Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie It's become a truism that the way to win in mobile is with an end-to-end, hardware-to-software-to-cloud strategy. I just wish this were as good for consumers as it seems to be for vendors. If I could get any wish fulfilled for 2013, it would be to have Apple and Google, in particular, go back to doing what they do best - rather …
Apple's got rid of iSync from Lion onwards, Google's killed ActiveSync support, and now everything's suddenly much more difficult.
Right, no problem, I'll switch over to IMAP but nobody seems that interested in making IMAP as good as it should (Lemonade profile). LDAP's not widely supported by the free services but it seems that CardDav is gaining traction, only that's a long way off being supported by Thunderbird (why did we need CardDav anyway if we've got LDAP?).
If I trust Apple, Google, or Microsoft it seems I'll suddenly find myself in a walled garden or on an island one day. As they drop support for the standards championed by the other big companies and come out with some shiny new standard (often supposedly open, just not widely supported or even supported by anyone else but themselves for at least a year or two). None of these companies which offer sync services should really exist, they're just a patch around the problem. Despite how kludgy Thunderbird is it seems it's the only way to keep my data mine in the long term.
@Timmay
Actually, iTunes and the Apple App Store offerings *are* cloud services. By definition, since they provide a service in the cloud (internet).
There's no doubt that Apple's map debacle was a complete fiasco. But I wouldn't say to Apple "With all your billions in the bank, just forget about doing mapping on your own. Google will always be king." Good luck to them in getting it right in the long term. I'd hate to think that just because Google are great at doing mapping now, they should retain a monopoly on it for all time.
With the exception of said maps, I find Apple's cloud offerings to be rather good. Contacts, Calendar, Photos, Messaging and Document sync across Apple devices is a breeze. As is nightly device backup to the cloud. This was brought sharply home when I recently had a device that suffered some water damage after 9 months. Back to the Apple Store, new device handed over, gratis, kick off restore from the cloud, and after the inevitable gigabytes of download, the new device in my hand was indistinguishable from the one I was using the day before.
I like Apple stuff *and* Android stuff. I'd be reticent to say one is definitively better than the other, but for me, I like the simplicity and convenience of owning Apple devices, where iOS certainly wins hands down in this respect.
All those Apple cloud services (Contacts, Calendar, Photos, Messaging and Document sync) are all SO much better in the Google/Android world.
Last time I tried to invite friends to a shared calender event, it failed miserably on iOS, and didn't appear in their personal calendars.
And not forgetting, you get more free storage with Google (unlimited photo storage in the cloud, 20k free songs, 10GB docs, 10GB email)
"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work."
-Gustave Flaubert
i.e, Time and thought spent getting your technology to behave itself is time not spent on actually achieving anything. The desire for "Simplicity and convenience" doesn't make you simple, it makes you smart; it leaves your mind clear to actually create something for the benefit of your fellow humans.
Tricky concept, I know.
"the Android operating system that is popular but not nearly as good as Apple's iOS" Everyone is entitled to an opinion but nowadays I start to think the author clearly hasn't picked up the devices and made a comparison before mashing the keys while writing the article. Well I find iOS a bit backward personally but using android and Windows Phone is quite natural.
>"the Android operating system that is popular but not nearly as good as Apple's iOS" Everyone is entitled to an >opinion
Yeah, it depends on how you use and what you use it for. I'm happy with my Android phone, but I upgraded from a featurephone fairly late in the game. Apple did make a smart move with iOS from the get-go, by implementing MIDI and with a low enough latency to allow it to be useful (Android has only caught up on this front with Jelly Bean, and developers of music creation software are expressing an interest). It is a niche feature, but one that sits well with another niche market that has traditionally liked Apple: musicians. Being cynical, it is smart move to cater to musicians, when the other side of your business is selling their work.
Here is an example of someone who gets full use out of his iPhone for his purposes, using its accelerometers as MIDI controllers in conjunction some hardware (distantly based, I think, on a dissected MIDI Clarinet) he has open-sourced on Thingiverse: http://onyx-ashanti.com/
"keeps releasing the Android operating system that is popular but not nearly as good as Apple's iOS, and its phones/tablets that are not as good as Apple's hardware"
Have to assume this was just pure flame bait?
Google doesn't release hardware at all, their hardware partners do that - and at a very wide range of price points. Apple, on the other hand, provide premium hardware at a premium price. Pointing out that a cheap Droid doesn't compete well in terms of hardware quality isn't the most insightful observation.
On the OS side I'd be interested in how you would define "not nearly as good". Now when it comes to tablet apps iOS has definitely got Android licked. The number of apps that are relevant and useful to me that simply don't exist at all on Android or do so only in a phone form is a constant source of irritation. And sadly a number of those Android tablet apps that I do have are poor relations indeed when you see the iOS version side by side. But the main thing keeping me from buying an iPad and benefiting from all these is Android itself. My Asus TF101 (running ICS) is just a wonderful device to use, made even better by the ability to use custom launchers like Nova. By comparison I find iOS on the iPad to be a dated, undynamic and clunky interface that you can't do much with.
So for me, I'm just going to have to hope that eventually tablet apps on Android will start to catch up.
Out of interest, which large-tablet apps are these that aren't available on Android? (Not disagreeing, genuinely curious what apps still need to be written.)
@Mark .
Music creation apps. Though the devs of such software are getting started Android versions now that Jelly Bean has reduced the latency considerably over previous versions. I don't know if this is what HandleOfGod had in mind.
While there are apps that will run, most of the content of the Play store makes no allowances for large screens. The result is functional but ugly, and fails to take propper advantage of the extra space afforded. There are many examples on the web of people complaining about this, but as just one example compare the Android Spotify client with the iPad version.
Every time I see something about apples map app being bad I can't help but think how retarded the commentator is.
It doesn't matter if the apple map app is bad, you can still use the google one, and Apple are no longer paying google for the privilege saving a very large wad of money and due to the google map app being better then the apple provided google map app it's better for the consumer.
Just because reporters and commentators and often consumers are dribbling retards doesn't mean it was a particularly bad move.
The end result of the map decision was
1: Apple saved lots of money
2: Google lost money
3: Consumers got a better google map product
4: Stupid people used an immature apple map product and got all nerd ragey
5: very few people gave up their iphone due to the event
"...and so keeps releasing the Android operating system that is popular but not nearly as good as Apple's iOS..."
Whoops you lost me there. Android is the most evolved, fully fledged, attractive mobile operating system out there, and has the best qualities of Windows - extensibility, flexibility.
iOS, with respect, is barely more than what a feature phone OS.
Seriously, that killed your credibility, which is a shame because on the whole I agreed with your points of view.
You miss the point completely. iOS gives it's users exactly what they need - a reliable, secure phone OS, the ability to run a huge number of apps and they seem to support handsets 3+ years old. Android gives you some of this but without the security and support seems to fade much, much quicker. My last Android phone could not get updated, a colleagues 'new' Galaxy Note took about 6 months to get the current version of Android and had and still has bugs.
Android appeals to techies (and no harm in that) who either want to tinker or think the may and people who get it free on contract but do not really care (or know?) if it's Android, iOS or Windows Phone or ?? I'd say the majority of people I know with Android based phones are running old versions and at least half do not even have data tariffs / ever buy apps etc. - i.e. don't use it for more than calls + SMS.
".....Google ....keeps releasing the Android operating system that is popular but not nearly as good as Apple's iOS, and its phones/tablets that are not as good as Apple's hardware."
Matt, sorry but your wrong.
iOS is rubbish and how can you say "style over substance"?
What style? 00's chic? YEAH, RIGHT!
How can anyone take what you have to say next seriously ?
I think I have been sort of subconsciously sharing the author's feelings. Amazon, with its Apple-like move towards being a walled garden of hardware and software and services, has really turned me off as a customer. At this point, the only Apple product I'd buy is an iMac because I am still allowed to run whatever OS on it I want. Google? I guess Google is just as guillty as the rest. Maybe it doesn't feel that way because it still has OEM partnerships on hardware and I still use its browser and web services on Microsoft's OS.
So far, I have not been prohibited from doing what I want with my tech (or not to the point of getting really pissed off) but I can see the author's point and can easily see that day coming.
Most people buy a Mac / iPhone for Mountain Lion or iOS - I do not imagine many people buy an iMac wipe it to only run Windows. Sure I can run Bootcamp or Parallels to keep Windows capability but it's purely for a few legacy apps. I switched to Mountain Lion as it is just 'better' than Windows, data security / backups and full disk encryption, better integration with my iPhone etc.
I've also use Windows 8 and it's definitely a marmite moment and most people I have asked seem pretty cool to it.
As brilliantly demonstrated by the iPhone holding fiasco.
And the melting iMac issues, not to mention fading colors once the bright and shiny had worn off and been exposed to sunlight for a while.
We could finally have some objective assessment of Apple as a whole, admitting that the company has had some bright ideas and deserves some recognition, but is far from the perfect idevice-maker that sooo many people insist it is, but I suppose we won't finally bury this stupid Apple reality distortion field any time soon.
The difference is when your iPhone / Macbook goes wrong it gets resolved and usually very quickly. iPhone repair = 20 minutes at the Apple Store - Samsung phone repair = 3 weeks away and ended up buying a replacement (expensive).
Apple tend to still support their stuff for years - with other makes the in-warranty support is usually poor and non-existent outside warranty. I know plenty of iPhone 3GS users whose phones are still in daily use after 3+ years and Macbook users with 4-5 year old machines still perfectly useable.
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