It makes me beyond annoyed that google seems to insist on radically changing the design of their apps every 6 months, for no discernible reason, with no unifying theme or thread or underlying rationale.

> every 6 months

How so? This is Material 2 compliant. The last "style" they had was Material 1, which was 5 years ago.

"material" itself doesn't support many things on android ie there are no android versions of things. it's crazy considering the same company is supposedly using the spec for their device designs.

You're not the only one. I got yet another update to Gmail on Android a couple of weeks ago - honestly, it looks familar... it's like they've changed it so many times it's back round to how it was at some point in the past!

I really wish they'd just stop .

Android's GMail update sucks for those that can't stand high values of white, it is like being at an interrogation room with a spotlight on the face.

I agree - there really is a lot of white in the latest update! I'd much prefer a bit of colour to help delineate different sections of the UI, such as the search bar and buttons.

So would everyone except Google's in house design team, which has lost the plot.

There seems to be some suggestion this was done for the purposes of enabling dark mode, which has never made the slightest bit of sense tbh.

This is the essence of Google. They’re too big to fail so they can pretty much do whatever they want. Kill huge apps (Reader, Picasa), major paradigm shifts in UI, abandoning projects, fragmented efforts... how many messenger platforms do they have again?

Pretty much any other company would die from this kind of wheel spinning and frantic behavior, they’re fortunate to get away with it.

Or creating their own recommended design principals and then never implement them into their own flagship apps.

That's practically tradition by now, when you consider Office or iTunes, especially in older times (when people cared more).

Good ideas have flowed in both directions - such as iOS's notification center having a "striking resemblance" to Android's notification shade.

Both of them are actually converging to look and behave like webOS 10 years ago

Makes sense in the case of Android.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat%C3%ADas_Duarte

I wish the text was bigger on the Android version, similar to how much more space it takes up on the Apple one. Boosting readability is important, and the font is a little small for my taste.

Agree. This looks like the kind of UI that was designed in Photoshop or perhaps a device simulator and then never vetted on a real device by a real person. It's not great.

Most likely can be made a lot bigger using both font and display size settings in Android

I thought you were exaggerating until I went to look. That does look just like the notifications that I get on the ipad. I'm surprised to see them match it so closely, but I'm glad to see improvements in this area on Android anyway.

Convergent evolution occurs when independent traits evolve as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches.

Other times an adaptation of one animal so radically changes the environment that other animals adapt similar traits because of it. When one poisonous insect becomes red and birds learn to avoid red insects, red is a useful color for other insects to be as well. Innovation is good, but copying good innovation isn't bad; variation let's us explore, convergence let's us carry experiences from one platform onto another. I like that the two dialogs look so similar, though I wish Google would copy Apple's text formatting a bit more closely, and I feel like Apple should copy the location marker at the top of Google's dialog.

Its a white dialog with blue clickable text. The text length makes standard blue buttons impossible. This is just what state of the art "developer ugly" looks like.

iOS and Android design seems to be converging more and more lately.

Starting with material 2, Google has decided to center align a log more elements on the screen (text, icons, etc). Google has also shifted to a lot more white and gray with blue used for actionable items.

In both cases it seems like apple got it right the first time, Google tried to pioneer the opposite and has now gone back and copied Apple.

Meanwhile a bunch of designers at Google have gotten promoted for their diligent work.

Looks like designers at Google are more used to iOS than to Android...

That dialog has little to do with Material principles...

To the point that the Material design files are only available in Sketch, screw Android designers that happen to use other platforms.

It is pretty striking how similar the UI is starting to look compared to iOS. And I say that as someone largely on the Android side of the Android-iOS debate. Also add to that the shift recently to move navigation to the bottom of the screen in the form of tabs.

I guess ultimately there's plenty of examples of this happening both ways, though.

Convergence of UX for the same context and expectations is a Good Thing. This is symmetric to expecting cmd + X and cmd + Z to do the same thing on different OSs and apps. No reason for it to be considered a bad thing.

The design looks the same. The idea makes sense but the design is strikingly similar. I think that’s what OP was getting at.

The iOS one is still better IMO because they can/have (?) to say what they're using it for in the dialog.

Very Surprised if Apple don't have a patent for a modal box :-)

They do, but you have to double-click to dismiss it because Amazon has a patent on single clicking.

They have a patent for single click buying. Not “single click” that I’m aware of...

This is shameful. I have no words. It's practically a verbatim copy. Of course, getting the font sizes wrong, because it's Android. But other than that, just shameful. It doesn't even look like Material design. I seriously hope they change it before release.

It's like the engineer in charge of the feature couldn't get a hold of a designer and so had to make the design himself... so he just took if off his own phone.