[mitchty]

I've used my friends cyanogen and non s3's, honestly Androids not bad. The problem for me is the phones themselves. I have "girl hands" (size 7.5), I can't do bigger phones and use them with one hand.

As for public transit info any developer can register their app to provide that data. And to be honest I think its not that bad of an idea to let transit providers update transit information rather than having Google try. (where I am they don't even try that)

As for picking the browser, you're moving goal posts if you don't consider iOS "advanced" for lacking it.

[w1ntermute]

> I can't do bigger phones and use them with one hand.

I can't personally relate to this issue, but yes, there is a lack of (flagship) Android phones with smaller screen sizes. Like many other guys, I actually need the larger screen size or I can't accurately hit the keys on the virtual keyboard.

However, one interesting thing I've observed is that this trend is reversed in Asia - the women (who are much more petite, including their hands, than Western women) adore the Galaxy Note, which even I find to be way too big. I've seen girls who can barely hold their Note with both hands.

> And to be honest I think its not that bad of an idea to let transit providers update transit information rather than having Google try.

This sounds like a double standard to me. People always praise Apple for its tightly integrated software, but the one time it decides to leave something core to the OS to 3rd party developers, it's a good idea?

I think you should try extensively using Google Maps on Android before making this judgment. The value in being able to see the door-to-door journey directions, along with the total time, distance, and cost of travel, is nothing short of amazing. When living in a city that essentially runs on public transit, like, NYC or Tokyo, I can tell you from personal experience that access to Google Maps is truly transformational. Jumping between apps to get public transit info simply does not compare.

> As for picking the browser, you're moving goal posts if you don't consider iOS "advanced" for lacking it.

Please elaborate, because I don't get your point. If it's that this contrasts with my stance on maps, it's not that I want browser choice instead of a good browser - I want both (just as with maps).

[mitchty]

On hand size, I only bring it up because I see far too many guys that seem to be blind to the fact that a significant portion of the population has physical characteristics that differ from their own. My hands are actually bigger than most womens as well and they're still small relatively. I can't speak to the asian market but the note is a mini tablet almost. If it weren't for me being used to one hand texting I probably wouldn't care as much about the sizes. But it is a rather big factor for myself personally.

I have used the google maps app on android actually, I'm hoping for google to release it onto the apple app store (assuming it isn't rejected that is, and until we have information on that i'm not going to discuss this aspect further as its somewhat pointless).

The android 4.0 google maps is quite nice actually and it would be nice to have both apple maps and google maps. I'm not arguing that apple's take is the best way with their transit directions. Just that both have different pros/cons and currently one con with googles transit methodology is they are the gatekeeper to the updates. I'm not reading any further into that con itself and noting that a local transit authority could release their own app that updates time information on iOS 6 and fix this for their users. That to me seems a bit of a better way to go about it. Yes I'm aware of googles efforts to standardize transit data as well, in this case the fault is the data providers not feeding their schedule information to google. But hopefully with the approach apple took both sides can be fixed.

Lets be honest, this is the first version of apple maps, as such it is somewhat inevitable it won't be complete. That said, developers have been pointing out the same failings since beta1 was released. I think the hullabaloo over its failings are somewhat premature. Yes it should be better, but at this point its spilled milk.

> Please elaborate, because I don't get your point. If it's that this contrasts with my stance on maps, it's not that I want browser choice instead of a good browser - I want both (just as with maps).

My point was more that making the designation for "advanced" to include features that your favorite OS includes but not another, you're being somewhat disingenuous. This is regardless of what you want, but its hard to argue that one missing feature that not everyone uses downgrades the entire OS to not advanced. Now arguing about "most advanced" is fine as I would agree it probably isn't, but this is after all marketing blurb as promotional material. I doubt even apple would be arguing that this is any sort of absolute statement that could be empirically proven. Maybe the marketing department would but I tend to ignore such statements as hyperbole.