Time and time again, after being frustrated with Lastpass's UX i think of how much nicer 1Password looks. I really miss that app. It's hard for me to suggest LastPass to people who aren't comfortable. I've heard people from 1Password talk about there design work. On those days of frustration, I wonder if LastPass a real UX team.
That may be true, but I remember seeing many reports of Lenin and Stalin statues being pulled down all over the former soviet countries after the URSS fell apart. I'm surprised that one was still standing.
I was listen to an old episode of Radio lab (http://www.radiolab.org/story/91713-famous-tumors/) and they had an ad for 23andme. The ad most talked about how you can use this information and talk it over with doctor. The ancestry reports was just a side thing mentioned at the end.
> Even if we accept that OS X users don't buy books about their OS and don't rant as much (which I find particularly out of touch with reality), that's because there are vastly more Windows users around.
I would have assume most mac users who want to learn buy Apple's 'One on One' courses or some other related service.
I saw this reasoning flying around a lot when Valve started working on linux. I saw the move from linux initially as a natural extension of developing for the Mac OS. GabeN was quoted saying something on the lines of how the games were running much more stable on OSX then windows and said the problem they had wasn't related to there code.
Then I heard how performance issues. Using games performed (slightly?) better on Linux then on Windows. There was talk about mouse issues on Windows 8 and how some bench marks could be faked.
All this sounded to me was Valve wanted a better gaming environment.
Side note, I don't know how many people would be switching to Windows' store and gaming social features over Steam.
Steam
is a basically a middleman for games taking 30% cut of revenue. Of course they're and should be
terrified of how Apple eliminated middlemen with the App store and the
30% cut of all sales inside the app. There are things like Xfire for the
social gaming features.
1) Vender lockdown & habits - I've been using an since the second iPod Touch (as a PDA). I'm not ready/eager to change "my workflow".
2) Accessibility - iOS (and the mac os) has had some the best (or at least easiest to setup) accessibility support. I'd be happy to be wrong about this but Androids documentation is either really lacking on these features or the features aren't there.
You're absolutely right. The accessibility features are lightyears better on iOS. This means that far more people with visual impairments are using iOS and thus more apps are being developed for the blind on iOS than other platforms. It's a pretty virtuous cycle :)
> Jailbreaking is also critical to ensuring that the disabled are able to use their mobile devices as easily as possible.
This reason, while good and noble, feels really wonky. From what i understand, iOS's accessibility has much miles better then Android's accessibility options. If their main motives is to give a better mobile experience to people with special needs, maybe focusing on implementing these improvements system wide changes would be time better spend.
You work hard to make these changes then iOS 7.x.y comes out and the user updates by mistake and loses all the changes a jailbreak gives. It is this constant fighting with the system that has made staying with iOS less appealing these days.
Worrying about updates is a fact of everyday life for people dependent on accessibility features, on the OS as well as the APP level. Updates to apps often include changes to UI, which completely change the way blind users interact with the App via VoiceOver. This means that with every update there is a risk of the app no longer being accessible or having to relearn the entire interface.
It's true that Apple's accessibility features are miles better than Android's, but they aren't perfect. Jailbreaking allows people to add the functionality they need that isn't currently supported.
A great example of this is f.lux which is an amazingly useful app for people with low-vision, but is not supported on non-jailbroken devices.
Everything I've ever heard, including in this thread, says that iOS and its apps are still way ahead of Android and its apps in accessibility. I'm not very personally familiar with the accessibility on either so I can't say, but I'd be surprised if this has changed as radically as you say.
you should do some research then. for a blind person, IOS7 is unusable. while recent samsungs are almost fine... though i hate pretty much everything samsung did with android, the accessibility stuff was ok.
There are tons of blind and vision-impaired users using iOS 7 and a quick web search shows articles praising the improvements for those users. No doubt there are vision-impaired users who don't like it, too, but it's silly to make a blanket statement that it's unusable.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114