[HN Gopher] Google's apps to embrace iOS on iOS
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Google's apps to embrace iOS on iOS
Author : ingve
Score : 240 points
Date : 2021-10-09 09:03 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sixcolors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sixcolors.com)
| jb1991 wrote:
| Good. Whether it's on a device or on the web, I find material
| design to be a terrible aesthetic. Any kind of flat design in
| general is often very difficult to understand, the UI components
| blend in with things that are not interact-able.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I feel the exact same way. Google's design sense in general is
| terrible.
|
| YouTube is a UX nightmare. Gmail and Maps are probably the only
| two half-decent products but they're both becoming very heavy
| and bloated these days.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| I'd argue that YouTube has a better UX than a large majority
| of sites on the internet. If it was actually terrible, no one
| would use it.
| whalesalad wrote:
| They have a monopoly. What other video sharing site is even
| remotely on the same traffic level (not including social
| networks like fb)
| fabiospampinato wrote:
| Which non-flat design language do you like most?
| gsich wrote:
| Windows up until the downfall starting with Windows 8.
| [deleted]
| unicornporn wrote:
| Windows 95, the pinacle of UI design. Honorable mentions:
| Gnome 2 with Clearlooks or Mac OS 9.
|
| On the modern side, SerenityOS is going the right way.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| OS X circa 10.6 - 10.9. Aesthetically pleasing, with lots of
| tonal contrast and touches of color to highlight important
| items. Clickable elements are clearly clickable, and the UI
| is reasonably dense, but it never looks overcomplicated or
| busy.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. I can't stand using Google's own apps on
| iOS because they look jarringly out of place to me, like
| running a Mac app that looks skinned to look like Windows.
|
| Obviously not everyone agrees and that's OK. I acknowledge this
| is purely a personal preference thing. But for me, I detest
| Material apps on my phone and iPad.
| vmception wrote:
| Yeah every time Chrome accidentally opens on iOS I cringe at
| the shoehorned design choices
|
| This probably happens because i clicked a link in gmail
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| It is the copious amounts of whitespace that I find so very
| offensive in Material UI.
|
| My secret guilty pleasure at work is shooting down any mention
| of using Material UI design in any of our software haha.. it is
| just silly how much pleasure I get from it :)
| atatatat wrote:
| Be cooler if you could implement Material Design in a more
| usable way than even Google, no?
| cout wrote:
| Large amounts of whitespace became vogue around the same time
| as skinny scrollbars. I don't mind the whitespace -- it makes
| it easier to see how things are grouped on the screen. But
| give me back usable scrollbars on non-touch devices, please!
| As I age I find it harder and harder to see and click on
| small things, so these newfangled design languages that make
| UI elements smaller feel very unaccessible.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Maybe I'm just nostalgic but I preferred dense UIs of the
| 90s. At least those which didn't have too much empty space,
| and communicated grouping with boring stuff like fieldset.
|
| Now it seems I must scroll forever and there are no
| discernible anchors to link to. When studying web design in
| the early aughts the popular Nielson book ("Designing Web
| Usability") argued for separate pages over a lot of
| scrolling. For informational sites I think that approach is
| superior.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| IMO the best approach is some kind of amalgamation
| between scrolling and paging. For example infinite
| scrolling, but with clear separation between pages and
| with URL changing to the corresponding page (so I can
| bookmark it and return to this page later, for example).
| Infinite scroll as a concept is good. If I'm at the
| bottom of the page, chances are high that I want to get
| next page anyway, so why don't you show it for me
| already. If I don't need it, whatever. If I need it, it's
| there.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _Infinite scroll as a concept is good._
|
| Infinite scrolling doesn't work with scrollbars, and
| somehow people still think it's okay to put important
| links in the page footer... on an infinite scrolling site
| where it's literally impossible to ever reach the page
| footer.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I could never understand the hatred of skeuomorphic design.
|
| Material design seemed to me to add an unnecessary overhead to
| interaction especially with colors bleeding in. I love a
| strong, and arguably ugly, contrast ratio of 7:1
| underdown wrote:
| Skeuomorphic design simply doesn't work. Turning knobs and
| dials on a touchscreen? It's a three dimensional interface
| slapped on a 2d canvas.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Doesn't work? The old Apple podcasts app worked just fine.
| It's the modern one that breaks and has UI jumping all the
| time.
| DanHulton wrote:
| You can't judge the success or failure of ANYTHING by the
| podcasts app (except the podcasts app itself, of course).
|
| Remember old QuickTime with wonky drawers and knobs
| everywhere? Everyone hated it, and rightly so, and
| switched to alternatives in every case where they could.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I really like the three "wheel" picker on iOS (used for
| dates, at least): for coarse changes, I "flick" the wheel
| a couple times and let "inertia" do its work, then I fine
| tune it when I'm close.
| i_like_apis wrote:
| Sure but I still think shadows and 3 dimensions work.
| pie42000 wrote:
| It's lazy, ugly, inefficient, unclear, and ugly to look at
| justwalt wrote:
| Lazy? Unclear?
|
| I would imagine it takes much more work to design something
| skeuomorphically than it would something flat. And clarity
| is the top priority - you should instantly know what the
| thing does upon seeing it.
| varjag wrote:
| It all comes down to the fact that doing a skeuomorphic
| design is a lot more work than blurting a few colored
| rectangles.
| pie42000 wrote:
| It's also more confusing, distracting, and dated. Also
| super lazy. Good clean song is harder, but more enjoyable
| to use.
| varjag wrote:
| Let's come to a reasonable compromise: skeuomorphic is
| dated and material is super lazy.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Same. I wonder how it would have fared in the world of Apple
| Pencil, where the feeling of literally writing notes on a
| yellow pad could have been extended out of the device and in
| to the world. I like the current stuff and think
| skeuomorphism ran it's course, but I never hated it and never
| understood why people did. Apple didn't even come up with it
| - remember Microsoft Bob? It was just a product of a time
| when computers had to be more friendly and feel like real
| stuff and not the other way around.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| I've never been a fan of skeuomorphic design. I'm sure there
| are good examples of it somewhere. My memories of early apple
| and iOS apps implementations with fake physical things e.g.
| desks or bookshelf's, rendered in the background and such
| made the app feel cheap and had less class. I felt this way
| even before skeuomorphic design started to become less
| fashionable.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Right, I think bad skeuomorphism incorporates textures
| whereas good skeuomorphism incorporates shadow, lighting,
| and depth
| DenisM wrote:
| It's a generational change - much easier to make a career by
| discarding what came before rather than competing with it.
| You will see this in a lot of areas of society.
| Oddskar wrote:
| It's funny how a "generation" left Apple and suddenly
| they're rolling back all kinds of changes to how they were
| before that generation "made their mark".
| i_like_apis wrote:
| "skeuomorphic" came into being as a scary label. We should
| prefer "realism" or something else
| noahtallen wrote:
| One of the big factors in modern design is reducing cognitive
| load by reducing visual distractions. In other words, one
| goal of simple, clean, non-skeuomorphic designs is to make it
| easier to understand the interface. I'd be interested to see
| studies comparing good variants of skeuomorphic and minimal
| designs.
|
| I wonder if the actual problem is that minimal designs are
| easier to get wrong. Skeuomorphic designs might be easier to
| get right just because you're almost "cheating": you don't
| have to decide on the best way to represent X digitally. You
| just copy/paste X from the real world as best you can, and
| people will get it because they already know the IRL
| interface. As many users are very comfortable with touch
| interfaces now than 15 years ago, that's less important.
| lrem wrote:
| Frankly, probably the only thing worse than the flat designs
| are the skeuomorphic designs. Bring back the Windows95-like.
| Give me edges, shadows and colours, all clearly indicating
| what the heck this bunch of pixels is meant to be. But
| without pretending it's a yellowing leather-bound notepad.
| leroman wrote:
| I find that flat design was the answer to having too much
| emphasis (in my opinion) on design and designers being too
| involved in the process which (again, in my opinion) collided
| with the engineering work..
| grishka wrote:
| Maybe it's me being biased as an Android app developer, but I
| find Material very much okay on Android (but very out of place
| on desktop for example). At a time when Apple just made
| everything fully flat and had a kid draw their icons, having
| actual depth with shadows felt welcome.
|
| Though I have to admit, I did like the Holo aesthetic more. And
| I do miss affordances in UIs, and non-flat UIs, in general.
| cout wrote:
| For me, material design evokes feelings of being in
| kindergarten making crafts with colored construction paper.
|
| Material UIs are not perfectly flat; there is usually a
| shadow, so I can tell an element is distinct from the layer
| below it. The problem for me is that it often feels about as
| organized as the mind of a kindergartener.
|
| Consistency of look-and-feel is important, but consistency of
| organization is even more important. How confusing would GUIs
| in the 90s have been without the File and Edit menus?
| ink404 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you mean by the organization of
| material design?
| atatatat wrote:
| So what I'm reading is: there's nothing wrong with Material
| Design aesthetically, but the design choices commonly made
| when choosing Material Design are regularly poor.
|
| That's fair.
|
| Unlabeled hamburger menu buttons and gear icons placed
| every which area (sometimes multiple!) are great examples
| of (admittedly common!) abuse of what can be a powerful UI
| concept.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Sure, material design is not perfect. Its just all other design
| systems for mobile are worse and less consistent. Apple's own
| UI is very lacking in components and guidelines are mostly
| absent.
| Razengan wrote:
| Fuck Google:
|
| * YouTube has deliberately crippled Picture-in-Picture and
| background audio on iPad/iOS for years, but apparently not on
| some Android phones.
|
| * YouTube has AutoPlay (next video) but no Auto-Repeat. What the
| fuck?
|
| * On iPhone, Google.com has Dark Mode option (without signing in)
| only when you Request Desktop Website, but viewing the default
| mobile site has no option Dark Mode.
|
| * Google apps try to hijack voice dictation to their own servers
| instead of using the built-in iOS dictation.
|
| * Signing into any Google app will also forcibly sign you into
| Google Search on Safari. You have to manually delete Google
| cookies to sign out of Search but remain signed in on the YouTube
| app, for example.
|
| * iOS/iPadOS features like Dark Mode and Split View still not
| fully supported in some apps.
|
| * "SafeSearch" (censorship) cannot be disabled in some countries
| (at least not without signing in, allowing your search terms to
| be associated with your account).
|
| Really. Why do the biggest companies struggle so much with such
| basic UX issues? Serious question.
| beyondcompute wrote:
| Good news!
| jw1224 wrote:
| The YouTube app on Apple TV is absolutely atrocious.
|
| I can't believe either Apple or Google think it's acceptable --
| it must be one of the most-used apps on tvOS, and is easily the
| worst I've ever come across.
|
| It seems to be built with Cobalt [1], so it's basically HTML5,
| pretending to be a native app.
|
| A short list of flaws which have infuriated me for months:
|
| * Scrolling is completely broken. Scroll down a playlist, and it
| stops after 10 or so videos, hangs, then loses your scroll
| position.
|
| * When you start watching a video, the UI is almost completely
| unresponsive for the first 5 seconds exactly. You can exit the
| video, but the title/channel/details are totally hidden for
| exactly 5 seconds, for some bizarre reason.
|
| * Navigating the app is like wading through molasses, even on the
| newest Apple TV 4K. It's so unbearably slow.
|
| * Even if your YouTube account is verified, age-restricted videos
| refuse to play. You're told to "switch to your primary account"
| to watch them, but, I'm already in my primary account!
|
| * A few times I've left the app open on a paused video. 20
| minutes later, with the Apple TV screensaver now running, the
| video randomly starts playing again.
|
| YouTube is my primary source of video content -- I can't remember
| the last time I watched an actual TV show. Many of my friends say
| the same thing. Come on YouTube, get it together!
|
| [1] https://cobalt.foo/
|
| (I hate to be "that guy", but seriously -- if Steve Jobs was
| still around, he wouldn't have accepted this. There are stories
| of him calling Google execs because he didn't like the colour on
| one of their buttons. Anyway, I digress...)
| mikestew wrote:
| Not being a big user of YouTube, I just kind of assumed that
| the AppleTV client was broken due to some tiff between Google
| and Apple. If I manage to get it to play a video, and that's a
| 50/50 proposition at best, some bug will pop up eventually,
| after which I either give up or AirPlay it from my phone to the
| TV. So I basically don't use YouTube on ATV.
|
| But parent comment is saying that it apparently works, but is
| just broke in a lot of use cases. Based on my experience,
| this...surprises me.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Most frustrating thing for me: in every other app, you hide the
| scrubber UI just by touching the touchpad. In Youtube, just
| touching does nothing, you have to press Menu/Back. That's bad
| enough, because I can't rely on muscle memory to hide the
| scrubber. I need to remember if I'm in YouTube or not, because
| if I hit Menu in any other app, it'll exit the video.
|
| But the scrubber in YouTube also auto-hides after a few
| seconds. So it's happened a few times that I've reached to
| press Menu on the remote, and by the time I've done it, the
| scrubber auto-hid and I just exited out of the video. And of
| course, it lost my progress.
|
| Really amateurish stuff.
|
| edit: oh, and video titles get truncated after two lines, but
| there's no indicator that it's been truncated, no ellipsis,
| nothing -- and no way to view the full title. So if a title
| contains critical info, you're SOL.
| Shank wrote:
| I'm so glad you mentioned this. Trying to navigate to a channel
| from a YouTube video you're watching is significantly impaired
| by the fact that the default behavior is to scrub rapidly in
| the video timeline, and you have to provide a very distinct
| "break away" gesture to navigate from the scrubber to the
| channel controls.
|
| It's also extremely difficult to like and dislike videos in the
| app. You have to break away from the scroll bar, then hit a
| gear and then navigate to the like/dislike button.
|
| I'm glad it's not just me who hates this.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Yes. In my experience, the best way to watch YouTube on an
| Apple TV is to pull the video up on your phone in safari and
| AirPlay it over
| sharmin123 wrote:
| Hacking a WhatsApp account with the help of ethical hacking:
| https://www.hackerslist.co/hacking-a-whatsapp-account-with-t...
| fredgrott wrote:
| miss-labled, Google is not dropping MDC or MD for that matter.
|
| This is an independent shop dropping MD
| kryptiskt wrote:
| "Jeff Verkoeyen, staff engineering lead for Google Design on
| Apple platforms, on Twitter now:
|
| This year my team shifted the open source Material components
| libraries for iOS into maintenance mode...
|
| The time we're saving not building custom code is now invested
| in the long tail of UX details that really make products feel
| great on Apple platforms. To paraphrase Lucas Pope, we're
| "swimming in a sea of minor things", and I couldn't be more
| excited about this new direction."
| kall wrote:
| That's great news. I'm guessing big apps like Maps and Youtube
| will become a lot nicer while the small ones will be mediocre
| Flutter versions.
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| Maybe youtube will finally get a "back" button on ios!
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I'm guessing big apps like Maps and Youtube will become a
| lot nicer while the small ones will be mediocre Flutter
| versions_
|
| Flutter will undoubtedly adopt (and benefit from) this new
| UIKit-based Material Design implementation too.
| kall wrote:
| I don't think it will, since flutter 100% bypasses UIKit and
| renders directly to pixels with Skia.
| tonymet wrote:
| Let's hope they adopt iOS performance and responsiveness as well.
| jikbd wrote:
| I have no doubt Google will not use iOS default GUI components.
| They will come up with some sort of abomination that
| superficially looks like the native iOS components but are off in
| every way when you look closely, like Qt does.
| sbaildon wrote:
| My expectations mirror your own, but a few of Jeff's thoughts
| imply that they won't take this path:
|
| > App bars become UINavigationControllers. Standard controls
| just need light branded touches. Lists can align with modern
| UITableView and list-based collection view APIs. Menus are just
| UIMenus.
|
| > And the best code is often no code :)
|
| > The time we're saving not building custom code is now
| invested in the long [...]
| jamil7 wrote:
| They already do that for Flutter with the Cupertino Widgets.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| But ... you have to pick widget per OS, not automagically
| rendered differently by OS
| Leherenn wrote:
| I was very surprised and disappointed when I discovered
| that. It didn't really felt cross platform anymore if for
| every component you need to do a platform check and render
| it differently. It sounds like flutter is more about having
| the same (custom or material) UI on both platforms and not
| having the framework do the "nativification" for you.
| planb wrote:
| Doesn't sound like this is the case from the linked Twitter
| thread: ,,App bars become UINavigationControllers. Standard
| controls just need light branded touches. Lists can align with
| modern UITableView and list-based collection view APIs. Menus
| are just UIMenus."
| kaba0 wrote:
| How is Qt off in every way?
| jikbd wrote:
| If you can't see it, there's no way I could ever convince
| you. The spacing, the sizes... all UI elements are slightly
| off in some way.
| kaba0 wrote:
| On which OS and compared to what? The OS's native
| framework? I can believe that. But eg. on Linux, it is a
| native framework looking perfectly fine. And on Windows,
| their own native apps can look out of place in the intermix
| of 3 generations of "native" frameworks.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| On every major OS except niche ones
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| That always confused me, because I thought Apple had a policy
| where you couldn't visually replicate their native iOS
| components, else they would reject you from the App Store.
| However I haven't worked in iOS-land since around 2015; has
| that policy changed?
| jfoster wrote:
| Whatever they go with, the guaranteed outcome (due to being
| Google) is that they will do something else within a few years.
| domenukk wrote:
| What about flutter apps?
| Jyaif wrote:
| Flutter apps can be themed, and a "cupertino" theme mimicking
| iOS Views exists.
| amimetic wrote:
| It isn't a theme per sae, really an alternate set of widgets:
| https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/widgets/cupertino
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| Good riddance, I find Google apps on both my iPhone and AppleTV
| quite annoying because their use of MD makes them different to
| use compared to everything else on those platforms.
|
| The YouTube tvOS App feels particularly egregious to me, its
| video playback controls seem to behave nothing like all the other
| installed tvOS video apps that I use (Netflix, Plex, and
| AppleTV).
| indymike wrote:
| It's not you. YouTube on Android's previous and next video
| buttons are where every other video app puts +10 and -10
| seconds. When you go to the next video sometimes there is no
| obvious way back.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've never had that problem, to be honest. If I recall
| correctly, Google's next/previous predates the +-10 seconds
| buttons that have become popular these days.
|
| Youtube has the double tap gesture which I actually miss in
| all other video apps that only have special buttons for it.
| mikevm wrote:
| I guess they don't think Flutter is a good experience for iOS
| apps. When you don't eat your own dogfood, why would you expect
| others to do so?
| eddieroger wrote:
| I don't understand Google's relationship with Flutter. It's
| clearly not the basket they're putting most of their eggs in,
| but it got a pretty top spot in the I/O keynote this year, so
| it's not like they aren't putting weight behind it. I had some
| experiences with a Flutter app, and it's not a language or
| framework for me, but I for sure don't follow Google's logic in
| keeping it alive when they aren't super visibly using it
| themselves.
| vl wrote:
| Most Google apps pre-date Flutter by far, and teams
| developing them (rightfully so) are not going to port them to
| Flutter.
| tgv wrote:
| Can you build native iOS apps in Flutter?
| schmorptron wrote:
| Yes. There's also icon "packs" that mimic the iOS style, and
| I believe you can use different icons for different builds
| between android and ios?
| grishka wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "native" when you bundle half an OS
| worth of libraries with your app, including one that draws
| the UI with OpenGL instead of using system _anything_.
| aabbcc1241 wrote:
| Nowadays folks like to call "hybrid app" as "native app".
| The bottomline is "native app" is what allowed to be
| listed on the "app store".
| grishka wrote:
| I think I've seen electron apps in macOS app store? And
| I've definitely seen all kinds of webview-based apps on
| google play.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "native" when you're running a
| sandboxed app on top of an immutable base system, but our
| goalposts tend to change pretty frequently in the arena
| of consumer electronics.
| mikevm wrote:
| Flutter is not native. They draw all the controls
| themselves, so there'll always be some difference between
| how the native platforms feels and how a Flutter app feels
| (due to small and not so small differences).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Their renderer is why I love and hate Flutter. It's so
| easy to become productive in Flutter, but the end result
| always feels off-brand on every platform.
|
| I suppose the exception is the web, where React-based
| rendering and CSS resets have killed off most of the
| native feel anyway, but Flutter on the web is too slow to
| actually be usable in my experience. Yes, with a high
| powered laptop and a JS-optimized browser like Chrome
| it's acceptable, but that just shouldn't be necessary.
|
| I can see Flutter have its advantages, like on Fuchsia
| where "native" isn't defined by anything else and on
| kiosk systems where the application is the only
| meaningful UI that'll ever be shown, but in apps I'm just
| generally annoyed by its seeming popularity.
| dskloet wrote:
| Well, eating their own dogfood also means not using an iPhone.
| amelius wrote:
| You can eat two brands of dogfood.
| iakov wrote:
| Honest question to HN readers: which Google apps are you using on
| iOS, and why?
|
| I've bit the bullet and ditched Google ecosystem last year,
| moving email to Fastmail, buying an iPhone and the like. The only
| Google app i still use is Maps - they are vastly superior to
| everything else, with navigation, public transport schedule
| (extremely accurate in Prague) and reviews/recommendations built
| in. Essentially its a three-in-one application with no adequate
| replacement.
|
| I wonder if I am missing something good from Google.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Google Maps in Japan is unusable. Many times it directed me
| which might have been the shortest way but through micro-
| streets that are really difficult to navigate instead of the
| more efficient 2-lane.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I've noticed that Google Maps has this really strong desire
| to rat run. It really likes taking tiny roads, and making
| excessive turns to reduce your transit time by a few seconds
| or minutes.
|
| Unfortunately it usually ends up being slower, because the
| tiny road aren't faster, Google just has very low accuracy
| speed data for then.
|
| Apple Maps on the other hand tends to prefer simpler routes
| with fewer turns. In London this means Google will take you
| down a maze of backstreets, which frequently have turn or
| modal restrictions (specifically put in to prevent Google
| Maps style navigation) Google doesn't know about. Whereas
| Apple Maps tends to stick to main thoroughfares, which are
| always quicker and much less stressful to use.
|
| For me the classic example is driving from east to west
| across London. Google maps will insist on taking the
| wiggliest route that's entirely 20mph speed limits. Apple
| Maps will suggest heading out east to a ring road and looping
| back west to your destination. A longer (slightly slower)
| route, that about a billion times easier to navigate.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Utter rubbish with public transport too. Quite often it will
| suggest the slowest lines to a destination.
| 2ion wrote:
| To be fair, Japan has specific digital service offerings in a
| lot of niches that outdo most of internationally aligned
| competitors with their eyes closed.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Care to share a few examples? Visiting Japan has been on my
| list for many years. Still hasn't materialised.
| noneeeed wrote:
| It's interesting to hear that. Here in the UK I find GMaps
| way better than Apple maps in a number of ways. Apple maps
| has a frustrating habit of sending you to anything but the
| proper entrance to large venues or places of interest, it's
| become something of a running joke with my wife who insists
| on using it when driving.
|
| It goes to show how these companies are much less monolithic
| than we might sometimes assume.
| Bahamut wrote:
| I found Google Maps worse than Apple Maps in both Japan and
| South Korea, it's kind of crazy that's the case given that
| Google has had such a lead. It makes me wonder whether Google
| is investing much into these products anymore.
| 3np wrote:
| How do you make Apple maps work with kanji and romaji
| addresses at the same time? Half the time I'm driving
| somewhere, I have to painstakingly translate addresses
| before the search finds it (and even that's not 100%)
| wirthjason wrote:
| I assume you're talking about driving. To me Google Maps has
| worked well when walking around Tokyo, particularly when
| finding small, hole in the wall ramen shops off the beaten
| path. I haven't used it in the city for driving but it's
| worked well when going to rural onsen locations. And I prefer
| it to the rental car's built in navigation system (which is
| almost always a Nissan Note).
|
| There is one time it really screwed up. I like walking along
| those micro streets, lots of interesting stuff to see in
| neighborhoods. My wife and I were pushing out baby in a
| stroller and Google maps route sent us along a path that
| included a giant steep flight of stairs! It wasn't a big deal
| by there was no mention that the rout would be in accessible
| to people who couldn't climb stairs.
| 3np wrote:
| Really? Are you aware of any alternative that actually works
| well?
|
| I've been trying to move to OSM but so far i haven't found
| any usable alternative that actually gets and has good
| coverage of Japanese addresses in Kanji/hiragana as well as
| romaji. Apple Maps is way behind Google here (and I find
| Apple Maps otherwise quite usable in Europe).
|
| Apart from in-car navigators (with terrible UI, at least the
| ones I tried so far) I'm not aware of even domestic
| alternatives that are usable. All my Japanese friends use
| Google Maps.
| sosborn wrote:
| You might want to explore https://www.navitime.co.jp/
|
| IMO, best dataset at the expense of a very Japanese-style
| UI.
| jorvi wrote:
| YouTube - sadly no alternative
|
| Google Maps - Apple Maps still borks up way too much
| pell wrote:
| Only Maps. But ditching Maps has been really difficult for me.
| It's just vastly better than the competition here where I live.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I still use Google Maps. But CityMapper is excellent in urban
| areas (where available), and organic maps is great for
| walking directions.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'm still on Photos. I'd like to move to something else, but I
| don't fancy being locked into iCloud.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| For me personally I use pretty much all the Google apps. Drive,
| Docs, Keep, Maps, Home, Gmail, Duo, Search, Photos...
|
| The reason is I have an iPad, Pixel, Windows desktop, MacBook
| Pro and Linux laptop.
|
| Google's ecosystem is the only one that works well across all
| operating systems, and Google Home has by far the best voice
| control.
| gman83 wrote:
| I have an iPhone and use almost every Google service available
| instead of the Apple one. Why? Not because the app is better,
| but because I'm also using Linux & Windows, as well as a
| Android tablet. With Google services at least I'm not locked
| into one platform.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Same story here. I'm very irritated by Google Contacts not
| being available on iOS. What do you use there?
| manigandham wrote:
| iOS/iPadOS centralize accounts in system settings. You can
| toggle what services and data you want synced: mail,
| calendar, contacts, notes. Your google/gmail contacts are
| natively synced with your phone's contact list. No separate
| app needed.
|
| Go to Settings > Mail > Accounts > [account name] > toggle
| services
| zaphirplane wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Google contacts are synced into iPhone
| contacts if you login to gmail
| symlinkk wrote:
| You can just sync the native iOS contacts app with Google
| dmitriid wrote:
| - Google Maps. It's still the best maps app even though the
| quality of information they display and suggest has gone
| downhill.
|
| - Google Photos. About a magnitude of magnitudes faster than
| Apple Photos when uploading/syncing/sharing/literally anything
| with photos than Apple Photos which are always stuck in some
| limbo with no indication of what is happening.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| With the same uploaded quality ?
| dmitriid wrote:
| Not the same, but this still doesn't explain why Apple
| Photos is so dog slow and has so few indicators as to
| what's going on.
|
| Apple Photos: Uploads stuck? Check. Sharing photos taking
| up to three hours to show up on the other person's device?
| Check. Weird formats when sharing (qt/mp4, downsized
| jpegs/pngs/hvecs) with no controls? Check. And so on and so
| on.
|
| Google Photos has its quirks. But man is experience so much
| better.
| statictype wrote:
| I use Google Calendar because when meetings get changed or
| updated I would like to know about it at once and not after
| 15min or 30min or whatever time it takes the default calendar
| app to get its act together.
|
| I also use Google Sheets on iOS because it's significantly more
| useful than Numbers.
|
| Google apps and services + iOS is the sweet spot for me.
|
| iPhone is significantly better than Android for me as a
| hardware device and OS. But Google apps for productivity are
| miles ahead of anything Apple has.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| > and why?
|
| Because ease of use.
| kiryin wrote:
| Only tangentially related, I know, but I see google maps quite
| differently.
|
| First and foremost I want to admit that I have no good comeback
| to the public transport schedules, that is a good feature.
|
| But regarding mapping and navigation, google maps does not
| treat you like a human being. It's essentially a catalogue of
| advertisements, much like google search. It's optimized to
| guide you to the "nearest pizza place" or what have you, and at
| least in my area, if you're not looking for a vaguely defined
| place to spend money and already know your destination you're
| screwed, quite ironically. Everyone I've talked to around here
| struggles with it and has developed the strangest procedures to
| trick gmaps into showing the route they want to see.
|
| I personally use OpenStreetMap and it works very reliably,
| admittedly after I reconstructed some roads and added some
| labels to places I visit. Luckily there are many active editors
| around here, so even when I'm going to visit a new area 99% of
| the time I get where I want without issue.
| mdpye wrote:
| Which OSM app do you use?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Citymapper has great public transport navigation in many areas
| including Prague.
|
| Apple Maps is becoming better every day, especially for
| navigation, the place where it lacks is the poi database.
|
| OpenStreetMaps also has a large poi database.
|
| Even though it isn't as feature filled as the database used by
| Google Maps, at least you can be sure your app isn't hiding a
| restaurant because they didn't pay for an ad. Which is what
| happens if you use Google Maps.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > navigation, public transport schedule (extremely accurate in
| Prague)
|
| Have you given Apple Maps a go recently? In cities where
| they've done the big transport updates (I think Prague is one
| of them), I've found Apple Maps to be far superior to Google
| Map.
|
| Live transport times, accurate station entrances and exits
| (great here in London where stations can have half a dozen
| entrances spread out over half a square mile). Incredible
| walking and cycling audio instructions, which make good use of
| cycle paths, and provide instructions using traffic lights as
| landmarks (e.g. go through the next lights, then turn right).
|
| Reviews etc are a bit crap still, POI data isn't as good. So
| the directions to your destination are great, but actually
| telling Maps what your destination is sometime frustrating.
| Additionally I've noticed a view map errors that result is
| silly routes, but I suspect Google Maps has the same, i just
| didn't have the local knowledge to notice them.
| sofixa wrote:
| I don't know if you can say superior when Google Maps does
| all those, maybe bar the last one:
|
| > Live transport times, accurate station entrances and exits
| (great here in London where stations can have half a dozen
| entrances spread out over half a square mile). Incredible
| walking and cycling audio instructions, which make good use
| of cycle paths, and provide instructions using traffic lights
| as landmarks (e.g. go through the next lights, then turn
| right).
| manigandham wrote:
| In areas with good Apple Maps coverage, it provides
| instructions that are more helpful and usable while driving
| with a simpler interface than Google Maps.
|
| For complex routing and overall features, Google is still
| far ahead.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I think Apple Map's implementation is substantial more
| polished than what Google has. So while the top level
| feature list might be very similar, Apple Maps just works
| better. This is of course my opinion, but if you haven't
| used Apple Maps in a while, I strongly encourage you to try
| it for a week. I think you'll be impressed with how well it
| works today.
| tkgally wrote:
| I have over a dozen Google apps installed on my iPhone and
| iPad, but there are only three I use enough to have an opinion
| about: Gmail, Maps, and YouTube Music.
|
| Gmail and Maps work well enough for me, and I have no
| complaints. I much prefer the street view navigation on the
| Apple Maps app in areas where it's available, though.
|
| YouTube Music, which I mainly use on the iPhone, is sluggish
| and buggy. Album covers, for example, are often slow to load,
| and sometimes the wrong covers appear next to songs in
| playlists. I only stay with it because I have a bunch of
| playlists left over from Google Play Music, which I was
| satisfied with, and because I encountered annoying technical
| problems with both Spotify and Apple Music when I tried them a
| few years ago.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Did you try the "Transit" app for public transit?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Some that haven't been mentioned by others: Google Pay, because
| it has an integration with my city's parking meter system that
| is better than that system's official app, Google
| Authenticator, and Google PhotoScan.
| cpursley wrote:
| Not sure about the EU but Yandex maps is surprisingly good
| (yeah, I know - Russian). But at least you don't send your data
| to Google.
| raydev wrote:
| Google Maps is still better than Apple Maps overall. There are
| some nice little features in Apple Maps added in the last few
| years, but my most recent attempt at using Apple Maps
| navigation led me to an empty lot.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| When I still had iOS I mostly used Google Maps, Gmail, and
| YouTube.
| jikbd wrote:
| I use Gboard because it treats me as an adult, allowing me to
| type expletives.
| sbuk wrote:
| Fucked if I know why you can't type expletives on your iPhone
| - seems to work fine for me.
| sprkwd wrote:
| I added a contact whose name was all the expletives and now
| it ducking allows me to swear.
| jikbd wrote:
| You can type them, but not by gliding.
| barnabee wrote:
| This seems to have changed now.
|
| As of iOS 15, gliding is able to type expletives for me
| if they're added to the "text replacement" list.
| sbuk wrote:
| Ah. Didn't appreciate that. To be fair, it took Apple so
| long to implement this I've never learned to use the
| feature.
| dade_ wrote:
| No, I'd be done with Google, but nothing competes with Maps,
| and Earth. Apple maps isn't cross platform, so useless to me
| anyway. My nest was just replaced with Ecobee. I still use
| their search and news, but web only. I am open to switch when I
| find something better.
|
| And Google Home, because I have a Chromecast so my friends can
| share content, music from android phones.
|
| I look forward to the change, I find Google's Material design
| to be a big visual improvement over what was, but more
| frustrating to use.
| scary-size wrote:
| Maps and Keep (for a single shared shopping list)
| viktorcode wrote:
| Google translate. I was a Lens app user since iPhone 4. Then
| Google bought it and incorporated into the translate app. So, I
| installed it solely for the purpose of using lens
| functionality.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| This functionality is built-in to the camera app from iOS 15
| as Live Text.
|
| You might have to turn it on both at 'General/Language and
| Region' and then in the Camera settings.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Live text is a joke in comparison to Lens, unfortunately.
| It's clear that Apple is a few decades behind on
| translation technology, their implementation is worse than
| Translate from when _I was in school_.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Live text translate is a pale shadow of what Google
| translate can do.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| > for the purpose of using lens functionality.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Not sure what you are getting at. Isn't the whole point
| of the google word lens feature that it translates
| foreign languages and replaces the text with your
| language in the image in real time?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| > I was a Lens app user since iPhone 4. Then Google
| bought it and incorporated into the translate app. So, I
| installed it solely for the purpose of using lens
| functionality.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Yes, the lens functionality _for translating text_
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Ah, so they are using the translation app solely for the
| _translation_ functionality.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I still use drive and it's related apps.
|
| There are two things that makes them stand out, ux wise:
|
| 1. That round button in the lower right corner that has to be
| there because it's material, damn the actual need.
|
| 2. If a pane has a horizontal bar, it means that pane is
| dragable - except of course in Googles apps. Then it's just
| there to look at.
|
| While Google maps is more accurate with data, I find Apple Maps
| good enough and nicer to look at. I occasionally go to
| maps.Google as a backup.
| metagame wrote:
| If you're missing "something good" really depends on what you
| have a need for. They've offered free SMS for years, which is
| pretty cool, but niche. You sound like you might like trying
| Waze, which is also owned by Google.
|
| I wouldn't recommend using any of it, though. It's Google,
| after all. Not as evil as they come, but pretty bad.
| simonh wrote:
| For me the main ones are Map, GMail and Drive/Docs. I'm all-in
| on MacOS and iOS and have been for over a decade, but those
| three apps/services are essential for me.
|
| Search obviously, I tried DDG but it's not quite there for me.
| I tried Brave a few months ago but it was glitchy and unstable,
| on MacOS at least.
|
| I could probably move to a different email service, but the
| rest of my family are on GMail and I don't see a strong reason
| to move.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Why use the GMail app over the built-in client?
| redman25 wrote:
| Not the poster but I use it because Mail didn't support
| notifications. I'm not sure if that's still true. A lot of
| Gmail specific features tend to work better with their app.
| ftio wrote:
| Disclaimer: I work at Google. Opinions my own.
|
| I love Gmail. I've also been an iOS user since day one, and
| 99% of the time I prefer apps that feel like iOS apps.
|
| I use the Gmail app instead of Mail, even for my personal
| email, because Gmail has a number of concepts and
| integrations with other parts of Workspace that don't
| neatly jibe with the native Mail app. iOS wants to treat
| labels as folders, which is an approximation. Responding to
| Calendar events isn't the one-tap, in-place experience it
| is in Gmail.
|
| The Gmail app also does a few key things a lot better:
| search is way more sophisticated and reliable; Smart
| Compose is really brilliant and makes me faster,
| particularly at knocking out more 'trivial' emails.
|
| The one thing I really miss about iOS mail that Gmail
| doesn't support is VIP contacts. Gmail has a way of marking
| emails as 'high priority' and only notifying on those, but
| its classifier doesn't really match my expectations. As a
| result, I've just turned off notifications for email. I
| check it a few times a day. Probably healthier, but esp
| when I'm waiting for an email from a critical contact, VIP
| would be awesome.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Why would family be a lock-in factor for GMail? It's just
| email.
| fossuser wrote:
| Takes an entire day to migrate accounts from online
| services and apps. The flow for this is very bad, on some
| sites you have to email support and on others it's
| impossible.
|
| Even after doing this a year later I still get email to my
| old account (Uber) even though I've updated my email. Some
| sites you can't update and there is no support (Stanford
| medical).
| h4waii wrote:
| If you admin a Google Apps account on your own domain, with
| family/friends on it, they have to suffer if you want to
| migrate away.
| Joeri wrote:
| DDG for me is 90%, so I use DDG and append !g whenever I
| don't get the results I'm looking for. I'd rather have google
| search as a choice than a default.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Gmail, Chrome, Google Maps, Google Calendar
|
| The old Google chat app was better than the current one, but
| c'est la vie
| helloguillecl wrote:
| Good question!
|
| I moved to IPhone after having to follow the uncertain and
| complicated upgrade roadmaps of Android Phones.
|
| I use Apple Notes and Reminders heavily. They feel stable (of
| the kind of stability in which you know they won't be just
| wiped out of the internet) and they just work.
|
| I'm considering moving away from Google Drive since I still
| cannot make sense of their new Google Sync and Backup client.
|
| I will most likely stick to GMail since I really like the UX.
|
| As other user here points out, GBoard for iOS is wonderful, I
| can easily type in three languages as a Spanish speaker who
| speaks to his German SO (mostly) in English.
|
| I use Apple Music and it is very good, nice to have an
| alternative to Google Play Music, which of course doesn't exist
| anymore.
| drukenemo wrote:
| Is GBoard useful still if you don't grant Google full access
| to the keyboard inputs?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If you want to use Notes and don't want to trust Apple, you
| can store the notes on any IMAP server you like.
|
| I don't know if it is possible to store Reminders outside of
| iCloud, I don't really use it.
| aix1 wrote:
| > public transport schedule (extremely accurate in Prague)
|
| Give Citymapper a go if you haven't already. I find it vastly
| superior to Google Maps for public transport here in London.
|
| (And I work at Google so, if anything, am probably biased the
| other way.)
| [deleted]
| wruza wrote:
| Moreover, when I see "material design" it puts me off, because
| it reminds me how I hated my ex-android, playing button "wave"
| animations but not doing an action. Google ui is flat in all
| senses, and feels like a low-effort work stretched to the size
| of idea. Idk why they started to implement that ui for iphone,
| when it clearly had its own.
| can16358p wrote:
| Good to see they embrace that platform's own conventions instead
| of forcing their own.
| saurik wrote:
| I don't actually like Material Design very much, but it isn't as
| if I like Apple's iOS 7+ "flat" design either (though it has at
| least gotten better over the years). I think having consistent
| mechanics is not only useful but "very important", but I also
| never felt like Google's apps on iOS were particularly "alien":
| they seem to be using the built-in scroll views (I have a
| somewhat low tolerance for this, but I honestly am not "super
| picky" about subtle things that could be different... I have
| friends who are designers who turn up their noses at a control of
| weird corner cases that feel like bugs aren't clearly exactly the
| Apple control, which I think is ridiculously snobby) and their
| overall layout feels like any other mobile app.
|
| I do hate hate hate the Google Docs app, but it isn't because of
| Material Design: it is because the concept of how the app thinks
| of editing mode vs. viewing mode is extremely confusing, and I
| always manage to end up dismissing the very button I need to
| access the editing mode in my quest to enter the editing mode. (I
| also often end up adding a comment by accident and my attempts to
| cancel the comment pass through some workflow where I cancel the
| cancellation of my comment... I feel like this entire concept of
| double-cancel is insane.) But they would almost certainly make
| that app just as difficult to use with any widget set.
|
| But the actual design of say, the YouTube app? It is fine. To be
| clear: I hate it when an app sucks... I am ultra-picky about fine
| details in products involving the spacing and alignment of
| widgets, and I find that almost all "bespoke UI" truly pisses me
| off, as most designers frankly tend to suck at coming up with
| good components that make sense in context (and then the engineer
| that builds them tends to fail to push back on them sufficient
| and you get a cluttered and disorganized mess). But it isn't
| because I am being snobby about "it has to be an Apple control or
| I won't accept it": it is because I know a lot of typography
| (which itself is probably more than a normal user, who wouldn't
| even care about spacing and alignment!). And seriously: that
| isn't the YouTube app, nor is it the Google Maps app.
|
| And then, at the end of the day, you have to ask whether the vast
| majority of people with an iPhone are even using Apple's own apps
| very often. I appreciate some people do; the person reading my
| comment in anger right now is likely thinking "I DOO!!". But
| seriously, now: how much time do you think a _normal user_ is
| using their phone to use Facebook or TikTok or Twitter (which I
| bet you don 't use at all and claim these are horrible apps for
| horrible people who don't know better, yadda yadda) vs. literally
| the entire rest of their lives, mess less using the Apple apps?
|
| I use Safari (though I wouldn't if I felt I had actual choice...
| "thanks, Apple" :/), but it doesn't use the standard iOS app bar
| controls either ;P. Other than that, I still use Messages a lot
| (though most of my friends gave up on iMessage long ago, and
| switched to WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger), Notes every few
| days, and the Phone app once a week or so; I go into the Settings
| app a lot, I guess, which feels weird, but it is what it is ;P. I
| used to use Camera a lot, but in addition to also being fully
| bespoke UI, I don't go outside anymore as all the events I go to
| are cancelled or virtual :( so I have nothing to take a picture
| of anymore) I am actually going outside today, but probably not
| many: I don't actually consider fleet week to sound like an
| exciting photo op).
|
| I use Calendar, which uses normal iOS UI for the editing of stuff
| but then uses seemingly entirely bespoke UI--that I don't think
| is very good, BTW--for everything else. And hell: I think
| "normal" users don't use even the Calendar app, as 1) the only
| reason I am using shared calendars is because I have a fancy
| white-collared job, where other people insist on using calendars
| constantly with meetings they want to remotely manage, and 2) I
| am one of those rare weirdos (that are over-represented on Hacker
| News) that prefers to keep all my data locally and so I liked how
| the Calendar app was only on my phone... most everyone else I
| know uses Google Calendar, and I bet most non-tech people just go
| into the App Store to get the Google Calendar app to access it (I
| know the other fancy white-collared people I work with do this,
| because they are always confused at how my Apple Calendar renders
| stuff when I ask them questions, but I still believe fancy white-
| collared people are weird so this isn't a great data point).
|
| But so then, for real: despite being "old" (almost 40) and "out
| of touch" (I don't ever post because I feel a bit weird doing so)
| even I use Facebook and TikTok and Twitter (oh and Instagram!)
| more than all of those Apple apps combined... and _none_ of them
| seem to think Apple 's stupid iOS 7+ navigation bars make any
| sense and so they all have something more similar to Material
| Design's app bar. I think this is a good thing; and, even if I
| didn't, I will claim I would have been unlikely to think about it
| much as these are the apps I--and I continue to bet most normal
| people, even way way more so than I--use most.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| UI consistency is nice, but the reduced design space is also
| kinda boring. I guess balancing a unified look while keeping
| enough freedom for developers to express their ideas is a pretty
| hard job for the toolkit designers.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| Developer here. I can confirm that it's harder and more
| time/effort-expensive to build a UI framework or design system
| or custom component than using existing ones. I absolutely
| abhor working with designers who think that software design is
| about the freedom of expression of their personal creativities
| and tastes instead of the pragmatic, simple execution of
| fulfilling a business need both for the business and the
| customers.
|
| Design systems should not exist in a silo. Design systems
| should be consistent across a platform, so if you want to
| practice your freedom of expression, make your own platform.
| Or, design a website, where there are hardly any constraints.
| featherless wrote:
| Edited title is a bit sensationalized. Key elements of Material
| will still be important parts of the design system on iOS; it's
| about acknowledging when the platform solution is sufficient for
| the intended purpose. I'm sure that there will still be gaps that
| need to be filled, but many don't need custom solutions anymore
| :)
| njhaveri wrote:
| I think there may be some confusion here. Reading the original
| tweets from @featherless, I don't see any intent to actually
| change the end-user design. For example:
|
| > This evolution of how we approach design for Apple platforms
| has enabled us to marry the best of UIKit with the highlights of
| Google's design language.
|
| I'm reading this to say that custom UI components will be
| replaced with UIKit components that will be customized to have
| Google's design language. But at a high level, the apps will
| continue to look the same as they currently do.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I 'm reading this to say that custom UI components will be
| replaced with UIKit components that will be customized to have
| Google's design language. But at a high level, the apps will
| continue to look the same as they currently do._
|
| Yes, going back to the source Twitter thread I also believe
| that's the correct conclusion. Jason Snell and Steve Troughton-
| Smith misinterpreted the deprecation of this Material Design
| _implementation_ to mean that Google was deprecating the use of
| the Material Design design language on iOS.
|
| In reality, Google is building a new Material Design
| implementation on UIKit to get better OS integration and a
| bunch of capabilities (such as accessibility features) "for
| free".
| kall wrote:
| Yeah, I don't expect a drastic shift, but I would expect some
| details, like the weird material tap animation, to change for
| the better. Maybe the youtube app will support all iOS screen
| sizes with their safe area insets and properly sized
| toolbars. That's the kind of thing that the people who write
| about apple care about.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I felt that Google arrogantly believed that people were first
| and foremost users of Google's platforms, and benefited from
| consistency across those platforms
|
| I don't find that arrogant, it's a way of seeing things. It's
| what I want from apps i use.
| easygenes wrote:
| Yeah, I am irritated with the inconsistency of the UI of
| 1Password between MacOS and Windows to the degree now that I'm
| a couple of free hours away from migrating to Bitwarden.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| As someone that tried that - it's not worth it. ;)
|
| Also I believe 1Password 8 (in "early access") right now is
| much more unified across platforms. I haven't tried it
| though.
| macintux wrote:
| Yes, there was much gnashing and wailing of teeth here when
| they announced they were abandoning the native experience
| on Mac.
| foxhill wrote:
| interesting. i use it on linux and mac, and presumed it'd be
| the same in windows, because the app is clearly an electron-
| based app (and _drinks_ RAM as such). is the windows app
| native?
| DRW_ wrote:
| It may eventually go that way - but I believe the Linux
| version was the first electron version.
|
| 1Password started out as a (well regarded) native Mac app,
| that they then developed a native Windows app for. By the
| time they came around to Linux, they decided on Electron
| (with a rust backend) - they're now moving the Mac and
| Windows versions to the Electron versions unfortunately.
| foxhill wrote:
| that's a real shame. i understand that even with modern
| cross-platform UI toolkits, like qt and wx, multi-
| platform development is more labor intensive than an
| electron app.
|
| sublime text has been managing it for a long time though,
| and is one of the reasons i don't see it ever going away
| as _the_ text editor.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > i understand that even with modern cross-platform UI
| toolkits, like qt and wx, multi-platform development is
| more labor intensive than an electron app.
|
| I don't think this is a given, it only really becomes
| true if you have a need to control the UI down to the
| pixel, and if we're being honest, very few developers
| actually need that. Your life as a cross platform dev
| becomes a lot easier when you accept that the UI will
| have minor platform-influenced deviations that ultimately
| have zero negative impact on usability.
|
| That's one of the reasons Sublime is been able to keep
| their boat floating -- it doesn't look and feel 100% the
| same between platforms and even adopts various platform-
| isms, like the text navigation key shortcuts under macOS.
|
| The only reason "native-ish" cross platform UI frameworks
| are challenging to use is brand-driven UI design. Do as
| Google is suggesting they're going to do and let brand
| take a back seat and things become a lot more simple.
| yunyu wrote:
| Sublime doesn't use native platform UI toolkits. They
| ship their own version of Skia (same as what's used in
| Chromium) and have their own UI toolkit for the editor
| rendering.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The point remains that its UI isn't the same across
| platforms, like for example it uses whatever the local
| system font is instead of whatever the designer decides.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The point is that they're using an off-the-shelf icon kit
| with some native dialogue forwarding. By this definition,
| VS Code is also a 'native' app, which we know to be
| untrue.
|
| Frankly, I think the MacOS HID has been dead since
| Mojave. At some point, developers realized that Cocoa
| wasn't enough for most apps, and it was an awful lot of
| work to put into an app that would only be used by a
| fraction of their customers. Currently, the definition of
| "native" on MacOS is that it uses loosely the same
| keyboard shortcuts as your other programs, and if you're
| lucky then it integrates with your global menu. In the
| age of webapps and cross-platform development, there's
| simply not a way that MacOS' approach works. Even niche
| toolkits like GTK solved this problem better than Apple,
| which makes it even more mind-blowing when I see Mac
| developers defend their build system.
|
| Walled-gardens lead to sticky situations like this, where
| volunteer-driven efforts are more developer friendly than
| first-party offerings. I weep for the Xcode users who
| don't know what it's like living on the outside.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I respectfully disagree that GTK is more friendly than
| AppKit. It may be truly strictly from a cross platform
| perspective, but AppKit is still unbeaten in variety and
| capability of UI widgets, especially if front end web is
| the point of comparison. Just to get an interactive table
| view that's comparable in features to NSTableView on the
| web you're looking at duct taping together several
| libraries or reinventing the wheel yet again and writing
| the whole widget yourself. GTK and Qt better than the web
| in this aspect but still not as good (custom widgets are
| still frequently necessary with both toolkits).
|
| AppKit only comes up short in that it's not built to have
| its appearance changed dramatically and of course that
| it's tied to macOS. If you _need_ cross platform that's a
| legitimate limitation, but as noted before brand driven
| UI design is far from a need.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Mac-native apps are a pain in the butt to maintain, and
| you're catering to >10% of the computer market when you
| make one. Now you need to retain developers who
| specifically debug your Mac problems when they arise, and
| what's that? Now your app has been removed since Apple
| made a first-party version. Now your team consists of 8
| web devs, 3 MacOS devs who decided to make a native
| client for fun, 2 lawyers fighting to keep your MacOS app
| alive and one very confused CEO who doesn't understand
| why we're wasting our time with such frivolities anyways.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| 1password 7 on Windows has been around much longer than the
| linux/electron version - but it's getting "updated" with
| the "unified experience" in 1password 8.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Bitwarden is great. You can even self-host the server if you
| want to.
| sofixa wrote:
| There's even a FOSS alternative for the server, so there's
| even flexibility there.
| ancarda wrote:
| Isn't Bitwarden Server AGPL?
|
| If not, you can link me to the alternative?
| newscracker wrote:
| One popular server implementation is Vaultwarden
| (originally called bitwarden_rs), implemented in Rust.
| [1] The Vaultwarden wiki [2] has more details.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
|
| [2]: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki
| seabrookmx wrote:
| The popular alternative is bitwarden-rs, and it's usually
| chosen because it has a much smaller footprint and is
| well suited to self-hosting where you only have a handful
| of users.
|
| The official backend is multi-container and uses a full
| SQL server install.
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| Minor nit: they've had to change the name to
| "vaultwarden".
|
| https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden#readme
|
| > Note: This project was known as Bitwarden_RS and has
| been renamed to separate itself from the official
| Bitwarden server in the hopes of avoiding confusion and
| trademark/branding issues. Please see #1642 for more
| explanation.
| martini333 wrote:
| Google Material Design is do bad.
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