Huddles are even more confusing here - when I target my "Friends" circle, it populates the field with specific the names of everyone in that list, including people who aren't in Plus yet. Are they going to get an annoying nag e-mail that I do NOT want to send? I don't know, so I'm not using Huddles yet.
This problem is arising frequently for me with Circles - I'm not exactly sure what the impact will be beyond blanket posts to Friends and Public.
I agree about how it's unclear, and I wondered the same thing.
I've experienced this from the other end, though, so I know what actually happens: nothing. I have a couple of friends who included me in huddles days and days ago on their Android devices. It wasn't until today that I knew about them: they were all there for me to read after I installed the app on my iPhone.
Same here, when I downloaded the app today I had "huddles" waiting, where people had been chatting.
I like that they did it this way. If you don't know you're missing out, you don't really care... then when you finally get it and jump in, you're excited about all the content and chats happening.
For the record, I received a text message related to Huddles, so it might not involve e-mail (but might in fact be even more annoying for some people).
Interesting. I'm running iOS5 beta3, and when I attempt to hit the Stream, the app dies. Does this happen for anyone else? EDIT: Also when I click on someones profile in the 'cirlces' list.
I can't really give any impressions on the app without these things working, but viewing photos and photo comments feels nice and responsive.
"We discovered an issue with the version of the iPhone Google+ App that was on the App Store. When we launched, the App Store started serving a previous test version of the App which didn't have the stability and fixes that the latest version had. It started serving the correct version a little later. If you downloaded within the first 1 hour 40 mins, you may have downloaded the older test version. "
My Safari crashes so often on iOS5b3 that I'm not even expecting any other app to work properly :(. Now I fully understand why Apple doesn't recommend to use betas on 'production' systems.
I'm running 4.3.3 and it has crashed twice on me in about 5 minutes. If this were another company, I would delete the app and move on. The quality today is pretty bad. I hope they've already submitted a release with bug fixes to Apple.
iPad is 'that' hard because it is non-trivial to take advantage of the new screen real estate. Often-times you must implement a completely new navigation model because the stock split view controller is rarely the navigation model you want to use.
iPod touch is generally easier. It usually comes down to gracefully degrading features. Much care must also be taken to ensure that the app performs well on the iPod touch models which are often running much weaker hardware specs. The reality is that sometimes devs will only test on their personal iPhones and forget to test on older-gen iPod touches, so the iPod touch experience can sometimes be less than ideal.
Supporting iPod is trivial. If you're using the camera but not checking to make sure one exists first, you're being lazy and sloppy (Apple's docs say this much, though in nicer terms).
Location Services will still work without a GPS, though the accuracy will be reduced since it's relying on WiFi APs.
G+ doesn't use the compass.
On G+ for Android, they allow you to call people from their profile page if a phone # is provided; I assume they have the same feature on the iOS version. Yes, it's an extra few lines of code to determine if the device is a phone and can make calls, but again: lack of this is just laziness.
The iPad is, of course, a different beast, and often calls for a very different UI. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if the G+ website works better in iPad Safari than a native app would, at this point.
Even then, I can't think of much you've got to degrade for the iPod touch. The big stuff (screen/ram/graphics/cpu) is near enough identical. If you support the previous gen iPhone, the current gen iPod should be no problem. You can pick up location from wifi... all I can think of not being available is the compass...
The latest iPod touch does have a camera. It looks like it was an amateur mistake to not include the iPod touch to me. Just because it doesn't have a GPS chip doesn't mean you can't get your location.
The presence/lack of a camera and th compass are differences between iPhones and older iPod Touches.
The "nearby" and photo features seem pretty baked into the Android version. It just may not be worth the wait to condition those features and start the QA process for v.1
That’s stupid, though. iPod touches can competently locate themselves (it’s actually astonishingly precise – at least in cities) even without GPS. Oh, and the app should already behave gracefully when determining the location fails – GPS is most certainly not always available.
I'm not a dev, but I'd actually be afraid of releasing an app for ipod touch for something so reliant on internet access purely because of the low ratings it would probably get from clueless ipod touch owners...
I suspect this is a big part of the decision. It certainly would be if I were making the call ... if the UX isn't perfect, you're going to get idiots giving it 1-star reviews and generally complaining. I'm not sure I'd want to release anything that didn't have a standalone/offline mode for the Touch, just because I suspect that users operate them out of range from WiFi much of the time. (Or at least I see users playing with them where there isn't Wifi pretty often.)
Maybe someone will find an unofficial way of easily getting it onto the Touch ... that would make users who really know what they're doing happy, while also preventing the sort of people who are going to give it a 1-star rating when it doesn't work in the subway from installing it.
That doesn't really help things. If this was a conscious decision because they assume iPod touch users are mentally deficient, well then it just bit them in the ass. Apparently Google didn't realize that they could just download the app in iTunes to leave a bad review.
That doesn’t make much sense. iPod touch owners can still download the app, they just won’t be able to install it. Many of them will be pretty annoyed by that and leave angry reviews. iTunes doesn’t even prompt me about the lacking device support (I don’t have an iPhone, only an iPod touch), it just downloads.
To date the Google+ app has seven reviews in the US app store. Five short five-star ones, two one-star reviews: one complaining about the lacking iOS5 Beta support (incredibly stupid but people apparently write stuff like that) and one complaining about the lacking support for iPod touches.
Excluding the iPod touch may make some sense for apps that fly under the radar – but for something that gets as much exposure as Google+? I doubt it.
My latest app (Convoy - http://convoyapp.net) is a live map display of where you and your friends are. It uses internet and location services very heavily, yet I developed it almost entirely using an iPod touch, despite it's lack of 3G and GPS. I don't have to do any detection, the internet and location API's hide all of these details for you.
In fact I tested the app using my android phones wifi hotspot feature and the iPods wifi based location access.
Long Answer: Depends on the features you're using. If you're reporting location, you can double your edge cases when you start to rely on skyhook to give you locations. Also, the lack of camera may be what's actually filtering you out (if you have an old one).
iPad is incredibly difficult to fill up with certain apps (there is a TON of screen there).
Can't believe they went for the same Facebook style launcher, when it's a) used by Facebook b) only got 5 icons c) it's explicitly regarded as bad UI design by Apple (at this WWDC).
What alternate style launchers would you recommend then rather than the standard grid of icons? I agree that it doesn't look very good with few icons and has a bad UX with too many icons, but it seems hard to find something that fits perfectly in the middle.
Twitter, Tweetbot, tumblr, Instagram, Skype and Wunderlist (my most used apps) all get away with the 5 icons on the bottom. They mostly contain 4 main options, plus another screen with configuration and advanced options.
Tweetbot's fourth button allows you to rapidly change its behavior, it's fast enough and the best UI I've seen so far.
This thing is full of pointless UI weirdness. For example:
* None of the back buttons look like iOS back buttons or state where they lead.
* The tab controls are taller than usual, taking up room for no good reason.
* The open in Safari icon looks like nothing I've ever seen and it displays an alert view instead of an action sheet.
* The People view has a tabs on bottom and a segmented control on top. The segmented control is treated as primary (changes the entire view including tabs).
* It takes five taps to get from your stream to the posts of a particular circle.
It's also straight-up incorrect in places, claiming my list of circle members is displayed on my public profile when adding someone (I have explicitly disabled this via the web interface).
I am quite honestly surprised that the brainplex released something with this many sharp corners.
I thought you were referring to the launcher style in general as "bad design," not in the context of an in-app sub-launcher which is why it made no sense to me.
One aspect of this is that it is easy to abuse. Three20 (the framework currently backing the iOS app) has an implementation of the launcher control but doesn't provide support for the zooming launch animation.
As a result, we've seen apps like rdio using the launcher in a way that goes against the user's expectations of how a launcher should work. Instead of zooming the controller in from the center of the screen, the controller gets pushed onto a navigation stack. In rdio's case, they should have built a simple table view with each 'sub-application' having its own row. Tapping one of those rows would then push the controller onto the navigation stack in the same way that it currently does with the launcher.
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From a holistic user experience applications "spring forth" from the system launcher, creating a consistent feeling of two functional modes in the operating system. The first being finding and launching applications, the second being using the launched application. Introducing a third layer of launched sub-applications complicates that model, oftentimes unnecessarily.
...no iPod touch or iPad support? Honestly? Why? That's insane. Judging by how ubiquitous support is for those devices across iOS apps, I almost thing Google specifically disallowed them to be pricks, which is supported by the fact that it runs on the iPhone 3G. Either way to not be aware that this is an issue floors me. Maybe they really DON'T see the value or market in the iPod touch at all?
Between that sheer ridiculousness and the Android-esque navigation bar, this is shaping up to be one underwhelming iOS app launch from Google.
It looks like google didn't release it in all the stores, for example, it doesn't exist in the Lebanese App Store, where I can download it.
I still don't understand why would someone want to alienate users of certain areas or countries. Doesn't it make sense to release in all the stores to get the most exposure?
On the other hand, I don't understand why someone would alienate users of certain countries unless they had a reason to do so. I like to give companies benefit of the doubt when there's no hint of a conspiratorial political agenda.
I can't find it via searching the app store and from the direct link (on my iPad) I get "Your request cannot be completed". Guess I'll try back tomorrow or in a few days.
Apparently there was some kind of bug in the app store and it started serving up an older test version. If you downloaded within the first hour or two of release, you should re-download.
I suspect Google submitted at least 2 versions, the previous one was approved but it was buggy and Google did not release until Apple approved this new version.
Google then rushed to release the stable app, didn't know that App Store would still serve the old version until a few hours later.
Very interesting to see how much an improvement this is to the mobile site, which is a chore to use on the iPhone. Also here's hoping for a decent iPad app, since the mobile Google+ site looks ridiculous on the iPad and the desktop version is buggy.
I'm using 2-factor authentication. Couldn't create an application password. Had to use my main pwd+token which is only good for 30 days. Shouldn't they allow the use of a 2-factor application password for an iOS app?
No, they shouldn't allow the use of an application password. Application password are a hack to get around the fact there are so many apps that rely on Google that don't support 2 factor authentication. This does add some benefits like one permanent password and the ability to revoke it, but that is at the expense of security. Eventually normal password + token is how all apps using a Google account should function at login, so of course a new Google made app will function this way.
I created an application password to use for the iPhone app. After I tried to authenticate it told me that I couldn't use application passwords and to use my normal password+token.
Worse yet, on my iPhone 3G I can't get the code from the Authenticator app and then log on to the Google+ app before it expires... it's just too slow :/
But that really doesn't make sense, unless they're rolling their own location system. i-anythings with wifi have the location service, it pulls from nearby networks.
Can't test it, as I have an iPod (which is wtf-worthy...), but from what I'm seeing... have they released an API yet? Surely someone can come up with something better.
I would much rather them spend the time to make the regular website iPad compatible. But Google has some funky JavaScript on the inputs capturing every keystroke and sending each keypress to the server and none of it works on iOS. You can't type, and you can't paste anything in the textboxes. And similar bugs effect Firefox, like you can't select text in the textareas using the keyboard.
Since google+ launched I thought that the "Photos from your phone" is a really good idea. I haven't found any option for syncing in the iPhone app. Is it only available on the Android app ?
I couldn't fine it in the App Store on my iPhone, but I installed it via iTunes to my computer, then went to the App Store on my phone, went to Update -> Purchased and "Not on this Phone" and it showed up there, and I clicked to install/update from there, and voila!
If you go into Settings -> Store then turn the switch next to "Apps" to "ON" then the app will automatically download and install on your iPhone when you make the purchase on iTunes.
Interesting. Using this app, I'm able to use Google+ in China. However, going to plus.google.com doesn't work. Does this use a different communication method we & China aren't aware of?
I can't use it to post a message to a specific person (can only select circles). This means I can't use Agent G to post to FB / twitter. Will stick with the mobile app for now.
The link is not working for me, and it doesn't show up in the app market search. Released and pulled? False alarm?
Update: I'm reading that it's only available on the iPhone currently. Alas, my iPod Touch and iPad are not the iPhone. If this is the case, then that's too bad.
I think the App Store is a bit slow at updating. Early on apps also seem to show up only in some places and not in others.
I can get to the app from the link (and I’m in Germany), I can’t actually get it to show up through search, that’s probably another one of those early issues. It’s gonna get better eventually.
Really, Apple can’t reject the Google+ app without causing a huge shitstorm. It would be stupid to do so. Also: The app doesn’t actually violate any rules Apple has laid out, not in any way, shape or form – Apple most certainly doesn’t want to confuse developers with arbitrary rejections, at least not anymore.
This problem is arising frequently for me with Circles - I'm not exactly sure what the impact will be beyond blanket posts to Friends and Public.