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Funny, my impression is that all the useful apps tend to be on Android. For example, I use Google Talk a lot, as it saves costs for sending SMS. I keep begging
by Tichy 16y ago
Funny, my impression is that all the useful apps tend to be on Android. For example, I use Google Talk a lot, as it saves costs for sending SMS. I keep begging my iPhone 4 friend to use it, but he never even comments. I am not sure if it is not available on iPhone (multitasking problem?), or if he just doesn't care enough. Alternatively Twitter DMs are free, too.
What am I missing out on by staying on Android (except eye candy)? Fireball says he could go on forever, but doesn't mention anything besides games.
- kyleslattery 16y agoLooks like Google Talk is available as a web app: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-talk-for-iphone.html http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-talk-for-iph... There are similar tools like Kik (which I actually like better than Google Talk), that are available for all platforms: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-talk-for-iphone.html http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-talk-for-iph...
- Tichy 16y agoI don't see how it would work as a web app. It has to have background notifications to be able to replace SMS. Of course for direct chatting a web app would be OK.
- irons 16y agoHis point is about the third-party app ecosystem; you're talking about first-party Google products, which he acknowledges and excluded. There's nothing wrong with targeting multiple major platforms, but a market-leading platform without at least some desirable, exclusive software titles to its name is an historical anomaly.
- Tichy 16y agoI don't care who the vendor of the app is, to be honest. What is the difference if the app comes from Google or somebody else? The point is, what are the useful apps.
- zzzmarcus 16y agoWell, the games are pretty big. I don't play any PC or Console games but I've somehow amassed about 30 games on my iPhone, very few on my Nexus One though. Apart from that though, what I miss from the iPhone when I'm using my Android phone are OmniFocus, GoodReader/iBooks (I haven't found an Android PDF reader that comes close), GuitarToolkit, TabTookit, OmniTuner, MobileRSS (again, haven't found a close competitor on Android) and Hipstamatic.
- cletus 16y agoI used to use Google Talk a lot. On the desktop it's handy. On my Android phone (HTC Desire) it seemed to work well. Since getting an iPhone 4 however I've pretty much stopped using it entirely. I simply cannot find a good app for it. The ones I have found seem to sign out after 4 hours (making them useless) or just don't seem to work reliably (eg I'd get home and find a message on my desktop that hadn't made it to my phone). So I had to give it up. Your intended use case was the same as mine: lime SMS. But the fact that it works (or seems to at least) on Android doesn't make it a killer app for Android. It simply is a nail in the coffin for Google Talk. Messaging is something that needs to be ubiquitous. IM had this problem (eg some people were on MSN, others on AIM). It's why SMS is such a success. Google Talk is already limited to those who use gmail. Further limiting it to those with Android handsets makes it much less useful.
- Legion 16y agoMeebo. It is the only IM app on the iPhone that I've found that is worth anything. Part of the reason why it works so well is that it does not maintain an active connection on the phone. Most IM apps fail as soon as the phone loses its connection for even a moment. Meebo keeps you as logged in on their servers, and then sends push notifications to your phone when you receive messages. The result is that you don't go "offline" when you experience any phone connection hiccups. Try it if you haven't. I use Google Talk and Yahoo IM on my iPhone all the time.
- StavrosK 16y ago> Google Talk is already limited to those who use gmail. You realise that Google Talk uses Jabber, and is, thus, the only IM I know whose protocol is open? You can use it with basically any client developed in the past 10 years. Trillian should work well...
- rahoulb 16y agoI use OneTeam for GTalk - stays signed in for 12 hours and I've not noticed a missed notification (although they were sometimes delayed a bit)