iOS and Google+

Wow-gah-fuuuuu-humph!.... That's the sound of a love/hate relationship between G+, Apple's iOS and me.

There's no denying that the latest incarnation of google plus on the iPhone / iPod is awesome. It looks beautiful and for reading the streams that your circles provide it is one of the most georgously constructed apps you could ever wish to have....

Unfortunately that is where my love for it ends.

Don't get me wrong, you can post from it too. And in fact, if you just want to pop out a photo with two or three lines of blurb with it, then it does a pretty good job of that as well. It even does a decent job of attaching your location - and one thing it does better than the desktop version of G+ is of course check-in's.

But, (and as the actress said to the bishop - it's a big butt) the problems start when you want to do something a bit more useful.

Managing the sharing of pictures is a breeze - and a well thought out process, so why is there is still no satisfactory way to share a link to a web page. I'm begrudgingly using a bookmarklet from Safari on my iOS devices, and to be fair this does a pretty decent job, but I want (sorry, would like - want never gets you anything), I would like, the same functionality as appears in the feature rich desktop version of G+. I would like to be able to paste a link, and choose whether to include a picture or text snippet from that page before I post. Posting a link in the app works, but it just posts a link without the associated rich context.

In a similar vein, the same is true of posting a video. In fact, posting a YouTube video in the app is even worse than a URL. On an iOS device just getting the appropriately formatted YouTube URL in the first place is a minor mission. I've taken to opening the video in the native YouTube app, clicking "share via email" and then copying the URL in the body of the message to paste it into the G+ app - a right old faff, I'm sure you'd agree. Again, it works but no thumbnail of the video leaves it looking bland and unenticing

These are two of my grieviances with what is otherwise a beautiful piece of code and a worthwhile frontend to what is obviously the most superior social network on the Internet. There is however, one more issue that I have which is far far more serious than the other two.

The complete and utter lack of acknowledgement that the iPad exists.

Now this really is a major failing on Google's part. I'm sure they don't want it to be the case, but the iPad is the definition of tablet computing and as such the definition of mobile computing (at least in the social space - as well as many others) so why would you not craft a universal app?

Look at all that for gorgeous screen real estate waiting to be filled with G+ goodness... Someone, somewhere is making a very very bad call.

I don't think I'm asking for too much - and I have said I would like, not I want.... So come on Google - fix it up and fly right.

Naturally if your an Andriod user (Haters gonna hate - rise above it), your concerns are far less, but I'm sure you want your OS' parents to look good on any platform don't you? Sexy-code sells....

Adieu.

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This post originally appeared here: Posterous