12 ms·

Since the passing of Steve Jobs there has understandably been a lot of speculation about what will happen to Apple given Steve's laser-like focus on user experi

by cletus 14y ago

Since the passing of Steve Jobs there has understandably been a lot of speculation about what will happen to Apple given Steve's laser-like focus on user experience above almost all else. Some self-proclaimed "power users" did of course rail against the Apple ecosystem but like most things Apple does (did?) it was right most of the time for most users. I've been an avid iPhone user since the iPhone 4 and have bought every iPad so far. iOS 6 may mark a turning point to me such that the 4S that I have now may well be my last iPhone. My phone for me is probably beyond anything else a way of getting places (ie maps). Even more than phone calls, SMS or the Internet. I sympathize with the position that Apple wants to control the entire experience but I really am dumbfounded that they've sacrificed user experience to do it. So much so that I don't think I want to update to iOS 6. When compared to Android, the one remaining pillar for the iPhone for me is battery life. The 4S simply trumps any Android I've used or witnessed to date. I typically have to charge my phone only every 2-3 days. The Droid I have (which admittedly was a terrible phone) is lucky to last a day. The Galaxy S3 is better but still... I look forward to the next Android phone running out-of-the-box 4.1 (or whatever the latest release is at that point).

reubensutton 14y ago
I'm always confused about people who complain about battery life not lasting over a day. How often are you not near a source of electricity at least once a day? That being said, my Nexus S tends to run out after about 10 hours now, which is intensely frustrating.
- TillE 14y ago
  > How often are you not near a source of electricity at least once a day? It's a major issue when traveling, which is when you want your fancy smartphone mapping features the most. If you want to be able to use it later in the day, you have to be careful not to use it too much earlier. I've been pleasantly surprised with the Galaxy Nexus battery life though, which usually lasts me just about two days.
  - thornofmight 14y ago
    A car charger usb port has been a one of the more useful things I've gotten for my car in the past few years.
    - katbyte 14y ago
      that helps when travelling in a car but if backpacking or on a plane, bus, train, or in less developed cities plugs can be rather difficult to find.
- benologist 14y ago
  I'm always confused about people who complain about battery life not lasting over 10 hours.
  - deveac 14y ago
    Get up from hotel room and leave before 8 to make it to the conference. On the move all day till it ends around 6. Starving. Time to Yelp up a good place to eat in this town and map my way there. Oh wait. God help you if you took pictures or used your map application much during the actual course of the day. The day smartphones can allow a user to use every core application heavily (maps, email, voice, camera) all day from the time they leave their bed in the morning till the time they return to it will be a great day imho. It isn't every day that you're travelling for business, but it's these users and these situations that feel the pain points of battery life the most. It happens to millions of people all the time, every day.
    - manaskarekar 14y ago
      I think you missed the jab the parent post took at the grandparent post. Just because you don't think you need x amount of hours of battery doesn't make it useless for everyone else. Also, people who question why do you need more? Because you can do more things. Our usage of smartphones is increasing in many ways and improved battery life should not be counted in terms of how many hours of talktime it will give you, but how many hours of <insert heavy battery eating application here> use it will give you.
      - deveac 14y ago
        >I think you missed the jab the parent post took at the grandparent post. Wait. Are you saying I missed an expression of sarcasm on the internet? Sorry manaskarekar, but that's impossible.
- lambda 14y ago
  For one, when travelling, you can sometimes go for a while without having a chance to plug in and charge (due to not being on one place for long, bags being inaccessible, not having outlets on a long plane ride, etc). But even when not travelling, I will sometimes forget to plug my phone in one night. It's really frustrating when it dies the next morning before I have a chance to recharge it again.
- crististm 14y ago
  what's the point on having a battery if you have to charge it often? Since obviously there are solutions that drain less battery, "charge it more often" is an inferior experience.
- rm999 14y ago
  The unfortunate irony is I need my phone the most when I'm away from my computer for long periods of time, and these are the only times I run out of battery. I run out of battery maybe three times a year, but when it happens it's often a pain.
arrrg 14y ago
Apple can’t unilaterally decide to use Google Maps or not. You do not know the conditions Google set. My guess is that Apple was backed into a corner and Google wouldn’t give them vector maps or turn-by-turn navigation. Building a good maps service is miles outside of Apple’s core competency, so this is all very sad – but at the same time no surprise at all. (Mind you, all this at best explains the bad maps experience, it does not excuse it.)
- checker 14y ago
  Why didn't they just buy TomTom with their war chest instead of building in-house? It seems to me like they would be familiar with navigation software. Ultimately I imagine that Apple will get Maps solid eventually, but not delivering a solid product initially will cost them.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    The issue isn't the Maps application, it's the dataset which in part comes from TomTom. Buying TomTom wouldn't have necessarily improved the data that TomTom would be using, they'd have just ended up with a GPS/Mapping company. Incidentally they did buy a couple of companies related to mapping, so they've got some in-house knowledge of mapping but a poor dataset will always be poor no matter how many smart people are sat looking at it.
    - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
      TomTom has been powering GPSs for years, someone would have noticed if the data was as bad as this before. And even if they hadn't (which they didn't because their data is fine), Apple should have. Whichever way you slice it, the buck stops with Apple, the biggest and richest company in the world and their world renowned eye for detail and software development competency.
      - nicholassmith 14y ago
        Depends entirely on how the data is being used, what set of data they're using and so on. I've found that Maps is fine for driving instructions in my area of North East England, but that Walking directions are occasionally missing or not quite right.
GBKS 14y ago
I'd also recommend to base your decision on the overall service you get over the 1-2 years you'll own your phone. I've had an Android phone the past 2 years and am completely disillusioned with Android/Google/HTC. Everything is great for a few months, then issue after issue kept piling up. For example, the first system update my phone had problems installing. It took two weeks of Googling and Verizon store visits to figure out that I had to do a factory reset for it to work. The second system update has been lingering on my phone for about 3 months. The install process simply never finishes, no matter what I do. Second, apps simply stop working one by one. Flipboard doesn't manage to load images anymore. Wunderlist can't sync anymore. Installing Instagram breaks the built-in camera and gallery completely. Lots of random errors in other apps. The weather app stopped automatically refreshing. The alarm app doesn't go off anymore. Not to mention the application cache limitation to 150MB. So even though I have 500MB available storage, I can't install more apps, since they don't have room for temporary files. If that's full, apps simply stop working (only fix I found was a 1-hour phone-rooting process). The touchscreen sometimes stops responding (off/on fixes that). Tapping a bookmark on my home screen loads the browser, but not the actual link. The phone randomly restarts at times. The unlock screen started misbehaving recently. And on and on. In comparison, my 4 year old iPod Touch is more reliable and more fun to use than my 2-year old HTC. My 3.5 year old MacBook just upgraded to iOS6 and everything runs smooth as butter. So my experience is that Android phones get worse over time, and Apple devices get better over time (or at least stay the same). Of course, your experience may differ, and maybe Android is more mature by now. But I'd highly recommend not to base a switch on a few features, but to take the overall service you will receive over two years into consideration.
- kuida0r3 14y ago
  Wow, can I ask which Android version/HTC phone you're using? I kept my HTC Incredible from 3~4 years ago rooted for development and sometimes as a music player in the gym. All of my apps still function. That said, I don't use it everyday nor as a phone so the issues may just be non-obvious to me.
  - billswift 14y ago
    I have seen that one discussed often enough on forums, I believe it is the "Apple Fanboy Android".
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
kamechan 14y ago
on battery life, i get anywhere from 1.5 to 3 days on my HSPA+ nexus (from play store) the way i use it. definitely have never sweated getting through a day. * fair amount of web browsing * little or no media or games * heavy twitter, fairly heavy facebook * 50+ SMS/gvoice messages per day * 50+ emails a day * ~1-2 hours of phone * ~30 mins of tethering a day coming from an iphone myself i was worried about battery life on the nexus, but it actually does better than my iphone did.
paul9290 14y ago
For me iOS6 & iPhone5 = WTH Apple? Maps suck for me because.... - google map links found in google search and almost every website are useless. I click these links weekly and now with ios6 when clicked these once very useful links take me no where useful( I know it's a google map link but...) - plugging ios6 into my car via USB renders turn by turn useless...UNLESS I am listening to something on iTunes or spotify then I will hear Siri speak turn by turn? iPhone 5... - Millions and millions of iPhone owners now have to buy more power cords after ten years of using the same one? Why not go with wireless charging?
speleding 14y ago
Go to maps.google.com, tap "Install on home screen". Really, I agree that this is not ideal for the average user but you, as an HN visitor, should not have much trouble performing such a minor step to get your functionality back (and Google's web app even has a few new features compared to the old native App) There are good reasons for Apple to have their own mapping that will eventually lead to a better experience. Think about how many Apple apps already need some kind of geolocation (Find iPhone, Find Friends, location based reminders), there are lots of potential synergies there. It just takes a while to catch up on the half a decade of experience Google has had in doing it.
- alan57 14y ago
  Well said. Apple should have their own maps app. Bummer it's as bad as it is right now, so find a workaround and trust it will get better in time...
- breakall 14y ago
  One thing that's still missing (or at least well buried) in the mobile version of maps.google.com on iOS is Street View.
EwanToo 14y ago
If battery life if your thing, look at the Droid Razr Maxx HD. Daft name, but high resolution screen, jelly bean (android 4.1) pre-installed, and fantastic battery life compared to most smart phones http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/05/motorola-droid-razr-hd-maxx-hands-on-bigger-battery-beautiful/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/05/motorola-droid-razr-hd-ma...
ken 14y ago
I don't want to claim to know what Steve would have done, but this does not seem at all unlike him. He was extremely focused on user experience, but he was also a huge believer in bringing technologies under Apple's control, and making hard decisions that would benefit Apple and Apple users in the long run. I can think of plenty of things that Apple did that everybody hated on day 1 because they caused immediate pain, but in the long run were for the best. The decision to drop almost all existing connectors for USB. Mac OS X (which was just unusably bad for a year or two, if your apps even ran on it yet). The Intel transition. The complaints continue today: the Macbook Retina display means half my apps look bad, and the Lightning connector is a slap in the face to everyone with 30-pin docks. And Maps version 1 is terrible (even though they look better than Google's first Maps release, to me). No surprise at all that Apple wants to be in full control of every app they ship on iOS. The last time I remember them doing that on the Mac was perhaps Internet Explorer. Can you remember how bad Safari 1.0 was?
JofArnold 14y ago
I look forward to an Android phone that doesn't look utterly ghastly. I know this is shallow, but my phone is a device which I use to interact with the world far more than any other so it needs to avoid offending my eyes. The moment Samsung or someone came out with a beautiful, fast Android phone with great hardware and a decent manageable size (S3 is too big) I'd buy it in a heartbeat. The software itself is pretty great - especially the camera app on the S3 for example.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  I think the One X is a beautiful device personally. http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/ http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/
  - JofArnold 14y ago
    Thanks! Funnily enough, I was just looking at that. It's pretty good. Any ideas why the reviews are substantially lower than, say, the S3? I know this isn't a review site, but hopefully your reply will help more than just me. I.e. do you have one and if so, what are your experiences?
    - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      No, I haven't used either device. S3 might have better reviews, but if "beautifulness" is important to you, I think the One X is much better looking. Everything I read makes the One X sound like it's at a least among the best 3 or 4 phones out right now, so although it might not be as good as the S3 overall, it's probably pretty good. And it apparently has an outstanding display, which I'm guessing is something you value as well. Not trying to push you either way, just saw that you were looking for a good looking device and thought I'd point out the One X if you weren't aware of it.

by cletus 14y ago

reubensutton 14y ago

I'm always confused about people who complain about battery life not lasting over a day. How often are you not near a source of electricity at least once a day? That being said, my Nexus S tends to run out after about 10 hours now, which is intensely frustrating.

TillE 14y ago
> How often are you not near a source of electricity at least once a day? It's a major issue when traveling, which is when you want your fancy smartphone mapping features the most. If you want to be able to use it later in the day, you have to be careful not to use it too much earlier. I've been pleasantly surprised with the Galaxy Nexus battery life though, which usually lasts me just about two days.
- thornofmight 14y ago
  A car charger usb port has been a one of the more useful things I've gotten for my car in the past few years.
  - katbyte 14y ago
    that helps when travelling in a car but if backpacking or on a plane, bus, train, or in less developed cities plugs can be rather difficult to find.
benologist 14y ago
I'm always confused about people who complain about battery life not lasting over 10 hours.
- deveac 14y ago
  Get up from hotel room and leave before 8 to make it to the conference. On the move all day till it ends around 6. Starving. Time to Yelp up a good place to eat in this town and map my way there. Oh wait. God help you if you took pictures or used your map application much during the actual course of the day. The day smartphones can allow a user to use every core application heavily (maps, email, voice, camera) all day from the time they leave their bed in the morning till the time they return to it will be a great day imho. It isn't every day that you're travelling for business, but it's these users and these situations that feel the pain points of battery life the most. It happens to millions of people all the time, every day.
  - manaskarekar 14y ago
    I think you missed the jab the parent post took at the grandparent post. Just because you don't think you need x amount of hours of battery doesn't make it useless for everyone else. Also, people who question why do you need more? Because you can do more things. Our usage of smartphones is increasing in many ways and improved battery life should not be counted in terms of how many hours of talktime it will give you, but how many hours of <insert heavy battery eating application here> use it will give you.
    - deveac 14y ago
      >I think you missed the jab the parent post took at the grandparent post. Wait. Are you saying I missed an expression of sarcasm on the internet? Sorry manaskarekar, but that's impossible.
lambda 14y ago
For one, when travelling, you can sometimes go for a while without having a chance to plug in and charge (due to not being on one place for long, bags being inaccessible, not having outlets on a long plane ride, etc). But even when not travelling, I will sometimes forget to plug my phone in one night. It's really frustrating when it dies the next morning before I have a chance to recharge it again.
crististm 14y ago
what's the point on having a battery if you have to charge it often? Since obviously there are solutions that drain less battery, "charge it more often" is an inferior experience.
rm999 14y ago
The unfortunate irony is I need my phone the most when I'm away from my computer for long periods of time, and these are the only times I run out of battery. I run out of battery maybe three times a year, but when it happens it's often a pain.

arrrg 14y ago

Apple can’t unilaterally decide to use Google Maps or not. You do not know the conditions Google set. My guess is that Apple was backed into a corner and Google wouldn’t give them vector maps or turn-by-turn navigation. Building a good maps service is miles outside of Apple’s core competency, so this is all very sad – but at the same time no surprise at all. (Mind you, all this at best explains the bad maps experience, it does not excuse it.)

checker 14y ago
Why didn't they just buy TomTom with their war chest instead of building in-house? It seems to me like they would be familiar with navigation software. Ultimately I imagine that Apple will get Maps solid eventually, but not delivering a solid product initially will cost them.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  The issue isn't the Maps application, it's the dataset which in part comes from TomTom. Buying TomTom wouldn't have necessarily improved the data that TomTom would be using, they'd have just ended up with a GPS/Mapping company. Incidentally they did buy a couple of companies related to mapping, so they've got some in-house knowledge of mapping but a poor dataset will always be poor no matter how many smart people are sat looking at it.
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    TomTom has been powering GPSs for years, someone would have noticed if the data was as bad as this before. And even if they hadn't (which they didn't because their data is fine), Apple should have. Whichever way you slice it, the buck stops with Apple, the biggest and richest company in the world and their world renowned eye for detail and software development competency.
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      Depends entirely on how the data is being used, what set of data they're using and so on. I've found that Maps is fine for driving instructions in my area of North East England, but that Walking directions are occasionally missing or not quite right.

GBKS 14y ago

I'd also recommend to base your decision on the overall service you get over the 1-2 years you'll own your phone. I've had an Android phone the past 2 years and am completely disillusioned with Android/Google/HTC. Everything is great for a few months, then issue after issue kept piling up. For example, the first system update my phone had problems installing. It took two weeks of Googling and Verizon store visits to figure out that I had to do a factory reset for it to work. The second system update has been lingering on my phone for about 3 months. The install process simply never finishes, no matter what I do. Second, apps simply stop working one by one. Flipboard doesn't manage to load images anymore. Wunderlist can't sync anymore. Installing Instagram breaks the built-in camera and gallery completely. Lots of random errors in other apps. The weather app stopped automatically refreshing. The alarm app doesn't go off anymore. Not to mention the application cache limitation to 150MB. So even though I have 500MB available storage, I can't install more apps, since they don't have room for temporary files. If that's full, apps simply stop working (only fix I found was a 1-hour phone-rooting process). The touchscreen sometimes stops responding (off/on fixes that). Tapping a bookmark on my home screen loads the browser, but not the actual link. The phone randomly restarts at times. The unlock screen started misbehaving recently. And on and on. In comparison, my 4 year old iPod Touch is more reliable and more fun to use than my 2-year old HTC. My 3.5 year old MacBook just upgraded to iOS6 and everything runs smooth as butter. So my experience is that Android phones get worse over time, and Apple devices get better over time (or at least stay the same). Of course, your experience may differ, and maybe Android is more mature by now. But I'd highly recommend not to base a switch on a few features, but to take the overall service you will receive over two years into consideration.

kuida0r3 14y ago
Wow, can I ask which Android version/HTC phone you're using? I kept my HTC Incredible from 3~4 years ago rooted for development and sometimes as a music player in the gym. All of my apps still function. That said, I don't use it everyday nor as a phone so the issues may just be non-obvious to me.
- billswift 14y ago
  I have seen that one discussed often enough on forums, I believe it is the "Apple Fanboy Android".

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

kamechan 14y ago

on battery life, i get anywhere from 1.5 to 3 days on my HSPA+ nexus (from play store) the way i use it. definitely have never sweated getting through a day. * fair amount of web browsing * little or no media or games * heavy twitter, fairly heavy facebook * 50+ SMS/gvoice messages per day * 50+ emails a day * ~1-2 hours of phone * ~30 mins of tethering a day coming from an iphone myself i was worried about battery life on the nexus, but it actually does better than my iphone did.

paul9290 14y ago

For me iOS6 & iPhone5 = WTH Apple? Maps suck for me because.... - google map links found in google search and almost every website are useless. I click these links weekly and now with ios6 when clicked these once very useful links take me no where useful( I know it's a google map link but...) - plugging ios6 into my car via USB renders turn by turn useless...UNLESS I am listening to something on iTunes or spotify then I will hear Siri speak turn by turn? iPhone 5... - Millions and millions of iPhone owners now have to buy more power cords after ten years of using the same one? Why not go with wireless charging?

speleding 14y ago

Go to maps.google.com, tap "Install on home screen". Really, I agree that this is not ideal for the average user but you, as an HN visitor, should not have much trouble performing such a minor step to get your functionality back (and Google's web app even has a few new features compared to the old native App) There are good reasons for Apple to have their own mapping that will eventually lead to a better experience. Think about how many Apple apps already need some kind of geolocation (Find iPhone, Find Friends, location based reminders), there are lots of potential synergies there. It just takes a while to catch up on the half a decade of experience Google has had in doing it.

alan57 14y ago
Well said. Apple should have their own maps app. Bummer it's as bad as it is right now, so find a workaround and trust it will get better in time...
breakall 14y ago
One thing that's still missing (or at least well buried) in the mobile version of maps.google.com on iOS is Street View.

EwanToo 14y ago

If battery life if your thing, look at the Droid Razr Maxx HD. Daft name, but high resolution screen, jelly bean (android 4.1) pre-installed, and fantastic battery life compared to most smart phones http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/05/motorola-droid-razr-hd-maxx-hands-on-bigger-battery-beautiful/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/05/motorola-droid-razr-hd-ma...

ken 14y ago

I don't want to claim to know what Steve would have done, but this does not seem at all unlike him. He was extremely focused on user experience, but he was also a huge believer in bringing technologies under Apple's control, and making hard decisions that would benefit Apple and Apple users in the long run. I can think of plenty of things that Apple did that everybody hated on day 1 because they caused immediate pain, but in the long run were for the best. The decision to drop almost all existing connectors for USB. Mac OS X (which was just unusably bad for a year or two, if your apps even ran on it yet). The Intel transition. The complaints continue today: the Macbook Retina display means half my apps look bad, and the Lightning connector is a slap in the face to everyone with 30-pin docks. And Maps version 1 is terrible (even though they look better than Google's first Maps release, to me). No surprise at all that Apple wants to be in full control of every app they ship on iOS. The last time I remember them doing that on the Mac was perhaps Internet Explorer. Can you remember how bad Safari 1.0 was?

JofArnold 14y ago

I look forward to an Android phone that doesn't look utterly ghastly. I know this is shallow, but my phone is a device which I use to interact with the world far more than any other so it needs to avoid offending my eyes. The moment Samsung or someone came out with a beautiful, fast Android phone with great hardware and a decent manageable size (S3 is too big) I'd buy it in a heartbeat. The software itself is pretty great - especially the camera app on the S3 for example.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
I think the One X is a beautiful device personally. http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/ http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/
- JofArnold 14y ago
  Thanks! Funnily enough, I was just looking at that. It's pretty good. Any ideas why the reviews are substantially lower than, say, the S3? I know this isn't a review site, but hopefully your reply will help more than just me. I.e. do you have one and if so, what are your experiences?
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    No, I haven't used either device. S3 might have better reviews, but if "beautifulness" is important to you, I think the One X is much better looking. Everything I read makes the One X sound like it's at a least among the best 3 or 4 phones out right now, so although it might not be as good as the S3 overall, it's probably pretty good. And it apparently has an outstanding display, which I'm guessing is something you value as well. Not trying to push you either way, just saw that you were looking for a good looking device and thought I'd point out the One X if you weren't aware of it.