I am taking the plunge and moving from an iPhone to an Android device. I’ve been waiting a long time for Android to get to the point that it was fast and responsive enough, with a big enough application warehouse, wide enough support, and a smooth enough experience, to support me. Android is maturing with a consistent, system-wide look-and-feel, almost every major service now has an Android app as the counterpart to its iOS-first experience, and has a bright future with wearables, home automation, and more.
I certainly won’t be the first person to change ecosystems entirely. Several have done it before, some looking for change or claim freedom, some aiming to save money, some because someone prompted them, some think they may be conforming by going with the ever-stylish Apple. I am doing it for this reason: for me, Android is now a better platform than iOS.
Before we get started, some ground rules:
- I’m not trying to convince you to switch. iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BB10 all have area of strength and some unique angle. All would make a suitable enough platform for 99% of users. And all have areas of weakness.
- Secondly, some qualifications: I got my first iPhone about 60 days after release. I’ve owned every model since, thanks to a crafty staggered upgrade plan with my wife, who each year generously permits me to outfit her with the prior year’s flagship device. I’ve been an avid iOS user since the iPhoneOS 1.0 days. I followed the 40+ step jailbreak process for 1.0, experienced AppSnap, JailbreakMe, and several flavors of ra1n.
- I first used OS X at 10.0 when my longtime Mac neighbors installed it, I first really got into the Mac in 2002 when I somehow convinced Apple to send me a PowerMac for review, and switched to Mac full time with Tiger in 2004. My house is decorated with Apple gear: iMac, Macbook Pro, Macbook, AppleTV, Airport Extreme Base Station, Airport Express, iPod, iPhone, iPad…I’m predisposed to loving Apple.
- Fourth, I read most Apple and premier technology websites, so I’m immersed in this regularly and no decision is without some substance.
- I started writing this article before WWDC ’14, and have revisited it. Many of my “complaints” about iOS are addressed in iOS 8. I’ve tried to weigh that appropriately.
- Last, I’ve tried to be original in my nitpicks and stick to technology, rather than re-hashing the same debates about things like Apple politics or behaviors (e.g. iMessage de-registration).
Okay, are you ready? Let’s go. Let’s start with my original 11 reasons for switching away from iOS. For ease, I’ve lumped all of my concerns into the following buckets:
- iOS UI/UX inconsistencies
- The Keyboard/Auto-Correct
- Siri
- Integration Degradation
- Lack of interactivity
- Lack of system control
- Inter-app communication
- Privacy controls
- Central account registration
- Stability
- iTunes
iOS UI/UX Inconsistencies
iOS is beautiful. The system and the app ecosystem are unmatched in their style. At least that’s what everyone seems to repeat, and I convinced myself to be true, for a long time.
However, my experience is that most users are oblivious to just how messy iOS really is. Let’s start with this: the creation of cross-platform toolkits, particularly the HTML5 and Flash ones, have lead to an enormous amount of applications that look and act nothing like iOS. The iOS experience can be incredibly confusing with all sort of metaphors, graphical elements, depths and layers, and experience tricks. Surely you’d agree that Apple can’t be held responsible for crappy copycat games churned out in an Asian development factory, so let’s just set that on the side for now. But let’s also recognize that when Apple talks about 1 million apps in the App Store, it’s really far fewer. If there are (an arbitrary) one-tenth of that really stand out, I’d be surprised. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number is actually lower than that.
As techies and developers, we recognize that APIs change and developers need time to adjust, update, and recompile their apps for new versions of iOS and new capabilities. But as a user, the iOS experience is often a confusing mish-mash of inconsistencies. So let’s give the third-party app scene a pass, let’s just talk about Apple’s iOS, the one created and maintained by Apple. iOS 7, the “leap ahead” in design language, is a huge turn off for me. I generally reserve the term “Fisher Price” for Windows XP, but iOS 7 can’t make its mind what it wants to be.
Take, for example, the iOS 7 icons. First, we have Phone, Mail, Music, and Messages, 4 of the most used icons on the iPhone. These apps have shed their skeuomorphic appearance for a “flat-like” look. There is no depth to the icon. The apps still have their “composition,” which includes rounded corners, drop shadows, a gradient, and a reflective sheen. This implies a consistent light source, which implies some height/depth. Now look at Game Center, Weather, Photos, and Newsstand. Icon subjects overlap one another. This type of half-commitment to “flat” UI is evident throughout iOS 7. There will be people on the internet already formulating their attack-like response, but when Apple makes such a big deal out of design, they should be held to the high standards they have set. The icon super-ellipse shape “feels” wrong to me. And the argument iOS 7 icons are “wrong” has already been made better than I can make it. So the icons, the very core of the OS in that it’s your “home,” is flawed.
Now picture yourself playing a game. Some sort of button sits in the top menu bar, generally on the right, and maybe it’s a “Save” or “Restart” or “Next” button. Now pretend someone texts you, mentions you in a tweet, or replies to your Facebook status. For some period of time, if configured in a non-modal way, for maybe 2 seconds, a banner drops down, obscuring widgets, information, or merely creating some brief lag (damn you, Flappy Bird!). Contrast this with Android, which only overlaps the status bar, blocking only the clock and other notifications, but never part of an app. This is often frustrating, but is at least odd language. Your core interaction with the OS is obscured by some other event, and it actually steals active screen real estate.
Ultimately, Apple was historically the company with unmatched attention to detail. Sadly, iOS 7 doesn’t support that. iOS 7, for me, is just not a fully-formed vision.
So, how about iOS 8? Surely these concerns are addressed a year later? Sadly, not one of them is.
The iOS keyboard/text input
My biggest single gripe with iOS is the keyboard. The featureless, dumb all-capital-letter all-the-time keyboard. Most ICS-and-newer stock Android keyboards support some smart features. Most support swipe-input, for example. Many after-market keyboard support social integration, in that they can log in to Twitter and Facebook and Gmail and “learn” how and what you type so they can be smarter in correction and prediction. But iOS still can’t learn basic words, and as a result, iPhone users everywhere are sick of their ducking keyboard.
What color, I sometimes ask my friends, is the iOS keyboard?
The many keyboards of iOS 7
As I mentioned, not only is the iOS keyboard forsaking function for form in using capital letters when you’re typing lowercase, it’s also confusing for users to tell if the caps lock/shift key is depressed or not. Sure, it’s not difficult to learn, but the fact is that I regularly come across users who are stumped until they begin typing. And there’s a reason for that: because it’s not immediately evident, because the keyboard appears to have been designed by a designer, not a user. I don’t know how this made it past the quality testing phase.
But truly, it’s the lack of prediction and the lack of rapid swipe input that makes the iOS keyboard a loser. If it were system-wide replaceable, this wouldn’t be an issue. In fact, it might be a strength: a simple system keyboard for those who don’t want a faster or more powerful input source, but for the shift/caps lock issue. Instead, it’s a weak point on the OS.
Now, iOS 8 supports replacing the keyboard system-wide. I’ve been using iOS 8 since the day it was released, and while no new-function keyboard is available yet, you can test how this might work with other languages. It’s easy enough – better than Android, arguably, given the switch button is on the keyboard. But that comes with a few notes: the keyboards can’t type into “secure input” fields. Not sure what that means. I was able to test that iOS 8 does, in fact, support keyboard replacement even in older apps still using the gray/pinstripe keyboard. So this is very promising.
iOS 8 supports system keyboard replacement
Let’s move on to Auto-Correct. Not much to say here other than the fact that the Auto-Correct on the iPhone is terrible. How many of you have typed the word “for” and realized it was “got”? How many have typed an iMessage, and upon hitting “Send”, Auto-Correct changes the final word, without a visible warning or chance to decline? This happens to me all the time. Not only that, it’s common for iOS to replace words with strange suggestions. “Leeting,” for example, the L being close the M for “meeting”, suggests “leering,” and there is no second-guess. Now “Quick Type” in iOS 8 evidently addresses this, but I haven’t been able to get Quick Type to work on my iOS 8 beta yet, so I can’t confirm it’s any better or worse.
I can already hear responses from the crowd shouting “Just disable Auto-Correct!” But I don’t want to! I want Auto-Correct, I just don’t want it to change the words to the wrong words! Honestly, if Android keyboards and Blackberry’s cool swipe-up prediction can get soft keyboards so right, why does Apple get it so wrong?
Siri
Speaking of “get it so wrong”, Siri is one of the least used features on my phone. Or rather, would be, but for the fact that it’s constantly deploying in meetings when the system hangs for a few microseconds. But I rarely use voice dictation. Why? Do this experiment: first, open an app and use the dictation feature. Notice the spinner. About 40-60% of the time, the spinner will spin for at least 3 seconds. In many cases, it will spin and eventually simply time out, failing to deliver any response at all.
Now try this: hit your dictation button, then talk for a few seconds, then hit “Done,” then hit Backspace cancel it. Wait 2-3 seconds. Dictate something else. Then watch your original sentence populate the text box.
When Siri does work, for me, it’s right less than 50% of the time. Let’s be clear: more often than not, I’m changing the text anyway. I’m usually editing what was said and dealing with the impossibly frustrating magnification loop, which seems hell-bent on refusing to move to the exact spot I want. Sometimes, there’s a blue line under a word, but no amount of tapping brings up a suggestion. Sometimes, there’s letter that’s wrong, but it won’t let me select the letter or move the loop there, my only option is deleting the whole word. No matter how much you love Apple, surely you’ve seen this too.
Ultimately, Siri is not a tool I rely on for anything other than emergency texts while driving. An informal poll of my iPhone carrying friends shows just one person who uses it daily, and literally zero people who report it being accurate “most of the time.” We joke about having to over-annunciate everything you say, and then I show them Google Search for iPhone, with Google Now’s voice recognition. Your experience may be different, but this is real world data.
Google’s voice recognition is far superior to Siri
Integration Degradation
We were an AppleTV family. We bought the first 160GB AppleTV, and we own a third gen AppleTV. But I bought a Roku for testing and now we’re a Roku family. Why? Largely because converting and importing all of my media into iTunes made life frustrating. Don’t get me started on iTunes. But suffice it to say that we have one last AppleTV in use, and I hope to replace it with a Roku Streaming Stick soon. Why does this matter? Because when the AppleTVs went away, so did a piece of the integration.
The only thing I can “download” on iOS is a photo. And it’s jammed into “Camera Roll.” Every time I grab an image, or take a screenshot, Apple wants it to go into the same photo repository and then into my Photo Stream and then into iTunes. I want the photo of my kid, but I don’t want the Game of Thrones meme I downloaded just so I could send it via text. In fact, I had to disable photo stream, because it mostly grabbed garbage: wallpapers, funny downloads, screenshots… all muddling up my otherwise curated iPhoto collection.
I’m still waiting for a convenient, friction-less way to share media. There’s Bluetooth, there’s NFC, there’s ad-hoc Wifi…none are truly without challenge. When I try to share a photo with an iPhone user, AirDrop is still several steps and a few steps of waiting. In my mind, Apple should be way ahead of the curve here, we should’ve been able to share photos with our Macs and other phones wirelessly years ago. But I’m still connecting my iPhone with a lightning cord to get photos or emailing them to myself.
Why haven’t we been able to share and fetch files via Bluetooth since iPhoneOS 1.0?
Enter iOS 8 to solve much of this with the new AirDrop, and it’s ad-hoc, which means it doesn’t even require you being on the same wifi network! Presumably, this is some of the power of Bluetooth LE coming to the surface. The Mac/iPhone integration will improve considerably with iOS 8 and Yosemite. But today, the integration is a missed opportunity.
Lack of Interactivity
iOS 7, when not running an app, is cold, immobile, uncommunicative, and passionless. Take a look at my homescreen. There’s nothing going on. Right now, there’s a single badge, telling me something is up, but it’s just telling me about unread email. Nothing gives iOS 7 any personality unless there’s an app running, save for the parallax effect, which I readily disabled, solely to get rid of folder zoom. Contrast this with my computer, which has browser tabs refreshing under active windows, next to widgets in the menu bar and bouncing Dock icons. iOS 7 is always static by default and just… boring.
On the HTC One I’ve got, my homescreens are filled with useful widgets. I have the weather for the next few hours; headlines via the New York Times; my calendar; system controls for wifi, rotation lock, volume, brightness, and bluetooth; buttons to quickly post a status or a photo to Facebook; and a Twitter panel for mentions and notifications. My Android home screens feels warm an inviting, displaying useful information even before I’ve opened an app.
Also on Android, notifications are actionable. This means that I can “Like” or “Reply” to a Facebook notice from my notifications. Different apps have different actions associated with them. One of the most compelling abilities in other mobile OSes, for me, is this ability to interact with another app without a hard stop in my workflow.
iOS 8 supports actionable notifications, hallelujah! The notifications are still intrusive, but they seem to be much nicer and I can’t wait to see how they shape the future of iOS apps.
It frustrates me that I can’t check a text message while streaming YouTube. Background-running is still a funky subject with iOS. Some functions can, some cannot. On my Android device, when I connect to a certain wifi network, it disables Bluetooth to save battery. When I get in my car and connect to Bluetooth, it turns off wifi. Apps like Tasker and Trigger are very powerful in what they can do to manage your Android experience. iOS has no equivalent because the system doesn’t allow that type of access. For some, this provides security and peace of mind. For some, like me, it just means I can’t use the power of the device to its fullest.
Lack of system control
Put simply: iOS makes you use iOS the way iOS was intended. If I prefer Mailbox as my mail client, I can use it, but I can’t make it the default. I can’t choose my browser, I can’t choose my calendar, my text app, my music player, camera, etc. The fact is, I don’t like using Calendar as my default calendar, because it’s so limited. The Camera isn’t the best app for taking photos. iOS 8 supports Extensions, which we’ll address below, but it’s not far enough. I want to use the apps I want, and I don’t want the less powerful Apple apps to force themselves into my workflow. I want custom defaults. I want my own maps, my own email client, my own browser, and my own text app.
Android lets you choose default apps
Inter-app communication
iOS 8 will introduce Extensions. Finally, iOS apps will be able to talk with, and inject features into, one another. This is critical. But until iOS 8, and with the current generation iOS 7.1.x, this isn’t possible. That means we need duplicate apps and we need to constantly open and close apps. Take this common workflow: I take a picture with my iOS camera, then I open another app to edit it. In fact, it’s common for me personally to open a few different apps for editing certain pictures. Some have great filters, others have better retouch tools, still others share it on a certain social network.
iOS 8 supports system extensions to allow apps to communicate
One small footnote to extensions is that you can’t just write an extension for iOS, you have to write an app. In other words, you can’t just have a keyboard, or a filter, or something simple, there has to be an app. I would expect it to be commonplace for useful extensions to be bundled with mostly useless applications, but it’s a restriction that I’m sure is based in some technical challenge I don’t understand. Just interesting to note that extensions can only come from applications, so you should expect your custom keyboards to be mashed into an app of some sort.
The way the iOS SDK approaches interapp communication is very interesting. It will be fun to watch, over the next year or two, how developers extend iOS to become a much more powerful tool. But today, on iOS 7, we’re still living in tight sandboxes.
Privacy Controls
iOS presents me with far too many dialog boxes. I want a single page, a la Android or even Facebook or Google+’s OAuth web interceptors, that shows me all of the permissions an application wants: location, contacts, photos, etc should all be asked in one page, and I should have toggles for each. Otherwise, app makers have taken to popping up dialogs to explain the forthcoming system dialogs. It’s chaos.
If I want to manage an application’s permissions, I can’t see all the permissions it’s been granted in one place. I have to visit each piece individually – first contacts, then calendar, etc. There’s no simple way to see all of an app’s permissions. Now I can hear the response already, if it were organized by app, you’d complain that you can’t see everything using Location Services or Photos!. That’s true, we have to pick one way. But which do you think makes more sense, grouping privacy controls by function… or by app? I’ve never said “Which apps can access my photos?” but I’ve certainly thought, “I wonder what permissions I’ve granted app X.“
iOS privacy settings are grouped by type, rather than by app
Apps get access to plenty of data, but a single, unified sheet, recognizable throughout the OS, would do wonders for managing privacy.
It’s not uncommon for a calendaring app to want access to contacts, location data, reminders, photos, and in some cases, Facebook. That’s a lot of dialogs that, if not authorized, will certainly water down the experience considerably.
Central Account Registration
Why can’t systems like Reddit or even OSNews register logins centrally and allow apps to access those credentials? For some reason, iOS has decided that a few blessed services (Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, Flickr, Vimeo) may register credentials centrally. But on my Android phone, I currently see Amazon, BaconReader, Dropbox, Engadget, Exchange, Facebook, Google, GroupMe, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Outlook.com, and more. When apps want my credentials, they ask for permission to access the stored keys, not require a new, repeated login. As I grew more familiar with my Android phone, I appreciated it more as I tested several apps, but didn’t have to keep entering my logins and password.
An Android KitKat Account Registry
Stability
Maybe I’ve got a bum 5s. It’s possible. But I have issues most days. Let me go into detail. When iOS 7 was released, a newly 64-bit OS on a newly 64-bit chip, my Springboard would crash 3-5 times a day, minimum. This has been mostly rectified with iOS 7.1. I say mostly because I still experience several crashes a week. Usually, I can tell it’s happening as an application becomes unresponsive for several seconds and then I’m just waiting for the inevitable black-Apple-on-white-background to indicate the Springboard respawn.
While writing this (so this would be June 9), on iOS-current 7.1.1, I experienced several crashes, both occurred mid-rotation! Literally, as the screen was shifting from portrait-to-landscape or vice versa, it got stuck. Sadly, though I attempted screenshots, they didn’t work.
When I launch my camera from the lock screen, there’s about a 10% chance the button that takes the photo will simply crash the app. This happens with some frequency.
I find my phone, far too often, refuses to wake up with either the home button or the power button, and it’s always a gamble if it will wake up eventually or simply restart.
Apps historically stable for me, such as Feedly, Mail, Facebook, and the App Store have all experienced random crashes.
I can’t tolerate the spinning beach ball on OS X, and Springboard crashes are the mobile equivalent. iOS is far less stable, in my experience, than it was back in the iOS 4 and 5 days. Maybe that’s my memory playing tricks on me, but my phone is less reliable than ever.
iTunes
Perhaps the mother of all peeves, Apple’s iTunes application is the gateway for all things iPhone and iPad. All loaded media must pass through iTunes, unless it gets creative (e.g. VLC, which loads data over wifi, albeit excruciatingly slowly, even over 802.11ac). My daughter has an old, deactivated Blackberry Z10 that she uses as a little handheld. When she wants music and video, I connect it to my Mac via USB and drag the media, in virtually any format, in the appropriate folder (i.e. Music, Videos, Documents, etc) and it’s ready to go. While the BB application will launch, the Mac still thinks it’s just a mass storage device, it mounts like any other removable media.
My son plays with an old iPhone 4. Everything he wants first has to be converted into a format that is compatible, then it has to be imported into my iTunes library, where it must sit forevermore, otherwise, when I next sync, it will be deleted. Want to add an MP3? Must be in iTunes. As such, my iTunes library is now littered with the Tangled, Frozen, and Brave soundtracks. I can’t do it another way short of creating a second iTunes library and toggle-launching.
iTunes. Ugh.
An article discussing just how terrible the Swiss Army Knife of iTunes is could be a length piece in its own right, and I’m not the first to decry it. But ultimately, iTunes should probably be busted up into multiple apps, amongst them a system service to handle syncing iDevices separate from the music app, the video app, and the photos app.
Summary
It looks like iOS 8 is going to address a lot of my concerns with the iPhone. I am now firmly in the camp that is hoping for a 4.7″ phone (5″ is too big for one handed use, 4″ is just ridiculously small in 2014), and I expect that to be addressed with the iPhone 6 this Fall. It seems that iOS 8 and iPhone 6 will be a pretty awesome combo, especially alongside a modern Mac running Yosemite.
But I’m still jumping to Android. Why? Is it the power, the control, or the freedom from annual device hopping in favor of “when I’m ready or need it” upgrading? Those things play a small role, sure. I think, for me, it’s the fact that at the end of the day, iOS is still just a bunch of dead pixels staring back at me. There’s no life to the system outside of the parallax wallpaper effect, there are no widgets, no possibilities outside of what Apple has allowed. It still takes me 10 clicks to start my day as I check emails and several apps, whereas, with Android, most of my critical info is either on my launcher’s home screen or in my notification tray.
I think iOS as a whole is getting a little stale. There needs to be more than a redesign, there needs to be an entirely new Springboard. I can’t help but think that iOS feels lifeless unless you actively DO something. Maybe iOS 8 is really the first step towards that expansion; I’ll admit the feature list blew me away. I certainly didn’t see the replaceable keyboard or app extensions as possibilities. Maybe we’re making the right strides in the right timeline.
But all of these features… well, they exist on Android already, and they’re getting better fast. So it’s time for me to try something new. Maybe I’ll be back by iOS 9. Maybe even sooner! But for now, here’s looking forward to “Lollipop”!
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It depends what you want to do. I’m doing artworks these days, and an iPad is far superior in the types of apps I’m looking for to Android. Of course, I have to put up with all the disadvantages of iOS as you mentioned them, but if you’re looking for a specific type of art apps, you can’t go Android yet.
This is why I use an Android as my phone, and an iPad for my art stuff. Should Android get these types of apps in the future, I will buy an Android tablet too. To me, just like the Mac in the olden days, the artistic/creative apps are the last stronghold of iOS.
Regarding phone-chasing, try the new 5.5″ LG G3, with the 4k display. I know you said you want a smaller sized display, but this phone has the smallest bezels ever so far, so it looks more like a 5″ phone rather than 5.5″. It’s significantly smaller to the OnePlus 1, even if it has the same size display. Check the review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6605kiXmm8 at 1:25 minutes for a size comparison. Personally, as you know, I bought the OnePlus One (I will be writing a review for OSNews when it finally arrives).
Edited 2014-06-13 00:03 UTC
G2 was the best phone, and now G3 is the best phone. HTC one is nice too of course. If any of the best android phones were released by apple, the world would shake with delight.
Similarly, the new broadwell concept at computex is what the new apple products will look like. It didn’t register with anyone yet though, because there was no apple sticker!
Thoughts on jailbreaking to get get around the disadvantages of iOS?
Aside from the “drug deal” feel of jailbreaking, I actually think it’s a pretty interesting way to keep the less savvy users from installing god knows what on their devices, while posing only a mild challenge for those so motivated to run the jailbreak (and providing something of a test for the privilege, if only a small one).
Eugenia, you are sadly right. There are many more “creativity” apps for iOS than there are for Android, a few of which are very, very good.
Compared with iMovies, which is SO nice, the current video editor in Android Photos is a POS. It is cute and easy for a rapid Sunday-morning-with-the-dogs video with music, but it is VERY slow and VERY imprecise, and when the time comes to save, it is difficult to tell where the _F_ will it end up, whether it will remain editable, at what resolution will it be…
As for music, there is sadly nothing that can remotely compare to Garage Band on Android, not to talk about the cartload of sequencers, loopers and synthesizers you can find. As well as MIDI adapters, keyboards, recorders, the works.
As for still pictures, Android can import them directly from a camera, or from a card reader plugged into the USB port, only nobody knows, and adapter cables are not easy to find (though they cost like 3€). Android’s offer for photo editing offer is better than that for music or video, and you can even get tablets and phones with pressure sensitive styli, which I guess should be far more precise than finger painting on an iPad.
What applications?
Isn’t it better a Galaxy Note with a s-pen (Wacom digitizer)?
As a musician, iOS is the best choice. Since I have an iPad, my choice in a phone is kinda irrelevant now. I actually just use my phone as a phone. Might as well just use my old Moto Razr flip phone!
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I’ve been with Android since the very beginning and all of my phones have been Nexus devices running the purest form of Android. I will never use Apple products because I do not like Apple the company. Aside from the fact that one never really owns an Apple device (you merely use it in the manner Apple deems acceptable) their products are grossly overpriced for the specifications offered. In almost every way, Android phones and tablets are superior and offer many more options such as connectivity, expansion and performance. You’ve made an excellent choice, congratulations.
Quite blatantly untrue. You own your apple device no less than any non Nexus device and in many ways, your is upgrade path is far richer with an Apple device. Only the Nexus makes this untrue for android, and even then you need to factor in the shortcomings of the Nexus devices.
Expansion/connectivity – not really. Stock android supports the same types of expansion as iOS. SD, USB etc, these are all hacks on stock android as much as they are on iOS. However, it’s obvious you have a blinkered opinion. There are far more interesting devices that one may plug in to an iPhone than an android device (for example, there are some pretty amazing iOS add one for music production.)
Performance – swings and roundabouts, but I’d rather have a mobile device that performs well whilst having decent battery life due to sensible power management, rather that a powerful device that eats my battery in a couple of hours.
Quite blatantly untrue. You own your apple device no less than any non Nexus device and in many ways, your is upgrade path is far richer with an Apple device.
I don’t think he meant it literally, but rather that all the limitations Apple places all around makes it difficult (or impossible) to customize it in a lot of ways and make it truly fit your style the way you can with Android.
Hell, you can’t even access data on a plugged in iPhone without Apple’s iTunes being the gatekeeper.
Did no one around here actually watch the recent Apple WWDC?
You guys are mostly talking about the past.
When the other shoe drops this fall (new hardware, new device categories and additional features in the OS that never made the cut for WWDC) the entire Apple ecosystem will be transformed.
They are talking about now, not autumn. You are talking about the future… (Last I checked, autumn 2014 is in the future)
That’s 100% false. There are several apps that can access practically anything in an iphone (or idevice for that matter). Just yesterday I used iFunBox to `sideload` an older version of the iHome Sleep app that’s no longer available through the app store. I copied the app from someone elses phone who hadn’t updated. The copy isn’t locked to their device or contain any of their information (such as appleid). No trickery or jailbreak required.
I’ve never had much success with my 2nd gen iPod Touch using third party software to access it – on Windows, Linux, or FreeBSD. Granted, I haven’t tried recently, but I may give it a shot again.
But, still, those third-party apps aren’t supported. iTunes is the only officially supported gatekeeper to your device.
They’re supported by the people (individuals and companies) who make them, and people get full blown access to their devices. As long as they have that, I doubt many people care if Apple officially supports them or not. I know I don’t.
Now seems just about the worst time to be jumping ship. I have a Nexus 4 as my main phone, but used iOS for about 5 years prior (iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4) and would probably go back to iOS with my next phone because even stock Android on a Nexus device is flakey. Only today, stock camera app crashed taking a picture and rebooted the OS, and this is running 4.4. I do like my nexus, but it’s not the best phone I’ve owned by a long chalk. Most of the supposed freedom of android is pretty hollow if you are just trying to be an uber geek and run some whacky Unix process on your phone. If all you do ius read news, Facebook, email, SMS, and instagram – I wouldn’t bother. Believe me, I’ve sat and developed apps on my phone in AIDE, and it was great, but average user, this is overkill.
Edit: Android autocorrect screwed up just as badly as you believe iOS does. Nothing is perfect. Sigh.
Edited 2014-06-13 00:37 UTC
You must’ve gotten a lemon then. My Nexus 4 has only spontaneously rebooted once (that I know of) in the nearly 2 years I have had it, and the camera app has never crashed. It’s a HELL of a lot more stable than the iPhone 5s that I have through work. If you think that iOS is really that rock solid since v7, you need to do some research.
The two things that irritate the SHIT out of me about the 5s that probably won’t be addressed in the next hardware/software update are:
1. No LED light (once you’ve gotten a taste of dynamic notifications, it’s hard to go back to turning on your phone every time you want to check for new notifications)
2. No custom alert sounds in most 3rd party apps. (Really, Apple… WTF?)
As for the article itself, when the first thing the guy started bitching about was the icons, I’d have bet $100 that he got an HTC One for an Android phone, and the article confirmed it later on. iTards tend to be attracted to cosmetics and shiny things, so that wasn’t a big surprise.
Edited 2014-06-13 01:56 UTC
Well, great news for you, buddy. The HTC One is just a test device for work. I actually got a Moto X.
Although, my guess, based on your tone, is that any device would’ve gotten the same reaction from you. You don’t seem judgmental at all.
—
1) The iPhone does support using the LED for notifications, check your accessibility settings.
2) What do you mean custom sounds for each app? My iPhone makes plenty of custom noises. Just in the last hour, AP News, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and GroupMe have all made different sounds to alert me.
Edited 2014-06-13 01:49 UTC
I think he meant a front-facing LED, not the rear camera flash LED. But yeah, his tone was decidedly harsh and negative, to the point of being awkward.
Anyway, I’m curious what your opinion of Windows Phone is, compared to iOS or Android. I saw passing mention of a BB10 device in the household, and I’m wondering if you’ve ever used a WP device? If so, I’d love to read your opinion of it.
I have used WP, but not for enough time or with enough access to give a real opinion of it. From what I’ve read, it’s just now coming into its own, so it may be a more compelling option in the next 12-18 months. For now, I’d steer clear solely because of the lack of apps. I can replicate my entire iPhone homescreen on Android, but I cannot do it on WP… yet.
I’ve never had an app-centric mindset, so I guess that’s one reason WP appeals to me so much. For me it’s all about the workflow, and for what I do with a phone, WP is about as intuitive and fluid as it can get. Android is a close second, but even on modern flagship phones it still feels just a little too unfinished for my taste. iOS is right out; it’s great on the iPad, just as Android is great on a good tablet, but as a phone it’s just too much like a Fisher Price toy for my taste.
There are some downsides to WP, as there are with any platform; it’s not just a lack of apps but also a lack of polish on some of them. Even first tier apps like Facebook and Pandora are half-finished, slow, buggy nightmares on WP, in stark contrast to the OS itself. Pandora in particular is annoying, as my JVC car stereo supports Pandora’s Accessory function over Bluetooth, but only in the iOS and Android versions of the app. On my HTC 8XT I have to switch the stereo to standard Bluetooth Audio mode, and I lose the custom Pandora controls (thumbs up/down, skip track, change station).
Speaking of that car stereo, it also brings out some of the highlights and pleasures of using a WP device. The voice control on this phone is nearly flawless; it will read the text of SMS messages and allow me to dictate a response, all without touching a thing or taking my eyes off the road, and its voice recognition rivals Google Now. Turn-by-turn navigation is likewise nearly flawless in execution. For some reason I never could get Android to do voice control and recognition correctly, even on a Nexus device.
I guess since I’m not all about the hundreds of thousands of useless apps — and believe me, there are tons of those in the WP Store as well — I can find solace in a phone OS that doesn’t feel rough around the edges (Android) or too controlling and childish (iOS).
Morgan,
It’s quite interesting reading your comments about iOS/Android/WP. It’s exactly the thinking I took which landed me onto WP (ultimately).
iOS user since 07. But today I enjoy Android on my Nexus tablet, WP on my phone, and iOS almost nowhere. It all just kinda happened since I tend to concentrate on how I get things done rather than what app is missing.
And, as a counterpoint, I enjoy the iOS/OSX ecosystem everywhere between multiple devices and computers….syncs easily, is smooth and reliable…..ymmv.
No, just the HTC One. The Moto X itself isn’t really that great, but at least people don’t buy it for no other reason than it is shiny. And because I know you’re going to ask:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/30/5764836/motorola-shutting-down-us…
Yeah, a notification LED on the back… that’s handy
And a battery drain as well.
According to one iOS dev I asked, 3rd party apps are not allowed to access the built-in iOS notification tones in their apps, so they have to incorporate their own. The end result of this is that a lot of 3rd party apps (including Google Plus and Google Voice) end up using the default iOS Tri Tone, with no option to change, which is goddamn annoying. Plus, there’s no multi-color LED or anything to distinguish between which app(s) you have notifications for.
Edited 2014-06-13 02:15 UTC
I’m going to be honest – the LED is okay, and minorly useful, but I wouldn’t base my entire phone buying around that feature. Plus – honestly, I don’t even know which apps make what colour.. I know blue is the regular, and something like Facebook uses green, but most just use the stock.
Ask a few more devs, because that one is an idiot. I’ve got plenty of gripes with Apple and iOS, but that sure isn’t one of them. If an app is bringing custom sounds, it’s because the dev wants it and there’s plenty of that on Android too. And btw, tritone (which is not a tritone in a true musical sense I should add) is no longer the default since iOS 7, though it will remain your default if you’ve upgraded from 6.
Then why is it (or was it) the default tone for apps like Google Voice and Google Plus in iOS7? Is it like older apps that haven’t been updated for iOS7 still using the older iOS6 keyboard?
Exactly. Some apps do not actually play the default sound via the API, i.e. they do not query what the default sound actually is but play the tritone instead.
No. Google “nexus 4 camera reboot” and you will get plenty of hits.
I can back that up; in the brief time I used a Nexus 4, about every third time I tried to take a picture the phone would either freeze or reboot, or the camera app would crash until I rebooted the phone. I looked into it and found it was a common issue without a timeline for a fix. It’s one of the main reasons I stopped using the phone, as the camera is an important tool for me at work.
Edited 2014-06-13 14:51 UTC
I’ve taken loads of pictures on my Nexus 4 and NEVER experienced that. There must be a hardware issue with some batch.
If you’re getting reboots on led supported photos it’s probably phone HW, namely the power circuit not able to deliver enough peak power.
I get the same effect on my Note from time to time, I got this every time on non-original battery.
It only started happening around 4.3 for me. It’s software for sure.
Or software triggering some hardware fault…
And for a good few months opening camera from the lock-screen on iPhone5s would reboot the device immediately. System reboots are very uncommon for Nexus devices, while not uncommon for latest iPhones.
Gotta agree. I was recently playing with a Nexus 10 we have at work. On paper, the thing is more powerful than an iPad (at least pre-Air). Even with 4.4 the experience still sucks on it though. Returning to the home screen often flashes black for a split second before it can manage to load the wallpaper and icons. UI is laggier than iOS, Chrome quite unstable watching videos and often crashed. No thanks.
You had a better experience than I did with my Nexus 7. The bloody screen didn’t last four months before it cracked. I didn’t treat it badly, in fact I had put it down on my desk, walked away from it, and came back and the screen was cracked. No one entered or left the room where I was in that time. My guess is it was a tiny crack that had been there (a flawed device from the start) and it finally gave out. Worse than that, neither Google nor Asus will help me without paying about as much as a new tablet would cost, and they were rude on top of that. They won’t even sell me a replacement screen and digitizer which I’m quite capable of installing myself. The after-market replacements have shitty multi-touch support, and the only way to get one is to buy a broken N7 at about half the cost of a new one. I’m not paying $100 US for something broken, thanks.
iPad on the other hand? Going strong for over a year. Not a single problem and, if there was, I’d not get a brush-off from Apple. True it would cost something to get it fixed as the warranty has expired, but they are at least willing to listen to the problem before outright blaming me and hanging up. That’s one thing I will give to Apple, top-notch customer service at least for English speakers. I don’t know how they are in other languages… might be a fun way to practice my language skills to call Apple in Sweden.
Thats your testimonial, I own both the 1st and 2nd gen Nexus 7 and both have been rock solid. That includes development use under extremely heavy processing loads.
I’m wondering if the latter two are the cause of the first.
My Nexus 4 has been just as stable as my Nokia N900 (though your first love always holds a special place in your heart ;-). But I don’t run wacky Unix processes or develop more than the occasional Python script on my phone. I also may just be lucky, of course.
In fact, while I bought the Nexus 4 for $200 off-contract specifically so I could dual-boot Ubuntu eventually, I still haven’t. My phone is just too central to my life for geek experiments. To my surprise (maybe I’m getting old), I value stability above tech prowess in devices on which I rely frequently.
My collections of cheap ARM bareboards were born to be abused, of course. 😉
Honestly, I like my Android phone in some ways, but it’s a PITA sometimes. Music applications – playback and creation – are nowhere near close what is on the iPhone, and they won’t be anytime soon because Android does not manage its latencies nearly as well. Where’s the like of AniMoog? Loopy? Thumbjam? There’s a reason for that.
The other thing is that I have fits syncing real playback and rating information between my computer and phone. Yes, iTunes is a beast, but its integration is a strength too. What music player do you want? Spotify? PowerAmp? Must you choose good quality playback and equalizing over integration? Are there smart playlists? Ratings being synced both ways? Per-song equalization? I’m sad to say that while iTunes is bloated, the Android/Linux counterparts still miss the things I care about most.
Of course, you probably should go for a Nexus or a custom ROM, just to avoid those battery-guzzling bloatware applications most Android phones are loaded down with.
That said, smart actions and Velis auto-brightness have made battery life far more manageable than I’ve had on any previous phone. It’s a shame about the other stuff.
99% of users don’t really give a damn about 20 or 100 ms audio latency. Honestly, it’s like this constant annoying tune from the pseudo-audiophiles…
Nobody even half credible would complain about 20ms latency. Nobody serious would waste their time with 100ms latency devices. Audio production on an iphone/ipad, or android device is strictly for entertainment purposes.
Not so. iPads are in use in professional music performances now thanks to apps like Loopy. I have yet to see a single Android device go there, and there’s a reason for that. Audio performance and recording means low-latency or real time kernels, and if someone screws up while building a VM-based stack over top of the kernel, that platform is out of the running.
There’s no sign that Android is fixing this.
You won’t see it being used on a real tour and you won’t see it being used in a professional recording studio. Regardless of someone screwing around with Loopy on an ipad during some performance, tablet/smartphone audio is a toy/gimmick. Nothing more.
In the performance audio world, meaning live performance and/or recording, latency is serious business. This is why you have dedicated & specialized audio hardware. Tablets and smartphones are neither designed nor well-suited for the needs of professional audio. They’re good for people who like to screw around with audio and/or record stuff in their bedroom.
I’m sure you could find an example of a musician using an iPad during a performance but back to the that 99% of users point…
Somebody somewhere has, sure. People have hacked Nintendo Gameboys (among other things like that) to give them access to the sid chips, and have used those in one way or another. Tinkering is present in any field. Novelties will always be there but just being in existence doesn’t qualify it as anything beyond that.
And that’s perfectly fine. iOS dominates there, and let it dominate. It’s built better in media production.
But some people then extrapolate that to the point that the whole platform is crap, because building audiovisual media production apps on Android is much harder.
You clearly don’t know anything about music then. Low audio latency is critical for creating music. This has nothing to do with audiophiles, any human creating music will notice 100ms immediately. Basic interaction design.
And you clearly don’t know anything about what people do with their devices. People that professionally do music production use iOS, because it’s the best.
But this crap about how important 100 vs 20 ms latency is coming from people that have nothing better to do.
Here’s the dirty secret – it’s exceptionally unimportant to 99% of users.
People doing music professionally don’t use iOS at all because ipads & iphones in the music world amount to nothing more than toys/gimmicks/novelties.
Latency is extremely important and addressed by specialized hardware, as I’ve already pointed out. 20ms is fine in production and live performance. 100ms is not. The only type of person who thinks thats crap is someone who has no clue what they’re talking about.
Yes, because 99% of users aren’t doing music professionally and 99% of users are clueless on these subjects.
In 2013 I was saving enough to go all out Apple, from iPhone to iPad to a 27 inch iMac, I wanted the entire ecosystem. Approaching Fall 2013, my desire kinda waned and I ultimately postponed my purchases. In early 2014 my brother got a first gen Galaxy Note as a gift, he liked it but wasn’t ready to use it, considered it to be too big. He preferred his Blackberry or the iPhone 4S he had prior to selling it. So he decided to let me keep it and use it until he was ready to take it back or sell it. I decided to go for it and installed my SIM.
Its ironic, because it looks like Android is now the Windows of Smartphone OSs.
Since then, I have honestly asked myself what I have been missing on iOS? Nothing pretty much. I own an iPod Touch 3rd gen I was using since 2009 for my mobile needs. To be honest, Android just feels more powerful in your hands. Its like a desktop OS done right on a mobile OS. I was just amazed, downloading music, videos with apps that I am regularly accustomed to using on my Windows PC. I could easily find them on the device use the different apps to view and listen the media I download using Chrome for Android.
Another thing I like is the centralized notifications, quick access to Wi-Fi, no digging through menus. What I don’t like is the keyboard in Android 4.1. iOS has a way more intelligent keyboard, I am thinking about installing Swift to see if it will change the experience. Apart from this, the Notification Center is a big plus. Settings on the device can be intimidating and confusing at times, I prefer a lot of the Settings options on iOS.
As with Samsung, there two of the same type of apps on the device and that’s a minor problem. Overall, Android has certainly caught up, just as Windows caught up with the Mac OS at 3.0 and surpassed it at Windows 95.
With all the essential mobile apps available: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Microsoft apps, I use Outlook.com, BBM, honestly, why do I need iOS again? Yes, the iPhone is a beautiful device, but at the end of the day, its about using the device and much of that is software. Making a post FB using an iPhone vs a Android device is no different. Which ultimately comes down to cost.
Money talks, the local cellular carrier in my country is selling cheap Alcatel Android phones for what would be $69 US with 3 months free 4G Internet. You would be shocked the amount teachers and students I see everyday with one. They are doing their FB, Tweeting, Instagram, Yahoo Mail just fine on it. Its not about the OS for them, its about the apps and as far as that is concerned, the majority of what persons need are on Android.
For me it’s simple – Apps.
I dislike the way Apple’s runs it’s ecosystem, iOS annoys me on a daily basis, and the recent deal with that shit headphone company has made me feel dirty each time I pick up my iPhone.
But the quality and variety of the apps available in the iOS App Store is a lot better than Android’s. A lot, lot better. Most of them look a lot better too – even Google’s apps for iOS tend to look better than they do for Android.
People can talk about freedom all they want, but to me, the ability to go and download an app without having to worry about whether it works on my device is more liberating than anything Google Play has ever done for me.
That Beats deal still makes me wanna puke blood though.
Edited 2014-06-13 03:11 UTC
You are not an iPhone4/4S user then?
All the apps on the app store work on the iPhone 4, which runs the latest iOS. Of course except games which need more power than the iPhone 4 has.
So… In fact, not all the apps. And as an iPhone4S user, I can attest that a lot of apps run like their game counterparts – like s**t. And iOS7 made them worse…
To each their own, but for me, if you want a consumer system controlled more by a corporation than yourself, go Apple for handhelds and Windows for laptops & desktops. If you want more freedom and fewer controls & restraints, go Android for handhelds and Linux for laptops & desktops. I’m not into that consumer stuff built for planned obsolescence.
Or seen another way: If you want to have a device that is designed to serve you more ads, get Android. If you want a device designed to be a good device (and thus get you to buy more devices), get iPhone.
As for planned obsolescence, Apple is much better at supporting their old hardware than any Android manufacturer including Nexus devices, so that is just plain wrong.
Seconded. Even the iPhone 3gs got iOS 6, a good while after the Nexus One stopped getting any updates at all and the N1 had better specs.
Except storage, you mean. N1 – 512mb. 3gs 8GB+
That is barely true. My Galaxy Nexus after 2.5 years and skipping last update runs as smoothly as it did on launch day. My iPhone4, however, runs like a dying horse…(I’ve had my iPhone4 for 3 years)
I curate a lot of my music into Playlist on iTunes, so far I have not gotten that over, I know its possible, but I have not gotten around how to do so.
Phones like HTC One or Xiaomi MI2 are incredible even better than Apple phones IMHO… but for me Android OS is a big fat no no, It’s too complicated, bloated with features that I don’t care. And the worst part: you are obligated to use Google services for everything. Sorry Google Inc, but thanks, I don’t need your generosity.
I love two things in a product: simplicity and openness. iOS gives me only the first one but I will keep an eye on FirefoxOS, it’s a very interesting project and _really_ open (not a Google-trap like Android). HTC + Firefox OS could be a killer product for me.
In the meantime, I will keep using Apple phones because they “just work” (for now at least, because Apple began to add stupid features like Android too… and that’s a really bad symptom).
This is quite obviously completely and utterly not true. Running Android without Google services is super-easy – custom ROM, don’t flash GApps, but instead pick one of the million other application stores, or just sideload everything.
Try running iOS without Apple services. Good luck with that.
Indeed, my first Android phone was a Motorola Cliq, which positively sucked running the stock MotoBlur ROM. I flashed CM7 and used alternatives to Google apps for everything, via F-Droid and Aptoide. It still wasn’t a great phone, but it was usable at that point.
Yes, for sure. When I used an xperia play as my daily phone it was nice to be able to flash between different ROMS.
However one point I think you have to keep in mind is that your average Joe phone user is not going to be able to flash his phone nor would they likely know you can on some phones. So with the stock Google/name your manufacture GUI, you are going to be tied to Google services.
Honestly there is a risk either way but seeing how Apple controls the devices and the software and the cloud services and is not in business solely to make money off my data, I prefer Apple.
Not only your average Joe. I’m a developer (including custom Linux kernels on ARM), but I’d rather do my actual development instead of tweaking the device I bought for phone calls and web browsing.
You are not being serious… following your logic, iOS is very open too if you do a jailbreak!!
Regarding the usage of iOS without Apple services… I don’t have problem with Apple services really. Apple business is selling phones and headphones not people’s privacy.
Google is whose trying to be Skynet here, our privacy is their product. I don’t need their free “goodies”. No thanks.
BTW I will be very glad to switch to Firefox OS when it’s done, a real open OS without creepy companies with hidden agendas behind it.
In the meantime, iOS is the only sane choice for me. I prefer to pay for “just work” products not betas.
Edited 2014-06-14 09:47 UTC
Sorry if you’ve already mentioned it but a 6month follow up to this post would be good.
Ive made the jump from iPhone to Galaxy Note2 in 2012, i used ChromeBook, Galaxy Note 10.1 as a replacement for my iPad, however in the end i went back to the iPhone.
I went back for following reasons,
Reliability, my iPhone 5 is a lot more reliable than the Galaxy Note2 (which i had replaced under warranty so it wasn’t just that GN2). It would slow down after a couple of months, almost like a SSD lacking TRIM. It would randomly crash, reboot etc.. Battery life was somedays excellent, other days it wouldn’t last more than half a day, all with the same usage patterns.
There is a bug on Samsung Android phones that when you have headphones plugged in and sound on (i.e. not vibrate) text alerts, facebooks alerts, phone call ring tones etc.. will play through both headphones and the phone itself. I went and spoke to samsung themselves who were able to replicate it on all their phones and offer no way to fix it apart from keep my phone on vibrate (still does it on Galaxy S4’s)
Some of the apps at the time were not as easy to use as the iPhone/iPod version.
Phone aside the next was the eco system, i am pretty much all in the apple ecosystem, i love iTunes, i think it works well managing my media, of course i wish it would run a little faster however it seems to run ok. All my media is converted to itunes format anyway as it’s a good format for my needs, i have pretty small files which look ok on TV but are great for the iPad and iPhone, due to their small file size i can manage a lot of media without having to create a massive storage infrastructure to keep it stored. The MP4 is pretty universal so my Synology NAS will read them fine, my PS3, Samsung Smart TV all read the files fine.
My apps such as Nike Fuelband are locked into Apple, my journal app Day One is locked into it, Things! for project management etc.. These are all apps which are available for my iPhone, iPad and Mac’s, all sync together and all work well.
However this is just my opinion, everyone has a story of why they are using their particular eco-system, personally out of the big three, Apple, Google and Microsoft we have reached a level of maturity, in that whatever platform you pick, youre gonna get your apps, music, email, calendar contacts and social integration, when you consider these core elements which make up the 90% it’s the last 10% which makes the decision, the individual i like doing xyz with my phone, some people like Micro-SD’s some people don’t etc..
Things i miss from Android is the Filesystem, i would love to have the ability to wifi, bluetooth files from/to my device, like it was said in the article it’s like having a pocket desktop computer.
Miss the swype keyboard, however this should hopefully be fixed in iOS8.
Things i wish all phone manufactures would do, stop chasing thinness, i would love my iPhone 5 to be a little thicker at the cost of having a battery which would last 3 days instead of 1.
Good article. Just a quick tip: There’s an option in iTunes to manage music and video manually, without syncing. It’s the first setting I change. So many people doesn’t know this.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1535
That still requires the content to be in iTunes, it just doesn’t require the whole Sync process. I’m trying to get my kids’ content out of my iTunes, particularly huge movies that have to be converted into an iTunes friendly format, then stored in my Library.
I hate iTunes as well (at least the PC and Mac side application), however there is one upside to it supporting a limited range of formats on the mobile device itself, and that is hardware acceleration. True, Android can play damn near anything you throw at it. So can iOS, with the right apps such as Goodplayer (though getting data on and off some of those apps is more complicated than it needs to be). However, what I quickly realized was that if I attempt to play a format that is not hardware accelerated (regardless of platform) I get a massive battery drain in the case of videos. I knew it would drain the battery faster, but just how much faster came as quite a shock. It’s much less so for audio only media, of course. However, without looking up your hardware specs for your Android device (if they even tell you) you really have no idea what formats can be accelerated. It varies from device to device. At least with iDevices, it’s quite clear cut which formats are supported by the hardware and which ones are not and you can decide what to convert and what to leave unchanged.
The thing if an iDevice does not like the container, it insists on completely converting the media file, regardless if the encoding is the same.
Either way most common formats are hardware accelerated, so there shouldn’t be any need for that nonsense on most files.
It doesn’t if you select to manually manage your devices. It just needs iTunes to mount the iOS FS so that media can be copied over. I just drag and drop from Finder onto my device’s icon in iTunes after having deselected autoimporting into iTunes. Not a single piece of media has been added into my iTunes database.
Maybe it doesn’t work as well under Windows but in OSX there is no problem.
That’s a partial solution only. I still can’t pull my media back off the device unless it was purchased through the iTunes Store. Plus, only certain types of media can be managed that way (music, videos, and photos). Plus might I remind you that files must be converted into appropriate formats? This is not real drag and drop management.
Brings up an interesting question though, why the hell can’t we just mount the damn thing in the Finder? All this tight integration and yet they haven’t managed something that obvious.
There are quite a few third party apps that allow you to move data off your iDevice, such as the venerable Senuti to iPhoneView or iExplorer on Windows. These also access things like contacts, notes etc.
The reason it won’t mount in the Finder is that iOS FS is encrypted (I think) and the decrypter is embedded within iTunes or hacked versions in third party apps.
Edited 2014-06-15 15:30 UTC
Not all data though, and there’s no guarantee these third-party apps will continue to be developed or support new devices and os versions. Most of these apps still don’t let me move audiobooks on and off my devices, for example.
Your timing seems totally wrong.
I would have waited until some new features/services from Google. Compared to what Apple showed last week, it seems iOS finally implemented what was still missing and added some pretty interesting stuff.
BTW, you said Android, but on which hardware?
After a LOT of research, I decided on the Moto X. Yes, it’s a year old.
The Nexus 5 and HTC One are just a step too big for one handed use, which automatically disqualifies anything 5″ or above, so bye-bye OnePlus One, G3, X+1, etc. I really wanted 4.7″ for now. Informal reviews show everyone that I know who has one still loves it, so I’m giving it a shot.
If you want to use those “full of life” widgets.
Back when I had an Android phone they were fun – “who’s eaten 90% of my battery this morning” fun.
Also, I really hope you’re not getting a vendor skinned phone if you like UI consistency.
As a switcher to iOS after 2 Android phones, my opinion is that all that widget/notification bling is just useless after the initial “oooh shiny” feeling fades. On the contrary, I have my phone set up to not f*ing bother me except for phone calls. It’s much better for your concentration than having a facebook-like deluge of notifications and pretty widgets
As a app developer, I have currently an iPad2, an iPhone5c, 4 android phones and a Nexus7 tablet. I do like the iOS ecosystem for the hardware quality and for the smooth, consistent way of working. But some aspects are annoying or outdated. The virtual keyboard works OK if you don’t know anything else, but once you experienced a Android keyboard, you suddenly realize that the iOS implementation is mediocre. (This should be fixed in iOS 8). As a power user I have some other pain points in iOS: no way to define a reply-to address in the mail app, no way to define a SSID in the personal hotspot, lack of widgets, iCloud. The last one is a real PITA to work with if you also have non Apple devices.
The main issue with Android are the non removable software shipped by the phone manufacturer, and the mediocre quality of some apps and widgets. Some widgets are really great, productive and not battery unfriendly, but others are just shit. It takes time to find out which ones are good, The one I really like is Wifi network chooser. It takes on iOS 5 times as long to choose a an available wifi network if you are a public place where you haven’t used Wifi before.
I don’t see the update cycle for Android Phones as a big issue. The phone is in most case faster replaced/lost/broken than the need for an OS upgrade. However for tablets this is defenitely a negative point.
So you’re an app developer with 5 android devices but haven’t worked out you can delete system apk files and they’re gone? (root access required)
I am always amazed to see how some people feels the needs to justify their own choice and try to explain why this one is better than the other one.
I am a 100% iOS and OS X user, but I also know this simple fact: whether it is iOS, Android, WP or whatever modern mobile OS, you ALWAYS will be able to find better this or worst that in any OS. And most of the time, this is a completely purely subjective opinion based on your own expectations (and it is just fine this way).
I did choose Apple’s ecosystem and I don’t see the point of telling people why (unless they ask me in which case I always insist on the subjectivity of this choice). One of the reason is that I don’t like Google’s business model which has nothing to do with Android: should I expect that anybody care about that?
Moreover, the strength of one OS in someone’s eye may be its weakness for someone else: is it that difficult to understand that some people actually prefer a curated walled garden as some prefer a formal garden to a landscape garden? Does it make a landscape garden better because it is more “free”?
Edited 2014-06-13 12:14 UTC
I’m always amazed why people like to read things they hate and then complain about having to read things they hate.
I’m not surprised at all. Part of the draw of websites like Slashdot, Ars Technica, and OSNews is the comments section, where people can discuss their opinions. It’s fun, even if 90% of it is whining and bitching.
Dude, you came to a site, read an article called “Editorial” that *starts* with the sentence, “I’m not trying to convince you to switch.”
It’s my personal chronicle that several people I know wanted to read. If you don’t, kindly pass by. I mean, why are you on OSNews at all if you don’t want to discuss the merits of different OSes?
Or busy with more important things to worry about.
I’ve said it many times before: If I want an Android phone, I’ll read a dozen reviews and compare specs and look at the vendor’s reputation for pushing OS updates, etc., etc. And then I can pick the BEST phone. On the other hand, if I buy an iPhone, I’m buying a GOOD phone. Not the best, but I can guarantee that I’m NOT buying a BAD phone. And by doing this, I’ve saved myself the effort of reading all those reviews. Instead, I can spend my time doing research or pushing code to GitHub.
For the same reason, I use a Mac on my desktop. As a developer and researcher, I prefer Linux (so I have plenty of Linux servers I get into remotely). But with a Mac, it just takes less work to deal with basic administrative tasks. I remember when it was a horrendous pain to get Linux to work on wifi, and even if you could get it to connect, there was no auto-discovery; you had to configure everything manually. Yes, Linux distros are WAY better about that now. But at that time, I was using a Mac, so I managed to mostly avoid that issue. In other words, I never had to waste time and hair-pulling on that problem.
After ~3 years with Android, I finally got to understand the Apple ecosystem major value.
It’s not the HW.
It’s not the OS itself.
It’s not the number of apps.
It’s not the integration.
It’s not the content(nonexistent in my country).
It’s the developer culture that dictates that all devices get properly supported and usability tested in context of each device peculiarities (incl. physical size). The sheer amount of work that it takes to support Android variability has demoralized app devs to the point the quality standards within the ecosystem are really low compared to similar IOS apps.
Event signature Android apps show annoying bugs from time to time.
If there would be number of 1st tier devices that devs care about 1st order, I’d settle for that, unfortunately such tie only exists between Google devices and Google apps and that’s a too little.
Edited 2014-06-13 13:04 UTC
Nice reading, Have used Android before but after I bought a BlackBerry z10 I can’t go back. I only get mad trying to use my wife’s Sony z1 and more trying to do something on a IPhone.
On my phone I just swipe with my finger on the screen, no button click to unlock, close a app or anything.
Swipe up and right you get in to your mail/messages. Only swipe up will show running app. Swipe down will show your other status. If the phones locked you can still read messages if you click on them.. It just works. z10 has no fast hardware but the os make’s it fast. Thes days I also can run Android app without converting them (I do need the files thou).
Before 10.2.1 there was a lot of problems and with 10.3 it will even get better
So test a BlackBerry
I wish my carrier supported Blackberry phones, I’d definitely get a Z10 to weigh against my 8XT. I was a Blackberry user before Android was commonplace, and I’ve always been comfortable with them. I can only imagine how nice the new BB10 OS is.
Agreed! They really did a nice job with the interface and it’s the one feature I wish they had on the iPhone.
I love Apple. I’ll never change. What’s wrong with me reading these change articles? No more. I’m done!!
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving Apple and/or their products. Use what works for you, and don’t take the article to heart as it is one man’s experience, not your own. This article’s comments are full of Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and even Blackberry users, who all get what they need out of their chosen platform.
Not one of these platforms is superior overall to another; only when you drill down to the individual user’s wants and needs do you find one coming out on top of the rest.
And if the day comes that you realize you prefer something else to iOS, don’t feel bad about that either. Change can be good, even if it’s uncomfortable.
In addition, a persons previous favorite may not be same when it’s time to get something new and you look at the current offerings. It reminds me of the Forbes top earners list – the names on the list are usually the same but their position/ranking varies from year to year.
> better than Android, arguably, given the switch button is on the keyboard
You can configure Hacker’s Keyboard (available on F-Droid as well as the Play Store) to display a language-switch button, as long as you have all the languages installed. Hacker’s Keyboard’s main claim to fame, however, is the ability to display *every single key* of a standard PC keyboard in landscape mode. This makes using SSH apps on Android tolerable on a phone, and moderately useful on a tablet, without requiring an external keyboard.
I don’t think that’s what was meant. It wasn’t a language switch button that was wanted but an input method switch button. iOS and Android both already have switch language buttons on their stock keyboard if you’ve set up more than one language. You can configure the google keyboard to have an input method switch button as well, but whether you’ll be able to have one to switch again depends on the keyboard to which you’ve moved.
The Google keyboard has actually had this for a while. You just need to go into its advanced settings and add an input style for any language as “pc” rather than picking qwerty/qwertz/dvorak/etc. Enable that style in your languages list and disable the default for that language and you’re done. No need for a third-party keyboard to get this functionality.
This article definitely hits some of my peeves of the iOS platform on the head. I especially hated that I had to use iTunes to get material onto my old iPhone 4s. Everything from photos and music to even contacts from my previous phone at the time (HTC Hero, which itself was complete utter tripe but that was a fault of Sprint, not the device). The iTunes iDevice management system is very flawed and unintuitive. I can’t count how many times iTunes wanted to resync everything on the phone just because I made a change to the behavior on one of the iDevice’s tabs.
One of my other biggest qualms about the iOS platform is the fact that there is nothing truly customizable about it. Sure you can tweak settings and such for certain applications but you cannot go into the depth of customization that Android and other mobile OSes give you. If I don’t want the flat, over driven white, and painfully bright interface that modern technology companies push on to all our devices like its the solution to all of the industries problems then I can just go into the settings and change it. If there isn’t a setting to change it then I can download an app, extension, or launcher that will let me change it.
I do love being able to install third-party applications on my Galaxy S4. I’m not limited to any one app store or even to the need of having an app store. If I find a game or utility written by an indie-developer then I can install it on my device just by going into the settings and the changing the “Unknown Sources” setting to on. This certainly makes testing apps made by the company I work for a breeze.
Lastly, one of the key things about Android that I like is if I don’t like or agree with the current stock OS on my device then I can flash a custom ROM into my phone and give it a try. If that ROM doesn’t suit my taste then I can just flash a different ROM and keep going until I find one that’s just right.
Now, I’m willing to grant that iOS has some ups to it. With the restrictions in it, there is less of a chance of getting a rogue app that will eat your battery life. With an iOS device the possibility of contracting a virus is slimmer (but not impossible). And if you want an in-depth level of customization you could attempt to jailbreak it and keep your fingers crossed that your phone isn’t part of the X% that bricks in the process. However, the fact of the matter is that iOS has been behind the curve for a long time. When I saw the iOS 8 WWDC conference all I could think to myself was “Congrats, iOS, you’ve finally evolved to the level of Android 2.0 Eclair.”
Edited 2014-06-13 15:32 UTC
Lots of things that could be said about this article, but our opinions on this subject more or less boils down to this:
“On my Android device, when I connect to a certain wifi network, it disables Bluetooth to save battery. When I get in my car and connect to Bluetooth, it turns off wifi.”
This is fundamentally a hack. Why should it be your responsibility to micromanage hardware? Yes on a pure geekery level that can be fun but most people eventually find they have more important things to do. I sometimes use bluetooth. Therefore I leave it enabled. It doesn’t have a huge effect on my iPhone’s battery life and so I don’t have to care about programming my phone to disable it strategically. Same with many other things. I would rather wait for the correct solution to be found than spend my spare time tying together hacks.
Android seems shaping up quite nicely. But the main problem I can see is its fragmentation. Each cellphone provider rollout their updates on their own pace, and most of the time, none at all.
I have got a cheap (as in free) Galaxy SIII mini earlier this year from one of a major Canada cellular provider (Fido). And guess, what, when everyone is saying how great Android 4.4 is, my device come with 4.2. And, it is a new model, so it is not fully supported by CM.
It gets the work done with a long list of annoyance., comparing to an iPhone 4S that my wife owns. You know, even her iPhone 4 runs the latest iOS7. So, I am not sure if the heartbeat bug will affect me as there has been absolutely no update every since I got the android.
Always Androids phones and Tablets here, after Nokia was no longer a viable option. Always Samsung. I actually like some of the impovements Samsung makes to Android, except for the bloatware, but I believe they learned their lesson after the S4
Interesting that you might also have defective Apple hardware, given the crashing issues. Because I’m getting pretty fed up with Android devices. I have owned 6 so far… and 4 of them were defective. Guess which is the only one that continues to work apart from my new replacement device? The ORIGINAL HTC Dream G1. Here’s my Android experience:
* Bought a used HTC Dream G1. Still own it, still works great.
* Bought a Motorola Droid 2 Global. Within a year of light use and **meticulous** care (never dropped or banged up), the touch screen stopped working.
* Bought a Samsung Captivate Glide. Defective out of the box, only works for about an hour before the screen stops responding and eventually the device goes dead. Pull the battery, let it “rest” for a day, put the battery back, and it works for a while and then dies again.
* Bought another Samsung Captivate Glide. After about a year of moderate use and **meticulous** care (never once dropped or banged up, looks like new) it stopped booting up and basically acted like the first Captivate Glide.
* Bought an HTC Inspire 4G. Out of the box, the microphone wasn’t functioning.
Now I’m on a Samsung Galaxy S3. We’ll see how many months this one lasts…
Edited 2014-06-14 04:14 UTC
I love testimonials. I have had the exact opposite experience. I started with the original Droid and have had a Droid 2 Global, HTC Thunderbolt, and now a droid Bionic. The ONLY phone I had any issues with was the HTC. That had the infuriating random reboot bug that it took them nearly a year to correct. Aside from that my devices have been rock solid. Including my 1st and 2nd gen Nexus 7s.
and a more mixed set of feelings I could not have. I love the widgets and the personalization I can do (setting a default browser alone is more than awesome after iOS). I even get Firefox, all synced up with my Mac and most of my extensions to boot. Central account management is awesome as well, though some apps really don’t take advantage of it when they should (ES File Explorer, I’m looking at you). My moto G works well most of the time, but it’s the times when it doesn’t that really make me wonder if I did the right thing or if I’ll end up going back to iOS in the end.
The problems:
* Battery life is erratic in a way that multitasking cannot explain. My battery can literally jump from 60% to 1% in a second, and I’ve calibrated it over and over again. This one looks like a hardware problem, and a common one, with the G so I’ll not lay the blame at Android for this one. Still, it is a serious problem for me when I want to use my phone and suddenly can’t because the battery has unexpectedly died. Motorola/Lenovo are no help (more on that later).
* One more G-specific issue. This one affects all G’s. If your battery does drop to 0, you won’t be able to turn your phone back on even when charged without going into the recovery menu. Note your battery must drop to a flat 0 before this will happen. This is due to the crappy charging circuit they put in there. Couple that with my previous problem though, and ouch. The first time it happened I thought my phone had completely died for no reason at all. Had I not researched the problem I’d have ended up RMA’ing a phone that didn’t need it. Funny how company reps didn’t mention the recovery menu trick when I called about that “dead” phone, eh?
* Now on to Android itself. To put it bluntly, it’s flaky as hell. Even Google’s own apps crash frequently (maps, anyone?). This has happened on every Android device I’ve dealt with, Nexus or otherwise.
* Inconsistent notifications and poor handling of volume controls. When I press the volume button, what will it do? Change the music volume? The ringer/notifications? Both? I’ve never figured out a pattern to what it does. Sometimes it changes the volume of the foreground app when unlocked. Other times, the general media volume (even varies in the same app). Sometimes the notifications volume along with it, sometimes not. Other times, a background app will have somehow grabbed control of the volume buttons and they won’t even control the volume (more on that when I talk about apps). Really? In 2014 we can’t figure out how to make a damn volume button work consistently? At least iOS does that and you can even set whether the buttons will affect notifications or not on that platform. Android? Think again. Too many things fighting for control, even with few things installed.
* Do not disturb. Such a simple concept… yet one completely missing from stock Android. Seriously. Motorola has their version of it called Assist and it works okay, most of the time. on iOS though, I must say, dnd works 100% of the time when scheduled (one of the few things that has worked properly since day one of its introduction). There are varying versions of it across Android device manufacturers and custom roms, and don’t even get me started on the so-called do not disturb apps in the Play store. It’s a clusterfuck.
* Custom roms. That’s everyone’s response is use a custom rom. Screw that. I bought a phone to work for me. I do not work for it. If we feel that custom roms are needed, something has already gone horribly wrong with the core. It’s as simple as that, and I don’t have the time for that crap. A phone needs to be reliable.
* Last but not least, the apps. Oh, the apps. Don’t get me wrong, there are some real gems out there on Android. Apps like Smart Audiobook Player simply don’t exist for iOS, nor does Firefox Mobile (best damn mobile browser I’ve ever used). But most of them are pure crap, and whenever there’s a choice between Android or iOS versions of the same app, the iOS version typically is more stable and has more features. And the adware… I need to vomit just thinking about it. I can hardly find one app that doesn’t ship with ad crapware, and a lot of them have no option to pay to remove it. Add to that, they push ads to the notification center. What the flying fuck? In the app is bad enough, but outside of it too? Any app which does that gets an instant removal from my device, no exceptions. Sadly, it’s getting to be more and more common lately in the Play store. Half the time I can’t even find an app I want (still looking for a good sleep tracking alarm clock that doesn’t fucking silence my alarms when the ringer is turned off). High quality audio recording? No apps for that (oh there are plenty of recording apps, but they don’t even come close to high quality).
* No useful integration with anything other than Bluetooth. No Airplay, which Chromecast doesn’t even come close to replacing. NO charging docks that double as speakers (and no, I do not count the ones that send phone audio over Bluetooth and have a USB port).
When it all comes down to it, and when you add the new features coming in iOS 8 for Mac users (which I am), I’m seeing more cons than pros with the switch. The customization and power is nice, but it feels hollow when I take into account the other issues, and I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle it has become.
I just switched back to my iPhone 5 yesterday, after using a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact for about 3 months. I will not settle for anything but a Google maintained phone, should I ever switch back.
My Sony randomly crashes, hangs, reboots, gets stuck on the lock screen (and you can’t remove the battery or force it to reboot, you just have to wait for 10 minutes until it decides to either do that or start working again). Additionally, I can’t remove some of the crappy Sony apps that I neither want nor need, and updates are slow. There are no stable custom roms for the Z1 Compact at this point (at least that I know of).
There’s a lot of things i actually like about Android, but honestly, Samsung’s phone just make me want to rip my eyes out and while Sony’s phones are attractive, their software simply sucks. And a lot of the Android phones I actually want are not available in Switzerland, or only when they’ve been on the market elsewhere for about 6 months.
Battery life was AWESOME though, 2.5 days usually until I had to recharge. Never got that from a smartphone before. But all in all: Not happy.
There is a big opening for somebody to come out with a mobile OS that takes the world by storm because most folks don’t really LIKE their smartphone, they TOLERATE it.
I bet my last buck that everybody here can name several things they do NOT like about their smartphones, that includes myself. I have an Android phone and I hate how it has “senior moments” where it will just get jerky for a second or two, I think its task management isn’t good, the permissions are watered down and honestly too vague, there are several areas where it could be a LOT better.
So I will keep trying new phones hoping to find a phone OS that works as well as a modern desktop…in fact smartphones in 2014 remind me of desktops circa 1993, they’re buggy,unpredictable, and just feel primitive compared to what we’ve had on the desktop. Talking to folks there are plenty that would be happy to switch, just offer something truly better than the other guys and we’ll happily jump on board.
Yeah, it’s true, but when people are given an option, they don’t always take it.
For example I hate touchscreen, I would rather have a hardware keyboard.
But it turns out, manufacturers created them, but nobody bought them. They flopped. Now to be honest, I think it might have been a timing issue.
The problem is, even if you make great products for a good price it doesn’t mean your sales will be great.
With you, all the way. I still miss my Nokia E72 for that reason.
Another big +1 to both of these points. Many things drive me crazy about my Galaxy S3 with Cyanogenmod.
And yes, please, SOMEBODY please design another QWERTY Android phone. I would buy it in a heartbeat, and I know I’m not the only one.
Unfortunately people like us who are more productive on real keyboards are about to be completely out of luck. I don’t think there are plans for another qwerty slider from any of the major Android phone makers, going forward.
I still prefer my HTC 8XT to the Motorola Photon Q I had been using, but I sorely miss the Q’s excellent keyboard. It’s definitely the best mobile keyboard I’ve ever used.
Most people maybe, but I love my BlackBerry Z10. The only downside is that it lacks native Skype and Viber applications (and I prefer not having to use Android applications – simply because they’re always way worse than their iOS/BlackBerry 10 equivalents, and they also look out of place).
A feature, don’t use it. I am an Android user and there are features I find unreliable or annoying. Instead of whining about it, I don’t use them. How difficult is that?
Been there…. switched to Android.
Had mostly ZERO problems with the operating system, other than maybe the OS felt a “tiny” bit more sluggish and less smooth than iOS, but it was hardly noticeable. Other than that the OS was fine.
What took me back to iOS was the apps. The APP QUALITY is 100000x poorer on Android. For the same class of app doing the same function, the iOS Apps are much much better quality. This is often even true of apps when the same company makes both apps on both platforms.
The difference in app quality, and usability was night and day better on iOS.
What is interesting is I expected the opposite with the developers having more ‘freedom’ to do what they wanted on Android.
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