Category: Technology

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I’ve had this on my mind for a few years now, and was reminded by this article about how Apple will reject Stadia and xCloud from the App Store. I’m a fan of both of those services so far, but my thoughts are tangential to Apple’s locked down platform. The nit I am picking is with search.

There is an almost throwaway line in Apple’s policy about how all the games would need to be reviewed and available in search. In direct relation to this issue, the policy is dumb and will likely fold, either to antitrust inquiries or backdoor handshake deals (or both). It creates a bad user experience (people who want to use the service on iOS cannot) for the sake of a good user interface.

I can’t fault them for it. In my 10 years using smartphones, I was able to switch to iOS for an entire 6 weeks, around the end of 2015. The only thing that still haunts me as an Android user is Spotlight Search.

It underscores the core design difference between the two systems. There is a single iOS which everyone experieces, but users bring along their individual stuff into the walled garden. On Android, you are generally encourged to create your own unique experience, which is rewarding in itself. However, trying to access personal items is a hassle, as search is almost always pointed outward toward the G-shaped hive mind.

I’ve spent several weeks organizing personal notes, experimenting with new tools. The interoperability and longevity of plaintext notes has proven particular alluring, and quite useful in practice. But if I want to perform a mobile search that includes my personal files as well as relevant emails/todos/etc., I am out of luck. The market leader to end all market leaders of internet search fails to accomplish this, and probably on purpose, because again, all search points outward by design.

Anyways, this has been bugging me for years, and won’t get any better because I just got my next Android phone. On a related note, I look forward to Obsidian coming to mobile.

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I was lucky enough to get into Google Music early, by invitation. I have used it ever since, with a 1-month hiatus around 2014 to determine that Rdio was the best streaming service available (lol). In reality, the only option at the time for people with iPod-filling-sized music collections was Google Music. You could probably run a Subsonic server or something, but that stuff was for nerds. This was one of the largest companies in the world, offering a consumer solution for a consumer problem.

This was all before the wide realization of Google’s penchant for killing its offerings that people actually liked. But this one has obviously been much harder – they’ve started trying to kill their original music service over 2 years ago with no luck.

Youtube (in terms of branding) is already a step down. It has its own trouble with extremism, etc. Also, streaming music on Youtube always seemed like an anachronism to me – your medium is wrong, you are using unnecessary bandwidth, also you aren’t cool enough to have amassed your own collection. Can’t beat (ad-supported) free, I guess.

Grandfathering into the early adopter’s rate has saved me roughly $160 so far, over Spotify and others. May not be enough monetarily to justify staying, but it is enough to say I got in before it was cool. And to people who curate music collections, that is worth more lol.

The wrench in all this is I got a 3 month trial to Tidal, and it is going pretty well so far. It apparently can be combined with Plex, which may be getting back to that holy grail of mine + theirs. Will have a decision to make soon.

 

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You'll finally be able to set third-party apps as a default in iOS 14 (Input)
In a landmark move, Apple will allow third party email and browser apps to become your default choice for your most important apps.

I’ve been reexamining whether a switch would be worth it, and this is table stakes if they expect it to happen. It is on the iPadOS slide, so seems like an assumption at this point that it would also apply to phones

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The Facebook emails by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (werd.io)
I still need to read the documents unsealed by British Parliament for myself, but they seem pretty revealing. From the Parliamentary summary itself: Facebook have clearly entered into whitelisting agreements with certain companies, which meant that after the platform changes in 2014/15 they maintai...