I decided that I should swap my Galaxy Note 4 for an iPhone 6 Plus to compliment the iMac I purchased last December, and while the iPhoto/Photos integration that I wanted it for can't be underplayed, boy do I wish that they'd stop deliberately breaking compatibility with the camera on Samsung phones (won't recognize them as a camera at all no matter what you do) so that I could go back to Android. iOS still behaves much as it did 6 years ago with only minor tweaks, while Android has made some (relatively) amazing usability improvements, particularly for simple stuff like text selection, copy and pasting, etc. Not to mention that the lack of any true ability to modify/customize the iOS home screen is laughable...
...and the camera on the 6 plus isn't even as good as the Note 4's, which came out like more than a year earlier...
...altogether I'm glad iPhoto works as intended and that's a big deal for me but it's literally the ONLY positive over having an Android phone.
I decided that I should swap my Galaxy Note 4 for an iPhone 6 Plus to compliment the iMac I purchased last December, and while the iPhoto/Photos integration that I wanted it for can't be underplayed, boy do I wish that they'd stop deliberately breaking compatibility with the camera on Samsung phones (won't recognize them as a camera at all no matter what you do) so that I could go back to Android. iOS still behaves much as it did 6 years ago with only minor tweaks, while Android has made some (relatively) amazing usability improvements, particularly for simple stuff like text selection, copy and pasting, etc. Not to mention that the lack of any true ability to modify/customize the iOS home screen is laughable...
...and the camera on the 6 plus isn't even as good as the Note 4's, which came out like more than a year earlier...
...altogether I'm glad iPhoto works as intended and that's a big deal for me but it's literally the ONLY positive over having an Android phone.
The camera on the iPhone 6 is almost universally considered the best phone camera there is. It's better than almost any point and shoot camera, let alone phone cameras. To do better you need to get a "real" camera. Many pro photographers rely on their iPhone cameras as a backup and get the job done. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you.
The only thing laughable about not customizing the home screen is that you think it's important. No widgets? Oh no! What are you going to say next? Car A is worse than Car B because it doesn't have fuzzy dice? Back in college things like WinAmp themes were very important. Nowadays I'm an adult.
Also, to say that iOS hasn't made improvements is something only someone who hasn't used the old iOS could say. Try using an iPhone 1 with iOS 1. It was awful! The improvements are just less noticeable for iOS than Android since it was less awful to begin with. Try using the G1, the first Android phone. Makes the iPhone 1 look amazing. It's easier to improve when you're so bad to begin with.
Lastly, copying, pasting, etc. is only an issue if you are doing too much typing on your phone. The only copying/pasting I ever need to do on the iPhone is to copy URLs between apps or such, and it works flawlessly. Are you writing a book on your phone or something? Stop it. They don't put effort into improving that experience because typing a lot on the phone is not a thing that people do.
I was gonna say maybe the Lumia camera might be better, but a cursory glance at reviews have said that comparisons with the iPhone 5(s) that the iPhone was still better in most cases. Also the Lumia is a Windows phone so you might as well just throw it in the trash anyway.
Although even when I had an Android I basically never used any of the "customization". I tried them, but I found that they often weren't that helpful in most of my uses and generally just got in the way. The iOS UI is a fairly tried and true design. It works well and they'll probably not deviate from it too much. Which is why Android more or less has a similar design in its UI.
I find copy and pasting somewhat of an issue, and granted my Android phone was a bit long in the tooth, but I remember it being just as annoying. I've generally found iOS to be a bit better in that regard. But I'm usually only ever copying maybe a text message or a URL which isn't ever really that bad. I just think such operations are not always suited to a touch device so they tend to be sorta clunky from the get go.
Personally my BIGGEST gripe with the iPhone and iOS is that I would like the ability to message from a Windows computer. They could probably write an application for it but I doubt they ever will. There's sort of ways to get it to work from what I've researched but it just seems to be a major pain in the ass.
Personally my BIGGEST gripe with the iPhone and iOS is that I would like the ability to message from a Windows computer. They could probably write an application for it but I doubt they ever will. There's sort of ways to get it to work from what I've researched but it just seems to be a major pain in the ass.
You mean you want to send iMessages from a Windows computer? Just use Google Hangout instead.
The only thing laughable about not customizing the home screen is that you think it's important. No widgets? Oh no! What are you going to say next? Car A is worse than Car B because it doesn't have fuzzy dice? Back in college things like WinAmp themes were very important. Nowadays I'm an adult.
So because you're an "adult" you need/want less freedom?
The only thing laughable about not customizing the home screen is that you think it's important. No widgets? Oh no! What are you going to say next? Car A is worse than Car B because it doesn't have fuzzy dice? Back in college things like WinAmp themes were very important. Nowadays I'm an adult.
So because you're an "adult" you need/want less freedom?
Yeah, not being able to put stupid widgets on your home screen is a limitation of civil rights. What next? iPhone doesn't have a hook to attach charms! FREEDOM! 'MERICA!
The only thing laughable about not customizing the home screen is that you think it's important. No widgets? Oh no! What are you going to say next? Car A is worse than Car B because it doesn't have fuzzy dice? Back in college things like WinAmp themes were very important. Nowadays I'm an adult.
So because you're an "adult" you need/want less freedom?
Yeah, not being able to put stupid widgets on your home screen is a limitation of civil rights. What next? iPhone doesn't have a hook to attach charms! FREEDOM! 'MERICA!
Ok maybe freedom was the wrong word. Let's say flexibility. I'm not saying this as a gotcha question or a joke. The idea of that is actually interesting to me. I know I for one spent a great deal of time customizing my current Arch Linux install.
Personally my BIGGEST gripe with the iPhone and iOS is that I would like the ability to message from a Windows computer. They could probably write an application for it but I doubt they ever will. There's sort of ways to get it to work from what I've researched but it just seems to be a major pain in the ass.
You mean you want to send iMessages from a Windows computer? Just use Google Hangout instead.
Well not everyone is using Google Hangouts or Facebook chat. It's usually not that big of a deal but occasionally if I'm texting someone and I want to send links to someone from a window I have open on my PC it would be nice to keep the link within the context of the text messages instead of saying "I sent you this thing on Facebook chat".
That whole space is fragmented in a way that kinda annoys me anyway. Some people will pretty much only text, then a percentage uses Facebook chat, then another percentage uses Google Hangouts. For instance my family and my girlfriend mostly only text, then one of my buddies only uses Facebook chats and rarely responds to texts and basically doesn't use Hangouts, then my coworkers mostly only ever use Hangouts and occasionally Facebook chat and don't respond to texts ever really. That's not an issue of iOS but moreso people having all these preferences over applications.
The only thing laughable about not customizing the home screen is that you think it's important. No widgets? Oh no! What are you going to say next? Car A is worse than Car B because it doesn't have fuzzy dice? Back in college things like WinAmp themes were very important. Nowadays I'm an adult.
So because you're an "adult" you need/want less freedom?
Yeah, not being able to put stupid widgets on your home screen is a limitation of civil rights. What next? iPhone doesn't have a hook to attach charms! FREEDOM! 'MERICA!
Ok maybe freedom was the wrong word. Let's say flexibility. I'm not saying this as a gotcha question or a joke. The idea of that is actually interesting to me. I know I for one spent a great deal of time customizing my current Arch Linux install.
Oh, so you're in THAT phase. You'll get over it. I had the Gentoo Linux sickness back in the day. Even went crazy with the fvwm. Got over that before I finished college. Defaults forever.
Personally my BIGGEST gripe with the iPhone and iOS is that I would like the ability to message from a Windows computer. They could probably write an application for it but I doubt they ever will. There's sort of ways to get it to work from what I've researched but it just seems to be a major pain in the ass.
You mean you want to send iMessages from a Windows computer? Just use Google Hangout instead.
Well not everyone is using Google Hangouts or Facebook chat. It's usually not that big of a deal but occasionally if I'm texting someone and I want to send links to someone from a window I have open on my PC it would be nice to keep the link within the context of the text messages instead of saying "I sent you this thing on Facebook chat".
That whole space is fragmented in a way that kinda annoys me anyway. Some people will pretty much only text, then a percentage uses Facebook chat, then another percentage uses Google Hangouts. For instance my family and my girlfriend mostly only text, then one of my buddies only uses Facebook chats and rarely responds to texts and basically doesn't use Hangouts, then my coworkers mostly only ever use Hangouts and occasionally Facebook chat and don't respond to texts ever really. That's not an issue of iOS but moreso people having all these preferences over applications.
Sounds like the issue is you can't control your people.
Desktop customization, including not only ordering icons but controlling where they appear (and don't appear) on the screen, is a usability issue WAY above and beyond fuzzy dice. Your rant was silly.
Professional photographers buy (and praise) all sorts of popular boutique shit, and so do I, but I don't sit around pretending that it's always the best in breed.
The camera on the Note 4 doesn't only have 13 megapixels to Apple's 8 (which, granted, is only a single and not-always-important comparison), but Android has a superior HDR algorithm with more user control, which matters to me (the slow mo camera is also better on Android but that's a toy anyway.)
Lots of circle jerking goes on about all sorts of brands and some of it is even warranted, but Apple is basically a cult.
And sure, I had my Ubuntu phase, too, and I like defaults for the same reasons you do. Apple's home screen, though, is a throwback plain and simple. Undeletable built-in apps? (At least let me hide them). An automatically flowed grid of icons that can't be positioned except to be reordered? Barf.
I use Atom Launcher on my Android devices and it is the fucking tits, bro.
The only thing laughable about not customizing the home screen is that you think it's important. No widgets? Oh no! What are you going to say next? Car A is worse than Car B because it doesn't have fuzzy dice? Back in college things like WinAmp themes were very important. Nowadays I'm an adult.
So because you're an "adult" you need/want less freedom?
Yeah, not being able to put stupid widgets on your home screen is a limitation of civil rights. What next? iPhone doesn't have a hook to attach charms! FREEDOM! 'MERICA!
Ok maybe freedom was the wrong word. Let's say flexibility. I'm not saying this as a gotcha question or a joke. The idea of that is actually interesting to me. I know I for one spent a great deal of time customizing my current Arch Linux install.
Oh, so you're in THAT phase. You'll get over it. I had the Gentoo Linux sickness back in the day. Even went crazy with the fvwm. Got over that before I finished college. Defaults forever.
Arch isn't quite as crazy as Gentoo. I am actually using a mostly stock Gnome Shell with a few extensions for stuff like window tiling.
iOS is practically unusable, but only because of a very few things that could easily be fixed. Even precise selection of text, which I do daily, is a chore. It's absurd how little they've improved it especially given Android's superior implementation as an example to work from.
The undeleteable icons and enforced grid flow are also pretty inexcusable in 2015.
Aside from those (major) issues, I don't have many problems with iOS, although I still firmly believe that iPhones need a "back" button. Requiring every app to implement its own flavor of "go back to the last thing/level/page" makes for another usability disaster.
What exactly are you doing on your phone that you need to precisely select text so often? If it is writing forum posts, please stop and wait until you have a keyboard. You have a problem if you must post in the forum so desperately that you do it from your phone.
I don't like the undeletable icons either, but what exactly is inexcusable about them? Just stick them all together in a folder labeled "garbage" or "etc." and shove it on the second page. Big deal. Are they hurting you? Are children starving because you have to hide away some icons in a junk folder?
And what's wrong with the enforced grid? You have a nice organized and easy one-touch access to the apps you care about. Each icon is exactly the right size for touching. What's the problem?
I share links on social media, look up the status of various confirmations (repairs, reservations, package tracking) which often requires me to copy and paste confirmation codes when the vendor doesn't supply a hotlink, which is often.
I very seldom post on forums from my phone, but I have done it. Why should it be hard especially when it's easy on Android? Attacking my use case kinda demonstrates that you can't really defend iOS here.. which is fine but let's call a spade a spade.
I do the "garbage" folder thing but it's a stupid workaround that needn't exist. It exists because Apple REALLY NEEDS you to see THEIR apps which are important for THEIR BRAND IMAGE, but what good is it doing their brand image when most of their users clump that shit together into a folder/group called "Stupid Bullshit"?
The icon grid was great when Apple had the only smartphone on the market, but I like to be able to position specific applications in specific places on the screen and the iOS icon grid makes that more of a pain than it should be. On my android devices I generally have a double row of about ten or twelve icons that I position across the bottom of the screen above the quicklaunch which contains the apps I use every day. They're always in the same place and when I install something new I don't have to play with a card stacking algorithm to keep them all straight. Why would/should I want to do that?
I like the double row at the bottom of the screen because it leaves room at the top FOR MY CALENDAR/WEATHER/SCHEDULE WIDGET. WIDGETS!! HOW STUPID!! ;-)
Apple is all about convenience and expedience and a unified user experience which is great when, say, I need to support 50 people's mobile devices. But for me, a heavy and educated user, Apple makes things harder to customize than they should be.
And that text selection thing is huge... what a pain in the ass.
You can't beat iPhoto, though. Picasa isn't even close. Nothing is even close. That's why I have an iPhone: for iPhoto.
iOS is practically unusable, but only because of a very few things that could easily be fixed. Even precise selection of text, which I do daily, is a chore. It's absurd how little they've improved it especially given Android's superior implementation as an example to work from.
The undeleteable icons and enforced grid flow are also pretty inexcusable in 2015.
Aside from those (major) issues, I don't have many problems with iOS, although I still firmly believe that iPhones need a "back" button. Requiring every app to implement its own flavor of "go back to the last thing/level/page" makes for another usability disaster.
The back button issue is sort of trivial. I initially was kinda confused without it when I first got an iPhone and I realized that it's basically unnecessary. Once I understood the workflow I didn't miss that feature ever. And either way most Android apps, from what I remember, define their own behavior for the back button anyway. I do remember some apps not really working the way I expected with the back button on Android.
I guess personally I feel like any other design besides the grid is usually less efficient. Even with Android I never used anything but. And I'm skeptical of any other design I could think of.
As far as hiding undeletable apps I just put all the ones I'll never use into a folder and put them on another screen. I think that works fine. It's just a different way to organize things. Their OS design make WAAAY more sense for the standard user, by not hiding things behind multiple different segments it makes it incredibly easy to tell from a glance what is installed and what is not installed. My Android phone still had undeletable apps and would have required that I root it to get rid of them. Dunno how much that has changed, but I much more prefer having somewhat usable apps instead of a fucking Blockbuster app that was even dated when I got the phone.
The one thing that sorta rubbed me the wrong way initially was the application settings going from Android to iOS. Although the more I've used it putting everything in the OS settings is a better idea overall. Especially as it got more standardized. When I had an Android things were sorta scattered all over the place, some settings being in the application, some being in the system settings.
Well I wouldn't call the back button a deal breaker but I do think that not having one is going a bit too far into the "simplified idiot box" design philosophy of Apple.
Moving shit you're NEVER going to use isn't "a different way to organize things", it's a workaround.
I agree that not having a layer of stuff you want to use and a layer of everything installed on the device makes things less confusing for Grandma, but I don't think we should be designing everything for Grandma.
Android does have some undeleteables, but they go on that second "everything" tier which is much better than a folder full of shit in the corner.
Apple "hides" settings much worse than Android does, it's just a matter of what you're used to and where you're used to finding it. At least in Android the setting you'd like usually EXISTS somewhere... ;-D
It's pretty much do you want a default phone versus do you want to have any choice in how you use your phone or how it looks.
I was surprised to find that the iPhone 6 camera doesn't OIS, most Android flagships have it built into the camera. Apple made it exclusive to the iPhone 6 Plus and that thing looks like a fucking tablet because of the single physical button and extra space on either end of the phone so that they could put in a slimmer battery and spread out the components.
The iPhone 6 Plus's camera is the only camera worth having if you were to get an iOS device unfortunately it's connected to a tablet.
Also get apps censored on political basis, showing too much flesh or anything that may be sensitive to Steve Jobs ghost.
I like the that iOS gets to use a lower level language and can therefore be optimised to a degree but the UI just feels disgusting like a desktop full of icons. Each developer has their own menu system so there isn't a uniting theme whereas websites are starting to look like Android apps with hamburger menu and Material design animations. The software and ecosystem has just always been behind a generation or two recently.
Widgets are way more useful than you would think, it's almost always one tap less per used icon or no taps depending on the application and widget. Scott's off hand dismissal seems to be from a lack of trying out Android.
Also all Android apps will have the ability to be run in Chrome which may or may not have a major affect on how valuable people see one ecosystem over the other however it will be super useful if there are applications which can replicate the functionality of Google's own Chrome - Android applications.
There is Google Now which is super functional compared to Siri and has some great links to desktop searches (e.g. literally type "where is my phone" into Google and you will have remote access).
I've also never had an issue with things getting moved around when I install them. They always get put on a second page and never move things around. I dunno, some of your gripes just seem like things that you can work around or find something better that works for you but you're stuck on the ways you used to do them.
Sounds to me like the big problem here isn't iOS, it's you. I also don't like the undeletable apps. I would delete them if I could. But I just stick them in an extra folder like everyone else. It's not a big deal. It's definitely not worth switching to Android over.
For you it seems like the mere existence of these icons is causing great distress. Based on your post, you are actually angry that these icons are there. That's a problem not with Apple, but with you. If icons make you angry, you got problems. Don't lose sleep over it.
You say you are a "heavy and educated user", therefore you somehow know more about industrial and graphic design than Jony Ive? Just like all the pro gamers who think they know best what changes should be made to Counter-Strike? Just like all the pro drivers who know better than engineers how to build a car?
There's nothing wrong with the grid of icons. It accomplishes the task as well as any other. The only problem is that you for some reason decided not to like it. Just change your mind so that you like it. It's that simple.
With Android, no amount of changing yourself will change the fact that your phone isn't going to get the latest updates as soon a they are available. Nothing you can do will suddenly make all the iOS only apps appear on Android. Nothing you do will suddenly make all the retina beautifulness suddenly happen on your Android phone. That shit is actually broken. All your iPhone complaints are solved by changing yourself. There's nothing wrong with the software or hardware at all.
TL:DR; Defaults for almost everything. Change yourself so that the defaults become your preference. Zen. Peace.
But either way, they do things differently, and they're targeted towards different users. You want widgets and think they're useful? Get an Android. Personally I've never found them useful even when I was hoping they would be useful. You want a bunch of customization to fit your super specific use cases? Get an Android.
The thing that easily trumps almost everything about the Android for me over the iOS was I was getting real tired of the performance of apps due to device fragmentation. The devices perform WILDLY different from each other. If you happen to get a device that is not one of the top tier devices, then you can usually guarantee a poor experience. That never happens with the iPhone.
You could make that argument, but I don't agree. There's both a visual and conceptual delineation between the "home" screen and the "installed apps" screen on Android that doesn't exist on iPhone. There's a clear navigation to the "installed apps" screen that further delineates them.
Things don't "move around" when I install new apps, but reordering apps after installing something new and likely to be frequently used is more inconvenient with Apple than with Android by a significant margin. I said to begin with that none of the usability issues are monstrous, just that they're inconvenient and numerous enough to matter.
Moving shit you're NEVER going to use isn't "a different way to organize things", it's a workaround.
...
Android does have some undeleteables, but they go on that second "everything" tier which is much better than a folder full of shit in the corner.
These sound like the same exact things.
No the undeletables you can remove from the system so they are unable to run whatsoever and don't exist on the OS unless you specifically reinitialise them from settings. I only have the WeChat and Weibo apps on my phone as I bought it from Hong Kong geographically. The apps you don't really need to launch regularly just go in the app drawer which is the middle space of the 5 spaces at the bottom of the screen (the other 4 being whatever apps you want to place there).
Moving shit you're NEVER going to use isn't "a different way to organize things", it's a workaround.
...
Android does have some undeleteables, but they go on that second "everything" tier which is much better than a folder full of shit in the corner.
These sound like the same exact things.
No the undeletables you can remove from the system so they are unable to run whatsoever and don't exist on the OS unless you specifically reinitialise them from settings. I only have the WeChat and Weibo apps on my phone as I bought it from Hong Kong geographically. The apps you don't really need to launch regularly just go in the app drawer which is the middle space of the 5 spaces at the bottom of the screen (the other 4 being whatever apps you want to place there).
How do you remove an undeletable app from the system? Because removing it from the system to me IS deleting it. So I don't really understand. That Blockbuster application was ALWAYS there, sure you could delete the icon from the home screen, but every time you brought up the installed apps it was always there. No way to remove it.
You could make that argument, but I don't agree. There's both a visual and conceptual delineation between the "home" screen and the "installed apps" screen on Android that doesn't exist on iPhone. There's a clear navigation to the "installed apps" screen that further delineates them.
For you, I don't disagree. For some other users, you are completely wrong. If you've seen my mom use the android phone she had for several years you'd understand. And I guarantee she's not the only person. Like I said, the iPhone design shows you from a glance what is installed and what is not. There's no going to different screens to see what is actually installed.
Moving shit you're NEVER going to use isn't "a different way to organize things", it's a workaround.
...
Android does have some undeleteables, but they go on that second "everything" tier which is much better than a folder full of shit in the corner.
These sound like the same exact things.
No the undeletables you can remove from the system so they are unable to run whatsoever and don't exist on the OS unless you specifically reinitialise them from settings. I only have the WeChat and Weibo apps on my phone as I bought it from Hong Kong geographically. The apps you don't really need to launch regularly just go in the app drawer which is the middle space of the 5 spaces at the bottom of the screen (the other 4 being whatever apps you want to place there).
How do you remove an undeletable app from the system? Because removing it from the system to me IS deleting it. So I don't really understand. That Blockbuster application was ALWAYS there, sure you could delete the icon from the home screen, but every time you brought up the installed apps it was always there. No way to remove it.
You can disable an application from settings, it will still have its initial base memory, all updates and cache will be removed and it can't be launched or run unless it is re-enabled from settings.
Comments
...and the camera on the 6 plus isn't even as good as the Note 4's, which came out like more than a year earlier...
...altogether I'm glad iPhoto works as intended and that's a big deal for me but it's literally the ONLY positive over having an Android phone.
I am spoiled by thumbprint unlock. Swiping and entering in a code is for suckas.
The only thing laughable about not customizing the home screen is that you think it's important. No widgets? Oh no! What are you going to say next? Car A is worse than Car B because it doesn't have fuzzy dice? Back in college things like WinAmp themes were very important. Nowadays I'm an adult.
Also, to say that iOS hasn't made improvements is something only someone who hasn't used the old iOS could say. Try using an iPhone 1 with iOS 1. It was awful! The improvements are just less noticeable for iOS than Android since it was less awful to begin with. Try using the G1, the first Android phone. Makes the iPhone 1 look amazing. It's easier to improve when you're so bad to begin with.
Lastly, copying, pasting, etc. is only an issue if you are doing too much typing on your phone. The only copying/pasting I ever need to do on the iPhone is to copy URLs between apps or such, and it works flawlessly. Are you writing a book on your phone or something? Stop it. They don't put effort into improving that experience because typing a lot on the phone is not a thing that people do.
Although even when I had an Android I basically never used any of the "customization". I tried them, but I found that they often weren't that helpful in most of my uses and generally just got in the way. The iOS UI is a fairly tried and true design. It works well and they'll probably not deviate from it too much. Which is why Android more or less has a similar design in its UI.
I find copy and pasting somewhat of an issue, and granted my Android phone was a bit long in the tooth, but I remember it being just as annoying. I've generally found iOS to be a bit better in that regard. But I'm usually only ever copying maybe a text message or a URL which isn't ever really that bad. I just think such operations are not always suited to a touch device so they tend to be sorta clunky from the get go.
Personally my BIGGEST gripe with the iPhone and iOS is that I would like the ability to message from a Windows computer. They could probably write an application for it but I doubt they ever will. There's sort of ways to get it to work from what I've researched but it just seems to be a major pain in the ass.
Love that new widget addition.
That whole space is fragmented in a way that kinda annoys me anyway. Some people will pretty much only text, then a percentage uses Facebook chat, then another percentage uses Google Hangouts. For instance my family and my girlfriend mostly only text, then one of my buddies only uses Facebook chats and rarely responds to texts and basically doesn't use Hangouts, then my coworkers mostly only ever use Hangouts and occasionally Facebook chat and don't respond to texts ever really. That's not an issue of iOS but moreso people having all these preferences over applications.
Professional photographers buy (and praise) all sorts of popular boutique shit, and so do I, but I don't sit around pretending that it's always the best in breed.
The camera on the Note 4 doesn't only have 13 megapixels to Apple's 8 (which, granted, is only a single and not-always-important comparison), but Android has a superior HDR algorithm with more user control, which matters to me (the slow mo camera is also better on Android but that's a toy anyway.)
Lots of circle jerking goes on about all sorts of brands and some of it is even warranted, but Apple is basically a cult.
I use Atom Launcher on my Android devices and it is the fucking tits, bro.
The undeleteable icons and enforced grid flow are also pretty inexcusable in 2015.
Aside from those (major) issues, I don't have many problems with iOS, although I still firmly believe that iPhones need a "back" button. Requiring every app to implement its own flavor of "go back to the last thing/level/page" makes for another usability disaster.
I don't like the undeletable icons either, but what exactly is inexcusable about them? Just stick them all together in a folder labeled "garbage" or "etc." and shove it on the second page. Big deal. Are they hurting you? Are children starving because you have to hide away some icons in a junk folder?
And what's wrong with the enforced grid? You have a nice organized and easy one-touch access to the apps you care about. Each icon is exactly the right size for touching. What's the problem?
I very seldom post on forums from my phone, but I have done it. Why should it be hard especially when it's easy on Android? Attacking my use case kinda demonstrates that you can't really defend iOS here.. which is fine but let's call a spade a spade.
I do the "garbage" folder thing but it's a stupid workaround that needn't exist. It exists because Apple REALLY NEEDS you to see THEIR apps which are important for THEIR BRAND IMAGE, but what good is it doing their brand image when most of their users clump that shit together into a folder/group called "Stupid Bullshit"?
The icon grid was great when Apple had the only smartphone on the market, but I like to be able to position specific applications in specific places on the screen and the iOS icon grid makes that more of a pain than it should be. On my android devices I generally have a double row of about ten or twelve icons that I position across the bottom of the screen above the quicklaunch which contains the apps I use every day. They're always in the same place and when I install something new I don't have to play with a card stacking algorithm to keep them all straight. Why would/should I want to do that?
I like the double row at the bottom of the screen because it leaves room at the top FOR MY CALENDAR/WEATHER/SCHEDULE WIDGET. WIDGETS!! HOW STUPID!! ;-)
Apple is all about convenience and expedience and a unified user experience which is great when, say, I need to support 50 people's mobile devices. But for me, a heavy and educated user, Apple makes things harder to customize than they should be.
And that text selection thing is huge... what a pain in the ass.
You can't beat iPhoto, though. Picasa isn't even close. Nothing is even close. That's why I have an iPhone: for iPhoto.
I guess personally I feel like any other design besides the grid is usually less efficient. Even with Android I never used anything but. And I'm skeptical of any other design I could think of.
As far as hiding undeletable apps I just put all the ones I'll never use into a folder and put them on another screen. I think that works fine. It's just a different way to organize things. Their OS design make WAAAY more sense for the standard user, by not hiding things behind multiple different segments it makes it incredibly easy to tell from a glance what is installed and what is not installed. My Android phone still had undeletable apps and would have required that I root it to get rid of them. Dunno how much that has changed, but I much more prefer having somewhat usable apps instead of a fucking Blockbuster app that was even dated when I got the phone.
The one thing that sorta rubbed me the wrong way initially was the application settings going from Android to iOS. Although the more I've used it putting everything in the OS settings is a better idea overall. Especially as it got more standardized. When I had an Android things were sorta scattered all over the place, some settings being in the application, some being in the system settings.
Moving shit you're NEVER going to use isn't "a different way to organize things", it's a workaround.
I agree that not having a layer of stuff you want to use and a layer of everything installed on the device makes things less confusing for Grandma, but I don't think we should be designing everything for Grandma.
Android does have some undeleteables, but they go on that second "everything" tier which is much better than a folder full of shit in the corner.
Apple "hides" settings much worse than Android does, it's just a matter of what you're used to and where you're used to finding it. At least in Android the setting you'd like usually EXISTS somewhere... ;-D
I was surprised to find that the iPhone 6 camera doesn't OIS, most Android flagships have it built into the camera. Apple made it exclusive to the iPhone 6 Plus and that thing looks like a fucking tablet because of the single physical button and extra space on either end of the phone so that they could put in a slimmer battery and spread out the components.
The iPhone 6 Plus's camera is the only camera worth having if you were to get an iOS device unfortunately it's connected to a tablet.
Also get apps censored on political basis, showing too much flesh or anything that may be sensitive to Steve Jobs ghost.
I like the that iOS gets to use a lower level language and can therefore be optimised to a degree but the UI just feels disgusting like a desktop full of icons. Each developer has their own menu system so there isn't a uniting theme whereas websites are starting to look like Android apps with hamburger menu and Material design animations. The software and ecosystem has just always been behind a generation or two recently.
Widgets are way more useful than you would think, it's almost always one tap less per used icon or no taps depending on the application and widget. Scott's off hand dismissal seems to be from a lack of trying out Android.
Also all Android apps will have the ability to be run in Chrome which may or may not have a major affect on how valuable people see one ecosystem over the other however it will be super useful if there are applications which can replicate the functionality of Google's own Chrome - Android applications.
There is Google Now which is super functional compared to Siri and has some great links to desktop searches (e.g. literally type "where is my phone" into Google and you will have remote access).
For you it seems like the mere existence of these icons is causing great distress. Based on your post, you are actually angry that these icons are there. That's a problem not with Apple, but with you. If icons make you angry, you got problems. Don't lose sleep over it.
You say you are a "heavy and educated user", therefore you somehow know more about industrial and graphic design than Jony Ive? Just like all the pro gamers who think they know best what changes should be made to Counter-Strike? Just like all the pro drivers who know better than engineers how to build a car?
There's nothing wrong with the grid of icons. It accomplishes the task as well as any other. The only problem is that you for some reason decided not to like it. Just change your mind so that you like it. It's that simple.
With Android, no amount of changing yourself will change the fact that your phone isn't going to get the latest updates as soon a they are available. Nothing you can do will suddenly make all the iOS only apps appear on Android. Nothing you do will suddenly make all the retina beautifulness suddenly happen on your Android phone. That shit is actually broken. All your iPhone complaints are solved by changing yourself. There's nothing wrong with the software or hardware at all.
TL:DR; Defaults for almost everything. Change yourself so that the defaults become your preference. Zen. Peace.
The thing that easily trumps almost everything about the Android for me over the iOS was I was getting real tired of the performance of apps due to device fragmentation. The devices perform WILDLY different from each other. If you happen to get a device that is not one of the top tier devices, then you can usually guarantee a poor experience. That never happens with the iPhone.
Things don't "move around" when I install new apps, but reordering apps after installing something new and likely to be frequently used is more inconvenient with Apple than with Android by a significant margin. I said to begin with that none of the usability issues are monstrous, just that they're inconvenient and numerous enough to matter.
The apps you don't really need to launch regularly just go in the app drawer which is the middle space of the 5 spaces at the bottom of the screen (the other 4 being whatever apps you want to place there).