8 ms·

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

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 14y ago
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.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- cageface 14y ago
  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.
  - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
    It is just a replay of a well established cycle. For example, the Apple bazaar of the early 80s versus the entrenched minicomputer vendors.
  - saurik 14y ago
    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 14y ago
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. I've been saying this for a long time now. There's a rapidly diminishing return on app market size and the app experience gap between Android and iOS now for the average user is small. This is less true for tablets, of course, but that won't take long to change if any Android tablet starts making real headway in the market. And, as formidable as Apple is as an implementor I don't think they're going to be able to keep pace with the much more dynamic Android market as a whole. My 4S already feels like a relic compared to my S3.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  I still think app availability for iOS smartphones is better and significant (in terms of there being things that I'd hate to lose from my iPhone that I don't see on Android) but tablets I don't see what's selling one platform over the other from an app perspective. Yes I think Garageband is amazing but I don't really use it other than to show people and go "isn't this amazing"... I remember reading a piece DHH wrote about the default smartphone apps being where it was at was and thinking he was wrong, but I think from a tablet perspective that's where things are. Curious to know what you like about the S3. I've got a 4S and have played with the S3 and aside from the size (which is a matter of personal preference) I can't say I saw anything on there I was especially impressed by. It's a nice phone (and from a design perspective I prefer it to the S2), just nothing that would make me think about trading up.
  - cageface 14y ago
    The top two things about the S3 are the much bigger screen and Swiftkey. Those two things alone would be enough to tip the scales for me but there are a bunch of other small things I appreciate. 1. The pull down menu to toggle wifi/gps/etc is much more ergonomic than fishing around in the settings menu on iOS. 2. Widgets can actually be a lot more useful than the typical clock/weather header. I have quick toggle widgets for alarms, a player widget for music etc. 3. Intents. I can share a picture directly to a dozen different apps, not only the ones with support manually coded into the parent app. I can choose my own default browser, mail client, photo editor, twitter client etc. 4. The photo gallery and integrated G+ uploading is so much better than iOS's photo app it's not even funny. 5. I can block incoming calls and SMS from people I don't want to hear from. 6. I can carry a spare battery if I'm going to be away from a charger for a long time. 7. I have a real choice of browsers and currently Mozilla Firefox Beta is better than Safari or Chrome (IMO). 8. I can buy books directly from the Kindle app instead of playing hopscotch around Apple's stupid rules. 10. Gmail is much better integrated and more functional than any mail client on iOS. 11. Background updating. I don't really think about app updates anymore. They just happen in the background. I can turn this off on a per-app basis if I really care. 12. The play store is a lot more pleasant to navigate and shows a lot more useful information than the iOS app store. In the last six months a lot of holes have been filled. Pinterest, Path, Flipboard, Instagram etc. I don't really miss any apps from the iPhone.
Daniel_Newby 14y ago
> ... I think most people stopped being excited by document editing on the go way before iOS and Android came into being. Stross writes for a living. He needs a good prose editor the way a coder needs a good text editor.

cstross 14y ago

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.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cageface 14y ago
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.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  It is just a replay of a well established cycle. For example, the Apple bazaar of the early 80s versus the entrenched minicomputer vendors.
- saurik 14y ago
  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 14y ago

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. I've been saying this for a long time now. There's a rapidly diminishing return on app market size and the app experience gap between Android and iOS now for the average user is small. This is less true for tablets, of course, but that won't take long to change if any Android tablet starts making real headway in the market. And, as formidable as Apple is as an implementor I don't think they're going to be able to keep pace with the much more dynamic Android market as a whole. My 4S already feels like a relic compared to my S3.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
I still think app availability for iOS smartphones is better and significant (in terms of there being things that I'd hate to lose from my iPhone that I don't see on Android) but tablets I don't see what's selling one platform over the other from an app perspective. Yes I think Garageband is amazing but I don't really use it other than to show people and go "isn't this amazing"... I remember reading a piece DHH wrote about the default smartphone apps being where it was at was and thinking he was wrong, but I think from a tablet perspective that's where things are. Curious to know what you like about the S3. I've got a 4S and have played with the S3 and aside from the size (which is a matter of personal preference) I can't say I saw anything on there I was especially impressed by. It's a nice phone (and from a design perspective I prefer it to the S2), just nothing that would make me think about trading up.
- cageface 14y ago
  The top two things about the S3 are the much bigger screen and Swiftkey. Those two things alone would be enough to tip the scales for me but there are a bunch of other small things I appreciate. 1. The pull down menu to toggle wifi/gps/etc is much more ergonomic than fishing around in the settings menu on iOS. 2. Widgets can actually be a lot more useful than the typical clock/weather header. I have quick toggle widgets for alarms, a player widget for music etc. 3. Intents. I can share a picture directly to a dozen different apps, not only the ones with support manually coded into the parent app. I can choose my own default browser, mail client, photo editor, twitter client etc. 4. The photo gallery and integrated G+ uploading is so much better than iOS's photo app it's not even funny. 5. I can block incoming calls and SMS from people I don't want to hear from. 6. I can carry a spare battery if I'm going to be away from a charger for a long time. 7. I have a real choice of browsers and currently Mozilla Firefox Beta is better than Safari or Chrome (IMO). 8. I can buy books directly from the Kindle app instead of playing hopscotch around Apple's stupid rules. 10. Gmail is much better integrated and more functional than any mail client on iOS. 11. Background updating. I don't really think about app updates anymore. They just happen in the background. I can turn this off on a per-app basis if I really care. 12. The play store is a lot more pleasant to navigate and shows a lot more useful information than the iOS app store. In the last six months a lot of holes have been filled. Pinterest, Path, Flipboard, Instagram etc. I don't really miss any apps from the iPhone.

Daniel_Newby 14y ago

> ... I think most people stopped being excited by document editing on the go way before iOS and Android came into being. Stross writes for a living. He needs a good prose editor the way a coder needs a good text editor.