Convince me to ditch Google Now. I have a friend who is amazeballs over it but he also thinks Hangouts is the shit despite its utter inability to parse MMS. One nice thing about going from iPhone straight to OnePlus One: pure, unadulterated Cyanogenmod. I've played with Samsung's version of Android and yeesh. Also: bitmoji. Bitmoji is hilarious.
Now is only useful if you want to know flight / package status, commuting time or sports games frequently. Nothing that other apps can't do. The rest of its features is mostly filler. My advice is to drop it like it's hot. The only real use is when you're abroad, because the combo flight status + instant Google Translate + currency exchange + route to your hotel is truly amazing.
I'm not sure how I missed this, but one of the main issues is with Cyanogen OS being closed source off off something that should be open, even when one of CyanogenMod's focuses is maintaining open source at all costs, and OnePlus refuses to give a reason for it. http://www.slashgear.com/cyanogenmod-jabs-at-oneplus-os-closed-source-os-13368969/ They also keep doing... pretty incompetent things overall, as outlined in the story line below that blurb. They seem to be after money and only money, and don't really care all too much about ensuring anything else. Their mess in India shows some of that as well. Some more on that from OnePlus here, which also shows OnePlus as not super organized, but this is squarely on Cyanogen. As well as this absolute clusterfuck they created with Focal. Beyond that, they closed everything off and made themselves into a company, selling the things that have been built over the years but dozens of volunteers, and are refusing to compensate any of them in any way for the world, but are keeping the profits. They're also pretty terrible at respecting the employees they do pay, and but I suppose being shitty is within their rights here at least. There's just... a magnitude of things they've done since going incorporated, from unethical business practices, to poorly run business, to moving away from the purpose of an open source project, to mistreating employees. In the end, what they're actually producing hasn't been up to snuff either. If you're into it, look up some of the other roms available out there and flash one of them. Most are FOSS, community built and maintained, and way better than CM or Paranoid.
I may get there. I'm still in the land of baby steps with this thing. Appreciate the insight, though. I'm on a OnePlus because an iPhone 6 plus would have cost me in the neighborhood of a Nissan Versa lease and in an Otterbox, would legitimately be bigger than a TI85 (can confirm - friend did this and we put them side by side). Alls I knows of Cyanogen is it kicks the shit out of what LG ships with. Maybe the next time 'round I'll get dramatic but I'm already seeing cracks from the places I opted 3rd party.
I saw your post on the Versa. Something's fucked up there. I legitimately think my next phone will be the YotaPhone 2. I'm downright giddy about it, because I would almost exclusively use the e-ink screen, and the potential with customs is through the roof. I also have emails disabled. I never clear my notifications so I always have a full record of my conversations going on.
Ungh, Cyanogenmod is a beautiful thing. Hangouts is...not the shit...there isn't a single video utility that I'm really happy with, though Firefox just released a chat service which I'm looking forward to trying out. As for Nova: The main reason you'd want it is if you want the ability to customize everything. Plus it's pretty damn fast. But I can control the way just about everything looks on my phone, and what gestures do what, and it gives me a lot of options for organization. Haven't used Google Now, so I can't really compare the two.
Google Now is basically "swipe left for Big Brother." It will helpfully give you search results for that search you did while logged into google from your computer earlier in the day that told you all you needed to know. It will also give you the weather of that place you were in for three weeks but haven't been back to since September. What was kind of hilarious was the bugs. At one point I looked up "Superbowl" to see what time it was playing. For a month it gave me "Superbowl" headlines that were, in fact, about Suge Knight.