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It's interesting to see a wider acceptance of the reality of the mess of Android. Really the shocking thing was how good the iPhone 6 was, and how ready to swi

It's interesting to see a wider acceptance of the reality of the mess of Android. Really the shocking thing was how good the iPhone 6 was, and how ready to switch to iOS places like Korea were when the larger devices became available, when previously it had been assumed those markets were lost to Apple. The emerging social class type distinction emerging globally between Android and iOS users is a real and growing problem for Google, especially combined with Apple's probable search engine launch. The noise from my network in Android land has been that Lollipop remains a disaster. Easily the worst version since Android became popular, and it will be very curious to see what, if anything, Google have proposed for the resulting mess at I/O. It says quite a lot that the most exciting thing about Android for I/O is the rumoured stripped down headless version for Internet-of-Things devices, which may become an accidental foundation for a cleaned up future Android proper.

Oletros 11y ago
Is this an example of Poe's law?
tompagenet2 11y ago
I don't have the contacts to know if my opinions with Android are even vaguely representative. I'm interested in what your network think is wrong with Android Lollipop, and without any sarcasm or snideness can I please ask who your network represents just to get a sense of how representative it is?
- bane 11y ago
  From a user who's devices just all upgraded a short while ago, it has all the usability problems of the new google maps. Things are more animated/transition-y/slid-y, but hell if I can figure out what to push or where a desired setting is. It looks great, but it's not great for usability.
  - izacus 11y ago
    Can you elaborate more? Since I'm finding Lollipop significantly more usable in pretty much all respects - UI is more thought out, runs faster, battery life has significantly improved, dead Wifi detection is more reliable, timed audio profiles are a godsend... Can you be a bit more specific? Are you perhaps using a Samsung TouchWiz device, where Samung pretty much removed most of AOSP UI improvements?
    - bane 11y ago
      Here's a quick example, on my shield tablet, when videos fullscreen, the button to make it go full-screen/embedded disappear for no reason after a few seconds when it's full screened, meaning to escape a full-screen video, I have to hit the home or back buttons. This is a new behavior and super annoying. On my phone, under settings, there's no obvious button to push to change wi-fi settings. There's a skeumorphic switch to turn it off and on, but no obvious button. In fact there's no obvious button for all the settings, just the label and an icon, but apparently if you push the label for Wi-Fi it's actually a button, but there's literally no affordance that it is such a thing. Strangely, when you dive deep and view the app info for an individual app, there's buttons and pushable things everywhere. The new google apps are a mess as well. Here's the process to change users in the gmail app 1) hit the hamburger menu (what could be there?) A panel slides out, which for some reason doesn't go all the way across the screen, because I need that 20% of my inbox that shows me nothing at all to stay visible 2) I have 3 colored circles with faceless people icons, they switch between three of my accounts, where are the others? I have no idea which one is which, so I push one, get dragged in the inbox for that one, but it doesn't tell me which one I'm in until I hit the hamburger menu again. 3) I'm of course not in the right one, and the one I want to be in is not one of the three choices. Where to now? 4) I see a list of folders, labels, and other crap, does it scroll? Apparently it does (oh, and apparently settings is all the way at the bottom of that scroll list, that will be easy to find) but there's no indication that it's a scrollable thing. 5) Nope, no list of accounts to choose from. Where to now? 6) Oh...the name of the account that I'm currently in is a thing I can push (again no affordance) and if I push that for some reason the little down arrow triangle next to my account name turns to face up and a list of user accounts appear. I thought the arrow was just telling me to look down for stuff about my account. In other GUI metaphors, a down arrow means a selection list is unrolled, so it turning up means that something should have rolled back up. Why do I push my account name to find other account names? Absolutely a mess. I could go on, maps is something I use almost daily and it's a similarly painful experience. It's like google just said "fuck it, bury it all under hamburger menus". But didn't google get rid of the menu button on new android phones to force designers not to bury stuff under the equivalent? Remember when android devices had a built in menu button and a search button? Now that garbage clutters up every app screen and lazy designers just bury stuff under them. At least with the menu button I knew what to press to look for options. Now I can't even figure out what's a button, and the buttons they do show use faceless icons that mean nothing. The new chrome also, with it's "let's have every web page be an activity on the app stack" is terrible. Now I have to thumb through a pile of long-since closed apps to find the web page I was reading yesterday. Thank goodness somebody had the good thinking to revert that nonsense. It goes on and on, hiding needed interface options under 2 or 3 deep layers of hamburgers, making buttons invisible, weirdly out of place skeuomorphic sliders, removing affordances...hell, I have to hit "agree" every single time I turn on the location finding thing to consent to location sharing. EVERY SINGLE TIME. They've completely lost the plot.
mkawia 11y ago
Android can run on $40 phones and therefore widely used .To me that's the most exciting thing about android ,that's almost as huge as what Microsoft did in the 90s ,you know making actual impact. There are more people talking to Google voice than Siri
- jp555 11y ago
  There are many more people talking to Siri today than used Microsoft software in the 90s. Apple sells more iPhones in a quarter than the annual global sales of computers in 1995. Mobile is big enough for at least iOS and several flavours of Android. Speaking of which, those $40 Android phones don't come with Google services do they, so is anyone talking to them?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - asavadatti 11y ago
    Why are you comparing today's Siri with Microsoft from 1995? The comparison is between present day Google and Apple.
declan 11y ago
> network in Android land has been that Lollipop remains a disaster That's merely anecdotal, and my own anecdotes run in the opposite direction. I'm building https://recent.io/ https://recent.io/ for Android and iOS and have a Nexus 5, iPhone 5, and iPhone 6 Plus on my desk as test devices as I write this. I use both OSes, though I do use iOS a bit more. It's true that early versions of L were less than stable, though Apple has had the same problem. Another problem is slow adoption; only in the last few weeks, I think, has the Galaxy A3 been L-upgradable. The saving grace for Android L is Material Design, which is finally a strong unifying design language at least as good as what Apple has to offer and IMHO better with at spanning different device sizes. It's well thought out and will make Android apps easier to use (and Android generally easier to use) by increasing UI/UX standard interactions. That's anything but a "disaster."
higherpurpose 11y ago
Why is Lollipop a disaster? It introduced many great things.
- evilduck 11y ago
  Like memory leaks. Greatly problematic.
cartoonfoxes 11y ago
> It says quite a lot that the most exciting thing about Android for I/O is the rumoured stripped down headless version for Internet-of-Things devices, which may become an accidental foundation for a cleaned up future Android proper. Can you point me somewhere I can read more about this? i.e. not just the Google serach results, but any specific reading if you have suggestions. I'm an Android developer working with a company which is doing some very exotic things with custom hardware, and would kill to have something like this.

Oletros 11y ago

Is this an example of Poe's law?

tompagenet2 11y ago

I don't have the contacts to know if my opinions with Android are even vaguely representative. I'm interested in what your network think is wrong with Android Lollipop, and without any sarcasm or snideness can I please ask who your network represents just to get a sense of how representative it is?

bane 11y ago
From a user who's devices just all upgraded a short while ago, it has all the usability problems of the new google maps. Things are more animated/transition-y/slid-y, but hell if I can figure out what to push or where a desired setting is. It looks great, but it's not great for usability.
- izacus 11y ago
  Can you elaborate more? Since I'm finding Lollipop significantly more usable in pretty much all respects - UI is more thought out, runs faster, battery life has significantly improved, dead Wifi detection is more reliable, timed audio profiles are a godsend... Can you be a bit more specific? Are you perhaps using a Samsung TouchWiz device, where Samung pretty much removed most of AOSP UI improvements?
  - bane 11y ago
    Here's a quick example, on my shield tablet, when videos fullscreen, the button to make it go full-screen/embedded disappear for no reason after a few seconds when it's full screened, meaning to escape a full-screen video, I have to hit the home or back buttons. This is a new behavior and super annoying. On my phone, under settings, there's no obvious button to push to change wi-fi settings. There's a skeumorphic switch to turn it off and on, but no obvious button. In fact there's no obvious button for all the settings, just the label and an icon, but apparently if you push the label for Wi-Fi it's actually a button, but there's literally no affordance that it is such a thing. Strangely, when you dive deep and view the app info for an individual app, there's buttons and pushable things everywhere. The new google apps are a mess as well. Here's the process to change users in the gmail app 1) hit the hamburger menu (what could be there?) A panel slides out, which for some reason doesn't go all the way across the screen, because I need that 20% of my inbox that shows me nothing at all to stay visible 2) I have 3 colored circles with faceless people icons, they switch between three of my accounts, where are the others? I have no idea which one is which, so I push one, get dragged in the inbox for that one, but it doesn't tell me which one I'm in until I hit the hamburger menu again. 3) I'm of course not in the right one, and the one I want to be in is not one of the three choices. Where to now? 4) I see a list of folders, labels, and other crap, does it scroll? Apparently it does (oh, and apparently settings is all the way at the bottom of that scroll list, that will be easy to find) but there's no indication that it's a scrollable thing. 5) Nope, no list of accounts to choose from. Where to now? 6) Oh...the name of the account that I'm currently in is a thing I can push (again no affordance) and if I push that for some reason the little down arrow triangle next to my account name turns to face up and a list of user accounts appear. I thought the arrow was just telling me to look down for stuff about my account. In other GUI metaphors, a down arrow means a selection list is unrolled, so it turning up means that something should have rolled back up. Why do I push my account name to find other account names? Absolutely a mess. I could go on, maps is something I use almost daily and it's a similarly painful experience. It's like google just said "fuck it, bury it all under hamburger menus". But didn't google get rid of the menu button on new android phones to force designers not to bury stuff under the equivalent? Remember when android devices had a built in menu button and a search button? Now that garbage clutters up every app screen and lazy designers just bury stuff under them. At least with the menu button I knew what to press to look for options. Now I can't even figure out what's a button, and the buttons they do show use faceless icons that mean nothing. The new chrome also, with it's "let's have every web page be an activity on the app stack" is terrible. Now I have to thumb through a pile of long-since closed apps to find the web page I was reading yesterday. Thank goodness somebody had the good thinking to revert that nonsense. It goes on and on, hiding needed interface options under 2 or 3 deep layers of hamburgers, making buttons invisible, weirdly out of place skeuomorphic sliders, removing affordances...hell, I have to hit "agree" every single time I turn on the location finding thing to consent to location sharing. EVERY SINGLE TIME. They've completely lost the plot.

mkawia 11y ago

Android can run on $40 phones and therefore widely used .To me that's the most exciting thing about android ,that's almost as huge as what Microsoft did in the 90s ,you know making actual impact. There are more people talking to Google voice than Siri

jp555 11y ago
There are many more people talking to Siri today than used Microsoft software in the 90s. Apple sells more iPhones in a quarter than the annual global sales of computers in 1995. Mobile is big enough for at least iOS and several flavours of Android. Speaking of which, those $40 Android phones don't come with Google services do they, so is anyone talking to them?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- asavadatti 11y ago
  Why are you comparing today's Siri with Microsoft from 1995? The comparison is between present day Google and Apple.

declan 11y ago

> network in Android land has been that Lollipop remains a disaster That's merely anecdotal, and my own anecdotes run in the opposite direction. I'm building https://recent.io/ https://recent.io/ for Android and iOS and have a Nexus 5, iPhone 5, and iPhone 6 Plus on my desk as test devices as I write this. I use both OSes, though I do use iOS a bit more. It's true that early versions of L were less than stable, though Apple has had the same problem. Another problem is slow adoption; only in the last few weeks, I think, has the Galaxy A3 been L-upgradable. The saving grace for Android L is Material Design, which is finally a strong unifying design language at least as good as what Apple has to offer and IMHO better with at spanning different device sizes. It's well thought out and will make Android apps easier to use (and Android generally easier to use) by increasing UI/UX standard interactions. That's anything but a "disaster."

higherpurpose 11y ago

Why is Lollipop a disaster? It introduced many great things.

evilduck 11y ago
Like memory leaks. Greatly problematic.

cartoonfoxes 11y ago

> It says quite a lot that the most exciting thing about Android for I/O is the rumoured stripped down headless version for Internet-of-Things devices, which may become an accidental foundation for a cleaned up future Android proper. Can you point me somewhere I can read more about this? i.e. not just the Google serach results, but any specific reading if you have suggestions. I'm an Android developer working with a company which is doing some very exotic things with custom hardware, and would kill to have something like this.