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But if it helps you sleep at night, I simply dislike iOS. I dislike the UI. I dislike the keyboard. I dislike the interface (non-UI stuff).
I enjoy using android much more.
Well, duh. They're different, of course they're going to behave differently. I learned this the hard way myself, I tried approaching the iOS like it was an andriod and was similarly disappointed and frustrated. Many "why the fuck doesn't this thing X?" were yelled. Then I realized that they were different, did things differently and had to allow myself to adapt new mental models. Once I did and accepted the way it worked, using it was a completely different experience.
I recently went the other way around. After exchanging my Galaxy Tab 2 times for random hangs and unexplained slowness I thought I will check out the iPad. I still have an Android phone that I am perfectly happy with so throughout the day I go back and forth with iOS and Android. The experience on the iPad is undeniably superior after iOS5. The UI is way smoother than Honeycombs, I haven't found any beta behavior yet…
There's a four-finger slide for switching apps on the iPad... It may need enabling, though. The four fingers don't have to be spread out - just together is fine.
1. Google Maps, and navigation. If you're actually driving places, google maps is an amazing godsend. If you're taking mass transit, it blows the doors off what's on the iPhone. Ever get on a bus with your iphone, and have it vibrate in your pants when the next bus stop is the one you need to take? Google navigate shows you your mass transit trip in a schematic view that shows you where all the stops are in list form, and animates the little bullet point in the list as you move between stops. It's breathtaking. It'll be hard to beat Google Maps on an iphone, and I missed this sorely. For me the maps are so superior that during the brief time that I used iPhone, I used it as a wireless hotspot and kept my old android phone around just for the maps and navigation. I'm new to my city (San Francisco) and my whole experience of moving here was greatly enriched by the awesomeness of Google Maps. Many people probably already know where they're going or are already familiar with their mass transit options, so using a second class citizen for navigation (such as the iPhone) is probably fine for them.
2. Google Mail. Google's gmail app UI is awesome. I didn't know how much I loved it until I had to use iOS for a while. Bundling things by conversation is great. And I often receive 20-30 emails that are all divided into a total of about 3 conversations. Google lets me read and archive or delete those in 4 clicks (3 checkboxes for the 3 conversations, then one click of Archive or Delete). The iOS mail app makes me do that in around 60-80 clicks: either a swipe on the index page followed by a delete, or else a click on each email, followed by a delete.
3. Notification bar. I can always look at the top bar of my droid and know what, if anything, needs my attention. Or at the very least, why my phone made a noise in the last few minutes. It was hard for me to see at a glance what things just caused my phone to beep. If I received a meeting reminder, and a text, and something else, it was always clear on my droid which things need my attention, because of the status bar. There wasn't something like this on the iPhone. A few days ago they implemented a status bar on the iPhone, but it still feels like a cheap immitation of what Android does, in much the same way that the author here talks about how Android is a cheap clone of iOS.
But to be clear, the "feel" of the iPhone is superior in pretty much every way. But to me, it's not all about feel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basing that entirely on the UI seems like a really superficial view of what goes into both Android and iOS. If it was just a matter of ripping off the UI, Microsoft, RIM and Palm would still be in the game.
They aren't basing it off of UI as much as form-factor... and that is hardly superficial.
You want to be taken seriously, and the first thing you say is that "Android exists because it is a rip off of iOS"? Even if it was true, you've set the tone for your whole article as non-objective and fanboyish. Creating a product, like creating artwork, is a process that interacts with the whole industry. You see what others did, and you try to do better. Others see what you do and they try to do better. Lets not e…
I totally agree with you. You can't say this is a rip off... an OS is an OS. Google, or anybody else, would not have much choices when comes to build a new one. Window, apps, app store, etc. are fundamental to a mobile OS. Maybe Apple made the first one to be massively adopted and recognized, but they are not really inovators, they always took something that alreay existed (excepted first computer) and made it a more…
You can argue that eventually mp3 players would have succeeded, that smart phones would eventually all be flat touch screens, and that tablets would be cheap, not run a desktop os and successful. Truth is, we don't know because apple made those products a success first. To me actually making a product well, easy/fun/enjoyable to use is innovative. I really don't believe that we would see as many android tablets (well, tablets in general) if it were no for the ipad. I also still think the ipad is the best tablet because of the UI/apps and things mentioned in this article. The ipad also manages to be a pretty great price.
FTA: Fans of Android, let’s not tiptoe around this: Android exists because it is a rip off of iOS. Sure, it has grown into its own in a lot of ways, but its roots are decidedly placed at the introduction of iOS in 2007 While true, I continue to find it infuriating the extent to which people credit Apple with inventing things it didn't. The iPhone was not the first touch-only buttonless interface out there (depending…
Not being an insider, it might be true that no one at Android inc was talking about touch screens before 2007. But probably not. Ultimately, we can't observe what we really want to talk about here -- what would have happened without iOS.
The same compassion can go both ways; here is a link to one of many "iOS after Android" articles: http://techthirst.com/?p=414
I went Android because there's no need to jailbreak the phone to install third-party, and I'm a programmer. I don't have to pay $99/yr to program for it, or own a computer that runs one particular operating system. I'll admit that for a long time, the iPhone experience was way better than Android. And the browser and media functionality are still horrible. And the games... -sigh- But in general, I love the Android ex…
I'm not sure what he's talking about regarding the Android web browser. In my experience, it's been essentially the same as the Mobile Safari in terms of experience.
He posted a link [1] to video comparing browsers on Nexus S and iPhone 3GS. The difference is even more striking if you consider that Nexus S is 1.5 years newer. [1] http://vimeo.com/30050423
Here's a different video, to demonstrate (Nexus One without Flash vs iPhone 4 running iOS 4): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZiSG3TmdY