So, minyanville.com has an article that hits on a few of my favorite things:
- Bashes Apple
- Talks about how awesome Android is
- Forgets Windows Phone even exists
When Apple released Siri (October 2011), the body-less ”assistant” everyone thought it was so revolutionary. However, the truth is, they took a page from Android’s ‘Voice Commands’ program. As much as I hate to admit it, Apple did one up Android, in that Siri allowed for a bit of “fuzzy language”. Instead of just knowing specific commands, it would try to figure out what you wanted as long as it was close-ish. While this didn’t always work as intended (http://whysiriwhy.com/) it did have an advantage over the current Google offering. But even Apple co-founder the great and powerful Woz (Steve Wozniak) and many other didn’t think it was up to Apple’s standards.
Then in June 2012 Apple tried to distance itself even further from it’s users reliance on Google and their tools, by launching Apple Maps. This was to offer better graphics, turn by turn directions, real time traffic updates and built in reviews from yelp! But too bad they spent so much time making it look pretty they forgot to make the map portion of the program any good at all. Entire Cities were missing, wrong directions were given and bridges rippled like water. And again the Woz was not ammused.
Apple Maps was so bad that Apple actually started referring people to Google Maps, except Apple banned the Google Maps app, so people had to use their web browser (Safari, THANKS APPLE!) to get to Google Maps that way. By December of that same year, Google Maps was back in the apple App Store.
“Big deal.” you may scoff, “Apple is allowed to make one mistake, Siri is still lightyears better than anything Google has!”
Not so fast. Google just launched Google Now. This is a Siri alternative that many people are saying, plays Siri better than Siri. Unfortunately there are a few things it can’t do, because Apple doesn’t allow third party applications access to them, such as setting alarms, e-mails, texts, etc. For the record it can do all these on Android. It also won’t provide a homepage widget, because again Apple says no.
What it can do, is search for things better than Siri. The author on minyanville.com took his wife’s iPhone 4 opened Google Now and asked when William Shatner was born. In about 1 second Google Now presented a card with the Shat’s photo and birth date, which G.N. read out loud to him. The same test on Siri, on the same phone, offered a 6 second delay after the question then Siri said that she was unable to find a “William Shatner” in the contact list and asked if he meant a different William in the list. It took the author a bit to realize Siri was waiting on a reply, when he said “No” she said “OK and that was it. No follow up, nothing just done.
Now this only 2 examples, but think about it. Most iPhone users would rather use Gmail, Google Chrome and Google Drive than the apps Apple supplies. And the really funny thing to me, is that this goes against Apple’s walled garden approach to everything. And despite what they may try Apple has no choice but to just smile and take it, because so many of their users are programmed to need Google apps.
Read the full article without my input here.
