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I stopped reading when I got to the 6x2 Android vs iOS comparison. In order: The first one appears to make the argument that since the background images are si
by azylman 15y ago
I stopped reading when I got to the 6x2 Android vs iOS comparison. In order:
The first one appears to make the argument that since the background images are similar colors, Android copied. But they're both nature scenes (one day, one night) and the sky really only comes in shades of blue... The author could be talking about the icon shape (square) but that's even more ridiculous since that's been the standard in desktop OSes for more than a decade.
The second one shows Gmail on the left, which looks the same as the Gmail web interface, and the iOS mail app on the right. The only similarities are the colors and the layout. The colors: Gmail had them long, long before iOS was ever released. The layout: Outlook did it first in the early 2000s.
The third: Two keyboards, both with white keys and a similar color background. However, other than the (standardized) QWERTY layout, the button placement is entirely different. Further, the Android one shows off Swype, something not present in iOS.
The fourth: Apparently the Android tablet calendar interface (I dunno, I don't have an Android tablet) paired against... I don't know. It looks like a third-party web app. It's definitely not a calendar.
The fifth: A third-party chat client paired against the iOS Facebook app. Neither of those are written by Google, Samsung, or Apple. Both are third-party. Fail.
The sixth: Uh, they're both black devices with an LCD screen? Them and every other smartphone on the market. Hint: RIM did black smartphones first, in the 90s.
- glassx 15y agoYou missed the point and should have kept reading. The author is arguing that even though there's prior art for most of those things, and some of those are just too archetipal today, the SII would be radically different without the iPhone, given that the chances of this likeness being by pure chance are astronomically small. Whether you believe this is true or not is up to you.
- msg 15y agoThe article contains a false choice between random chance and copying. There are many other ways it could have happened, such as multiple simultaneous invention, aesthetic choices that are in fact constricted by physical analogs, conventions, and prior customer experience. If you believe that the iPhone has hit a local maximum for design, why not believe that other manufacturers are hillclimbing toward them with the same algorithm?