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Ingrained in Googles Ecosystem...
- Thread starter macher
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I actually only own maybe 50 itunes songs. But my apps i have invested quite a bit of money in
I've heard this question/comment some amount of times over the years & still leaves me head scratching.
I clearly have a much different understanding of "ecosystem" than others. To me... Apple has iOS devices they make (iPod, iPhone, iPad), they all have specific services that can't be used on another OS/device (iMessage, FaceTime, ApplePay, FindMyiPhone, FindMyFriends, etc.), together all this creates what is known as an "ecosystem". Amazon has something similar... they make a tablet, they curate an App Store, it runs their services, etc.
However, Google provides an OS to many phone OEMs- but only makes a few themselves- and nearly ALL of their services (gmail, google maps, google search, google now, allo w/ google assistant, duo, hangouts, drive, earth, YouTube, translate, docs, photos, etc.) are ALL platform agnostic... those are ALL on the Apple App Store.
Soooooooooo...... ummmmmm, what the hell "ecosystem" is it again that you think differs from using Apple hardware? The experience using the 3 services you mention (Google Maps, Google Chrome, & Google Drive) will by very, very, very minorly different run on iOS vs. Android. I think you're turning this into something it's not!
You use some Google services & prefer Apple hardware? Ok. So do like 90% of us!!! Set up a poll of how many use their free iCloud email vs. Gmail. There will be no contest. It is super groovy to use Google services. No problem. They will be forever tripping over themselves to try to bring their services to iOS ASAP! It's no big win if someone uses hangouts on a Droid... it came with it. WE are the "holy grail" users for Google. They really, really, really want iOS users to get into using their apps. Hence the aggressive push w/ free photo backup, etc.
TLDR:
Using a few Google apps (like we ALL do!) obviously does not equal being "locked into" a different ecosystem than Apple's & necessitate switching OS & hardware. Calm down.
Not really per se. On some things yes but people think 'they're locked into' Apples ecosystem. There are certain aspects of iOS that have you not being able to use other services or apps but it's not a lot.
For me I prefer a system that is more universal and for me that's Google. Surprisingly Google apps on the iPhone I find are fantastic. Not saying one system is better than the other but one system is more universal than the other. Secondly Google apps and services in my opinion are way ahead of Apple. And no I'm not an Android fan. I prefer Apple's hardware over any hardware that's out there.
I look forward to one day but will never happen that Google services will be backed right into the iPhone. I use Google Now A LOT via Chrome or the Google app. But I do use Siri A LOT to make calls and text. I don't use Siri for web searches or directions because I want directions to open up in Google Maps.
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Same. iCloud Photos and Apple Music, everything else Google.
Sadly that's what it took to have everything "just work" on my iPhone and iPad in iOS 10.
You should try Google Photos. Just give it a shot, you can have both on your device. I did that at first, now I just use Google Photos and it has unlimited storage and I think better UI.
I am in same position. ONE thing I wish for is gmail push to return to iOS app. The gmail app text is too small for my aging eyes. Other than that Google apps works fantastic on iOS. Google should have a paid service like google apps for gmail.com addresses they would make a mint off of it.
That's about the closest I've seen you come to a criticism of iOS as your sole computing platform.
Then you must have missed the other two dozen critical posts I've made about iOS 10 since September.
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I tried it when it debuted, and I wasn't impressed, but maybe it's time to check it out again.
i have been trying to use the google apps on my iPhone 6s to learn about them.
i like most of them.
but to be honest i can't figure out how i could ever get used to allo.
i need a way for people to stay in contact with me over multiple countries / multiple SIM numbers.
and i heard that hangouts will not be supported?
Google app is so great however.
as is google drive.
but the apple macOS integration is needed...
so Pixel by itself wouldn't be enough.
i need a laptop like the macBook Air that is made by google before i could switch.
i like most of them.
but to be honest i can't figure out how i could ever get used to allo.
i need a way for people to stay in contact with me over multiple countries / multiple SIM numbers.
and i heard that hangouts will not be supported?
Google app is so great however.
as is google drive.
but the apple macOS integration is needed...
so Pixel by itself wouldn't be enough.
i need a laptop like the macBook Air that is made by google before i could switch.
I usegoogle services for almost everything. They are compatible with every platform with zero hoops to jump through.
I like Google photos, but I'm considering giving iCloud photo library a try.
The free storage is nice with Google, and I love having all of the photos hosted in the cloud so they don't take up any space on my device. That's the big downside that I see with iCloud photo library, that it actually downloads everything onto all of your devices. Thankfully they let you use an "optimized version" to save space, but I could see this quickly taking up all of the space on my 128 GB phone. When you have young kids, you take a crazy amount of pictures and videos.
Having said that, I do prefer the videos that Apple auto creates over the ones from Google. It's totally subjective, but they just "feel" better, by including snippets of audio from video clips and not just playing a random song over the whole thing.
I'll try both for a while and see what works best.
Yea. Since I use the Gmail app links open in Chrome. But Google Maps won't open, Apple Maps does. Seems like a lot of Google services will open but some won't.
When we go to France we either use the Hangouts app or WhatsApp. Seems to integrate good between our iPhones and iPads. We use Free since we have a French address.
What do you mean Hangouts isn't supported?
hi
thanks.
according to the link below, google is shutting off hangouts (or at least stopping the underlying apps that support hangouts) as of april this year...
https://9to5google.com/2017/01/06/google-hangouts-api-dead-april-25th/
Agreed, definitely try it. It's matured 6x from it's beginnings. It is AMAZING and I use it every day on my iPad and iPhone and on my computer at photos.google.com (copy/pasting to my telegram chats).
I was sad to see Hangouts demise. It's Google's only cross platform messenger. I don't know ANYONE who uses Allo. Was shocked to see Google Voice (I was an early beta tester for this back in the day) get a massive update. Looks nice but I never use SMS. I recommend Telegram - it's worked well for my family, friends, and coworkers - it is cross platform.
And yes, Google rocks. I've tried EVERY cloud storage out there (well, almost every) and Google is by far the best. I can't do without it. I spent the last year trying out SpiderOak, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, etc... Spent countless hours reading about everything and moving my data over (using the service for several weeks). I keep coming back to Google. 2 Factor authentication, the best email, great syncing and cloud storage options, unlimited photo storage, the greatest browser that syncs across all my devices (windows, mobile, mac, etc...), a great family music option (Google Music), and I use Keep to dump everything I want to remember.
I have 50gb of stored storage between my Google Apps account for my own domain (which I pay $10/mo for unlimited Google storage) and my @gmail.com account (shared folders inbetween). I have 69,000 emails, 87,000 photos and videos (stored for free), 4,000 music files stored in Google Music, and 187 books in Google Books (Google Dashboard: https://myaccount.google.com/dashboard?pli=1).
So yeah, iCloud Photos doesn't work for me... I am not going to have 78GB of photos/videos downloaded to every device. With Google Photos I can access EVERY photo/video from ANY device while having a 300mb local cache (and share it with reasonable ease). I take gigs of photos / videos per month and love the ability to "Free up space" locally.
Side Note: But never have your eggs in 1 basket. I backup all my data to external hard drives and OneDrive every few months.
I used to be a fan of Android. I don't hate it, but I definitely like iOS better.
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iCloud Photos doesn't download any full res files to your device unless you turn on that option. And your device can't fill up if you choose Optimize Storage, that's the whole point of it.
Why Not be Ingrained in Both ? I owned an Android Samsung Tablet for Years and a Google Nexus 7 all Google Android. And I had iPhones for years 5 5s 6 Plus etc.
Then I flipped it. Got an iPad Pro 9." As My Tablet. And a Samsung Note 5 as my phone. Seemless.
People who know me would say I am an Apple person, but I am really very cross platform. What really ties me to Apple is the ease of using the Iphone to handle my huge music collection on Itunes. Pretty much everything else is cross platform as I use Microsoft Onedrive and Office 365 as well as lots of Google apps like Gmail, Drive, Docs, Google Calendar, Keep, etc. All of these work beautifully on the IPhone 7 and I have no complaints.
I do love tech stuff though and own a Thinkpad laptop and a Note 5 phone that I press into service regularly. As much as I like the Thinkpad, my Macbook Pro and Macbook are my go to computers given their ease of use and lack of hassle.
I see no reason not to use everything that is out there that interests me.
I do love tech stuff though and own a Thinkpad laptop and a Note 5 phone that I press into service regularly. As much as I like the Thinkpad, my Macbook Pro and Macbook are my go to computers given their ease of use and lack of hassle.
I see no reason not to use everything that is out there that interests me.
Wonder why it's said the Apple ecosystem is seemless. It's like the reason people get Apple because of how the ecosystem works between hardware.
Is it hype?
Well that's good to know. I'm going to set it up soon on all my devices, and that part had me worried. I had 68 GB of photos and videos on my phone from just the past two years. It's almost scary to think of how many GB's worth of photos are on my desktop.