• Majestic@lemmy.ml
    0·
    5 months ago

    Kind of like Microsoft then. They buy up or spend money trying to break into all kinds of different areas but consistently take bad L’s and get pushed back to their core business time and again after face-planting and alienating those who gave them a shot.

    • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      5 months ago

      That thing was killer. I used it throughout university with my classmates to build the best notebook covering all our lectures, tutorials, etc. We had a habit of dropping in polls for distant sections so we could decide which notes were best to keep etc or needed more work, etc.

      Docs is so weak in comparison.

  • Zloubida@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 months ago

    I hate Google and try not use it anymore but there’s still one thing I can’t do without : Google Maps.

      • leekleak@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        Organic Maps are great, however if you’re looking for shops and restaurants (or rather their reviews) Google Maps are second to none.

        • thedarkfly@feddit.nl
          0·
          5 months ago

          OSM can technically replace Gmaps for shops and restaurants if enough people were using and updating it.

          However, Gmaps in unbeatable for public transportation :( no alternative at all

            • thedarkfly@feddit.nl
              0·
              5 months ago

              Ooh, nice. Thanks for making me discover it! I would have liked a FOSS alternative, but this is pretty good.

              Edit: argh, it’s nice for local urban commute, but it doesn’t work outside or between big cities :(

          • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
            0·
            5 months ago

            In Europe you can usually download an app for the public transit in that specific country/city. However, Google Maps is the only one that will show you how to get to a specific address (not just the train/bus station).

            • dunz@feddit.nu
              0·
              4 months ago

              I use Transportr for that. It integrates with the different local metro systems. Works great in Sweden at least🙂

          • leekleak@lemmy.world
            0·
            5 months ago

            Oh, I’m well aware of that, but there are so few cities that have been mapped to the degree to compete with gmaps, that I doubt we ever will reach that level.

            Also reviews. I’m not sure if there even is a way to fix that without creating a separate program with a separate ecosystem in the process…

            • yynt@lemmy.ml
              0·
              5 months ago

              Unfortunately the reviews at GMaps are becoming less and less reliable though, as many businesses begin to have bad reviews removed through lawyers.

              I’ve had it happen to a couple of mine, where Google forwarded the request of a law firm to prove I had actually been at a restaurant more than 5 years ago (where I reviewed it with 3*).

              Even if you can prove it, most people won’t and in that case the restaurant went from 3.8 stars to 4.6, which is a shame really. It confirms a hunch that just as with Amazon the reviews get a lot less reliable.

            • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
              0·
              5 months ago

              It’s like the map from an angle without a specific destination. Helpful for showing the surrounding map area.

              If you’ve driven a car with a built in map display, it’s basically that but for your phone.

      • fossphi@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        OSM is great in some places. But outside of the more techy areas, it’s a barren land. I something do my part with streetcomplete, but anyway, it’s not there yet (in most places)

        • stinerman [Ohio]@midwest.socialEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          Yeah I contribute to OSM but apps like OsmAnd are a far cry in features from Google Maps. The paths are very much not optimized. If I tell it to go back to my hometown it takes me about 15 minutes out of the way. And I can’t tell it to go to a certain house because the houses aren’t mapped yet.

          Should I help map them? Yes. But for your average user that’s not going to work.

          • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
            0·
            5 months ago

            OsmAnd blows google maps out of the water in terms of features, but google does better with less. It’s easier to use and it has everyone contributing to traffic analysis with them even realizing.

      • yum@lemmy.eco.br
        0·
        5 months ago

        I have tried using it for a while but a few updates ago the search functionality was kinda messed up (and still is) so I had to switch back to gmaps :(

      • scrooge@infosec.pubEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        I can never stick with those alternatives, the traffic conditions feature is simply too good to miss

        • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
          0·
          5 months ago

          I find Waze quite good for traffic conditions. The only thing it always tries to steer me wrong with is that there’s 2 main routes home from work, around the North East of the city, and on the bypass around the West/South of the city. It always wants to take me on the bypass as when I’m at the exit for the other route, traffic is way lighter. However by the time I’m halfway home on the bypass traffic has brought itself to an essential standstill. And there’s no real ways cutting across the city that avoids the high traffic section of the bypass that doesn’t take longer than sitting in traffic. Also…the NE route is at most 15mins longer due to speed limits, but it’s 20ish km shorter.

    • marine_mustang@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      5 months ago

      Like everything else, advertising pressure has ruined it. You can still search, but just zoom in and look over an area to see what is there? So many businesses missing, because they don’t pay Google to advertise. Apple Maps shows them all, because they don’t make money from advertising.

      Open Street Maps are ok, but my area has a lot of businesses missing. If you know the address you need to go to, then it’s great for routing.

      My personal hobby horse with Google killing things is Reader.

    • senkora@lemmy.zip
      0·
      5 months ago

      Inbox for me. I still manage my email the way that Inbox taught me to do it, but it just isn’t the same.

  • butter@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Android is still great. The Pixel phone is the best Android phone by several metrics. Usability and Camera come to mind. Android TV is by far the best TV interface. Just because it’s sideloadable and decently usable. Low bar, but here we are.

    Gboard is good. The pixel launcher is good enough to not bother switching off. The Google Home certainly turns my lights on and off. And as soon as Google opens RCS, I’m leaving Google Messages.

    But that’s the only Google stuff I use. And I’m thinking of switching to Graphene OS.

      • butter@midwest.socialEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        I’m imagining that I’d just use whatever grapheneos keyboard, or Florisboard, which I prefer for peck typing over Gboard.

        My only problem is finding a time to switch. I need my phone for work, so I need to sit down, backup my data, install GOS and restore, then spend like 5 hours learning the new systems. Things like sandboxing Google are nice until I’m lost in BFE without Google Maps or OSMand+ because I didn’t properly set up.

    • CylustheVirus@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      I like my Pixel phones, so I dunno what about it is supposed to be a joke?

      My 3a still works. Wish they wouldn’t have removed the headphone jack from later models but the 7a has been fine.

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Yeah the pixel hardware is the only thing they make that I think is any good and I run graphene on mine

    • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      5 months ago

      Google won’t open it but Apple are working with GSMA to add the things Google made as proprietary extensions to RCS part of the RCS standard (such as encryption which isn’t in the standard).

    • Chev@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      Same here. Have had Nokia and Iphones before and have my Pixel 3a right now for about 4 years and still happy with it.

    • WillFord27@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      I got a Pixel 6 last year after owning a Samsung Galaxy 7 for 6 years. I have a notes page with 49 complaints.

    • Roopappy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Disagree. I owned flagship Androids from the G1 until last fall.

      Android is a privacy nightmare, and serves no technical advantage over an iPhone. So I got an iPhone. It’s 100% as adequate of a black rectangle that runs apps as any Pixel.

    • Farid@startrek.website
      0·
      5 months ago

      Yeah, Nexus phones were great, but Pixel phones are also good. And Android is definitely not “getting worse”.

      Agree with the rest though.

      • candyman337@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        5 months ago

        Android is getting weird. It’s not bad but some UI choices just don’t make sense. They’re making everything super large, and required so many swipes and clicks for certain settings. They’ve lost the plot a bit. Also, having used both iOS and Android, iOS gestures are leaps and bounds ahead of Android. Genuinely, it’s no contest.

        All this being said I prefer Android, I just wish they put more thought about ease of use and feature refinement rather than changing for changes sake. Like we are JUST NOW getting an update to the gesture controls. They’ve been basically unchanged since Android 11/12 they have had ample time to refine them a bit.

        • Dasnap@lemmy.world
          0·
          5 months ago

          I like Samsung’s flavor with OneUI as it’s kept a lot of the condensed layout and it has good one-handed support. I’ve created a lot of custom shortcuts that just use swipes from the side of the screen.

          • candyman337@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            5 months ago

            I’ve decided that I’ll never get a phone with a boot loader than you can’t unlock as long as I can help it, so Samsung is out for me

        • Daxtron2@startrek.website
          0·
          5 months ago

          I hate the super large quick access buttons. Like why would I want to only have 4 accessible with one touch when I’m used to 8+

        • wols@lemm.ee
          0·
          5 months ago

          Could you elaborate on the gestures part?
          I remember the opposite, having hated navigating my iPhone for work. I specifically remember swipe to go back not working reliably at all (many apps seemed to just ignore it, others I think configured other actions on that gesture - WTF), so I got into the habit of using that stupid little hard to reach, hard to hit, tiny back arrow that at least worked consistently when you managed to hit it.
          I’ve been enjoying Android navigation gestures pretty much ever since I found out they existed.

          It might have been a user issue in my case with iOS since I didn’t use it as much, and therefore maybe was simply using it wrong/was unaware of better ways. But I don’t see anything wrong/missing with gestures on Android.

          • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            As a mobile developer, tiny unhittable buttons drive me batshit. I used to get handed app design documents all the time that had these little buttons, along with image files for these buttons that were just large enough (width and height) for them. I would always do a trivial amount of extra work to make the actual tappable regions larger than the images to improve their usability, but when I mentioned this to the designers they would go apeshit and demand that I restore the original tiny tappable regions, usually with the bullshit rationale of that being what end-users expected and they didn’t want to verify that what I’d done to my best judgement was OK. Management would go along with the designers, on the grounds that enlarging the tappable regions required more time and effort - even though I’d already done it and undoing it would require even more time and effort.

            It eventually occurred to me to just do it without telling anyone and I had no further problems.

            A fun little fact about iOS: the operating system includes a private method (which is something developers supposedly can’t use without getting their app rejected) named _warpPoint. This hack was put in when they started supporting landscape, because the top toolbar and its tiny buttons became even tinier and virtually unusable in that mode. _warpPoint intercepts touches near the toolbar and changes the coordinates to the middle of the nearest button - basically doing the same thing I was doing by enlarging the tappable regions, just doing it at the global level. The irony is that they still don’t really work very well, despite the very existence of this method proving that Apple knows it’s a general problem.

          • candyman337@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            5 months ago

            So apple has slowly added some of these swipe features and a lot of iPhone users were basically trained how to use them over time.

            I’d honestly say swipe is a bit of a misnomer for them, it’s more like eases. There’s a specific way you to swipe for different things, it’s nuanced. When I switched to iPhone for a year, I had to ask my gf a few questions to get the hang of it, but once you do it’s super intuitive. On almost every app a swipe from the left is back and a swipe from the right is forward. And there was a different in finger action for a back swipe and a side menu. Once you get the hang of it it genuinely feels like second nature, I almost never missed my android buttons. When I switched back I tried androids swipe features and was immediately disappointed. Android’s backswipe is really oversensitive, meaning that it’s way too easy to swipe back when I’m not trying to. Also they’re multitasking up swipe is less sensitive meaning it’s harder to get to multitasking than on iphone. And of course the final nail in the coffin there is no forward swipe from the right, a swipe from the right is also just back on Android which was a real mind fuck. Currently I just use the Android old buttons, or I use the Android gestures where you have a home and back button and then you swipe for multitasking stuff. I can say that the multitasking swipe stuff seems to be better than the last time I tried it.

            I would say the biggest difference is when you swipe on the iPhone it’s like turning a page, a smoothe slide. Where as android it’s just a flick. So when I accidentally swipe the screen, I’m going back on Android, but on iPhone I have to definitely be doing an intentional slide, and for me that slide was just short enough to not be annoying.

            • wols@lemm.ee
              0·
              5 months ago

              Thanks for responding, that makes a lot of sense.
              I think generally what one gets used to has a big impact on preferences.

              I’ll say, an easily accessible, reliable gesture for side menu sounds nice. It feels like this was either abandoned on Android or left up to developers who mostly abandoned it. I remember struggling to get the side menu to trigger instead of back navigation and it not working near reliably enough. So I’ve been trained to always use the hamburger buttons that, ironically, are hard to reach in the top left corner in most apps. To be fair, I feel like I hardly use one menu interaction for every 100 back actions, so the latter being ergonomic is a lot more important to me.
              On that point, swipe from left to go back seems quite annoying. I go back all the time, and having to move my thumb across the entire screen is a pain. I almost never need to go forward, so having that be the more accessible gesture seems weird. I’ll concede that having a gesture for it at all is useful and Android should add the option.

              I never felt like the swipe to go back is too sensitive, and if you accidentally trigger it, you can simply move your finger back towards the edge before letting go to cancel the action. You can also configure the sensitivity in the settings. The feedback that you’re about to trigger the action is probably not as obvious as on iOS though, and likely less elegant.

              I think both Android and iOS would do well to let users customize these interactions more to their own needs.

    • cybermass@lemmy.ca
      0·
      5 months ago

      I enjoyed my pixel up until the day they put a backup button on photos that would pop up right when I’m swiping. So I had to go through my Google backup and delete/disable it (which can only be done from the computer) just so that I could use my Gmail again.

      Now I’m considering switching manufacturers on my next upgrade.

    • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      my 6a has been nothing but shit. You cant charge it and run the GPS at the same time or it overheats. Thats just one of the many issues ive had with it.

      • ditty@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        My friends 6a and his wife’s both have a display issue where the screen just randomly turns green. Restarting fixes it, but what the hell!

      • papertowels@lemmy.one
        0·
        5 months ago

        I have the same problem, but only when I run the GPS under sunlight in a car. I wonder if other phones have the same problem under those conditions? Can anyone else chip in?

        • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
          0·
          5 months ago

          Oh holy shit. I’ve done that a few times. Completely using GPS by audio and without thinking I put the phone down in the Sun. I’ve never done it more than 10 or 15 minutes before I remembered and every time it would be so fucking hot. Even with the screen off and everything which really should have helped keep it cool you know?

          The big problem here I was an instacart driver at the time so I had all these fucking weird things I had to do with my phone to make sure it didn’t explode while I was trying to keep it charged so I could work all day.

          • papertowels@lemmy.one
            0·
            5 months ago

            Yeah, the only thing I’ve had help is if I got an ac vent mount for the phone and had the ac going - if you get a small enough mount the cold air hits the phone and keeps it cool. But phone under the sun is BRUTAL.

        • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
          0·
          5 months ago

          Sometimes even when I’m just browsing lemmy it decides the screen needs to be dimmed for the next 20 minutes because im just being so very strenuous on it by looking at memes.

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Pixel 5, refusing to die.

      I just cleaned out all storage and man it’s still zippy

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        Pixel 5 is my new phone, lol. I had the original Pixel, now the 5. One of my kids used the original one for a few months after I upgraded too.

        I do miss headphone jack :(

        • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          I missed it for a while, then got some shokz open run.

          They are so easy I forget I’m wearing them, and they cover the music needs from my phone. For better audio, I go to other things.

    • Ptsf@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      The newer ones are nice, but as an owner of the first 4 because I need unbloated OSes, they were a complete joke in hardware support and failures. Can’t count the number of times I’ve lost data to my pixel 1 randomly resetting, had bluetooth issues with 1-4, and had a smattering of other nonsense issues with everything up to the 6. Eventually I gave up and hopped over to iOS.

      • psud@aussie.zone
        0·
        5 months ago

        My pixel 1 was and is fine. Pixel 3 was an excellent phone. The only bad phone I recall from Google was the Nexus 5x which was made by LG

        • Ptsf@lemmy.world
          0·
          5 months ago

          Glad you had a decent experience. That was not the case for me and many documented others. The bluetooth issues are particularly well known and plagued the whole series from 1-4, if you didn’t use Bluetooth much it probably didn’t phase you but holy shit it sucked. As far as nexsus devices go they were a crapshoot. My nexus 6p crashed week 3 and bricked into a boot loop. Google replaced it only for the replacement to do the same damn thing a month later. They had massive QC issues which meant you either got a fine phone or a shit one and a lot of people fell towards the latter.

          • psud@aussie.zone
            0·
            5 months ago

            Perhaps it’s that I am not an early adopter. I wait until I have good reason to update. It sucks that they make their customers unwitting beta testers, but they seem to have stuff sorted after the phone has been on the market for several months

            • Ptsf@lemmy.world
              0·
              5 months ago

              Not sure what made you assume I was an early adopter. Generally, after the pixel 1, I waited until the first few months passed just to get the discount they always had. You seem to make a ton of assumptions to pave way for some fine cognitive dissonance as they never “sorted out the stuff” in those phone models and if you bothered to research it instead of using your own experience as a defacto account I think you’d see that.

    • frunch@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      They lost me right there, lol

      Tbf a lot of Google is shite but i will never deny the pixel

    • kspatlas@lemm.ee
      0·
      5 months ago

      Yeah, I’m on a non pixel phone right now and I want to get back to pixel they’re great

  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    5 months ago

    I’m an iPhone person because of reasons, but I honestly think Pixel phones are the best Android devices I’ve ever seen.

  • Heavybell@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Google search is still better than bing, somehow. Gmail is good for signing up to stuff I don’t want mailing my protonmail. Google maps is still genuinely useful. Youtube is, for now, still better than any alternative I know about. I don’t see what’s wrong with Pixel phones.

    Don’t get me wrong, google is evil now and I don’t like it. But I don’t know any better alternatives for those things. Mm, except gmail, I could replace that I guess but it’s such a pain.

    • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms should also get a mention. People forget that before that the only way to work together on documents was a shared drive with file locking while 1 person can work on a file at a time, complicated and unpractical. There are still no massively adopted replacements for these (Or they’re made by Microsoft, lol)

  • blindbunny@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Have you not seen the corpse that is Google hangouts still attached to Gmail? Google died with inbox and I hope they go under after just barely giving back to open source projects they profited off of.

    • I'm back on my BS 🤪@lemmy.autism.placeEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Not only that, all these failed/terminated google services collected huge amounts of data. They were able to analyze that data and make ridiculous conclusions about human behavior. Whether those services are functioning or not anymore, they still learned what they learned. For companies and governments that want to manipulate populations, that is the most valuable product that exists.

    • Venator@lemmy.nz
      0·
      5 months ago

      I think that’s part of the reason they tend to fail in other areas: it’s just not important enough to them except for the data it generates for thier ads.

      • Lmaydev@programming.dev
        0·
        5 months ago

        Honestly I think they just have so much money they can run projects that most companies wouldn’t take the risk on.