You know, I’m prepared to bet that you don’t see even a slight contradiction in making a snarky comment whilst simultaneously accusing others of being snarky.
Anyway, just for shits and giggles could you expand on the “facts” you allude to? Are you really claiming that iOS doesn’t have a more walled garden approach than Android? I want to browse a usb hard disk, maybe copy some music or films across, it’s just a case of plug and go, and if it’s an AVI or whatever I can pick from a good dozen media players. Are you seriously arguing that the iOS infrastructure is that open? I’m not talking about UI tweaks or replacing loaders, I’m just talking about using a device for day to day stuff.
I have to ask what point you’re attempting to make because the article you link to is precisely fuck all support for your claims. It’s a 2 year old op ed that praises Android as an open OS but raises concerns the carriers may lock down features:
“My point is not to bash Google — what they’ve created is an excellent mobile operating system. My point is that the same “openness” that Android users are touting as a key selling point of the OS could very well end up being its weak point. If you don’t think Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are going to try to commandeer the OS in an attempt to return to their glory days where we were all slaves to their towers, you’re being naive.”
And even the concern over carrier restrictions is moot when Google is selling the Nexus 4 direct for under $300, and other manufacturers are selling similar price/spec unlocked handsets.
So, just to recap: what the fuck are you talking about?
Android is open. Just because some manufacturers lock the bootloader and won’t release the code for their hardware drivers doesn’t mean that you can’t download the latest AOSP codebase and compile your own Android binary that will work just fine on the latest Nexus. Plus it’s a pretty rare phone that doesn’t get rooted, and I’m not aware of any volume sellers that don’t end up getting supported for custom ROMs like CyanogenMod.
Sorry, don’t mean that it’s a rare individual phone that doesn’t get rooted. I mean that it’s a rare model of phone that doesn’t have a published method of rooting.
I don’t hate Apple, I like the look and feel of their stuff but they make it very difficult for me to become a casual user of their products.
I was a potential buyer of an ipad until I read more and realised what a fart-on it would be to use it in conjunction with my existing equipment.
I can’t install itunes, can’t drag and drop files, can’t play some of my videos without converting etc.
I bought a nexus 7 instead, I fired it up, entered my gmail address, dragged over the files I wanted to play and bingo! all done in 5 minutes flat.
The walled-garden approach is fine for those that are willing to buy into that structure wholesale but for such as me who just want a device to simply work with my current set-up it is would be a bit of a pain. This will probably just solidify the barriers that prevent users swapping from one “world” to the other.
Pretty much. I don’t understand why people still fight about this. Use what you like. They’re both powerful operating systems. I came from a lifetime of DOS & Windows PC use to Mac in 2006, and the Mac, for me, was the first time using a computer really became a joy. I love the way it works and feels; it’s plenty customizable for my tastes; I’ve never had to deal with getting rid of a computer virus (yes, I know eventually I will have to, but six years of malware free operation has already paid for itself many times over); I prefer geeking out in the UNIX-like terminal vs. the Windows command prompt, etc. I also like uniformity of design. But I would never tell someone that Mac and OS X or Apple products in general are “better” or inherently easier to use than Windows. Use both; see what you like.
Because your favourite multi-billion-dollar corporate exploits the broken US patent system and files bogus lawsuits against my favourite multi-billion-dollar corporation and seeks injunctions banning the sale of my favourite m-b-d corporation’s products instead of competing in the marketplace and striving to produce the superior product?
It’s rather galling to see the Apple fanboys constantly sledging Android and making it out to be an inferior product when it actually has Apple feeling threatened enough that they’ve resorted to gaming the legal system to try to shut it down. The stupid misinformation the fanboys spread is irritating, but I’m sure they do it because deep down they know that Apple can’t win on the facts - that the products are equally matched in terms of just about everything except with Apple you’re paying a premium for nothing extra and a walled garden to boot.
Apple likes make people do everything their way. They don’t just want you to buy an iPhone, they want you to buy an iMac for at home, a Macbook Pro for your work computer, an iPhone, an Apple TV for entertainment and get your kids Nanos for music. And Apple products are notorious for being easy to use with each other - Windows users often don’t like iOS products, but that’s because they are meant to work with OS X.
They are betting on their previous users to keep on using their products and for iOS to bring in PC users.
I was staying out of this up until now, but now I’m ready and willing to say “eat it.” I’ve been a Mac user since the Mac Plus days, and my first Mac was a Macintosh SE (and I’ve had Commodores, Amigas, every flavor of Windows except ME, Linux, etc., along the way). I’m not trying to brag, but simply indicate that I know and can get stuff done on pretty much any readily available machine throughout history. And still, I say “eat it.”
My first Palm V needed third party software to do everything on my Mac as it would do on Windows. My Epson digital camera needed a special serial driver after Epson dropped support. I needed clunky solutions for my first Kodak digital camera. I had to buy third party commercials drivers for my first Inkjet, and could only use expensive PostScript laser printers because even though PCL was on the network, HP never thought it was worth it to write Mac drivers.
So if your Apple device doesn’t work perfectly in Windows, then eat it. Except, I’m not really sure what doesn’t work – my iPhone syncs to Outlook 2010 on Win7 much better than Outlook 2011 on my Macs. Other than photo and music management (which I do on my non-work, Mac OS X machine), Windows operability is superior in every way compared to the Palm V days.
Oh, neither my Windows nor Mac machine (nor my iStuff) will play a lot of video files out of the box. In fact, there’re a lot of things that none of them will do right out of the box. That’s why we have application stores.
Given what we had to go through in the past, it really seems that today, we have no reason to cry, point fingers, or disparage one solution over another. Either it suits your purpose, or can be made to suit your purpose, or can’t. Time to look for another solution that works for you.
Well. Got my new iPad 4 and got me also a nice little Nexus 7 as people here were so pursuasive.
Now, not had the N7 long but I can compare and contrast the setup experience.
With my ipad it was a matter of a few seconds to set it up and start it recreating my old ipad from the cloud backup. Leave it to get on with it and when I come back, there it is. My old ipad, all the apps, all the folders they were set up in, all my mail and other settings all there. Everything ready to go.
Nexus experience. Log into my account. Then grope my way through the store interface to find a list of my old android apps. Select each one to manually download. Delete from the list of apps those that, even though I’ve paid for them, don’t work with this version of android. Go into each app that requires setting and passwords and re-enter all the data. Mail server settings etc etc.
Then - reset the apps and widgets onto the screen I had them on on the previous device.
Finally - go to Store and replace missing apps.
Now I’ve no doubt the N7 is a fine bit of kit but setting up the new ipad was a trivial, pain-free process. With android it was a total pain in the ass and I don’t have several apps I used to have. Ones I’ve paid for.
This is why people like me are happy to pay a premium to Apple. It just works.
Well, fair play to you you gave it a go. I could respond with a long description of how similarly hassle free my Nexus 4 was for transferring apps, contacts and everything else from my Nexus 7 but the fact is if the way iOS works suits you personally better then that’s all there is to it.
Would this be a bad time to mention that I’m currently playing with Blackberry 10, and it looks fantastic?
So weird that the Nexus is such a PITA to set up. When I upgraded my phone I put my gmail address and username in and it did everything else. Reading your description of your struggles is like watching an infomercial. There must be an easier way!
If you have a Google account and use Gmail, Google tasks, etc then moving from one Android to another is simple. Apps I don’t think are as easy but generally when I upgrade I start with a clean slate anyway.
My apps auto installed. They were definitely that easy. I find the whole description of the OMG SO HARD Android installation so implausible simply because my upgrades have been simple, painless and straight forward. All that poster’s anecdotes about how terrible their Android experiences have been run completely counter to my own anecdotal experience, to such an extreme that I question their good faith. Reading that recap was like watching someone struggling to use a blanket.
Oh, it seems a perfectly plausible account of signing into a Google account last used with a smartphone running Eclair and finding a lot of ancient stuff that doesn’t work well or at all in Jelly Bean.
I don’t find it a very compelling anecdote, however. I had a horrible time setting up extremely basic stuff on an iPad 2, and yet I can flash a new custom rom on my Galaxy Nexus and have it tweaked six ways from Sunday 15 minutes later. Clearly Android just works and iOS is horrible. :dubious:
(Checks forum). Screw you. So bad faith I spend £250 just to troll random strangers on the internet.
That is what the set up was like moving from a motorola phone and their own old version of android to the N7 tablet. No recreation of desktop, no auto-install of purchased (as opposed to default apps), no automatic configuration of all my mail accounts, facebook and other settings and a list of apps (including bbc iplayer and amazon mobile which neither goole store nor th amazon app store will install as they are ‘not compatible with your device’) that do not run on the N7 yet. Which I mention just to point out Android is not a ‘run everything’ system and apps are not all interoperable.
I had to go down the list of my purchased apps and press the install icon on each. Probably updating from one Nexus to another would go better but this was from a phone running a company variant of an older version of android to the latest Jelly Bean.
And to repeat -screw you if you don’t believe me.
I like the N7, especially as it has Google maps and is way cheaper than the ipad mini. It will serve as my road-warrior device as I can slam in a cheap giff-gaff card.
The speakers are much better than the ipad and Google Play had all my music sitting and waiting. The screen is also extremely nice.
I, like most consumers, neither know nor care what ‘flashing a custom rom’ means other than ‘techie sounding stuff we don’t want to have to deal with and probably couldn’t if our lives depended on it.’ I’ve no interest in tweaking anything. All I’m interested in is as wide a range of useful apps running as simply as possible in the interface supplied.
This isn’t the ninteen eighties where we had to wrestle with drivers and config files to get stuff to work. These are consumer devices for ordinary consumers where the idea is to make things as simple and as straight-forward as possible.
And you will note I’m not comparing setting up new devices - I’m comparing updating 2 devices. Of course you have to set up a new ipad from scratch if when you did it predates the icloud backup system, which is pretty new. I have never used itunes to set up a new ipad from old settings, which it should be able to do. But I’m guessing that as itunes is a useless piece of shit that wouldn’t be easy.
Motorola Android was every bit as much a walled garden as apple in terms of backing up and restoring. No doubt it would work fine if I was setting up a new motorola phone from the motorola backup, but I wasn’t.
But now I finally have a nice little mini and hopefully upgrading to another nexus will be as simple as upgrading an ipad. If I never have to figure out how to configure email servers in an app again it’ll be a day too soon.
That’s not an Android issue, it’s a Motorola issue. That said, you could easily have rooted your phone and backed up as much as you wanted to, then moved it straight onto your new tablet. What you’re complaining about is the equivalent of buying a new Windows 8 laptop and complaining that it doesn’t automatically have all the files and programs from your old XP one, despite the fact that you didn’t store them anywhere other than the internal hard drive.