there's nothing revolutionary in ios7 shown so far. that said, I can't wait for Apple to sue Android over the things they just stole from them.
I think a lot of people are getting hung up on lack of textures/lighting as "copying Android" but I would love to hear how Metro and Android are comparable on the things that are going to define iOS 7's experience: motion, dynamics, translucency, layering, and depth.
Before, interfaces looked like a bunch of real-world objects. Now, they look like a bunch of thin-ass lines and boxes, but behave like real-world objects.
I agree that iOS is all about motion, dynamics, translucency, layering and depth. But the verdict is still out on whether those things make for better interfaces.
Windows phone metro includes no depth at all, it truly is flat and 2D spatial.
Dynamics?
Lets wait until we can judge them side by side. I have a windows phone device, but no apps (my market doesn't really have anything decent), so I'm not really sure if the metaphors have evolved much from the panaromas.
For example, a common iOS 7 feature cited as "stolen" is the app switching interface. But that's the same interface Safari has used for switching tabs since the very first iPhone. They simply repurposed their Safari UI for the OS.
- The insta-airplane-mode-wifi-bluetooth buttons in iOS7. These are a straight lift from Android, and have been hotly demanded by users for a long time.
- Notification Center is an incredibly uncanny look-and-feel-alike of notifications in Android. It's basically an outright clone - though this isn't an iOS7 development.
- The new app switcher is a takeoff from webOS. Swipe to close an app is also implemented almost precisely like it was on webOS. Claims that this came from Android are IMO off the mark. I don't think it's fair to say they repurposed the Safari tab-switcher, considering the gestures bear such an uncanny resemblance to the webOS implementation.
I never need to switch to airplane mode, or bluetooth on/off in a hurry? I wonder who these people are they find setting/slide airplane mode so time consuming.
It's also not just airplane mode - do-not-disturb mode is also really useful, and it should be fairly obvious why someone would want to toggle it without menu-diving.
Ditto orientation lock. In iOS6 is tap-tap-swipe-tap-tap, now it's just swipe-tap. This last one is kind of a platform problem though - orientation lock is useful in part because some apps excel at landscape mode, while others suck at it but insist on enabling it.
All that said, I hope both sides "steal" good ideas early and often.
One example on the advancement of iOS 7, how about take their animation framework a step further (which is already ahead of whats available on Android) and introduces a full rigid-body physics engine that's easily at the developers' disposal?
What Apple has always done is good developer support in the form of great APIs
This is exactly what the Android design is about as well.
Catch up? Actually it was more of a "let's go another 100 miles ahead, Android seems to be catching up finally to were we've been the last 3 years".
What iOS features have been present for three years that Android is just now getting?
Let's be clear too, three years ago, iOS was at version 3.1.3.
I would love to be enlightened, as an iPhone 5/iPad 4/rMBP owner.
It's pretty easy to make UITableView's chug if you do something stupid when populating cells as well.
> A semi-decent animation framework for developers?
The property animation system introduced in Honeycomb and backported to what, 2.2? works very nicely.
> Low audio latency
Audio has been an issue on Android. I've not delved into it myself but this is certainly something that only seems recently fixed. Not sure this warrants calling the platform far behind though.
> and good power management?
I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
That's great, but the original comment I was discussing was the claim that "Android is just now getting what iOS had three years ago". iOS 7 is three to six months away, still.
Only the chuginess comes standard with Android.
The property animation system introduced in Honeycomb and backported to what, 2.2? works very nicely.
It's not really close to CA.
>Not sure this warrants calling the platform far behind though.
If you casually dismiss everything else too, of course not.
>I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
Like Android apps allowed to run rampant in the bg, draining the batteries pronto -- a complaint you hear all the time, and of which you can also find some measurements.
Sounds to me like you're trolling. This is not the case unless one is using a low end device.
> If you casually dismiss everything else too, of course not.
Pot, meet kettle.
> Like Android apps allowed to run rampant in the bg, draining the batteries pronto -- a complaint you hear all the time, and of which you can also find some measurements.
I honestly think you're just making things up at this point? Have you even used an Android device?
Yes, LTE was a big drain when it first came out. Generally Android devices handle power management very nicely.
At this point you just sound like a combative troll.
It's like discussing with a 10-year old. Either respond to what I write, ask me a question, ask for clarifications, or provide counter-arguments -- or don't and refrain from this subthread. The "you are a troll" accusation gets old quickly, as I approach forty. I could not fucking care less about going to a forum and making "joke comments". What I write is what I believe to be true, based on what I know.
So.
>Sounds to me like you're trolling. This is not the case unless one is using a low end device.
No, it's very much the case, EVEN on high end devices. And there have been posts from Android engineers on the issue, blaming various stuff, from the stop the world GC to the drawing thread scheduling. Here's one:
https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJ...
It also links to another Google person, saying that "that's not it, it's because of the extra security Android offers, that has an overhead". Which is funny considering:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/14/mobile-malware-exp...
>>Like Android apps allowed to run rampant in the bg, draining the batteries pronto -- a complaint you hear all the time, and of which you can also find some measurements.
>I honestly think you're just making things up at this point? Have you even used an Android device?
Yes, I have. A Samsung mid-range one. Also borrowed briefly a high end LG one. Not impressed on both counts.
As for the battery thing, not only it's an issue, but a whole cottage industry has sprung around it -- with battery-saving apps being among the most popular (LOL):
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-57581440-251/five-andro...
http://lifehacker.com/5990553/betterbatterystats-tells-you-e...
http://www.topapps.net/android/top-10-battery-saver-apps-for...
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobil...
I could similar list stuff forever...
You're still just being ignorant. This was a post by a former Software Engineer in Test Android intern who didn't know what he was talking about, hence why he was corrected multiple times all over the internet. In your own link he mentions that he was wrong but leaving the thread up for posterity! It's like you only post things you assume support your pre-determined world view without even reading them. Quote from Andrew on that post:
> BEFORE READING: A LOT OF MY ANALYSIS OF ANDROID PERFORMANCE IS WRONG, HOWEVER I AM LEAVING THIS POST UP BECAUSE OF MY COMMENTARY ON THE ISSUE.
So yes, I think at this point you're just trolling. I have addressed your points - performance is an issue on low end devices, not on high end devices. This is not unexpected. There are lots of battery packs for iPhones, that doesn't mean iPhones have relatively shit battery life, it just means there is a market for extending that battery.
The basic feature it didn't have --and I'm not sure it yet getting--, is that it's not about features and feature lists at all, but overall polish, coherence of implementation and ecosystem.
That said, just randomly, some things that it didn't have:
- An actual deployment base for the new versions. Even TODAY (much less 3 years ago) half of the people out there use a 2+ year old Android version. (Google's own mid-2013 data).
- A good security story. Latest study: "Android accounts for 92% of mobile malware, malicious apps increase 614%"
- Tons of top notch apps that are iOS only (or appear on iOS years ahead of Android launch) because devs cannot be bothered with a platform that's too fragmented and with more people using it as a feature phone and not caring about apps. From Instagram, to Paper, to Vine, to Letterpress, Flipboard, and tons besides. (Sure, there are also Android apps that are not on iOS. But the highly celebrated apps, including apps that result in billion dollar businesses like Instagram, are always if not exclusive, then first on the iOS side).
- Low latency audio APIs. It's lack killed the musician's app market that thrives on iOS. Android started getting 1-2 apps this very last month, but it's still DOA on the audio apps market.
- A huge ecosystem of add-on peripherals -- from heart monitors to MIDI keyboards to camera tethering, to glucose meters, to external speaker bases.
> As a side effect, they’ve embraced conventions that will be hard to emulate with commodity hardware or web tech.
And, while I disagree with the post's main thesis — I believe the changes were in no way directed towards the web — it's a pretty entertaining take on the updates, OP.