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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 bette

by ljlolel 15y ago

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. iOS 5 isn't innovating. iOS 5 is copying. I wouldn't be surprised if iPhone 6 has a hardware back button like android. The iPad still innovates, and hopefully Apple has a cool new product around the corner.

jamesaguilar 15y ago
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 against Apple adding another hardware button of any kind except maybe a camera button. I agree that a lot of Apple's advantage came from innovating. But a lot of the advantage also comes from taking features that other devices have done and doing them better. For example, Android does not show collated notifications on the home screen by default, and you can't interact with notifications without unlocking the screen and pulling down. iPhone's proposed implementation looks a lot better than what Android has. This happened with copy and paste too, and Android still has not caught up (no universal method for copy-and-paste). I don't care if Apple copies or innovates. What I care about is that iPhone is still (and after this next release, will to an even greater extent be) the best phone money can buy. How it got that way is immaterial to most of their potential customers.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  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. The path then to the app I want is the same as always: home button, app shortcut. Conversely, on iOS, what happens when I get sent to a different app and then want to go back to the original app? Home button, app shortcut. In my experience, the android way addresses the more common scenario. Also, there are builds of android (HTC's Sense UI, I believe) that do have notifications on the lock screen. Not only that, but the lock screen is configurable, so you can add shortcuts that, when you drag them to the unlock field, take you directly to the app. This is a neat feature that I hope eventually makes it into android proper. EDIT: Hm, this is factual and fairly uncontroversial. I suppose getting downvoted sometimes is just an inevitable consequence of participating in any dicussion involving iOS and Android? Oh well.
  - wzdd 15y ago
    > [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.
    - joebadmo 15y ago
      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.
      - _djo_ 15y ago
        Give it time. Most knee-jerk early down-voting on HN tends to get corrected over the next hour or two. It's annoying when one or two people unfairly down-vote a comment, but at least the system usually self-corrects.Once a thread is a few hours old I seldom see comments down-voted into grey oblivion that didn't obviously deserve to be there.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  The Android back button works exactly the way it should. For example, if you go to Gmail from Twitter and press back, I DO want to go back to Twitter, not to my inbox. But you're right, there isn't a good way to go to an app's home screen if you enter from a specific activity. That's something that needs to be looked at, but not at the expense of changing the excellent back button functionality.
- 51Cards 15y ago
  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.
  - jamesaguilar 15y ago
    You may want to look at Apple's design, which uses a lock-like mechanism for interacting with the notifications as well (e.g. slide-to-play voicemail, slide-to-view text message). There doesn't seem to be an option for clearing the notification while the screen is locked, so your concern is in this case moot.

by ljlolel 15y ago

jamesaguilar 15y ago

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 against Apple adding another hardware button of any kind except maybe a camera button. I agree that a lot of Apple's advantage came from innovating. But a lot of the advantage also comes from taking features that other devices have done and doing them better. For example, Android does not show collated notifications on the home screen by default, and you can't interact with notifications without unlocking the screen and pulling down. iPhone's proposed implementation looks a lot better than what Android has. This happened with copy and paste too, and Android still has not caught up (no universal method for copy-and-paste). I don't care if Apple copies or innovates. What I care about is that iPhone is still (and after this next release, will to an even greater extent be) the best phone money can buy. How it got that way is immaterial to most of their potential customers.

joebadmo 15y ago
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. The path then to the app I want is the same as always: home button, app shortcut. Conversely, on iOS, what happens when I get sent to a different app and then want to go back to the original app? Home button, app shortcut. In my experience, the android way addresses the more common scenario. Also, there are builds of android (HTC's Sense UI, I believe) that do have notifications on the lock screen. Not only that, but the lock screen is configurable, so you can add shortcuts that, when you drag them to the unlock field, take you directly to the app. This is a neat feature that I hope eventually makes it into android proper. EDIT: Hm, this is factual and fairly uncontroversial. I suppose getting downvoted sometimes is just an inevitable consequence of participating in any dicussion involving iOS and Android? Oh well.
- wzdd 15y ago
  > [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.
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    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.
    - _djo_ 15y ago
      Give it time. Most knee-jerk early down-voting on HN tends to get corrected over the next hour or two. It's annoying when one or two people unfairly down-vote a comment, but at least the system usually self-corrects.Once a thread is a few hours old I seldom see comments down-voted into grey oblivion that didn't obviously deserve to be there.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
The Android back button works exactly the way it should. For example, if you go to Gmail from Twitter and press back, I DO want to go back to Twitter, not to my inbox. But you're right, there isn't a good way to go to an app's home screen if you enter from a specific activity. That's something that needs to be looked at, but not at the expense of changing the excellent back button functionality.
51Cards 15y ago
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.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  You may want to look at Apple's design, which uses a lock-like mechanism for interacting with the notifications as well (e.g. slide-to-play voicemail, slide-to-view text message). There doesn't seem to be an option for clearing the notification while the screen is locked, so your concern is in this case moot.