[nfbcs] FW: compiling iPhone apps to Android apps

[Joseph C. Lininger]

I've been hearing a lot of talk about how great Apple's accessibility 
is, how that in Android is lacking, etc. However, as of today I'm just 
not seeing it. I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong, as I don't have 
an Apple device. That being said, I've watched people using them and I'm 
not seeing a lot of difference in their capabilities using an iphone and 
mine using a Galaxy S4. A couple of years ago, I would have said there 
was a major difference. I won a Galaxy S3 tablet in a raffle, and it 
just didn't work that well as far as accessibility goes. However, my 
Galaxy S4 phone has a newer version of Android and is much more capable 
as far as accessibility goes. I can even install things from Google Play 
and they usually work. In fact, there has been exactly 1, count it, 1 
app that I just flat could not use. It was one that came with the 
device. I would be interested in hearing about what abilities the iphone 
has accessibility-wise that I don't have with my Galaxy S4.

What I have seen, and what made me make the original choice of Android 
over Apple is that the Android offers me some choices that are simply 
not available with the iphone. I can use an SD card to exchange data 
between my machines if I want to; I'm not required to pass data over a 
network or sharing service. I can synchronize my address book, calendar, 
and task list wiht that in Thunderbird by installing a program on my 
computer and an app on my phone. I can connect my phone to my computer 
and have it appear as a drive so I can transfer files if I want to do 
that. No itunes or other software required to make that work. (Apple 
might have that ability too; unsure) I can write software and load it on 
the device over USB without publishing it to Google Play.

In the interest of complete honesty, I will admit that I am not overly 
fond of how the dialer works. It's not the easiest thing in the world to 
get it to cooperate and work the way I'd like, although I'm not sure how 
much of that is an access issue and how much of it is just that I don't 
like the way it operates. I think it's a bit of both, actually. From 
what I saw, the one in the iphone works more the way I would like. I 
wouldn't make a purchase dicision based on that, but I do acknowledge it.
Joe