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Meanwhile, over in iOS land, you cannot call route calls through another service, filter notifications, or run emulators. There is missing functionality, which

Meanwhile, over in iOS land, you cannot call route calls through another service, filter notifications, or run emulators. There is missing functionality, which can never be fixed, not just missing UI niceties in particular apps with (let's be honest) relatively low usage, which get fixed over time as usage increases.

neallindsay 4y ago
Those are great examples of why iOS will never take over the entire phone market regardless of how much better a user-experience they have. Low price is another prominent "feature" that you can't get in an iPhone. Apple is interesting in that they don't try to be everything for all people. They find a niche (usually a very profitable one) where they can execute better than the competition and they don't try to eat the whole pie. What other tech companies are like that? Nintendo?
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  Porsche, Ferrari?
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  I would say that not being able to filter notifications trashes the user experience. It's like not being able to filter email. Nobody who uses their phone or email for productivity would put up with it.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    Filter notifications how? On iOS you can allow or prevent notifications on an app level, and control a bunch of things about how they appear. Do you mean filtering based on the text, so that you allow some notifications from an app but prevent others? I'm curious about what you can do on Android.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      Yes, filter based on content of the notification. Android has the concept of notification channels, so apps can send notifications of different types on different channels that users can individually enable or disable, which is already significantly better than iOS, but for heavy users of notifications who want to minimize distractions, even that isn't enough, so I have my own notification filtering rules as well.
  - armadsen 4y ago
    I use my iPhone for productivity. I’ve never felt the need to filter notifications. It does seem like a nice feature. But “nobody would put up with it” is pretty hyperbolic.
MBCook 4y ago
It’s not a trade off though. Having those abilities shouldn’t do anything to prevent Android apps from being just as good. All it should do is enable Android to have even more good apps. So when both platforms are capable of making an app, such as Mastodon, why does the disparity exist?
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  > why does the disparity exist? I explained why. For an app with few users, it sometimes takes longer for open source to catch up. > All it should do is enable Android to have even more good apps And it does. It has far more and far better apps than iOS (maps with navigation long before iOS, ReVanced, better voice assistants, driving mode apps, better in-call abilities, better keyboards, better system-wide adblockers, better Firefox and Chrome, better GeForce Now, better BitTorrent apps, and on and on). Just not this cherry-picked example to Gruber's UI taste.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    To be fair Chrome on Android kind of sucks because it doesn't have built-in adblocking or extension support.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      That's true, but it does support all the web APIs that you would expect, and combined with a system-level VPN ad-blocker is still somewhat usable.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    > I explained why. For an app with few users, it sometimes takes longer for open source to catch up. Android apps have been available since before 2010. Time has been available. But it’s so hard to get recommendations of high quality Android apps that aren’t something Apple doesn’t allow (call recorder, web browser, etc.). That’s a great category, but I still struggle to see why that’s all anyone can point to. Paid, free, IAP, open-source, anything.

neallindsay 4y ago

Those are great examples of why iOS will never take over the entire phone market regardless of how much better a user-experience they have. Low price is another prominent "feature" that you can't get in an iPhone. Apple is interesting in that they don't try to be everything for all people. They find a niche (usually a very profitable one) where they can execute better than the competition and they don't try to eat the whole pie. What other tech companies are like that? Nintendo?

jjtheblunt 4y ago
Porsche, Ferrari?
lern_too_spel 4y ago
I would say that not being able to filter notifications trashes the user experience. It's like not being able to filter email. Nobody who uses their phone or email for productivity would put up with it.
- mcphage 4y ago
  Filter notifications how? On iOS you can allow or prevent notifications on an app level, and control a bunch of things about how they appear. Do you mean filtering based on the text, so that you allow some notifications from an app but prevent others? I'm curious about what you can do on Android.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Yes, filter based on content of the notification. Android has the concept of notification channels, so apps can send notifications of different types on different channels that users can individually enable or disable, which is already significantly better than iOS, but for heavy users of notifications who want to minimize distractions, even that isn't enough, so I have my own notification filtering rules as well.
- armadsen 4y ago
  I use my iPhone for productivity. I’ve never felt the need to filter notifications. It does seem like a nice feature. But “nobody would put up with it” is pretty hyperbolic.

MBCook 4y ago

It’s not a trade off though. Having those abilities shouldn’t do anything to prevent Android apps from being just as good. All it should do is enable Android to have even more good apps. So when both platforms are capable of making an app, such as Mastodon, why does the disparity exist?

lern_too_spel 4y ago
> why does the disparity exist? I explained why. For an app with few users, it sometimes takes longer for open source to catch up. > All it should do is enable Android to have even more good apps And it does. It has far more and far better apps than iOS (maps with navigation long before iOS, ReVanced, better voice assistants, driving mode apps, better in-call abilities, better keyboards, better system-wide adblockers, better Firefox and Chrome, better GeForce Now, better BitTorrent apps, and on and on). Just not this cherry-picked example to Gruber's UI taste.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  To be fair Chrome on Android kind of sucks because it doesn't have built-in adblocking or extension support.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    That's true, but it does support all the web APIs that you would expect, and combined with a system-level VPN ad-blocker is still somewhat usable.
- MBCook 4y ago
  > I explained why. For an app with few users, it sometimes takes longer for open source to catch up. Android apps have been available since before 2010. Time has been available. But it’s so hard to get recommendations of high quality Android apps that aren’t something Apple doesn’t allow (call recorder, web browser, etc.). That’s a great category, but I still struggle to see why that’s all anyone can point to. Paid, free, IAP, open-source, anything.