No it isn't, they are basically the same for 90% of users.
> Google's MADA agreement forbids OEMs from making anything but Google Now/Voice Search the default digital assistant on Android devices with Google Play.
> Google is telling it's hardware partners for Google Home and Google Cast they're forbidden from supporting competing digital assistants.
On iOS, you cannot.
On Android I can make a new email client, and overnight it can become the default email client for everyone that installs it.
On iOS I would need to convince most large apps to allow me as an option before it would work.
Not being able to do this is basically the last thing keeping me off of iOS at this point.
Open some app: Would you like me to be the default for X? Me: no thanks.
Next day:
open some app: Would you like me to be the default for X? Me: ahhh, NOT AGAIN.
Or have we forgotten how annoying it is that browsers all seem to do that all the damn time.
Something like a settings menu where you can control the default apps for many "intents" (that's the android terminology, not sure what else to call it).
Choose an app for email, sms, "instant messaging", browser, navigation, phone, etc... Don't let individual apps change anything, and if you want don't even let them prompt you to change something. That last part can be enforced by appstore guidelines.
If apple does this, i'd switch overnight. And as someone that is about as far away from the apple ecosystem as you can be, i'd probably end up using many of the apple "things" over time. Let their first party apps stand on their own. I have no qualms with having theirs be the default, and it honestly doesn't even bother me if they aren't un-installable, but let me change my defaults!
This is NOT how it works on android and WP
1. Install email app.
2. Click on email link in other app.
3. Select email client if more than one installed
4. Click select for now / remember my choice.
5. If you clicked remember email links from all app will start that client.
Meanwhile on my ipad, I feel like Apple is making all the choices and I just have to deal with it. This is the biggest difference between Apple and Android for me. My Android devices have the apps I like and 'just work' when launched or whatever. Apple forcibly opens the Apple apps and I need to run down my screens of installed apps to find what I actually want to run.
I don't know how in this day and age I can't choose my default handlers of a product I own.
You can remove almost every default app from iOS 10, including Maps.
I have given up on using the default map for searching anything. Of course the map content itself is the same, but what good is a mobile map if you search for a coffee shop around you in New York and it gives you some grocery store in Scandinavia? I would be forgiving if this happened rarely, but to me it happened very often. I have 4 iDevices and they all have the same problem. This never happens with Google maps.
Frankly both Apple Maps and Google Maps could stand some UI improvements. Google Maps won't shut up, throws up some bizarre progress bar even on mute, has mystery meat navigation, and replaces the map with some giant material design-style empty space when it decides I've "arrived" (even if I haven't).
Apple Maps used to make it hard to pan around, but that's been fixed in iOS 10. Instead now it has terrible bugs in landscape mode, and has adopted the "you've arrived, now you don't need the map any more!" behavior.
If they just let the map be a map...But anyways I'm old enough to remember pulling over to pull out the giant paper map in San Francisco, so I can't get too upset. Either one has made my life so much better.
On iOS? You can tell Google your home/work addresses in settings, I ask for directions/transit home multiple times most weeks and it works. On Android they can figure them out, but on iOS they don't have enough permissions and you'll have to tell them - but when you do this works.
Instead they want me to sign into Google and it wants that info to then be stored on Google's servers.
All of them are far from perfect, but vastly better than what we had before.
At any rate, sure, Apple Maps isn't as good yet. They launched years after Google Maps and with a much smaller team. (There are some interesting politics behind that, from what I've heard; just say that the fiasco of the Maps launch is the primary reason Scott Forstall is no longer with the company.) The team now numbers over 1000, from what I've heard, and I expect the gap to continue to close -- but it's going to continue to take a while.
More likely, Samsung doesn't have the internal chops to build a Cortana/GNow/Siri but has a corporate mandate to have a Samsung version of anything Google does on Android. If you have ever used a Samsung phone, you'll see there's both a bundled (by contract) Google suite of apps and a matching Samsung suite of apps.
I don't think this is a sign of them moving to Tizen or picking a bigger fight with Google or Apple, but a continuation of what they've been doing for several years and something of a non-issue and non-news. I imaigne, like most Samsung apps, it'll be ignored for the superior Google equivalent.
Personally, I'd like to see them leave Android for Tizen. We really need more competition in the mobile space. Shame Samsung isn't serious about leaving Android. The few times I've helped someone with a Samsung phone have been frustrating and confusing. There's just too much Samsung junk on there fighting for your attention.
Samsung doesn't strike me as a great place to end up, but I suspect they were the only place to end up, practically speaking. It'll be interesting to see if they can really compete against Google Now, though.
"Better" is subjective. I used Google Maps since it was released on iOS. I recently switched to Apple for a perceived privacy benefit.
Microsoft is also taking the same approach with Surface tablets, Surface books and upcoming Surface phones
They've been actively chasing away customers. Google is giving unlimited photo storage to Pixel phone buyers. Last year Microsoft took back the 15 GB it had given to Lumia phone buyers.
Or maybe they needed money, but going with those companies would mean acquihire with 100% certainty, and Samsung offered more "free" terms.
Tell me about how everyone uses IE on windows.
On iOS, you cannot do that for maps. If an app implements a "View this on a map" feature, I don't believe you have any way of changing which app that link opens in.
Sure, you have the freedom to install whatever app you want. And that freedom begins and ends with manually launching the app; third-party links will still open with Apple Maps.
1. They realized just owning the software platform is very limiting (For example they can't compete with Apple no matter how good they are. Just look at Google maps. Thousand times better than the default Apple maps but will never be #1 map app on iOS because people always choose the default). Also, now even Google is moving towards owning their own hardware platform. As a VC funded company I think this is the best timing to exit. Otherwise it's all downhill from here.
2. Samsung wants to fight with Google/Apple/Amazon/MS and needed a weapon (because, you know, people say AI is the future nowadays).
So at best these guys will be integrated into Samsung phones to differentiate Samsung's hardware. I don't see them becoming the "open platform" that they envisioned at all.