8th Annual Crunchies Awards – San Francisco – February 5, 2015 | TechCrunch.
Normally I’m pretty neutral when it comes to Tech Awards by websites, but this year I am paying attention (mostly to vote in OnePlus as a recent company because I am in love with the OnePlus One phone I got).
As I was looking through the awards, I came across “Best Technology Achievement”.
On the list is, of course, “Apple Pay”. I won’t doubt that Apple Pay is a pretty good thing.
But “Best Technology Achievement” ? What the hell. Google Wallet has been out for far longer and does it much better. For all the Crunchies I’ve seen so far, Google Wallet wasn’t on the list in any of the previous years. It’s truly maddening.
I’ll hear complaints of the following kind:
Apple Pay is more secure because TouchID! Well, TouchID is broken and was pretty much immediately after being announced. Google Wallet requires a PIN, which while only 4 characters, is still pretty good.
Device support is limited for Google Wallet! Well, yes, because Android devices aren’t limited to the flavor-of-the-month Apple device. That being said, if you buy a $100 phone without NFC, you can’t use Google Wallet. That’s a given. In fairness, you’re not getting a $100 iPhone any time soon, so… That’s not really a fair comparison, is it? Didn’t think so.
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Google Wallet works damn near everywhere that has NFC enabled readers, which is becoming even more common. And guess what? If they don’t have NFC enabled readers you can go ahead and get the Google Wallet card which has the added benefit of being a physical card that you can swipe anywhere, thus preventing 3rd-parties from getting your real Credit Card number.
The only thing that Apple Pay has done better than Google Wallet is the damn advertisement. Google Wallet isn’t really known outside the Android user-base.
It’s frustrating to see Apple getting credit where Google is; honestly though we’ve come to expect that. Super frustrating, but exactly what is wrong with Technology “Awards” done by websites using 3rd-party entrant lists (Crunchies are user-submitted).
Go figure.
