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I wonder if you ever even touched an iPhone or iOS device? You certainly never used one. I have a long history of using "smartphones", I owned a Nokia communica

I wonder if you ever even touched an iPhone or iOS device? You certainly never used one. I have a long history of using "smartphones", I owned a Nokia communicator, a Compaq windows mobile PDA, a Sony-Ericsson P910, and then decided nothing was really worth it. So then came along the iPhone. It did exactly what I needed, I bought a 3G the moment it was available here in Europe. Then came Android. As a long-time embedded developer, suddenly, mobile applications became important. I now develop for both iOS and Android, and know both platforms pretty well. Android in my opinion is a geek's toy, and just like the Linux desktop "good enough", but not quite there yet. Simply put, iOS is way more polished. On some levels it does less, but what it does, it most likely does a lot better (viewed from a user pov). There are off course exceptions, Apple is not flawless - it's unbelievable that only now in the 5th major release their notifications-system is improved, and the lockscreen would finally be used to actually display usefull information. Another problem is the calendar app, which looks nice on the surface, but it's pretty useless for day-to-day use (luckily there is Week Cal). And don't even mention folders. I hate them, they're useless, and put apps in a dungeon to be forgotten forever. Anyway, these complaints are minor compared to my gripes with Android. I won't even start going down that path. Yes I tried the Nexus One and Nexus S we have here at the office extensively, I still take them with me when I have to travel for work-related work so I don't end up with massive personal phone bills. And then came along tablets. I skipped the first generation iPad, I always wait for 2nd generation for most new stuff. Along came the "competitor" tablets. Ever played with a Xoom? No? Good advice: keep it that way. Playbook? Avoid like hell. Samsung galaxy tab? The 10" is ok-ish. Not great, but usable - but spend my own money on it? No tx... Weird thing is, my biggest problem isn't necessarily Android (which isn't exactly "nice" on a tablet), but the 16:10 display, it's simply horrible for a tablet... Why do people think an aspect ratio for watching a movie (which is about ehm 5% of the things I do on my iPad2) should dictate the form factor? So as I said, I bought an iPad 2, and I'm very happy with it. From time to time, a test-sample of some unknown tablet is dropped on my desk to look at. The only-one I haven't seen is the Touchpad, which I would love to have. Anyway, I am still daily confronted with Android phones, blackberries, windows mobile - I have to develop for it. I do know these platforms very well, it's my job. And I think Android is absolutely necessary to push competition, not only Apple, but also Windows Mobile 7, which is actually pretty impressive imho. Too bad WebOS probably doesn't have a future, this had a shared 2nd place with winmo7 on my mobile OS list. Android is 3rd, followed by Meego and then Blackberry OS, which I absolutely detest. So please don't pretend other people never used anything else while you try to bash iOS and Apple... Nothing is black & white. Both Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Intel, Nokia, ... are companies trying to act in their own interest. Don't fool yourself, no mobile OS is perfect, but it's very hard to point out things iOS does worse than any competing OS.

josteink 15y ago
I'll honour your long, proper reply with what I hope is an equally proper one. I'll just quote your first question, but hopefully that touches within enough of the subjects you mentioned. I wonder if you ever even touched an iPhone or iOS device? You certainly never used one. I was stuck with one for over two years. An iPhone 3G. It was my replacement phone for my old Windows Mobile phone (some HTC S730 or something) and the level of polish on that iPhone was amazing. It blew me away. For a while it made me accept its locked down nature, all the things my old phone could do, but this one could not. I even accepted fucking iTunes. The polish made it all OK. But as I used it more and more, added more apps, I saw how none of them played together. I noticed every single time that how no matter what you wanted to do, the only way to do that was go back to the homescreen, locate another app, then re-locate your data, then continue working on what you wanted to do. Want to shoot a picture, modify the colours and then upload that modified picture to facebook? Well start the camera app. Close. Go back to home, and find and open your picture editor app. Then navigate and relocate your picture. Edit. Save. Then go back to the homescreen, open the facebook app and the click post and then try to relocate your now modified image and I'm sure you get my idea. This OS has absolutely no flow. There is polish, but there is no true elegance to anything on that platform. Every minor little thing involves hastles, indirection. Because the OS was designed to do simple things and simple things only. The OS itself smears its own inelegance onto everything it runs. My example was only for a picture. For other file-types iOS doesn't even allow inter-app interaction because as we all know, "iOS devices has no files". In Android? Shoot, send to editor, edit, send to Facebook. Done. How simple is that? And I've never even touched a file. But I can if I want to. And this is very important. Eventually iOS drove me crazy. It was artificailly limited, crippled, had a too simple design and everything it did was flawed somehow, just to accommodate that sense of polish. I see Apple are doing desperate catching up these days to try to get on level with Android in terms of sophistication, but iOS is simply at its core too simple to allow that. The additions to bring it up Androids levels feels tacked on, not designed and as a part of the experience. So trust me: I've certainly used an iOS device, for long periods of time. For a while I even thought I liked it. But I am very certain that I will never, ever set my foot in iOS country again. It just feels wrong, locked down and artificial. And every tiny action you do creates squeaky noises. Squeaky noises saying "you need to go back to the homescreen and start all over again. Again". Thanks but no thanks. It is my humble opinion that iOS has been a stale OS for a very long time now, and the only innovation happening on iOS is as a result of direct copying from Android. As this (now censored) article so very clearly highlights. But try to start a discussion about such a topic on HN, and you will get labeled troll and censored or driven off site. You get censored because you say Apple is not an innovator. Why? I don't know. I could guess weird conspiracy theories. Or I could just assume that there are enough Apple fanatics on this site which instantly doesn't like what they see and clicks "flag". I honestly don't know, but anything critical against Apple gets shot down dead on this site like no other place on the internet. And if I know that level of censoring is happening on one subject which I pay attention to, what about those other topics? Are they being censored as well? What are being censored here on HN? Currently I find the uncertainty about that somewhat startling and I have considered stopping going here for that reason.

josteink 15y ago

I'll honour your long, proper reply with what I hope is an equally proper one. I'll just quote your first question, but hopefully that touches within enough of the subjects you mentioned. I wonder if you ever even touched an iPhone or iOS device? You certainly never used one. I was stuck with one for over two years. An iPhone 3G. It was my replacement phone for my old Windows Mobile phone (some HTC S730 or something) and the level of polish on that iPhone was amazing. It blew me away. For a while it made me accept its locked down nature, all the things my old phone could do, but this one could not. I even accepted fucking iTunes. The polish made it all OK. But as I used it more and more, added more apps, I saw how none of them played together. I noticed every single time that how no matter what you wanted to do, the only way to do that was go back to the homescreen, locate another app, then re-locate your data, then continue working on what you wanted to do. Want to shoot a picture, modify the colours and then upload that modified picture to facebook? Well start the camera app. Close. Go back to home, and find and open your picture editor app. Then navigate and relocate your picture. Edit. Save. Then go back to the homescreen, open the facebook app and the click post and then try to relocate your now modified image and I'm sure you get my idea. This OS has absolutely no flow. There is polish, but there is no true elegance to anything on that platform. Every minor little thing involves hastles, indirection. Because the OS was designed to do simple things and simple things only. The OS itself smears its own inelegance onto everything it runs. My example was only for a picture. For other file-types iOS doesn't even allow inter-app interaction because as we all know, "iOS devices has no files". In Android? Shoot, send to editor, edit, send to Facebook. Done. How simple is that? And I've never even touched a file. But I can if I want to. And this is very important. Eventually iOS drove me crazy. It was artificailly limited, crippled, had a too simple design and everything it did was flawed somehow, just to accommodate that sense of polish. I see Apple are doing desperate catching up these days to try to get on level with Android in terms of sophistication, but iOS is simply at its core too simple to allow that. The additions to bring it up Androids levels feels tacked on, not designed and as a part of the experience. So trust me: I've certainly used an iOS device, for long periods of time. For a while I even thought I liked it. But I am very certain that I will never, ever set my foot in iOS country again. It just feels wrong, locked down and artificial. And every tiny action you do creates squeaky noises. Squeaky noises saying "you need to go back to the homescreen and start all over again. Again". Thanks but no thanks. It is my humble opinion that iOS has been a stale OS for a very long time now, and the only innovation happening on iOS is as a result of direct copying from Android. As this (now censored) article so very clearly highlights. But try to start a discussion about such a topic on HN, and you will get labeled troll and censored or driven off site. You get censored because you say Apple is not an innovator. Why? I don't know. I could guess weird conspiracy theories. Or I could just assume that there are enough Apple fanatics on this site which instantly doesn't like what they see and clicks "flag". I honestly don't know, but anything critical against Apple gets shot down dead on this site like no other place on the internet. And if I know that level of censoring is happening on one subject which I pay attention to, what about those other topics? Are they being censored as well? What are being censored here on HN? Currently I find the uncertainty about that somewhat startling and I have considered stopping going here for that reason.