rest of the piece it's clear that here is someone who has not only
bought an Android device, but put a bunch of time into it.

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.

~~~
cstross
Two points:

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.

~~~
cageface
_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._

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.

~~~
saurik
As one of the people users often come to asking "how do I root my XYZ", I must
point out that while Android-the-platform sometimes feels like a bazaar,
Android-the-product is a set of walled gardens that are slowly being organized
under centralized management.

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.)

~~~
cageface
Android is certainly far from ideal, but in life we very rarely get the ideal.
At least with Android I can take my business to another vendor if I disagree
with a policy. And it may not be as open as I might like but there is still a
world of difference between AOSP and what it enables and what is possible on
iOS only through illegal hacks.

~~~
saurik
(I feel like I should take offense at you calling what I do "illegal": while
nothing is easily proven "legal"--one can always just sue and see if it sticks
--jailbreaking iPhones does not break any obvious laws and even managed to get
an explicit exemption from the strongest candidate, the DCMA.)

~~~
cageface
I actually think jail breaking is a bad thing because it enables piracy and
diminishes the appeal of less controlling alternatives.

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.

------
w1ntermute
> Android 4.1 is just about acceptable as an alternative to iOS. The user
> interface is rather less polished

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.

~~~
nicholassmith
Just because a major tech blog says something is true does not mean every man
and his dog will agree, especially over something like UI polish.

I personally think it's _much_ better compared to a few generations ago, but
still has a few more rough spots than iOS.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Just because a major tech blog says something is true does not mean every
> man and his dog will agree, especially over something like UI polish.

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.

~~~
nicholassmith
Everyone is biased, I'd prefer someone like Charlie Stross who's love of Apple
products is firmly on his sleeve to say "I've got a Nexus, it's pretty decent
but..." because you know a) he's biased towards Apple, so he's comparing it to
his base of reference, and b) if he says it's approaching the level of quality
it's very good. A lot of tech bloggers hide behind 'we're unbiased!' and troll
for clicks by changing their minds on a company/product every 6 months.

~~~
Kylekramer
Given the pace of technology, it seems like an unbiased observer would change
their mind every few months.

~~~
nicholassmith
Not necessarily, the pace of technology is fast but not as fast as a flip-flop
for click bait. I think one of the best examples is when Gizmodo went from
being overwhelmingly positive about almost _everything_ Apple produced, to
being overwhelmingly negative in the space of about 2 weeks, whilst the rest
of the tech press was giving Apple favourable reviews.

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.

------
brazzy
> it tends to lack the design aesthetic of apps written by Apple fanboys who
> have been brainwashed with the Cult of Cupertino's desire for things to be
> functional, pleasing, and useful.

Pre-emptive counter-snark is something that seems enormously funny to you when
you write it, but rather paranoid when you read it.

------
lutusp
The title of this submission: "Charlie Stross on _indespensible_ Android apps"
(emphasis added)

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_.

------
Tichy
I guess ultimately there are just not many apps that are really necessary,
apart from browser and ebook reader. Web apps are winning after all...

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.

~~~
pbreit
The Duck Duck Moose and Sesame Street apps are good. But for toddlers, iPad as
much, much better. My toddlers, who have no trouble using iPad, have a
terrible time with the Nexus.

~~~
Tichy
What I loathe about my Galaxy Tab is the menu bar at the bottom. Impossible
not to touch for a toddler, and with the blink of an eye he get's thrown out
of the current app again.

Thanks for the app suggestions anyway!

------
mhd
…or in other words, how to turn your tablet into a quite lackluster Unix
laptop. Once you add up external storage and a bluetooth accessories (incl.
crappy keyboards), are you really that far removed from an X-series Thinkpad
(or one of those new-fangled ultrabooks), albeit with worse performance?

~~~
cageface
I just cannot see the point of trying to turn a tablet into a laptop. If the
shift to mobile taught us anything wasn't it that one device can not adapt
equally well to all tasks?

~~~
mhd
I really hope that this isn't a true "shift", but disregarding that, if you
look just a few years back you had a PDA and a phone, now that's done by one
"smart"phone (that, plus GPS and camera).

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.

------
darklajid
I don't quite understand the 'Rotation Locker' link. Android 4.1 includes a
_very_ exposed button for that.

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.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Running Jelly Bean on a Galaxy Nexus - I don't seem to have a button there for
that.

Edit: Aaah - it seems to only be on the Nexus 7. How odd.

~~~
darklajid
Thanks for the clarification. Having only access to a single JB device (my
Nexus 7) myself I didn't even know that this is 'special'.

------
casca
It amazes me that there is still no usable firewall on Android. Droidwall et
al that require pre-configuration of apps with very limited granularity make
no sense in an environment that regularly gets new software installed with
unknown characteristics.

~~~
scott_karana
I believe LBE Guard allows you to sandbox any arbitrary Permission on android,
and can be configured to ask you whenever a new (or existing) application is
started. Requires a rooted device, but I found it to be effective.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lbe.securi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lbe.security.lite&hl=en)

~~~
casca
LBE works for Android permissions but not for distinct network endpoints per
application.

------
guard-of-terra
I'm amused to see FBReader making inroads to international readers community.

