4 ms·

I remember when the 4 was 'The' phone to have, and two iterations later, Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets. Especially the

I remember when the 4 was 'The' phone to have, and two iterations later, Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets. Especially the odd approach they're taking with NFC & Passbook in iOS 6. Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products? I was holding off on a new handset until the iPhone 5, but the Nokia's Lumina series seems to do more.

joe_bleau 14y ago
Maybe the NFC hardware is there, and the software support wasn't ready in time? We'll see once the teardowns commence.
philwelch 14y ago
> Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products? The hardware's not ready yet? After all, the original iPhone was arguably "perfectly suited" for 3G and GPS, though the hardware for those things wasn't ready until the iPhone 3G. Maybe NFC is on the roadmap for iPhone 5S?
bratsche 14y ago
"Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets" This seems like it must be a joke, but I read a lot of people saying things like this. The sum of a phone are the features that come with it right out of the box, like little checkboxes to look for, without regard for the quality of their implementations or their usefulness in general. And here of all places, Hacker News, to show such complete disregard for the 3rd party app market (and the quality of their apps). iOS has much, much higher quality apps available in general than either Android or WP7. And while iPhone may not yet have NFC capabilities that the average user probably has little or no use for right now anyway, it does have things like a very nice music player that stomps on Android's. A fucking music player, that's like the first app that both iPhone and Android had, and the one in iOS has always been superior. But somehow iOS is the one playing catch-up. I just don't understand this new mindset that iOS has fallen behind Android, much less WP7.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- jyrkesh 14y ago
  I would've completely agreed with you even a year ago, but it's just not true anymore. Any "useful" app on iOS has an equally useful equivalent on Android. Hell, one of my favorite "elegant" apps, Any.DO, originally launched on Android. As for the music player? What are you talking about? Not only is the Google Play Music app great, it supports 20,000 songs in the cloud for free, it autoconverts FLAC to 320 kbps, and you don't have to use some bloated music suite to upload it all. Plus, it's not like there isn't a ton of viable replacements out there (Apollo, PowerAmp, Winamp, GoneMad, VLC). Android played catch-up since the G1 launched. It caught up with Ice Cream Sandwich, and it got in front with Jelly Bean. No, it's not in every Android phone, but it's unfair to compare the Android ecosystem to the iPhone. Nexus vs. iPhone? I think it's pretty clear now...
- barrkel 14y ago
  iOS has much, much higher quality apps available iOS has visually slicker apps, but they are less functional, because iOS is more locked down. With Android, I use a custom home screen and a whole bunch of widgets that make the device far more useful to me than iOS devices which seem like toys in comparison. For example, the 3G Watchdog's widget showing quota usage, and calendar and weather displays. The fact I can use rsync to sync folders between my phone, tablet and home NAS without storing my files in the cloud somewhere or having the files siloed in a specific application or generic "photos, movies or music" buckets is a game changer for me. The only time I use my iPad these days is on transatlantic flights when I want to watch my own movies or play some slick games. But that's even being transplanted by my Nexus 7, which is much nicer to use owing to lower weight - and bonus, I get most of the apps that also work on my phone. iOS reminds me a little of DOS circa 1993, while Android feels a bit like Windows 3.1 of the same era. DOS apps were typically silos using custom graphics libraries, while Windows apps were drab but more consistent and had some pretense at integration (early OLE).
  - mannkind 14y ago
    "I can't wait to rsync my files on my new tablet!" -- Nobody

joe_bleau 14y ago

Maybe the NFC hardware is there, and the software support wasn't ready in time? We'll see once the teardowns commence.

philwelch 14y ago

> Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products? The hardware's not ready yet? After all, the original iPhone was arguably "perfectly suited" for 3G and GPS, though the hardware for those things wasn't ready until the iPhone 3G. Maybe NFC is on the roadmap for iPhone 5S?

bratsche 14y ago

"Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets" This seems like it must be a joke, but I read a lot of people saying things like this. The sum of a phone are the features that come with it right out of the box, like little checkboxes to look for, without regard for the quality of their implementations or their usefulness in general. And here of all places, Hacker News, to show such complete disregard for the 3rd party app market (and the quality of their apps). iOS has much, much higher quality apps available in general than either Android or WP7. And while iPhone may not yet have NFC capabilities that the average user probably has little or no use for right now anyway, it does have things like a very nice music player that stomps on Android's. A fucking music player, that's like the first app that both iPhone and Android had, and the one in iOS has always been superior. But somehow iOS is the one playing catch-up. I just don't understand this new mindset that iOS has fallen behind Android, much less WP7.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jyrkesh 14y ago
I would've completely agreed with you even a year ago, but it's just not true anymore. Any "useful" app on iOS has an equally useful equivalent on Android. Hell, one of my favorite "elegant" apps, Any.DO, originally launched on Android. As for the music player? What are you talking about? Not only is the Google Play Music app great, it supports 20,000 songs in the cloud for free, it autoconverts FLAC to 320 kbps, and you don't have to use some bloated music suite to upload it all. Plus, it's not like there isn't a ton of viable replacements out there (Apollo, PowerAmp, Winamp, GoneMad, VLC). Android played catch-up since the G1 launched. It caught up with Ice Cream Sandwich, and it got in front with Jelly Bean. No, it's not in every Android phone, but it's unfair to compare the Android ecosystem to the iPhone. Nexus vs. iPhone? I think it's pretty clear now...
barrkel 14y ago
iOS has much, much higher quality apps available iOS has visually slicker apps, but they are less functional, because iOS is more locked down. With Android, I use a custom home screen and a whole bunch of widgets that make the device far more useful to me than iOS devices which seem like toys in comparison. For example, the 3G Watchdog's widget showing quota usage, and calendar and weather displays. The fact I can use rsync to sync folders between my phone, tablet and home NAS without storing my files in the cloud somewhere or having the files siloed in a specific application or generic "photos, movies or music" buckets is a game changer for me. The only time I use my iPad these days is on transatlantic flights when I want to watch my own movies or play some slick games. But that's even being transplanted by my Nexus 7, which is much nicer to use owing to lower weight - and bonus, I get most of the apps that also work on my phone. iOS reminds me a little of DOS circa 1993, while Android feels a bit like Windows 3.1 of the same era. DOS apps were typically silos using custom graphics libraries, while Windows apps were drab but more consistent and had some pretense at integration (early OLE).
- mannkind 14y ago
  "I can't wait to rsync my files on my new tablet!" -- Nobody