The Tech Ranch

The Tech Ranch


APPLE AND ANDROID SQUARE OFF

August 29, 2018

VIDEO COMMUNICATION PLATFORMS
One of all the biggest challenges we face with our smart device is video communication across the platforms. For example, Facetime is a proprietary app for iOS users. Android users can not make video calls via Facetime without . It has nothing to do with the App you’re using, it’s more to do with the schematics of your product. There are work-around’s to make video communication easier.
Video Platform Breakdown
Skype: Owned by Microsoft, Skype was one of the first video call apps to become mainstream. Since then, it’s only gotten better. Skype is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, Linux, and Android.
Google Hangouts: Google Hangouts lets you make video calls and full-on video conference with multiple people. There are dedicated Hangout Apps for iOS and Android, and it’s available to all desktop users through their web browser.
Google Duo: Google Duo is only available for Android and iOS. It only supports one-to-one video calls that need to be made overover Wi-Fi or cellular data connections. Google Duo also offers a couple of neat features. Knock Knock lets you see the video of the person who’s calling you, even before you answer the call. You can also leave a video message (much like a voicemail) when someone can’t answer your call.
Facebook Messenger: You can make video calls using Facebook Messenger on pretty much any operating system. There are dedicated Messenger apps for iOS and Android, but you can also use Messenger right in your desktop web browser to make video calls from Windows, macOS, or Linux.
Viber: Viber is a feature-rich app that you can use for video calls and a variety of other purposes. It has millions of users worldwide and is available for a variety of platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Video Platform Challenges
Media Files
Media files cannot be transferred to a Windows PC, as easily, when using an iPhone. If you are a Mac user, transferring your files is not an issue. However, if you are a Windows PC user, moving media files on and from an iPhone can be daunting at first. With an Android device, all you have to do is plug it into a USB port on your Windows computer. Things are different with iPhones. If you want to transfer music or video files, you must download and install iTunes and use this app instead of File Explorer. The best method I found for doing that is to use the Microsoft Photos app to import pictures from the iPhone.
Navigation
iPhone doesn’t have a back button. There are buttons inside apps and gestures that you can use on an iPhone to go back. But, the Backbutton from Android is a lot more useful. Tapping it repeatedly to get out of any app, and it was always there, in the same place, no matter what. On an iPhone, every app can have the Back button in any position its developers want.
Operating System
The default iPhone apps that come with the operating system are less advanced than the Google apps found on Android. Default apps that come with the iPhone 7 128gb, such as Safari, Apple Maps, Photos, and Mail, for instance, are not as good as Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Photos, or Gmail. The default apps that Google offers on Android tend to be more advanced. This impression probably depends on how much you are entrenched in Apple’s or Google’s ecosystem.
iPhone apps do not crash as often as their Android counterparts. App crashing on Android systems can feel normal it happens so often. A positive difference is that apps are not crashing on the iPhone as of...