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Comment by lgg | Hacker News Reader

As an Apple user, and former Apple engineer I disagree...

I don't think one perfect solution exists, but I also don't think pushing a lot of decisions to the user is a good idea. The fallacy is thinking the goal is to provide a solution for all users. Stake out a position make choices, be the best product for the users that you work for, and let someone else cater to the other users.

I don't personally like Windows Phone, but I think it is a great platform that has a vision and has made an interesting set of choices. It simply does not hit my specific needs.

On the other hand I think Android is a just a confusing mess to use, and I say this as someone who is fairly familiar with its innards and has been hired to write Android firmware code.

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> On the other hand I think Android is a just a confusing mess to use, and I say this as someone who is fairly familiar with its innards and has been hired to write Android firmware code.

That's funny, because my grandma uses Android just fine, even though she had never touched a computer in her life before using Android. Being "familiar with its innards" and having written Android firmware doesn't give you very good insight into how average users interact with the device.

My mother bought an Anroid phone and it was a disaster. I used to be an idiot loser who pushed all the nerdy ideologically sound products and solutions on friends and family...when I was 16. When I found out that's what she got I bought her an iPhone and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

Did she set it up herself?

There was nothing to "set up", she created a Google account and that was about it. The biggest difficulty she had was learning to type with a QWERTY keyboard, since she had never used a typewriter or computer before. So she instead uses the mazec2 Handwriting Recognition keyboard[0] with a stylus. That's something you definitely could have never done on Apple's locked-down platform.

0: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metamoji.m...

Wireless? Rejecting/accepting Google Now? Non-gmail email accounts?

I'm trying to think back to when I set up my dad's phone and my own phone. Certainly wasn't 1. Create Google account 2. Done.

I don't think Apple did it any better though. It all sucks in different ways.

> Wireless?

I probably entered this while she was at my house, but she had no problems setting it up after going home.

> Rejecting/accepting Google Now?

Never came up.

> Non-gmail email accounts?

As someone who had never used a computer before, this obviously wasn't an issue either.

THe decisions aren't there unless if you seek them. You're not going to be prompted to change your keyboard if you didn't install a new one, for example...

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