[jusben1369]

Apple is really defined by superior design. Google is defined generally by superior engineering. A better point to make would be if Google revamped their search engine and it was meaningfully degraded experience for search. They'd be criticized and rightly so as that's what they're supposed to do better than anyone else.

[Jtsummers]

Didn't that happen, back around 2009? I remember many of my searches failing to find things they had the month or two before because Google was treating my parameters more as suggestions (returning results with 1 or 2 of the 4 or 5 words I'd used, ignoring quotes for grouping, etc).

[Coincoin]

What? They fixed that? Nope, searching anything with "verse" still makes Google think it knows better than you and searches for "vs" instead.

[warfangle]

Anything?

https://www.google.com/search?q=chapter+and+verse&oq=chapter...

Nope.

https://www.google.com/search?q=free%20verse ?

Nope.

Something just random, that I didn't think would have anything interesting?

https://www.google.com/search?q=seventeen+verse

Nope. What search terms replace "verse" with "vs" for you? Or do you google comparisons constantly?

Or are you just a troll?

[RobAtticus]

Agreed, I had a hard time getting the behavior described. Googling for "orange verse tangerine" finally did it. Other things that don't make as much sense to be compared, such as "giraffe verse tangerine" only produce a suggestion of "Did you mean..." but still it searched for my original query.

Seems Google does this for things that are likely comparisons (e.g. oranges and tangerines), which seems reasonable.

[thisisnotatest]

I work on Synonyms at Google. We're constantly tweaking our algorithms. It's possible that at one point one tweak made us more aggressive with replacing "verse" with "vs", but then later another tweak made it less aggressive. :-)

[warfangle]

Neato :)

[georgemcbay]

There is a verbatim search option now which undoes some of the damage of this. But I agree that Google search has actually degraded over the past few years from the point-of-view of the highly sophisticated searcher (it may have improved or stayed the same for the masses).

[epo]

I'm sorry, not following this, the word is "versus", a verse is typically something like a unit of a song. Or is this American usage, in which case what do you call a "verse"?

[Jtsummers]

Google likes to suggest alternatives to words, he does mean verse as in verse of a song or poem, but (I never saw this particular one) had some searches where google was trying to turn verse into versus or vs. What I saw, and I've either gotten used to it or it's changed, was around 2009 when my searches stopped working one day. I'd use 3-5 keywords and Google's first page would only display pages using 1-2 of them. Invariably it was not the results I wanted. Quoting sections stopped meaning anything to Google searches so searching for phrases became dicy, as the words in the phrase would get split up. So if I was searching for "phrases became dicy" and new that was a line from the page I wanted, Google would return pages with maybe all three words but they'd be scattered about the page.

[coldtea]

>Apple is really defined by superior design. Google is defined generally by superior engineering.

Wait what? When did that happen? When did Google get "superior engineering"? For search, web etc, perhaps. But as far as iOS vs Android is concerned that was never the case.

For starters, Apple design and engineered the iPhone first. Google's Android FIRST came out a whole year later. Early Android prototypes, shown by Google just before the iPhone was announced had half-size screens and physical keyboards, just like the rest of the smartphones of the day.

Since then Apple has consistenly beat Google on hardware features, from the retina display (with much better color rendition to boot) to camera innovations, the motion co-processor, a working fingerprint sensor (for a change), and 64 bit ARM (which means far more than "being able to see more memory which isn't even installed") etc. Consistently better battery life.

Well, maybe it's not a fair comparison, because Google is not a hardware engineering company. They had to buy Motorola, which wasn't the best in the business itself, anyway. But the above are still true for Samsung offerings too.

On the industrial engineering side, Apple's designs, machining, fit and polish is unsurpassed on the Android side. Including materials used.

In the software side it's the same story. The iOS Cocoa API is leaps and bounds ahead of the Android API. It was never plagued with issues with scroll lag and display latency (and also audio latency, which is why 90% of Audio/MIDI apps are for iOS). Doesn't have a nightmarish GC experience to tend to for more involved apps. More fit and polish overall. Heck, Android even gets 80%+ of all the mobile malware around.

The major points for Android devices were not better engineering per se, but stuff like bigger screens, different configurations etc. And extra features that got marginal use, like face unlock and near field communication, stuff that Apple could have if that's how they rolled.

Some good stuff Android had first was because Apple went conservative to implement them when battery life better permitted them (like background apps -- Android just unleashed them and the hell with it, Apple trying to get the juice, and hence experience, right first).

There's one genuine thing Android had going for it, and that's the Intents system in my opinion. The "quick settings change panel" was also another good one. I don't think we can go much further.

[Osmium]

> the motion co-processor

Agree with your general points but the Moto X also has a pair of interesting co-processors: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/the-iphone-5s-the-mot...

Personally, I don't think Apple's getting anywhere enough credit for their in-house processor design at the moment. If that's not engineering talent I don't know what is. Just look at the Anandtech review for proof of that:

http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/5

[kllrnohj]

> Early Android prototypes, shown by Google just before the iPhone was announced had half-size screens and physical keyboards, just like the rest of the smartphones of the day.

The HTC G1 was also one of the early prototypes shown off. Android definitely came later, but they were already working on a large, capacitive touch phone before the iPhone came out.

> Since then Apple has consistenly beat Google on hardware features, from the retina display

Uh, no, so very much no. Apple was sooo late to the high density party. Android was shipping high density, high resolution phones a year before Apple did. Apple did leapfrog on the density front with retina, but they were definitely, unquestionably playing catch-up on this front, not leading the way.

> camera innovations, the motion co-processor, a working fingerprint sensor (for a change)

All of this was done by other companies first, and in some cases better.

> The iOS Cocoa API is leaps and bounds ahead of the Android API.

This is such a stupid statement. Both APIs have their advantages and disadvantages.

> The major points for Android devices were not better engineering per se, but stuff like bigger screens, different configurations etc.

Which was enabled due to superior engineering in some respects. True density independence, flexible layouts everywhere, architecture-neutral designs, etc...

[rustynails]

I had a feeling that a critique on Apple would turn into a Google bash. Can you please stay on topic. As an IOS user who is posting from his iPhone, I'm tired of Apple fans deflecting genuine criticisms at APPLE. You didn't raise or refute one thing in the article.

You sir/mam are a fanboy of the worst kind.

For the record, I feel IOS 7 lost its way. Jobsy would have shot it to pieces and buried it before it saw the light of day.

[Oletros]

> Early Android prototypes, shown by Google just before the iPhone was announced had half-size screens and physical keyboards, just like the rest of the smartphones of the day.

And now it is clear that you don't know a shit abouit what your talking

By the way, Apple also invented the wheel and the sliced bread

[gutnor]

Seriously where do engineering stops and design starts to make that statement work ?

Looking at Google Map, Google Search. Those "defining" application of Google, in addition of incredible engineering they redefined what a map and search engine should even look like, so design. Similarly, the iPhone, iMac, iPod were as much about engineering and than design.

In reality, Apple is defined by making money on hardware and Google on cloud software. It is a quirk that they got to clash, because they very much complemented each other.

Google get some slack with Android because they do not sell phones and the vast majority of users do not use Android UI anyway. On the hardware side, Android world provides hundreds of models, there is at least 10 flagship model at any single time. Each get its own amount of nitpicking but eventually all get lost in the noise of other Android news (announcements, prototype, announcement of prototype, benchmark war, "megahertz" war of the day).