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Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

engadget.com

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Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#41

Post by grandalf »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #30
grandalf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is nice if you're OK with 2 hour battery life. Android is OK if you like trusting Samsung with your phone's UI design. Android is fine if you want to choose from 1% of the number of apps available for iPhone. A friend of mine designs phones for Motorola. He's angry as hell about the Android ecosystem b/c he knows there is some great hardware being built, but it's compromised by greedy companies that ship the…

> Android is nice if you're OK with 2 hour battery life. I get an entire day's battery life out of my Nexus S, and I listen to Pandora and podcasts my entire 8 hour shift every single day, as well as play games, surf the net, and use it heavily for on-the-go text communications. > Android is OK if you like trusting Samsung with your phone's UI design. I have a Samsung phone and don't have any of their customized phon…

I got an Evo 4G and got 4-6 hours with virtually no talking. My iPhone 4 usage pattern is similar and I get 2 days between charges. A friend who has one bought extended life batteries for his Evo and still only gets 4 hours from each if he's lucky. The Moto engineer I mentioned said that the phone is known for getting 2 hours of battery life.

Regardless of which number is correct, the phone never should have shipped.

Also, due to the various HTC provided customizations, users of the phone get locked into outdated versions of Android long after newer features have been added. This is the worst form of lock-in b/c it's so clearly designed to get people to buy a new phone even though their current phone is upgradeable. The Nexus One is a pure Google phone so it's upgradeable, but most are not. This means app developers have to target lots of old OS versions if they want a large install base.

Not sure if you've compared the quality of apps on either platform lately. But most of the apps on Android are gimmick apps such as "Free Nelly Ringtones" and other garbageware. The creator of that app released several hundred nearly identical apps, each with a different song.

Look at the top 100 free and paid iPhone apps. At best 10 in each category have an app of similar quality available on Android. Most that do are from major firms, not from indie developers or small studios.

Edit: I'm actually rooting for Android but let's not pretend that the race is close at this point. This is mostly due to Google letting the phone companies' perverse incentives get in the way of a top quality product.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#42

Post by lukifer »

ben1040 wrote: post #3

I wonder what the fallout from folks like Instapaper and Tap Tap Tap will be. It seems kind of shady for Apple to say Tap Tap Tap's Camera+ couldn't have volume button as a shutter (because it was a UX rule violation), then six months later implement that feature right into iOS.

I really feel for the folks at Red Pop today: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/786496402/red-pop

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#43

Post by Pewpewarrows »

rimantas wrote: post #24
ljlolel wrote: post #11

EDIT: who would downvote this? (I'm saying that iOS 5 is nice, but it's mostly just adding features that directly copy its competitor Android, and not even all of them. Android had been copying in 2009-2010, but now it's Apple. A lot of people, even devs, don't realize that Droid has had all these features for months. I hadn't.) I have an iPhone 4, I've had iPhones for 4 years. I love the iPhone. I tried a Nexus S wi…

The subtle (and not so subtle to others) difference is that iOS will have these features polished. Android just has them.

Which of those features aren't polished on Android? Or are you just another iOS customer that's never used any of these features talking out of their ass.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#44

Post by tptacek »

martythemaniak wrote: post #9
itg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can never make everyone happy. Don't include enough new features, and get complaints that your doing nothing new; add new stuff, then complaints about stepping over toes of developers with similar apps.

Integrating features from apps is a bit of an asshole move, but at least everyone does it. They pulled that app and threatened the devs because it hacked the buttons. You don't see the difference?

Not really. I think everyone knows, whether they want to admit it or not, that Apple gets to say what all the hardware buttons do. To what other end would Apple do anything with that authority other than to benefit Apple?

This wasn't some random feature that Apple capriciously decided wasn't allowed. It's not like they told Marco, "you're not allowed to make, save, and sync readable versions of web articles". The application you're talking about changed the behavior of the hardware buttons on the phone. Nobody was really surprised that Apple objected to that.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#45

Post by kenjackson »

rimantas wrote: post #40
kenjackson wrote: post #14

iOS5 was surprisingly underwhelming, given how long its been since they shipped iOS4. This certainly won't stop the train known as Android. I really don't see this changing the iOS sales trajectory upward at all.

Do you imply that current trajectory is downward? And Apple does not sell iOS, it sells iPhone, iPod touch and iPads with that OS. I am sure iPad sales are not going to go down any time soon.

No, I don't mean to imply that. I was trying to say that they have a current relative trajectory (flat on iPhone/iPod, solidly up, but slower than anticipated after Q1 launch on iPad) -- and this trajectory doesn't seem to change any more upward after this. In particular relative to Android.

To put it another way, if they didn't do this release at all and just continued to sell iPhones with iOS 4.x on it for the next 12 months, I don't think we'd see a difference in their sales numbers.

I think this is a testament to the current quality of their devices and OS. But it does feel like we've entered Mac circa 1991. It's getting long in the tooth and the improvements are really small, while a competitor with a late start is showing signs of accelerating.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#46

Post by dataminer »

ljlolel wrote: post #11

EDIT: who would downvote this? (I'm saying that iOS 5 is nice, but it's mostly just adding features that directly copy its competitor Android, and not even all of them. Android had been copying in 2009-2010, but now it's Apple. A lot of people, even devs, don't realize that Droid has had all these features for months. I hadn't.) I have an iPhone 4, I've had iPhones for 4 years. I love the iPhone. I tried a Nexus S wi…

I am a recent convert from iphone 3g to nexus one, and I am pleasantly surprised. One feature I like the most is the back button which makes Android feels like the web, you get in and out of apps just like you get in and out of websites. Android may not have the eye candy of iOS and tons of very well developed apps but it sure is very convenient.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#47

Post by wzdd »

joebadmo wrote: post #31
jamesaguilar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt we'll see a hardware back button on iOS. That is a misfeature of Android because of its inconsistent behavior -- if you came to one activity from an activity in another app, how do you go to the parent view in the current app? The back button takes you to the activity from which you came, not to the parent view. I think most iOS users are fine with how back works in iOS; personally I would be very much…

You're almost certainly right that iOS devices probably aren't going to get a hardware back button, but I disagree with you on the usefulness of hw back buttons. Generally, if I come to an activity from another app, it's to do one specific thing and then I want to go back to the original app. There are certainly cases when I want to stay in the app I got sent to and then hit back and find myself in the original app.…

> [on iOS] what happens when I get sent to a different app and then want to go back to the original app?

The answer is that this (switching apps) happens far less frequently on iOS compared with Android. In Android, the intent system (and back button) make it very easy to switch between apps. On iOS, apps use APIs instead. Integrated Web views rather than opening a browser. Mail API rather than switching to the mail client. This keynote we just saw that Apple has done this again, adding a Twitter API to iOS 5.

It's quite an interesting and significant difference between the two mobile operating systems. Android's approach encourages openness, Apple's approach gives them complete control over the UX. Neither is inherently bad.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#48

Post by joebadmo »

wzdd wrote: post #47
joebadmo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're almost certainly right that iOS devices probably aren't going to get a hardware back button, but I disagree with you on the usefulness of hw back buttons. Generally, if I come to an activity from another app, it's to do one specific thing and then I want to go back to the original app. There are certainly cases when I want to stay in the app I got sent to and then hit back and find myself in the original app.…

> [on iOS] what happens when I get sent to a different app and then want to go back to the original app? The answer is that this (switching apps) happens far less frequently on iOS compared with Android. In Android, the intent system (and back button) make it very easy to switch between apps. On iOS, apps use APIs instead. Integrated Web views rather than opening a browser. Mail API rather than switching to the mail…

That's a good observation, but I would submit that the reason iOS apps use web views instead of opening the browser is exactly because of a lack of a good way to get back to the originating app. App developers naturally don't want to sent people away from their app with no easy/clear way to get back. The addition of the Tweet API is another way to address a symptom of the underlying problem of not having a way back.

It is an interesting and significant difference, and I think the flexibility of Android's system is one of its great strengths. It's always been able to do what the Tweet API does, more flexibly, because app developers can just send focus to the user's preferred twitter client instead of having to write in the twitter functions they want, and don't need new functionality built in to the OS.

Certainly it requires a bit more sophisticated user (not that iOS users are dumb, just that you have to understand what's happening, and it could very easily be confusing to a naive (non-pejorative sense) user), but it's really a joy to use.

EDIT: I know I shouldn't care, but the systematic downvoting is really starting to get to me.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#49

Post by mikeleeorg »

51Cards wrote: post #17

I am going to make this comment and it might be unpopular but it is definitely not meant to be a slag against iOS. I am noticing that a lot of the new iOS features are "missing features" from other mobile OSs... and since I'm really only familiar with iOS and Android so I can only compare those but a short list: - centralized notification tray - OTA activation - OTA synching - OTA updates - optimized updates - remind…

The same thought crossed my mind. Not that I mind, as an iPhone user.

Coincidentally, a friend was showing me his jailbroken iPhone this weekend with an Android-like notification bar and other Android-like features (he's never owned an Android phone before; he just happens to like features like that). It was nearly enough to convince me to jailbreak my phone too.

I don't feel like these are outright innovations either, but that's okay. I'll still take 'em.

Re: Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall

#50

Post by 51Cards »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #27
ljlolel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not say that this is "how apple works." Apple innovates very well. The iPhone won not because it had an abstract "pristine sheen", it was just a better phone that innovated in the right ways: Maps worked great, Safari was a full browser in the phone, and other features. It's software keyboard worked well and enabled a large screen for capacitive touch and multimedia. iPhone 1 had a plentitude of new features.…

I really doubt we'll see a hardware back button on iOS. That is a misfeature of Android because of its inconsistent behavior -- if you came to one activity from an activity in another app, how do you go to the parent view in the current app? The back button takes you to the activity from which you came, not to the parent view. I think most iOS users are fine with how back works in iOS; personally I would be very much…

I have to comment that I completely agree with not being able to interact with notifications without unlocking the phone. The idea of a screen lock (aside from phone security for some) is to prevent accidental interactions in your pocket. I want to know that when I pull my phone out I haven't lost important notifications because it was jostling around in my pocket and clearing them.
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