Friday, January 21, 2011

Rant: Google on the iPhone

I am a google fan. I have a cr-48 ChromeOS Notebook that I have almost been converted to. I have a google tv which is amazing except when the remote freezes, but I have not been happy with almost any google iPhone apps, and I have tried them all. List hear what I think of them all.

Google Mobile App: The voice search is okay, but not enough to make me want to open this and then maybe have to switch to Safari after, it just isn't a smooth transition. It has push notifications for gmail, which is just weird. The great feature here is Google Goggles, which should be its own app, I would actually use it if I didn't have to go through that app.

Google Earth: I just don't know how to use this. I keep it to occasionally get GPS locations for geocaching, but there isn't really a real use.

Google Voice: This is the app I have been most excited for. I even bought a third party one for a while, I used work around and anything I could for almost a year. The one thing this brought was push notifications. That is awesome, except the app itself is sub par. Half the time when I try to type a text it will update, hiding the text box under the keyboard, and then when I try to edit the box after, it just deletes everything. It has problems in anything but the best of internet, and just generally is lame. I use it because of the push notifications, and the calling feature actually works, but if there was something better I would probably switch.

Google Latitude: Cool idea, just no one uses it, and it doesn't integrate well with things. I wanted it for so long, then when it finally came out it was just meh.

There are others, Google Books, I haven't tried much, Google Authenticator, I don't understand, and Google Places, which I have now, but haven't started using it much.

All in all, I don't like the soft blue look of all their apps, they don't integrate, and I still don't have a remote for my google tv. I know I shouldn't complain because they are all free, but it you have a product make it good.

I think I was just mad about how the google voice app just didn't work 3 out of the last 5 times I wanted it to. I now switch to my laptop to text most the time because it isn't worth the hassle of using the app. The Chrome extension for Google Voice is amazing and one of the reasons I cannot go back to Firefox.

Thanks google for doing okay, but get an iPhone App department that actually uses iPhones.