This isn’t an iOS vs. Android thread, although I’m aware this might come off that way to some. I’ve been using Android phones since the Galaxy S4 and at the time it felt like Android was far and ahead the best smartphone OS at the time. It was objectively better than iOS in 2010 in just about every metric apart from UI fluidity.
I’m not so sure about that any more. I still do prefer Android - the UI, the customizability, the ability to sideload apps, etc. That said, why is it that every single time Android gets a feature that truly makes the phone more usable, Google goes ahead and guts that functionality, only for Apple to actually give a shit about that feature a few years later and do it way better.
Just off the top of my head, I can’t believe Google screwed up:
- Android Beam
- Google Now on Tap (not to mention all the things it did that Google Assistant can’t)
- Hangouts (not necessarily Android but it could have easily been better than iMessage)
- Nearby Notifications
- Android @ Home
- Bump!
I get that Google as a company is out to make money, but do they really have to shut down any functionality that isn’t directly generating revenue?
I wish they wouldn’t, but depending on internal accounting, they probably have good reason to.
Google Now on Tap was so awesome I happily would have paid for it.
I still get frustrated when I can’t just make my phone figure out a appointment from an email or whatever on the screen. Tap was so useful back then, and if they’d stuck with it and developed it with Google Lens, and AI stuff now, it could be fantastically functional.
But nope, we get slow, dumb Google assistant :(
What was Google on tap?
Google Assistant but less focussed on voice and more focussed on what it saw on your screen. Assistant can still do most of its features but you just have to hope it feels like doing it…