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There's no doubt Apple is playing catch-up with Android these days. Siri was their only real innovation in the last 3 iPhones, and Google leapfrogged it within

There's no doubt Apple is playing catch-up with Android these days. Siri was their only real innovation in the last 3 iPhones, and Google leapfrogged it within months. Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to implement a decent notification system, their auto-correct is garbage, there's no file manager, you can't set a default browser (or default anything, for that matter), there are no widgets, no app shortcuts, no custom keyboards, managing settings is a nightmare, and you can't side-load apps without jailbreaking. That last one is especially bad thanks to their cryptic app approval rules and the fact that their app store is the least intuitive to navigate -- if what you want isn't in the top 10 and you don't know the exact name, forget about it. But hey, at least you get the privilege of spending a fortune on chargers and adapters. And other people with iPhones will think you're cool for owning one, right?

jrajav 14y ago
> there's no file manager Is there one on Android?
- dagw 14y ago
  I don't know if phones ship with one by default or not, but there are several in the app store. Personally I really like ES File Explorer, since it also lets me browse smb shares.
- thejetset 14y ago
  Generally not by default, but that can vary by manufacturer. You can just download one of the many available from the Play Store.
  - Spoom 14y ago
    Anecdotally my Droid Razr came with one.
- hdra 14y ago
  Depend on your phone model. Mine came with free version of a file browser with some functions (batch files operation, etc) disabled, with IAP to unlock those functions.
- Irregardless 14y ago
  Default will depend on which phone you get, but there's no shortage of great free ones in the market (Astro and ES File Explorer, for example). Also, Android phones work just like a USB drive if you want to drag and drop files then access them from another computer later. You can store anything you want and create your own folders, unlike the iPhone where you can only sync certain media types through iTunes. That's what I was referring to with the file manager thing, but I'm not sure how to say that succinctly...
  - jerf 14y ago
    "The Android phone functions as a standard USB hard drive." Also, it's not just a sandboxed area, like on my previous "feature phone" (store whatever you like on it, but the phone's OS won't do anything with it), but the real SD card in the phone, directly.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one. A feature that you think is critical is a feature that is critical for you. The refrain that iOS suffers from a lack of file exploration or drag and drop of any kind of content is based around the assumption that everyone wants that. Most people don't.
    - Drakim 14y ago
      I can understand your point, but too often this sounds like an extremely weak excuse: "So iPhone doesn't have this feature? Good! I didn't want it anyway!". I personally see having more options and choices as a great thing even when I don't personally need those options. Even if I think the default android keyboard is the greatest touchscreen keyboard in existence, I still think it should be possible and easy to use another keyboard app instead.
      - nicholassmith 14y ago
        Choice is great, my argument wasn't that choice is bad because that's silly. My argument was saying that a feature that a lot of people have no use for is a really big negative against a platform is an incredibly bad point. It's a feature that has inherent personal usefulness for the user, if there's a strong majority that don't have need of that then it's not a negative against a platform when it's functionality for functionality sake.
- cma 14y ago
  There's a 'Downloads' folder on Android, which at least covers most use cases.
lukeschlather 14y ago
Calling Siri innovation is revisionist history. Google had voice search nearly a year when Apple launched Siri. Also, Apple bought Siri, they didn't invent it. Based on the interactions I've had with Siri/Google search (I have an Android) there haven't really been any innovations in the space since Google introduced voice search. It's useful, but imperfect.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  If you want to be picky about that sort of thing Google bought Android, they didn't invent it.
  - eloisant 14y ago
    They probably bought it, but it's Google who brought Android to the state it is today. Just look how Android was when the G1 launched - and that's 2 years after Google acquired them.
  - runjake 14y ago
    If you really want to be picky about that sort of thing, Android wasn't even a pseudo-Blackberry OS-looking, D-Pad-controlled OS when Google bought it. In other words, anything notable about Android today was created at Google, from the kernel up to the UI to the frameworks to all the little features all these Android "switchers" are raving about.
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      The things that make Siri as useful as it is (which for the record IHMO is not very) is tight integration with iOS contacts, calendars and text messages for instance - all things not in the product when Apple bought it and all things which may ultimately enable the sort of integrated experiences people are saying are great with Google Now. Seriously, when Apple bought it Siri was interesting and pretty cool, but it's a different beast now. The parallel between it and original Android is fair - they're both evolved versions of something which was acquired.
xauronx 14y ago
> "their auto-correct is garbage" The last three people who switched from iPhone to Android asked me what was wrong with Androids auto-correct and why it didn't "work". They ended up having to install a third party keyboard to get anything they could stand to interact with.
- warrenmiller 14y ago
  yes, but they could install a 3rd party keyboard.
  - xauronx 14y ago
    Yes, but that they needed to was my comment. Personally, even as a mobile developer, customizing my phone is not my hobby. I'd prefer a new foreign car that has certain limitations to a used Jeep that I can extend in any way I want.
    - sparkinson 14y ago
      > I'd prefer a new foreign car that has certain limitations to a used Jeep that I can extend in any way I want. Are you sure about that?
      - xauronx 14y ago
        Absolutely. I need my phone to work, be simple and reliable, not require much/any maintenance. Similarly, I prefer a nice car with a warranty that I don't have to worry about or have any hassle with. A jeep might be cheaper, and when it runs slow I could install something to fix it, or if I don't like the steering wheel I could personalize it easily... but, for something I use every day and depend on, I just want it to be there and not have to deal with any complications. I'm ok with the one-size fits all steering wheel, the research driven interface on my stock radio, etc etc.
    - ChrisClark 14y ago
      But you need specific skills to customize your Jeep. On Android it takes 30 seconds and no skill to install the keyboard you want. It's not a very hard thing to do, I'm sure as a mobile developer you don't mind installing apps other than the ones that come with your phone. A different keyboard is just another app to fulfil a need, go to the Store, click install, new keyboard. Done.
nicholassmith 14y ago
I'd have been more tempted to get behind your argument and take it on it's merits until the final line. If you're still hammering on the "it's cool" line to put the device down, you're completely ignoring the fact that there's plenty of people who own an iPhone and think it's the right choice for them. Whilst being completely and utterly uncool.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
zmanian 14y ago
Key Pieces of history in the Siri vs Google Voice Search - Siri is a commercial spinoff of a DARPA AI project called CALO which was primarily designed to help the military handle information in the form of MS Office documents/Outlook email. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/siri-do-engine-apple-iphone_n_2499165.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/siri-do-engine-appl... - CALO was an almost 10 year project run out of SRI but executed primarily at Stanford,Berekley and the University of Washington. Many PhD's and post docs on the west coast in Machine Learning cut their teeth on some element of CALO. It's influence is pervasive throughout the Valley. - Apple does not have in-house voice recognition technology and instead licences technology from Nuance. - Nuance is essentially a holding company for all the commercial voice recognition technology from the 90's and 00's except what MSFT picked up from the TellMe acquisition and what Google developed under Mike Cohen. - Mike Cohen is a Nuance co-founder who nurtured voice recognition tech at Google for many years before leaving in 2011 but Google's current voice recognition technology is largely the result of research products he ran.(http://9to5google.com/2012/05/23/manager-of-speech-technology-mike-cohen-reportedly-leaves-google/ http://9to5google.com/2012/05/23/manager-of-speech-technolog...) To Summarize. Siri and Google Voice search share a common lineage. Google is better position to improve the technology because they are not relying an existing vendor and acquisitions for key pieces of technology but instead they have been gestating internal groups specializing in both semantics and voice to text internally for many years.
- platz 14y ago
  Amazing history, thanks! Siri is a commercial spinoff of a DARPA AI project Interesting example of how a substantial innovation (like Siri) yet again does not come from a private company, but from a R&D or such funded project without a short-term capitalist adgenda. Also I'd bet that this fact is largely unknown; this I'd understand is also characteristic. -- No wonder we're having problems getting public funding for "actual" new tech.
  - zmanian 14y ago
    Google has a structural advantage over Apple and MSFT in natural language. Apple has plenty of cash to buy Nuance to integrate Voice Recognition technology but lacks the management bandwidth. Microsoft Research has done a lot of path breaking work in natural language recognition but MSFT management seems to be actively hostile to their R&D group. Google has natural language features in all their core product areas and management that prides itself on dog fooding their own R&D. I'm a Google shareholder for these reasons.
prof_hobart 14y ago
Don't know if I'm doing something wrong with Android, or whether it's just because my phone is currently restricted to ICS, but I find the notification system appalling compared to iOS. On iOS, I get a notification and (if I choose to make it appear there) it pops up as an alert on my lockscreen which then goes into a list of alerts since I last unlocked my phone. If any of them interest me, I swipe over it from the lockscreen and it takes me straight into that app. With Android, I get nothing on my lock screen at all. What I do get, once I've unlocked my phone, is a little icon at the top telling me that the app wants to tell me something. I then have to pull the notification window down to see what it wants to tell me, at which point I can tap it to get into the app. I have installed "iPhone Notifications" on my Android phone, which helps a little - at least I get a pop-up message on my lock screen - bit it's still some way behind what I'm used to on iOS. Custom keyboards - thank god for that on Android. I found it almost impossible to type on the stock keyboard, whereas I've rarely had a problem with the iOS one. As for settings, again I personally find iOS much clearer on this. Everything is clearly not rosy in the iOS camp - I certainly miss widgets/live desktop when I'm using my iPhone for instance, but many of the other "issues" you list are subjective at best.

jrajav 14y ago

> there's no file manager Is there one on Android?

dagw 14y ago
I don't know if phones ship with one by default or not, but there are several in the app store. Personally I really like ES File Explorer, since it also lets me browse smb shares.
thejetset 14y ago
Generally not by default, but that can vary by manufacturer. You can just download one of the many available from the Play Store.
- Spoom 14y ago
  Anecdotally my Droid Razr came with one.
hdra 14y ago
Depend on your phone model. Mine came with free version of a file browser with some functions (batch files operation, etc) disabled, with IAP to unlock those functions.
Irregardless 14y ago
Default will depend on which phone you get, but there's no shortage of great free ones in the market (Astro and ES File Explorer, for example). Also, Android phones work just like a USB drive if you want to drag and drop files then access them from another computer later. You can store anything you want and create your own folders, unlike the iPhone where you can only sync certain media types through iTunes. That's what I was referring to with the file manager thing, but I'm not sure how to say that succinctly...
- jerf 14y ago
  "The Android phone functions as a standard USB hard drive." Also, it's not just a sandboxed area, like on my previous "feature phone" (store whatever you like on it, but the phone's OS won't do anything with it), but the real SD card in the phone, directly.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one. A feature that you think is critical is a feature that is critical for you. The refrain that iOS suffers from a lack of file exploration or drag and drop of any kind of content is based around the assumption that everyone wants that. Most people don't.
  - Drakim 14y ago
    I can understand your point, but too often this sounds like an extremely weak excuse: "So iPhone doesn't have this feature? Good! I didn't want it anyway!". I personally see having more options and choices as a great thing even when I don't personally need those options. Even if I think the default android keyboard is the greatest touchscreen keyboard in existence, I still think it should be possible and easy to use another keyboard app instead.
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      Choice is great, my argument wasn't that choice is bad because that's silly. My argument was saying that a feature that a lot of people have no use for is a really big negative against a platform is an incredibly bad point. It's a feature that has inherent personal usefulness for the user, if there's a strong majority that don't have need of that then it's not a negative against a platform when it's functionality for functionality sake.
cma 14y ago
There's a 'Downloads' folder on Android, which at least covers most use cases.

lukeschlather 14y ago

Calling Siri innovation is revisionist history. Google had voice search nearly a year when Apple launched Siri. Also, Apple bought Siri, they didn't invent it. Based on the interactions I've had with Siri/Google search (I have an Android) there haven't really been any innovations in the space since Google introduced voice search. It's useful, but imperfect.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
If you want to be picky about that sort of thing Google bought Android, they didn't invent it.
- eloisant 14y ago
  They probably bought it, but it's Google who brought Android to the state it is today. Just look how Android was when the G1 launched - and that's 2 years after Google acquired them.
- runjake 14y ago
  If you really want to be picky about that sort of thing, Android wasn't even a pseudo-Blackberry OS-looking, D-Pad-controlled OS when Google bought it. In other words, anything notable about Android today was created at Google, from the kernel up to the UI to the frameworks to all the little features all these Android "switchers" are raving about.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    The things that make Siri as useful as it is (which for the record IHMO is not very) is tight integration with iOS contacts, calendars and text messages for instance - all things not in the product when Apple bought it and all things which may ultimately enable the sort of integrated experiences people are saying are great with Google Now. Seriously, when Apple bought it Siri was interesting and pretty cool, but it's a different beast now. The parallel between it and original Android is fair - they're both evolved versions of something which was acquired.

xauronx 14y ago

> "their auto-correct is garbage" The last three people who switched from iPhone to Android asked me what was wrong with Androids auto-correct and why it didn't "work". They ended up having to install a third party keyboard to get anything they could stand to interact with.

warrenmiller 14y ago
yes, but they could install a 3rd party keyboard.
- xauronx 14y ago
  Yes, but that they needed to was my comment. Personally, even as a mobile developer, customizing my phone is not my hobby. I'd prefer a new foreign car that has certain limitations to a used Jeep that I can extend in any way I want.
  - sparkinson 14y ago
    > I'd prefer a new foreign car that has certain limitations to a used Jeep that I can extend in any way I want. Are you sure about that?
    - xauronx 14y ago
      Absolutely. I need my phone to work, be simple and reliable, not require much/any maintenance. Similarly, I prefer a nice car with a warranty that I don't have to worry about or have any hassle with. A jeep might be cheaper, and when it runs slow I could install something to fix it, or if I don't like the steering wheel I could personalize it easily... but, for something I use every day and depend on, I just want it to be there and not have to deal with any complications. I'm ok with the one-size fits all steering wheel, the research driven interface on my stock radio, etc etc.
  - ChrisClark 14y ago
    But you need specific skills to customize your Jeep. On Android it takes 30 seconds and no skill to install the keyboard you want. It's not a very hard thing to do, I'm sure as a mobile developer you don't mind installing apps other than the ones that come with your phone. A different keyboard is just another app to fulfil a need, go to the Store, click install, new keyboard. Done.

nicholassmith 14y ago

I'd have been more tempted to get behind your argument and take it on it's merits until the final line. If you're still hammering on the "it's cool" line to put the device down, you're completely ignoring the fact that there's plenty of people who own an iPhone and think it's the right choice for them. Whilst being completely and utterly uncool.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

zmanian 14y ago

Key Pieces of history in the Siri vs Google Voice Search - Siri is a commercial spinoff of a DARPA AI project called CALO which was primarily designed to help the military handle information in the form of MS Office documents/Outlook email. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/siri-do-engine-apple-iphone_n_2499165.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/siri-do-engine-appl... - CALO was an almost 10 year project run out of SRI but executed primarily at Stanford,Berekley and the University of Washington. Many PhD's and post docs on the west coast in Machine Learning cut their teeth on some element of CALO. It's influence is pervasive throughout the Valley. - Apple does not have in-house voice recognition technology and instead licences technology from Nuance. - Nuance is essentially a holding company for all the commercial voice recognition technology from the 90's and 00's except what MSFT picked up from the TellMe acquisition and what Google developed under Mike Cohen. - Mike Cohen is a Nuance co-founder who nurtured voice recognition tech at Google for many years before leaving in 2011 but Google's current voice recognition technology is largely the result of research products he ran.(http://9to5google.com/2012/05/23/manager-of-speech-technology-mike-cohen-reportedly-leaves-google/ http://9to5google.com/2012/05/23/manager-of-speech-technolog...) To Summarize. Siri and Google Voice search share a common lineage. Google is better position to improve the technology because they are not relying an existing vendor and acquisitions for key pieces of technology but instead they have been gestating internal groups specializing in both semantics and voice to text internally for many years.

platz 14y ago
Amazing history, thanks! Siri is a commercial spinoff of a DARPA AI project Interesting example of how a substantial innovation (like Siri) yet again does not come from a private company, but from a R&D or such funded project without a short-term capitalist adgenda. Also I'd bet that this fact is largely unknown; this I'd understand is also characteristic. -- No wonder we're having problems getting public funding for "actual" new tech.
- zmanian 14y ago
  Google has a structural advantage over Apple and MSFT in natural language. Apple has plenty of cash to buy Nuance to integrate Voice Recognition technology but lacks the management bandwidth. Microsoft Research has done a lot of path breaking work in natural language recognition but MSFT management seems to be actively hostile to their R&D group. Google has natural language features in all their core product areas and management that prides itself on dog fooding their own R&D. I'm a Google shareholder for these reasons.

prof_hobart 14y ago

Don't know if I'm doing something wrong with Android, or whether it's just because my phone is currently restricted to ICS, but I find the notification system appalling compared to iOS. On iOS, I get a notification and (if I choose to make it appear there) it pops up as an alert on my lockscreen which then goes into a list of alerts since I last unlocked my phone. If any of them interest me, I swipe over it from the lockscreen and it takes me straight into that app. With Android, I get nothing on my lock screen at all. What I do get, once I've unlocked my phone, is a little icon at the top telling me that the app wants to tell me something. I then have to pull the notification window down to see what it wants to tell me, at which point I can tap it to get into the app. I have installed "iPhone Notifications" on my Android phone, which helps a little - at least I get a pop-up message on my lock screen - bit it's still some way behind what I'm used to on iOS. Custom keyboards - thank god for that on Android. I found it almost impossible to type on the stock keyboard, whereas I've rarely had a problem with the iOS one. As for settings, again I personally find iOS much clearer on this. Everything is clearly not rosy in the iOS camp - I certainly miss widgets/live desktop when I'm using my iPhone for instance, but many of the other "issues" you list are subjective at best.