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Google closes its $1.1B deal with HTC Corp
- nicetime 9y agoFor sure, the only reason I’ve been on Apple devices these past few years is because Ubuntu is such an abomination. Windows is plainly unthinkable. And if you have my laptop, the mobile devices fall like dominos. I don’t love iPhones, but even at premium prices it’s worth it to integrate with OS X. Android really makes me sick though. Touted as free and open, but you still have to root your phone with shady exploits, payloaded over some sketchy USB shell. And then when you do, the custom roms are trash. And I wouldn’t even be rooting these devices if I could just efface some of the stock brand and bloatware, but no, every mobile provider wants me to sign into their analytics package, and billboard their logos all over the place. It’s a wasteland in all directions.
- feikname 9y agoThat's the mobile provider fault, not Android's... And no custom ROMs are necessary for root usually. Also, what makes you prefer macOS UX than Windows or Ubuntu? They surely have their downsides, but I don't think they're THAT bad to the point of not even touching one.
- genghizkhan 9y agoNot OP, but for me it's the apps. While a good number of apps I use professionally can be used on both Windows and Linux, I prefer using OSX simply because Omnifocus, Fantastical and Spark exist on it. I'm sure there are other people who can use the Todoist/web/web trio or make do with Outlook (if you're in an all-Exchange shop with no CalDAV stuff), I'm just not one of them. An alternative view is that Linux lacks good GUI apps and Windows blows at the command line (despite Bash on Windows). Windows apps also don't have great UX chops in the areas I'd like them to. 1password on Windows sucked the last time I used it, there's no native equivalent to Omnifocus or Things, there's no great calendar app like Fantastical, there's no great indie devs like Readdle[1] or Nucleobytes[2]. This comes from someone who's used all these OSes as well as FreeBSD and OpenBSD for both work and home. [1]https://readdle.com/ https://readdle.com/ [2]https://nucleobytes.com/ https://nucleobytes.com/
- BaronVonSteuben 9y agoThere's nothing sketchy about it if you buy a phone that is unlocked or unlockable. If you get a Samsung from Verizon, then yeah you're gonna have a hard time.
- pokemongoaway 9y agoExactly, we're going to need a replacement for Google's vanilla Android soon. You can't even take off the Google Now bar - which takes up significant space on all workspaces!
- on_and_off 9y agoYou can replace the launcher to have something very similar to Google's one but configurable.
- thisisit 9y agoI don't understand, how is this different from Google acquiring and then selling off Motorola Mobility?
- puzzle 9y agoI was at Google during the Motorola years. There was no integration whatsoever, by design. The Android team bent over backwards not to give Motorola any special access.
- otterley 9y agoWhy was it designed that way? Can you elaborate?
- thomasfortes 9y agoI remember reading somewhere that they did not integrate to not alienate other phone manufacturers, they were trying to avoid making the manufacturers feel like second class citizens.
- eanzenberg 9y agoThat strategy worked out really well for them.
- samfisher83 9y agoIt did. The have a majority of the market. They don't make money selling phones. They make money selling ads. As long as all the phones are using google search and ads they do well.
- L_Rahman 9y agoPresumably to avoid any impression of special collaboration between Google and Motorola that would have spooked the large Android OEMs of the time - Samsung, HTC and LG.
- scriptingnerd 9y agoApple comes across as people friendly, a hardware company who provides a tangible, usable set of products. Google comes across as what they are, an ad company with a semi-decent search engine and an OK web mail and docs platform. I stick with my i-devices and Fastmail.
- joejerryronnie 9y agoAgree with this - however I am consistently awestruck by Google Earth. It rarely helps me in my day to day life (apple/google maps work fine for that) but I never grow tired of zooming in on a tiny fishing village on some remote island in the Pacific or a random settlement high in the Himalayas. It feels almost God-like.
- Yetanfou 9y agoWhat Apple or Google or any other company comes across as is mostly in the eye of the beholder and can be influenced by many, sometimes trivial things. As an example my perception of Google has changed in recent years, not so much due to them shedding projects but more due to the intense politicisation of the place and the censorship which followed. I don't use the search engine directly, preferring to go through a third party to gain a semblance of anonymity. The Android project still gets my vote as long as AOSP remains viable, as soon as that road is cut off I'll jump ship to something else. To me Apple seems to be more in the business of herding their flock of users, trying to extract as much profit from them as feasible. They know which strings to pull to make keep most users from leaving the flock but recently more and more have strayed to the edge and beyond.
- elvirs 9y agoafter being an iPhone user for 6 years and recently switching to android (first a pixel, then one plus) I can say with confidence Google's hardware approach sucks. Android can do a lot more than iOS but it does most of the simple things in a user unfriendly way
- randomString1 9y agoAnd if you want things like "receiving updates" and "no bloatware, stock android" you have to compromise on the hardware side. Gets even worse when you add phone carriers and warranty to the mix (depending where you live). I just hope Treble will allow us to install a signed stock ROM (custom ROMs don't count in my book) on any device so all that matters is the hardware and customer support.
- DrScump 9y agoyou have to compromise on the hardware side Or, root the phone. Rooting has it's own rusks and inconveniences, though.
- akoncius 9y agoyeah, it's more like a theoretical option, because rooting voids warranty, plus you have to have technical knowledge how to do it. It is difficult to imagine my dad rooting phone :)
- sigmar 9y ago>Google's hardware approach sucks What is wrong with the Pixel hardware? (Have never owned one and have only heard good things)
- justAnotherNET 9y agoTwo of my coworkers hated theirs so much they went iPhone this cycle. One cited something about random clicking noises and hardware problems.
- 9y ago
- paulcole 9y agoApple has built a brand that’s cool and stylish. Google’s got a long way to go to get there. More brains aren’t the answer to this problem.
- dcow 9y agoBut tailored hardware might be.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- guhan_ganesh 9y agoThough Apple is lagging behind in innovative features in recent times, I think they are at a higher level because of the excellent hardware that complements their software and vice versa. I think Google feels let down by the other mobile manufacturer's hardware and hence wants to bet big on improving its in house hardware expertise.
- lostmsu 9y agoYeah, the battery story shows how excellent their hardware is.
- murukesh_s 9y agoThat could be the sales department at work there..
- thisacctforreal 9y agoI feel like their approach to user-friendly security is plenty innovative.
- rimliu 9y agoI am interested what innovative features are offered on other flagship phones that are not available for iPhone users? My impression is that smartphones matured enough not to have any major breakthroughs in recent years. That said Face ID is magic.
- fnord77 9y agoGoogle has always been tone-deaf when it comes to how they treat their users. Apples treats their users as something special. Apple delights - google, well it's fast, but it sometimes creeps you out. throwing more bodies at the problem isn't going to fix it - this is a top-down issue.
- jk563 9y agoFairly subjective to be fair. I'd wager that the same features that creep you out are some of the features that delight me.
- coliveira 9y agoAnother me-too from Google. It doesn't matter how much money they put on it, it won't work until they do something innovative. Apple had to do it to get where they are.
- gesman 9y ago+1 They should learn from Ballmer wasting MSFT resources housing him. Epic "me too!" failure.
- ac29 9y ago> Apple had to do it to get where they are. Apple aquired a lot of companies to get their "innovative" features. Siri was aquired (I know, its not great, but it was novel when it came out), PA-Semi was aquired (boosted their in house SoC development), and the original Kinect team for the iPhone X face recognition sensor suite come to mind. A much bigger list is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- genghizkhan 9y agoAll that proves is that ideas can come in from anywhere. Google has a similar list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... It's impossible to say how much input/influence each of these mergers had on the products of these companies. Some of these started products, some of these enhanced them, some of these even replaced them.
- eanzenberg 9y agoGoogle doesn’t understand least-friction products like apple and HTC isn’t going to get them there. Their customer first and formost are ad-buyers and what they sell is your data. Apple’s customers are users, and it shows.
- Profragile 9y agoStupid nerds, that's who Google can sell to. Everyone else will buy anything else.
- r00fus 9y agoGotta say as an iPhone user throughout (I own a nexus5 v1 ), I'm pretty impressed with HTCs design. However it's not clear that google will integrate them well. I see this as more of a sign that Google doesn't care about scaring the hardware manufacturers anymore.
- freeOpenBloat 9y agoFor sure, the only reason I’ve been on Apple devices these past few years is because Ubuntu is such an abomination. Windows is plainly unthinkable. And if you have my laptop, the mobile devices fall like dominos. I don’t love iPhones, but even at premium prices it’s worth it to integrate with OS X. Android really makes me sick though. Touted as free and open, but you still have to root your phone with shady exploits, payloaded over some sketchy USB shell. And then when you do, the custom roms are trash. And I wouldn’t even be rooting these devices if I could just efface some of the stock brand and bloatware, but no, every mobile provider wants me to sign into their analytics package, and billboard their logos all over the place. It’s a wasteland in all directions.
- aphextron 9y agoI wish Google would just buy HTC already and put out a Fuschia based phone so I can be done with iOS.
- on_and_off 9y agoFuchsia looks like it is at least 2 years from release (probably more. No wonder O was presented as `the technical foundation of the next 10 years of Android` (from the last IO): it is possible that Google plans Fuchsia as an Android replacement (maybe only at the technical level, as long as they add ART, it can be the next version of Android) but it is not going to happen overnight.
- cpeterso 9y agoWhy would HTC sell 2000 engineers to Google if they plan to still make smartphones? This move suggests HTC management felt they would be unable to produce $1.1B value with those engineers (which should be a warning to investors).
- bitmapbrother 9y agoHTC has been losing money each quarter and needed an infusion of cash to sustain their operations.
- sparkie 9y agoHow come the title was changed? Original title from the article was "Google Bets a Billion Dollars More Brains Can Help Take On Apple". My thoughts when reading this title: https://i.imgur.com/Y6Js3Ju.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Y6Js3Ju.jpg