Yahoo this week updated Aviate — its intelligent homescreen launcher for Android — to make it more personalized so that it learns and adapts to a user s behavior, but not everyone is happy with it.
Imagine you re walking downtown in San Francisco on a Saturday around noon, said a blog post by Aviate co-founder Paul Montoy-Wilson extolling the new features. We ll surface nearby restaurants so that you can find a yummy place to eat. When the Giants game starts at 1pm, we ll bring you live sports scores. If you plug in your headphones, we ll pull your music apps up to the top of your Smart Stream. If there s ever a specific card you re looking for, you can always access it with the Focus menu, located in the search bar on your homescreen.
That puts Yahoo s new feature in the same league as Google Now. Which is not what some fans of Aviate, which Yahoo bought early last year, were looking for.
I wish I could switch back to the previous version because this one ruins the whole experience, complained a Moldovan user named Sergiu Negara, writing on the Google Play store. Another user said she was subtracting 4 stars for breaking what didn t need fixing.
Above: Screenshots of Yahoo Aviate s new Smart Stream feature.
