I haven't used Android since it first came out, but does it have the dynamic physics, layering, dynamic image compositing (blur, etc), parallax, etc, that all are in iOS 7? iOS 7 seems to me to be very much about how it feels and behaves in motion. The current beta still isn't performance tuned, so my guess is the final build is going to be a pretty futuristic experience on the iPhone 5S.
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.
I agree, but it's funny. iOS 7 is all about dynamic, physical interfaces - so much so that they built a physics engine into UIKit. At the same time, they're ripping apart the user experience so that nothing onscreen _looks_ like a physical object.
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.
I don't know (or frankly care) how it is implemented. While the UI is flat, the apps use transitions and a parallax effect to build the illusion of the depth (similar to how Apple does it using their gyroscopic parallax effect on the home screen).
There is no depth or layering in metro, not even small drop shadows and definitely not layered application screens. The panaroma metaphor is panning left or right with some disjoint movement of the background (not really parallax, very fake) and the cutting off lots of text...
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.
All of the new features are just 'feature libraries' on top of CoreAnimation, which was there since 1.0. You could of made a demo of all of this that ran (slower) on iOS 2.0 with just CoreAnimation and the accelerometer hardware API as a 3rd party developer. CoreAnimation is the impressive part.
Well I've had a parallax (sic? I don't think I've spelt that right) Live Wallpaper for some time now. Android lends itself to allowing other developers to innovate without waiting for the OS to introduce those "features". There are also other Launchers that can provide the iOS 7 graphical embellishments while other Launchers have provided even more 3D enhancements. I've used those before, but I'm running a fairly stock UI out of personal choice.
And that I think is still why Android gives me the best platform -- choice. There are a variety of device manufactures and I can replace whole system components, but at the end of the day, while my particular device is unique to my experience, I can run the same software as another device that looks, and in some cases feels, completely different than mine.
In your estimation, what did iOS "steal" from Android?
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.
I make my living writing iOS apps, but come on - there's plenty here that has been "borrowed". Off the top of my head:
- 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.
People who use Bluetooth regularly find themselves having to turn it on and off for the sake of battery life. It's great to be able to do so without diving through multiple menus.
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.
I'm a bit baffled by this myself. I'm on the iOS 7 beta, and it's far closer to WP7 than Android. (Which is awesome -- I loved WP7, just wished it had apps.)
I think you could argue the control center is borrowed from Android (although the iOS 7 version looks kinda spiffier). The interface for moving between apps is similar. I had to open Safari to see your comparison. The demo I see on the product page for iOS7 reminds me more of Android than Safari. I remember seeing a few other things in the WWDC presentation but I don't remember what they were.
All that said, I hope both sides "steal" good ideas early and often.
Catch up? People like you really have no idea how much behind Android is as an OS. It's until very recently it's got close to 60fps scrolling, and low audio latency and decent power management.
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
And it is not even flat. Apple talks about three things regarding new design: depth, deference and clarity. Nothing about flatness, on the contrary, it's about establishing visual hierarchy via layers.
Also, even bigger part will be not in the static appearance but in subtle motions when interacting, thanks to UIKit Dynamics.
60fps scrolling? A semi-decent animation framework for developers? Low audio latency and good power management? Pretty much all the advantages Apple has from their decade of experience of developing OS X frameworks?
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.
There is a property animation system on Android, but it's woefully lacking when compared to iOS. IIRC it doesn't even support 2.5D transform with a Z axis and variable camera distance (which is useful for perspective transform). On iOS 7 they now have a full rigid-body physics engine built in and comes with a nice high level API for developers to take advantage of.
"On iOS 7 they now have a full rigid-body physics engine built in and comes with a nice high level API for developers to take advantage of."
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.
It's pretty easy to make UITableView's chug if you do something stupid when populating cells as well.
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.
This troll word. Do you use it with anything you find too uncomfortable to hear?
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:
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:
>>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):
> 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:
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.
>What iOS features have been present for three years that Android is just now getting?
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.
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.