Apple is terrible with built-in software, why not buy themselves out of a problem?

[C DM]

Entitlement from Apple users without a care about any actual details...probably nothing new unfortunately.

 

[gglittle]

I feel the same: Apple's Maps still sucks - the other stock Apple apps are OK IMO. The irony is that I sense that Apple did try to but themselves out of an sticky situation by purchasing geographic information on POI's, but they chose the wrong companies and got poor information as a result.

Not for me. Out of the box, Apple Maps identified where I live. Google, after 8 years had my house one mile to the west, and I was still getting calls from delivery and service folk that could not find the address because they were using Google.

 

[cynics]

IT WOULD TAKE BOTH PARTIES TO FIND A SOLUTION! i never admitted otherwise. your problem is this sentence "Apple supports email standards" gmail is e-mail and by definition does not support the e-mail standard that the MASS majority of the world uses. GMail recently surpassed Hotmail. pretty shocking. Actually your problem is i suggested Apple negotiate with Google to figure this out which seems to assume that there would be some monetary compensation as if that's just horrenodus. FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT APPLE! DON'T SIT DOWN AND TAKE IT FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS!




How is it in google's court again? What basketball game are we even playing? This is a VERY VERY simple equation. When Apple didn't have a maps app? They worked with google to get google maps integrated. When Apple needed a search engine for Siri? They worked with Microsoft to get Bing integrated. If Apple needed passport? They'll work with businesses to get that implemented. See a pattern? Apple picks and chooses partners to give us an experience. I hope you can see where I'm going.




Ah, I love the apple defense force coming out of you. Definition of insanity isn't anything you've stated actually. I can tell you personally that no product is perfect. I suppose being honest with myself is the only crime.

I really don't have time to respond to the rest of your post. I'm merely suggesting a solution to a problem that, perhaps only I face, although I doubt it. THey are selling millions of phones, they ost certainly don't have to appease me. But the very thought that what I'm suggesting is outrageous is BAFFLING to me since they've done it historically to get functionality we need to us. I'm just not blind to see it.

But don't let me stop you. Feel free to pick my argument apart with your Apple goggles. God knows it's hard to see anything else through the lenses.

I can understand your frustration if gmail push was that important too you but maybe YOU should do something about it?

I believe there are apps that might work with push. You can get an email address that supports it. You can get a phone that supports it.

That's a lot more proactive then kicking and screaming about something that will unlikely change.

 

[ravenvii]

Simple solution: allow the user to hide those apps and change defaults.

BOOM.

 

[Armen]

Simple solution: allow the user to hide those apps and change defaults.

BOOM.

You mean turn an iPhone into a generic smartphone like Android?

Android has no identity because its been so heavily customzied by every manufacturer. Most people on the street think Android= Samsung.

It's not a bad thing to let users customize their phone but if you give them too much control the phone's brand recognition and identity start to fade.

 

[VTECaddict]

let's just admit your analogy is horrendous because in your case, LG better pay ABC because the tv will sell horrendously if that's not the case. LG would bake the price into the price of the TV and this is ONLY assuming that LG is apparently singled out.

----------



try clicking any mail:to link from within safari.

No. I was using LG as an example. In my analogy, every TV company would have the same issue.

Same thing with push Gmail. ALL smartphones have the same issue. Hell, ALL email clients on any desktop or mobile OS that accesses Gmail through standard IMAP protocols have the same issue. Yes, this even goes for Android's stock Mail app. You need the actual Gmail app to get push Gmail, even on Android.

 

[Altis]

It's not a bad thing to let users customize their phone but if you give them too much control the phone's brand recognition and identity start to fade.

Is that really more important than the user experience? Is it better to lose people to Android and WP just to satisfy their big ego, rather than give people some choices?

If they're going to impose a one-size-fits-all, it shouldn't be so polarizing.

 

[cynics]

You mean turn an iPhone into a generic smartphone like Android?



Android has no identity because its been so heavily customzied by every manufacturer. Most people on the street think Android= Samsung.



It's not a bad thing to let users customize their phone but if you give them too much control the phone's brand recognition and identity start to fade.

Brand recognition and identity is generic.

Customizing a device for the identity of the user and making it different from other devices is the opposite of generic.

How did you come up with everyone using the same/common/general apps (synonyms for generic) NOT being generic? Lol

 

[phpmaven]

Yes it would be nice to be able to choose default apps such as email, but I think it's unlikely. Apple would lose too much control over the "user experience" if they did.

I'm assuming you are being sarcastic, but there's a lot of truth in that. Can you imagine if they just let everybody install whatever default apps they wanted to for the basic functionality of the device? They would have a support nightmare. Since Android support is virtually non-existent and there are a zillion different OS versions and devices, it doesn't matter that much there. Android is more of "Wild West" kind of scenario where people go nuts and install whatever they want on their device and are on their own if they screw it up. Obviously that is what Apple is trying to avoid.

 

[dcp10]

No sarcasm intended, but I agree that it's exactly what they want to avoid.

 

[Armen]

Brand recognition and identity is generic.

Customizing a device for the identity of the user and making it different from other devices is the opposite of generic.

How did you come up with everyone using the same/common/general apps (synonyms for generic) NOT being generic? Lol

In a sea of smartphones iOS is easily recognizable by its rounded square icons in a grid and its familiar native app icons. If no one cared than a lot of users wouldn't have thrown a fit at the iOS 7 icon changes.

What I'm saying is if Apple lets you hide the native app icons and use appstore replacements as defaults iOS will lose some of its branding and look more like other phones out there.

 

[Armen]

Is that really more important than the user experience? Is it better to lose people to Android and WP just to satisfy their big ego, rather than give people some choices?

If they're going to impose a one-size-fits-all, it shouldn't be so polarizing.

I think people are hyping up the need to be able to customize. I see people walking around here at work with Android phones and they look exactly the same as they did when they opened the box. Not everyone obsesses over their phones like we do.

Oh and ask anyone why they would choose something other than an iPhone and the response you will most likely get is "I wanted a bigger screen".

Apple knows this and that is why they are researching and testing larger screens. They are losing customers because of screen size not lack of customization.

 

[BaldiMac]

I think people are hyping up the need to be able to customize. I see people walking around here at work with Android phones and they look exactly the same as they did when they opened the box. Not everyone obsesses over their phones like we do.

Oh and ask anyone why they would choose something other than an iPhone and the response you will most likely get is "I wanted a bigger screen".

Apple knows this and that is why they are researching and testing larger screens. They are losing customers because of screen size not lack of customization.

I think it's a little funny that you simply replaced his pet peeve with your pet peeve.

 

[IFRIT]

It was touted by Apple when ios was released that core apps could be updated singularly like on Android and not have a whole system update, have apple been doing that?

----------

I think people are hyping up the need to be able to customize. I see people walking around here at work with Android phones and they look exactly the same as they did when they opened the box. Not everyone obsesses over their phones like we do.

Oh and ask anyone why they would choose something other than an iPhone and the response you will most likely get is "I wanted a bigger screen".

Apple knows this and that is why they are researching and testing larger screens. They are losing customers because of screen size not lack of customization.

The overriding reason is probably the screen as you said but there is a minority that are sick of the the very minimally customisable grid of ios. And probably the number 1 thing that annoys people about is on here at least is not being too change default apps.

 

[BaldiMac]

It was touted by Apple when ios was released that core apps could be updated singularly like on Android and not have a whole system update, have apple been doing that?

Apple has been providing delta updates for iOS since the release of iOS 5.

The overriding reason is probably the screen as you said but there is a minority that are sick of the the very minimally customisable grid of ios.

The overriding reasons that people choose Android over iOS is price and carrier availability. When you control for those two points, I can see screen size or customization as being top issues. (Although I'd bet that "I don't want Apple products" is probably higher than either. )

 

[Armen]

It was touted by Apple when ios was released that core apps could be updated singularly like on Android and not have a whole system update, have apple been doing that?

----------



The overriding reason is probably the screen as you said but there is a minority that are sick of the the very minimally customisable grid of ios. And probably the number 1 thing that annoys people about is on here at least is not being too change default apps.

Oh believe me the one thing that annoys me the most is the inability to place an icon anywhere on the grid without filling up row by row. iOS isn't perfect.

 

[IFRIT]

Apple has been providing delta updates for iOS since the release of iOS 5.



The overriding reasons that people choose Android over iOS is price and carrier availability. When you control for those two points, I can see screen size or customization as being top issues. (Although I'd bet that "I don't want Apple products" is probably higher than either. )

I was more talking about why people switch to Android from iOS after being a long time user.

 

[cynics]

In a sea of smartphones iOS is easily recognizable by its rounded square icons in a grid and its familiar native app icons. If no one cared than a lot of users wouldn't have thrown a fit at the iOS 7 icon changes.



What I'm saying is if Apple lets you hide the native app icons and use appstore replacements as defaults iOS will lose some of its branding and look more like other phones out there.

This is gonna be one of those agree to disagree things. Millions of iPhones out there that all work and look identical hence generic.

No one is saying you have to replace the stock apps but being giving the option isn't a bad thing IMO especially if you dislike or the current apps don't work the way you want them too.

Safari is an easy example, if you want to sync all your tabs and bookmarks to your PC or Mac and use Chrome it's a pita that every link posted opens safari. Giving the options to default to Chrome is a wise decision from a functionality stand point.

We just have varying opinions on this, nothing wrong with that I guess.

 

[joejoejoe]

i dont agree at all, i find the default Apple apps to be better than anything i've ever downloaded to try to replace them with.

try fantastical.

 

[BaldiMac]

This is gonna be one of those agree to disagree things. Millions of iPhones out there that all work and look identical hence generic.

For some definition of the word "identical".

No one is saying you have to replace the stock apps but being giving the option isn't a bad thing IMO especially if you dislike or the current apps don't work the way you want them too.

Safari is the only significant argument for default apps in my opinion. Although, being able to replace the email sheet used in third party apps would be nice, so you can add attachments from services such as Dropbox.

Safari is an easy example, if you want to sync all your tabs and bookmarks to your PC or Mac and use Chrome it's a pita that every link posted opens safari. Giving the options to default to Chrome is a wise decision from a functionality stand point.

But it could break functionality as well. The obvious example being redirects to the App Store.

We just have varying opinions on this, nothing wrong with that I guess.

Absolutely!

 

[C DM]

I'm assuming you are being sarcastic, but there's a lot of truth in that. Can you imagine if they just let everybody install whatever default apps they wanted to for the basic functionality of the device? They would have a support nightmare. Since Android support is virtually non-existent and there are a zillion different OS versions and devices, it doesn't matter that much there. Android is more of "Wild West" kind of scenario where people go nuts and install whatever they want on their device and are on their own if they screw it up. Obviously that is what Apple is trying to avoid.

If they allow another browser to be set as a default, how would that really create a nightmare? Perhaps phone and messages and maybe email apps might be a bit harder to do that with due to integration with contacts and maybe calendar or something like that (although even that should be doable).

 

[Armen]

This is gonna be one of those agree to disagree things. Millions of iPhones out there that all work and look identical hence generic.

No one is saying you have to replace the stock apps but being giving the option isn't a bad thing IMO especially if you dislike or the current apps don't work the way you want them too.

Safari is an easy example, if you want to sync all your tabs and bookmarks to your PC or Mac and use Chrome it's a pita that every link posted opens safari. Giving the options to default to Chrome is a wise decision from a functionality stand point.

We just have varying opinions on this, nothing wrong with that I guess.

You're absolutely correct in that everyone will have different opinions on the subject matter but just being a little familiar with how Apple thinks I don't see them letting you do these things. I mean hell, my iphone 5 is jailbroken and I didnt even go hunting for default app switching tweaks. I downloaded a Control Center tweak to let me change the toggles and quick launches..that's pretty much it. Sped up animations as well.

 

[cynics]

You're absolutely correct in that everyone will have different opinions on the subject matter but just being a little familiar with how Apple thinks I don't see them letting you do these things. I mean hell, my iphone 5 is jailbroken and I didnt even go hunting for default app switching tweaks. I downloaded a Control Center tweak to let me change the toggles and quick launches..that's pretty much it. Sped up animations as well.

Oh trust me I agree I don't expect much from Apple when it comes to things like that. And I'm fine with that, I still find more pros then cons with iOS.

There is some irony with you saying your jail broken with tweaks to change things that Apple forces on the rest of us though. Lol. Even if you don't go crazy with the tweaks.

 

[Armen]

Oh trust me I agree I don't expect much from Apple when it comes to things like that. And I'm fine with that, I still find more pros then cons with iOS.

There is some irony with you saying your jail broken with tweaks to change things that Apple forces on the rest of us though. Lol. Even if you don't go crazy with the tweaks.

yeah well, I didnt turn my iphone into a HTC Evo. Just complimented existing features

 

[FriednTested]

The apps that do push for Gmail are either from Google directly that they conveniently left support for themselves or from other providers that you have to grant access to your Gmail account so that every email would go through them for push--quite a few people don't want to have their email go through another company though, and those who are OK with it can use third party apps and companies that do that then.

Native email clients work the way Apples does where they don't go trogon their own servers to go through your email (again, as quite a few won't want that) and access your email from the provider directly supporting what the provider provides.

If Apple routed things through their own servers for email I'd likely be more upset about having to have my private email go through more servers and companies just for push notifications. And if I'm not upset by that then I can use a mail client that does that--which isn't a typical and expected or even necessarily desired feature or a normal email client.

I still don't understand the craze behind "push" email. I mean how bad can it be if you receive your email 15 minutes late at the maximum? You can set your phones to fetch emails every 15 minutes. So if your phone fetched at 4:00 p.m. let's say then it fetches at 4:15. Now you aren't going to get all your emails at 4:00:01 and if you receive that email at say 4:10 then you will get it in 5 minutes after it actually arrived. What is the big deal? And anyways sometimes emails do get stuck on the servers or something and get delayed anyways even if you have your gmail open on the computer and keep refreshing like crazy.