35 ms·

"Android ICS already offers more than what is coming in iOS 6"

77 points by jgroome 14y ago

atacrawl 14y ago
Why does "third party apps" get to count as Android already having a feature that iOS currently doesn't have?
- mdhen 14y ago
  Probably because functionality is what counts. who cares how you get there? and one of the upsides of Android having open development is that features will get built in more rapidly via third parties.
  - stephenr 14y ago
    If your phone is running the right version. Which you don't get to decide. People care "how they get there" when the phone they purchased a month ago can't run a cool new app because the manufacturer or their network provider decided they should be using a 2 year old version of android and that upgrades are not allowed.
    - mdhen 14y ago
      This is true. My perception of android is definitely affected by the fact that I have a rooted phone and run CM - but for the general populace they'll never be able to take advantage of most things. Which is really unfortunate.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    "Oh, so your 10.4 has indexed search and Expose? Well look at what my pimped XP can do.." "So you have hardware accelerated video filters? Well look at what I can fetch, hack and compile my Gentoo into.." I'm not saying Android is bad, but this znet post is just stupid, sorry. Apple has never really been a big inventor of new technologies (apart from industrial design), but integrating existing ideas as good as possible. Some people prefer to tinker on their smartphones, some people like me get enough tinkering on their desktop PC and like their notebooks and smartphones to "just work" (quoted because it's actually not always like that with Apple products anymore, but at least their iOS devices are pretty solid in what they do).
    - megablast 14y ago
      > Apple has never really been a big inventor of new technologies Personally, I consider the iPad and iPhone way more than just industrial design.
      - DeepDuh 14y ago
        Integrating, assembling and perfecting existing technologies and ideas is what they are. Interface demos with similar or identical gestures existed before. Capacitive touch screens existed before. These two devices have been big leaps, yes, but I don't see why it contradicts my point. My point was: Stop justifying your favourite products vs. my favourite product by saying stuff like "but it can do that too, your stuff is so unoriginal, duh!" /Louis C.K. voice off. Just fucking choose and live with it - or change it.
- manmal 14y ago
  I think they mean that iOS's platform restrictions have disallowed apps to do this so far, while Android has not, and there is no need for the OS to step in. What people tend to forget is that many apps are not supported on all API versions, and they will not work as reliably when not integrated into the system. The article is clearly written by someone rationalizing his refusal of iOS.
- jgroome 14y ago
  As far as I know, Android apps can add core functionality to the phone. For example, if I download the Facebook app, I can now share my photos from the Camera app via Facebook, without having to actually open the Facebook app itself. Same with Dropbox, Twitter, and the like.
  - manmal 14y ago
    Yes, 3rd party devs can add all kinds of system components, ranging from custom keyboards to homescreens. Only some functionalities are root-only.
  - diminish 14y ago
    Yes service sharing is the killer Android feature thanks to API design; Virtually all cloud and social services can have a share button on my android.
  - eco 14y ago
    I'm starting to feel this is what is driving the Android fragmentation argument with some iOS users. iOS's design is much more dependent on Apple implementing core features and interactions (I suspect this is partly by design). The benefit of this is that when Apple does implement them, they are incredibly well done and have that glossy Apple finish that Apple does best. Android's design allows heavy integration—or sometimes outright replacement of—all sorts of core OS features by third party developers. Case in point: Google Maps on Android is just a regular app. It's not built into Android (though it does ship by default on basically all Android phones). It receives updates regularly from the Play Store outside of Android's infrequent OS updates. Just being a regular app, however, doesn't prevent it from connecting itself into all sorts of actions throughout Android. You click on an address in a third party and it'll open in Google Maps (or any other third party app that registers itself to handle the "map an address" intent). You speak "Navigate to Starbucks" into Voice Actions and Google Maps will open. If you want to use a different browser on Android (Chrome for instance) you just install it and make it your default browser (which is an option you get the first time you try to open a link after you have installed it). Want to open reddit links in a reddit specific app? After installing your favorite you'll get the option to always open reddit links in that app (apps can register to handle specific url patterns). People talk about how you can Share using third party apps on Android but that's really just the tip of the iceberg that the Android Intents system allows. The Intents aren't even just a limited set defined by Android itself. You can create new Intents that the Android developers never envisioned and now your app seamlessly integrates with any number of other applications making use of those Intents. It's a beautiful system. So while iOS users sometimes have to rely on Apple to add functionality (like Twitter or Facebook), Android users often don't require anything but the third party developer to implement it. I believe this is why fragmentation seems to be a lot bigger of issue to some vocal iOS users than it is to many actual Android users. That's not to say that it isn't an issue, just that it isn't as big of an issue as they might expect from their experience with iOS.
- stephenr 14y ago
  For the same reason that features of a single companies own skin/theme/Frankenstein bolts on top of android are included?
doron 14y ago
ICS ecosystem is almost vaporware, it is supposed to be the best release yet, but i actually never saw it. Maybe its the best thing since sliced bread, but if nobody uses it, what exactly is the point?! Your chances of getting ICS on your legacy device are virtually zero. whereas getting IOS 6 on the iphone 4S is assured. [EDIT] I have been an android user since it was essentially released, and have only recently switched to IOS, there are many things that i find absolutely maddening with IOS and find some elements poor in comparison to android. That said, I grew tired of upgrading my phone on my own. Cyanogen was great, but it became a real hassle, I just want a device that works, and upgrades easily. I am very disappointed with Android, primarily because its unfulfilled promise. We can blame the phone manufacturers for this mess and we will be right, but a chunk of the blame goes to Google as well, it was blind to entrenched interests, and now the users are paying the price. It smacks of arrogance, and lack of strategy.
- Nemisis7654 14y ago
  It's hard to compare getting ICS on legacy phones to getting iOS 6 on your iPhone 4S. Of course, first gen Android devices aren't going to be able to run ICS, but neither will first gen iOS devices. iOS 6 is not going to be on the original iPad, the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G.
  - josegonzalez 14y ago
    I bought a Galaxy SII last October - about a week or so before the Galaxy Nexus was released - and here I am without an ICS. T-Mobile JUST announced support for it, saying it would be here within a week. The only update I have received was a patch update, with minor UI changes. Even depending upon CyanogenMod has failed me. T-Mobile loves getting non-standard devices and then not releasing drivers that could help boost their own popularity - likely for IP reasons. I have owned dev phones in the past, and this was my first consumer device, and coincidentally the first Android device that I could not easily unlock and update on my own. No, you can't compare a first gen Android device, but you sure as hell can compare a device more powerful than some netbooks.
    - 14y ago
th0ma5 14y ago
It is weird to see the public discussion about ICS being one about dismay and vendors holding the platform back, but with those of us who took the time to research, hack, and even program for Android, I've enjoyed more control and flexibility than even a jailbroken iPhone could give me. So, on one hand, I completely agree with all of the negative press about the droid platform, but on the other hand, I couldn't be happier.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Same here. I won't buy an Android device before making sure it can be easily rooted and that it runs a custom build I like.
xam 14y ago
Of course, only 7 percent of Android devices currently run it....
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
The thing this misses for me is what it can do and what it does do for most people. Smartphones are now mass market which means that a lot of people buying and using them aren't engaging in a lot of config, customisation and so on, that 90% of what they do and how they work is how it comes out of the box. Only about 7% of Android devices are using ICS 6 months after launch. By comparison 80% of iOS customers using iOS5 12 months on. What that means is that what's in iOS6.0 is probably way more relevant to your average iOS user than what's in ICS is to your average Android user. I've not seen anyone say ICS isn't good, the issue seems to be that it's not what most people experience when the use Android.
jcromartie 14y ago
And yet, only 7% of Android phones run last year's OS, at least as of May 1... I wonder what that number is today. I would expect it to be a little bit higher but not much.
- stephenr 14y ago
  According to google (http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...) 7.1% are on 4.x
bluthru 14y ago
User experience is not a checklist. There's a big difference between having those features be usable out of the box to every customer versus giving a user an unfinished phone and making them do shitwork to make it work.
maak 14y ago
There appears to be a lot of discussion about market penetration of the two operating systems. This is a separate discussion. The author is comparing the new iOS functionality to that present on ICS.
- shadesandcolour 14y ago
  People continue (and chances are will continue) to make the market penetration argument for the following reason: If the feature exists, but no one can use it, does it really exist? Claiming that Android had a feature first doesn't mean anything to the consumer who can't get that feature on their device. Compared to iOS where announced features show up on most devices and on every new device that you buy in the store the very same day.
desigooner 14y ago
I have an iPhone 4S (Work) and an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II (Personal - EU version with the physical button) and I am still to receive the ICS update here stateside! By the time iOS6 is released to users, there will be many a people with Android phones who wouldn't have received ICS updates for their phone!
shadesandcolour 14y ago
I'll answer this completely fanboyish article with a slightly fanboyish response. First of all, just because ICS had it "first" doesn't mean that they did it better. Let's add the fact that the feature being present in the operating system doesn't gauntness that Android users will get it on their phones like it does when Apple adds something to the operating system (with a few exceptions). Counting your "3rd party apps" (which apple really had first, two can play at this game) as features of the operating system just doesn't count. I don't care that apps can add functionality to the operating system. If it isn't there by default, it doesn't count as a feature. Claiming that a 3rd party app offers the same functionality as passbook for instance, is moot because 3rd party apps on the iPhone could do the exact same thing. Please don't compare your crappy voice actions or other skin specific implementations to Siri. She doesn't always work, but when she does, it's better than yours. Yes email on iOS has been lacking a little bit. Doesn't make it any less of a feature when things get added to the email client. I'm shocked that the author waited until the very end of the post to mention "glanceable widgets" since this seems like it's the champion of all Android users since it's really their "killer feature." Be that as it may, call your HTC One X more powerfull all you want, when it comes to platform integration and ease of use, the iPhone is still the king.
- myko 14y ago
  I'm afraid you haven't really used voice commands on Android. They do lack the NLP of Siri and the witty responses, but in practice they seem much more accurate at actually understanding what the user is trying to do. Also you may believe iPhone is king in the ease of use department, but I don't. I think after using either OS for an extended period of time they become second nature and usage of the other can be grating if expected behavior is different. Personally I find Android much easier to use, you may not, and that's okay.
  - Terretta 14y ago
    Forget "voice commands", which predate both iPhone and Android. I need SMS dictation. Dictation on the iPhone under iOS 5 is shockingly better than dictation on Android ICS on my Google Galaxy Nexus. I can carry on a complete SMS conversation via voice on iOS without editing, while having to edit every other phrase on ICS.
DominikR 14y ago
Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I can see not a single feature that is compared in this article is exclusive to ICS. Those features are also available on 2.2 and 2.3, so the whole discussion about "ICS is vaporware" is irrelevant when talking about those features.
- shadesandcolour 14y ago
  I guess when you call 3rd party apps that implement things features it's a little hard to tie things to one operating system version...
  - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
    As others have pointed out, the way iOS limits the reach of certain things, it was not even possible to have a third party app do some of those things. So, while these features may not be built into ICS, the Android architecture allowed for a third party app to implement it already.
mark_integerdsv 14y ago
There is an advert for Steers (a hamburger take away franchise here in South Africa, their burgers are delicious!) that came out around about the same time that McDonalds came to the country. It depicts one guy unpacking a stack of tiny burgers onto the table, bragging to his buddy about how little he paid for all these tiny cheeseburgers (getting the picture?) His buddy opens up a Steers bag, pulls out one great big Steer Burger, looks over to the other guy just before biting into it and says: "That's great, but now you have to eat them." The point of the advert is clear, I think mine is too.
- kstenerud 14y ago
  Is the point of the advert that smaller, commoditized burgers do better overall in the marketplace due to their cheap price, or that there's a market for the smaller segment willing to pay more for better quality? Or both? I'm also not sure what your point is, since Android is present in both markets.
  - mark_integerdsv 14y ago
    Sorry, I guess it is a little bit lost in the re-telling (maybe just my re-telling?)... My point is that 'Android (ICS) already offers more...' is hunky dory... Thing is: then you need to use Android. I was taking a little jab at Android because I'm annoyed that fans of the platform always seem to make ironic claims as to the ease and openness of it. It's not easy to hack and distribution is a mess... etc. Disclaimer: this post contains opinions, responses may contain nuts.
abruzzi 14y ago
This is the old bullet-list fallacy. Quality is simply a measure of the bullet list of features, and no attempt is made to what is behind the items on the bullet list. Remember when the first iPhone was announced? The bullet list after it was announced had touchscreen at the top of the list, so every manufacturer thought that all they had to do was add a touch screen to their existing platform, and hordes of just like the "LG ENV Touch" flooded carriers. Feature phones had small app stores where you could buy a dozen useless apps, so they beat the iPhone on that bullet item.
- MrScruff 14y ago
  Exactly. I remember hearing similar ramblings from Symbian and Windows Mobile 6.5 users when the original iPhone was released. Or how the iPhone would never achieve market penetration in Japan because it lacked all the bells and whistles of their feature phones (built in TV tuner etc...).
- alecco 14y ago
  > Remember when the first iPhone was announced? The bullet list after > it was announced had touchscreen at the top of the list No, the LG Prada was ripped off by the iPhone. Don't let apple fanboys rewrite tech history. Same with the iPod. Sure, it was a more polished product, but they were not the first with the feature set. Apple rarely is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850)#iPhone_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850)#iPhone_controv...
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    As @abruzzi said, it wasn't until the iPhone that other manufacturers started putting "touchscreen" at the top of their features lists. Apple wasn't first with the iPhone or iPod, but they sure as hell changed the product landscape after they released them.
  - hcurtiss 14y ago
    "Sure, it was a more polished product * * * ." That's exactly his point. Even if others offered the feature first, it's what's behind the bullet list that makes it a successful product (polish, if you will).
daleharvey 14y ago
Predictably most of the comments are about the android upgrade issues, but the solution is simple, people who care about these features buy a google device, which receives timely upgrades, is cheaper than an iphone, and has its own advantages (+disadvantages) over iphone hardware The people that dont care about these feature buy any random android and get this stuff later as the carriers catchup
- stephenr 14y ago
  "when" they catch up? I think you surely mean "in the unlikely event that they ever catch up or even provide/allow any update at all" If android is so "open" why do you have to pick a single device from a single manufacturer (even apple offers more options than the nexus lineup) if you want android that's really android and not raped by the handset manufacturer or the network operator?
  - daleharvey 14y ago
    When they catch up usually means when they upgrade their phone You can pick whatever phone you want, and install whatever android you can get working on it if you want, if you want ota upgrades in a timely manner you need to pick a manufacturer / carrier that does that, which is only google devices at the moment, thats specifically because it is so open.
    - stephenr 14y ago
      The only thing more open than android is the consumers anal cavity, thanks to the way handset makers and network operators treat their customers. Seriously, "install whatever android you can get working on it"?? I have a diploma in network engineering, I write web apps and I manage Linux servers. I don't want to play "guess the right Frankenstein mix" with a phone. I want to use it I really do think the "android tinkerers" who go on about "customising" sit there all day and endlessly fuck about with a phone, that they never actually use because they're too busy "customising" it. Apparently "customising" may also mean "embracing the openness of android and fuckin around to implement/fix features that shouldn't need fixing"
sidwyn 14y ago
It's not how much you offer, but how well you pull it off.
mtgx 14y ago
This article seems relevant to the discussion, too: http://blog.bestvendor.com/2012/06/did-apple-steal-these-ios-6-features/ http://blog.bestvendor.com/2012/06/did-apple-steal-these-ios... I've noticed that over the past couple of years, Apple has kept "stealing" the functionality of very popular apps from the App Store (starting with iBooks, and then others).
- stephenr 14y ago
  Dropbox? They stole from Dropbox? Becuse iDisk never existed I guess? "do not disturb" on a phone is only there becaus of some shitty desktop app that changes your Skype status to do not disturb? Importing Facebook contacts never would have occurred to anyone at apple if not for some gmail plugin? This article is worse than the one this discussion page is for.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  Oh no, Apple's implementing popular features?
jsz0 14y ago
You can now have a different signature for each email account on your iOS device, WOW I don't think this is possible with the stock ICS IMAP/POP mail app. It doesn't even have mali threading?
moron 14y ago
Ah yes, good old feature checklists. Those have been working so well for us these last couple of decades.
TrevorJ 14y ago
Facebook and Twitter are not features.
jack-r-abbit 14y ago
I find it kind of humorous that we used to hear a lot of "but the App Store has way more apps than the Market" as a "feature" that made iOS more desirable. Hell, Apple even used the "There's an app for that" campaign for quite a while. And now we have people saying, "Well, so what if there was an app for that in ICS. Third party apps don't count". Oh how times change.
- shadesandcolour 14y ago
  I'd be happy to allow Android users to call a 3rd party app a "feature of the operating system" like the author did, as long as he's will to include iOS 3rd party apps as features of iOS. We might as well compare oranges to oranges.
  - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
    He doesn't actually call the 3rd party apps features of the OS. He states the features that are available to both OSes and notes those that are via 3rd party apps. Some prefer everything to be built into the OS while others prefer an OS that simply allows others to create/enhance the functionality. There are pros and cons to both approaches.
Tloewald 14y ago
My Motorola RAZR could, in theory, do everything that the iPhone could do. Apps, email, web browser, three way calling, blah blah blah. I couldn't remember how to use any of it, and when I managed, it all sucked dog's balls. When android boosters realize that compatibility, simplicity, ease of use, and even standardization are actually FEATURES they might get somewhere. Meanwhile they've got phones from hardware vendors who expect no loyalty from their customers and don't show any loyalty to thei customers, because their customer will buy whatever gadget has the most blinking lights next time around. It's a self selecting group.
robmcm 14y ago
>Travel and reward card management >iOS6: Passbook >ICS: 3rd party apps This is missing the point, iOS has been doing this with third party apps for a while, passbook is like news stand or game centre and aims to consolidate lots of confusing implementation into one.
jolohaga 14y ago
The use of the words ICS and iOS is about equal among the comments. In a year, iOS will still be a current term. ICS will not.
rimantas 14y ago
With less satisfaction for the user, if you are to believe Apple's keynote of yesterday.
ajross 14y ago
This thread encapsulates everything wrong with the tech industry in one handy page. A flame bait OP, a bunch of fanboien leaping in to defend their favorite platform. Lots of rehashing of the Same Tired Old Arguments yet again, followed by the Standard Polemic Reply to those arguments, and the inevitable Ridiculous Digression Justifying Original Opinion. I swear, I got started out the top and realized I was about to downvote the whole thing before giving up. Look folks: Smartphones (I guess I should say "iPhone-style smartphones", as the term existed long before that, but was used for devices that aren't meaningfully comparable) are now 5 years old, and are becoming a mature technology. We're at the stage now where desktop GUIs were in, say, 1991. The competing platforms have reached feature parity, and there aren't many great advances left to distinguish them in the near future (until the next big disruptive change, anyway). So while the OP is flamebait, I think the point is mostly valid. iOS 6 looks pretty tame compared to its recent ancestors.

77 points by jgroome 14y ago

atacrawl 14y ago

Why does "third party apps" get to count as Android already having a feature that iOS currently doesn't have?

mdhen 14y ago
Probably because functionality is what counts. who cares how you get there? and one of the upsides of Android having open development is that features will get built in more rapidly via third parties.
- stephenr 14y ago
  If your phone is running the right version. Which you don't get to decide. People care "how they get there" when the phone they purchased a month ago can't run a cool new app because the manufacturer or their network provider decided they should be using a 2 year old version of android and that upgrades are not allowed.
  - mdhen 14y ago
    This is true. My perception of android is definitely affected by the fact that I have a rooted phone and run CM - but for the general populace they'll never be able to take advantage of most things. Which is really unfortunate.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  "Oh, so your 10.4 has indexed search and Expose? Well look at what my pimped XP can do.." "So you have hardware accelerated video filters? Well look at what I can fetch, hack and compile my Gentoo into.." I'm not saying Android is bad, but this znet post is just stupid, sorry. Apple has never really been a big inventor of new technologies (apart from industrial design), but integrating existing ideas as good as possible. Some people prefer to tinker on their smartphones, some people like me get enough tinkering on their desktop PC and like their notebooks and smartphones to "just work" (quoted because it's actually not always like that with Apple products anymore, but at least their iOS devices are pretty solid in what they do).
  - megablast 14y ago
    > Apple has never really been a big inventor of new technologies Personally, I consider the iPad and iPhone way more than just industrial design.
    - DeepDuh 14y ago
      Integrating, assembling and perfecting existing technologies and ideas is what they are. Interface demos with similar or identical gestures existed before. Capacitive touch screens existed before. These two devices have been big leaps, yes, but I don't see why it contradicts my point. My point was: Stop justifying your favourite products vs. my favourite product by saying stuff like "but it can do that too, your stuff is so unoriginal, duh!" /Louis C.K. voice off. Just fucking choose and live with it - or change it.
manmal 14y ago
I think they mean that iOS's platform restrictions have disallowed apps to do this so far, while Android has not, and there is no need for the OS to step in. What people tend to forget is that many apps are not supported on all API versions, and they will not work as reliably when not integrated into the system. The article is clearly written by someone rationalizing his refusal of iOS.
jgroome 14y ago
As far as I know, Android apps can add core functionality to the phone. For example, if I download the Facebook app, I can now share my photos from the Camera app via Facebook, without having to actually open the Facebook app itself. Same with Dropbox, Twitter, and the like.
- manmal 14y ago
  Yes, 3rd party devs can add all kinds of system components, ranging from custom keyboards to homescreens. Only some functionalities are root-only.
- diminish 14y ago
  Yes service sharing is the killer Android feature thanks to API design; Virtually all cloud and social services can have a share button on my android.
- eco 14y ago
  I'm starting to feel this is what is driving the Android fragmentation argument with some iOS users. iOS's design is much more dependent on Apple implementing core features and interactions (I suspect this is partly by design). The benefit of this is that when Apple does implement them, they are incredibly well done and have that glossy Apple finish that Apple does best. Android's design allows heavy integration—or sometimes outright replacement of—all sorts of core OS features by third party developers. Case in point: Google Maps on Android is just a regular app. It's not built into Android (though it does ship by default on basically all Android phones). It receives updates regularly from the Play Store outside of Android's infrequent OS updates. Just being a regular app, however, doesn't prevent it from connecting itself into all sorts of actions throughout Android. You click on an address in a third party and it'll open in Google Maps (or any other third party app that registers itself to handle the "map an address" intent). You speak "Navigate to Starbucks" into Voice Actions and Google Maps will open. If you want to use a different browser on Android (Chrome for instance) you just install it and make it your default browser (which is an option you get the first time you try to open a link after you have installed it). Want to open reddit links in a reddit specific app? After installing your favorite you'll get the option to always open reddit links in that app (apps can register to handle specific url patterns). People talk about how you can Share using third party apps on Android but that's really just the tip of the iceberg that the Android Intents system allows. The Intents aren't even just a limited set defined by Android itself. You can create new Intents that the Android developers never envisioned and now your app seamlessly integrates with any number of other applications making use of those Intents. It's a beautiful system. So while iOS users sometimes have to rely on Apple to add functionality (like Twitter or Facebook), Android users often don't require anything but the third party developer to implement it. I believe this is why fragmentation seems to be a lot bigger of issue to some vocal iOS users than it is to many actual Android users. That's not to say that it isn't an issue, just that it isn't as big of an issue as they might expect from their experience with iOS.
stephenr 14y ago
For the same reason that features of a single companies own skin/theme/Frankenstein bolts on top of android are included?

doron 14y ago

ICS ecosystem is almost vaporware, it is supposed to be the best release yet, but i actually never saw it. Maybe its the best thing since sliced bread, but if nobody uses it, what exactly is the point?! Your chances of getting ICS on your legacy device are virtually zero. whereas getting IOS 6 on the iphone 4S is assured. [EDIT] I have been an android user since it was essentially released, and have only recently switched to IOS, there are many things that i find absolutely maddening with IOS and find some elements poor in comparison to android. That said, I grew tired of upgrading my phone on my own. Cyanogen was great, but it became a real hassle, I just want a device that works, and upgrades easily. I am very disappointed with Android, primarily because its unfulfilled promise. We can blame the phone manufacturers for this mess and we will be right, but a chunk of the blame goes to Google as well, it was blind to entrenched interests, and now the users are paying the price. It smacks of arrogance, and lack of strategy.

Nemisis7654 14y ago
It's hard to compare getting ICS on legacy phones to getting iOS 6 on your iPhone 4S. Of course, first gen Android devices aren't going to be able to run ICS, but neither will first gen iOS devices. iOS 6 is not going to be on the original iPad, the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G.
- josegonzalez 14y ago
  I bought a Galaxy SII last October - about a week or so before the Galaxy Nexus was released - and here I am without an ICS. T-Mobile JUST announced support for it, saying it would be here within a week. The only update I have received was a patch update, with minor UI changes. Even depending upon CyanogenMod has failed me. T-Mobile loves getting non-standard devices and then not releasing drivers that could help boost their own popularity - likely for IP reasons. I have owned dev phones in the past, and this was my first consumer device, and coincidentally the first Android device that I could not easily unlock and update on my own. No, you can't compare a first gen Android device, but you sure as hell can compare a device more powerful than some netbooks.
  - 14y ago

th0ma5 14y ago

It is weird to see the public discussion about ICS being one about dismay and vendors holding the platform back, but with those of us who took the time to research, hack, and even program for Android, I've enjoyed more control and flexibility than even a jailbroken iPhone could give me. So, on one hand, I completely agree with all of the negative press about the droid platform, but on the other hand, I couldn't be happier.

rbanffy 14y ago
Same here. I won't buy an Android device before making sure it can be easily rooted and that it runs a custom build I like.

xam 14y ago

Of course, only 7 percent of Android devices currently run it....

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

The thing this misses for me is what it can do and what it does do for most people. Smartphones are now mass market which means that a lot of people buying and using them aren't engaging in a lot of config, customisation and so on, that 90% of what they do and how they work is how it comes out of the box. Only about 7% of Android devices are using ICS 6 months after launch. By comparison 80% of iOS customers using iOS5 12 months on. What that means is that what's in iOS6.0 is probably way more relevant to your average iOS user than what's in ICS is to your average Android user. I've not seen anyone say ICS isn't good, the issue seems to be that it's not what most people experience when the use Android.

jcromartie 14y ago

And yet, only 7% of Android phones run last year's OS, at least as of May 1... I wonder what that number is today. I would expect it to be a little bit higher but not much.

stephenr 14y ago
According to google (http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...) 7.1% are on 4.x

bluthru 14y ago

User experience is not a checklist. There's a big difference between having those features be usable out of the box to every customer versus giving a user an unfinished phone and making them do shitwork to make it work.

maak 14y ago

There appears to be a lot of discussion about market penetration of the two operating systems. This is a separate discussion. The author is comparing the new iOS functionality to that present on ICS.

shadesandcolour 14y ago
People continue (and chances are will continue) to make the market penetration argument for the following reason: If the feature exists, but no one can use it, does it really exist? Claiming that Android had a feature first doesn't mean anything to the consumer who can't get that feature on their device. Compared to iOS where announced features show up on most devices and on every new device that you buy in the store the very same day.

desigooner 14y ago

I have an iPhone 4S (Work) and an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II (Personal - EU version with the physical button) and I am still to receive the ICS update here stateside! By the time iOS6 is released to users, there will be many a people with Android phones who wouldn't have received ICS updates for their phone!

shadesandcolour 14y ago

I'll answer this completely fanboyish article with a slightly fanboyish response. First of all, just because ICS had it "first" doesn't mean that they did it better. Let's add the fact that the feature being present in the operating system doesn't gauntness that Android users will get it on their phones like it does when Apple adds something to the operating system (with a few exceptions). Counting your "3rd party apps" (which apple really had first, two can play at this game) as features of the operating system just doesn't count. I don't care that apps can add functionality to the operating system. If it isn't there by default, it doesn't count as a feature. Claiming that a 3rd party app offers the same functionality as passbook for instance, is moot because 3rd party apps on the iPhone could do the exact same thing. Please don't compare your crappy voice actions or other skin specific implementations to Siri. She doesn't always work, but when she does, it's better than yours. Yes email on iOS has been lacking a little bit. Doesn't make it any less of a feature when things get added to the email client. I'm shocked that the author waited until the very end of the post to mention "glanceable widgets" since this seems like it's the champion of all Android users since it's really their "killer feature." Be that as it may, call your HTC One X more powerfull all you want, when it comes to platform integration and ease of use, the iPhone is still the king.

myko 14y ago
I'm afraid you haven't really used voice commands on Android. They do lack the NLP of Siri and the witty responses, but in practice they seem much more accurate at actually understanding what the user is trying to do. Also you may believe iPhone is king in the ease of use department, but I don't. I think after using either OS for an extended period of time they become second nature and usage of the other can be grating if expected behavior is different. Personally I find Android much easier to use, you may not, and that's okay.
- Terretta 14y ago
  Forget "voice commands", which predate both iPhone and Android. I need SMS dictation. Dictation on the iPhone under iOS 5 is shockingly better than dictation on Android ICS on my Google Galaxy Nexus. I can carry on a complete SMS conversation via voice on iOS without editing, while having to edit every other phrase on ICS.

DominikR 14y ago

Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I can see not a single feature that is compared in this article is exclusive to ICS. Those features are also available on 2.2 and 2.3, so the whole discussion about "ICS is vaporware" is irrelevant when talking about those features.

shadesandcolour 14y ago
I guess when you call 3rd party apps that implement things features it's a little hard to tie things to one operating system version...
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  As others have pointed out, the way iOS limits the reach of certain things, it was not even possible to have a third party app do some of those things. So, while these features may not be built into ICS, the Android architecture allowed for a third party app to implement it already.

mark_integerdsv 14y ago

There is an advert for Steers (a hamburger take away franchise here in South Africa, their burgers are delicious!) that came out around about the same time that McDonalds came to the country. It depicts one guy unpacking a stack of tiny burgers onto the table, bragging to his buddy about how little he paid for all these tiny cheeseburgers (getting the picture?) His buddy opens up a Steers bag, pulls out one great big Steer Burger, looks over to the other guy just before biting into it and says: "That's great, but now you have to eat them." The point of the advert is clear, I think mine is too.

kstenerud 14y ago
Is the point of the advert that smaller, commoditized burgers do better overall in the marketplace due to their cheap price, or that there's a market for the smaller segment willing to pay more for better quality? Or both? I'm also not sure what your point is, since Android is present in both markets.
- mark_integerdsv 14y ago
  Sorry, I guess it is a little bit lost in the re-telling (maybe just my re-telling?)... My point is that 'Android (ICS) already offers more...' is hunky dory... Thing is: then you need to use Android. I was taking a little jab at Android because I'm annoyed that fans of the platform always seem to make ironic claims as to the ease and openness of it. It's not easy to hack and distribution is a mess... etc. Disclaimer: this post contains opinions, responses may contain nuts.

abruzzi 14y ago

This is the old bullet-list fallacy. Quality is simply a measure of the bullet list of features, and no attempt is made to what is behind the items on the bullet list. Remember when the first iPhone was announced? The bullet list after it was announced had touchscreen at the top of the list, so every manufacturer thought that all they had to do was add a touch screen to their existing platform, and hordes of just like the "LG ENV Touch" flooded carriers. Feature phones had small app stores where you could buy a dozen useless apps, so they beat the iPhone on that bullet item.

MrScruff 14y ago
Exactly. I remember hearing similar ramblings from Symbian and Windows Mobile 6.5 users when the original iPhone was released. Or how the iPhone would never achieve market penetration in Japan because it lacked all the bells and whistles of their feature phones (built in TV tuner etc...).
alecco 14y ago
> Remember when the first iPhone was announced? The bullet list after > it was announced had touchscreen at the top of the list No, the LG Prada was ripped off by the iPhone. Don't let apple fanboys rewrite tech history. Same with the iPod. Sure, it was a more polished product, but they were not the first with the feature set. Apple rarely is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850)#iPhone_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850)#iPhone_controv...
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  As @abruzzi said, it wasn't until the iPhone that other manufacturers started putting "touchscreen" at the top of their features lists. Apple wasn't first with the iPhone or iPod, but they sure as hell changed the product landscape after they released them.
- hcurtiss 14y ago
  "Sure, it was a more polished product * * * ." That's exactly his point. Even if others offered the feature first, it's what's behind the bullet list that makes it a successful product (polish, if you will).

daleharvey 14y ago

Predictably most of the comments are about the android upgrade issues, but the solution is simple, people who care about these features buy a google device, which receives timely upgrades, is cheaper than an iphone, and has its own advantages (+disadvantages) over iphone hardware The people that dont care about these feature buy any random android and get this stuff later as the carriers catchup

stephenr 14y ago
"when" they catch up? I think you surely mean "in the unlikely event that they ever catch up or even provide/allow any update at all" If android is so "open" why do you have to pick a single device from a single manufacturer (even apple offers more options than the nexus lineup) if you want android that's really android and not raped by the handset manufacturer or the network operator?
- daleharvey 14y ago
  When they catch up usually means when they upgrade their phone You can pick whatever phone you want, and install whatever android you can get working on it if you want, if you want ota upgrades in a timely manner you need to pick a manufacturer / carrier that does that, which is only google devices at the moment, thats specifically because it is so open.
  - stephenr 14y ago
    The only thing more open than android is the consumers anal cavity, thanks to the way handset makers and network operators treat their customers. Seriously, "install whatever android you can get working on it"?? I have a diploma in network engineering, I write web apps and I manage Linux servers. I don't want to play "guess the right Frankenstein mix" with a phone. I want to use it I really do think the "android tinkerers" who go on about "customising" sit there all day and endlessly fuck about with a phone, that they never actually use because they're too busy "customising" it. Apparently "customising" may also mean "embracing the openness of android and fuckin around to implement/fix features that shouldn't need fixing"

sidwyn 14y ago

It's not how much you offer, but how well you pull it off.

mtgx 14y ago

This article seems relevant to the discussion, too: http://blog.bestvendor.com/2012/06/did-apple-steal-these-ios-6-features/ http://blog.bestvendor.com/2012/06/did-apple-steal-these-ios... I've noticed that over the past couple of years, Apple has kept "stealing" the functionality of very popular apps from the App Store (starting with iBooks, and then others).

stephenr 14y ago
Dropbox? They stole from Dropbox? Becuse iDisk never existed I guess? "do not disturb" on a phone is only there becaus of some shitty desktop app that changes your Skype status to do not disturb? Importing Facebook contacts never would have occurred to anyone at apple if not for some gmail plugin? This article is worse than the one this discussion page is for.
ceejayoz 14y ago
Oh no, Apple's implementing popular features?

jsz0 14y ago

You can now have a different signature for each email account on your iOS device, WOW I don't think this is possible with the stock ICS IMAP/POP mail app. It doesn't even have mali threading?

moron 14y ago

Ah yes, good old feature checklists. Those have been working so well for us these last couple of decades.

TrevorJ 14y ago

Facebook and Twitter are not features.

jack-r-abbit 14y ago

I find it kind of humorous that we used to hear a lot of "but the App Store has way more apps than the Market" as a "feature" that made iOS more desirable. Hell, Apple even used the "There's an app for that" campaign for quite a while. And now we have people saying, "Well, so what if there was an app for that in ICS. Third party apps don't count". Oh how times change.

shadesandcolour 14y ago
I'd be happy to allow Android users to call a 3rd party app a "feature of the operating system" like the author did, as long as he's will to include iOS 3rd party apps as features of iOS. We might as well compare oranges to oranges.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  He doesn't actually call the 3rd party apps features of the OS. He states the features that are available to both OSes and notes those that are via 3rd party apps. Some prefer everything to be built into the OS while others prefer an OS that simply allows others to create/enhance the functionality. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

Tloewald 14y ago

My Motorola RAZR could, in theory, do everything that the iPhone could do. Apps, email, web browser, three way calling, blah blah blah. I couldn't remember how to use any of it, and when I managed, it all sucked dog's balls. When android boosters realize that compatibility, simplicity, ease of use, and even standardization are actually FEATURES they might get somewhere. Meanwhile they've got phones from hardware vendors who expect no loyalty from their customers and don't show any loyalty to thei customers, because their customer will buy whatever gadget has the most blinking lights next time around. It's a self selecting group.

robmcm 14y ago

>Travel and reward card management >iOS6: Passbook >ICS: 3rd party apps This is missing the point, iOS has been doing this with third party apps for a while, passbook is like news stand or game centre and aims to consolidate lots of confusing implementation into one.

jolohaga 14y ago

The use of the words ICS and iOS is about equal among the comments. In a year, iOS will still be a current term. ICS will not.

rimantas 14y ago

With less satisfaction for the user, if you are to believe Apple's keynote of yesterday.

ajross 14y ago

This thread encapsulates everything wrong with the tech industry in one handy page. A flame bait OP, a bunch of fanboien leaping in to defend their favorite platform. Lots of rehashing of the Same Tired Old Arguments yet again, followed by the Standard Polemic Reply to those arguments, and the inevitable Ridiculous Digression Justifying Original Opinion. I swear, I got started out the top and realized I was about to downvote the whole thing before giving up. Look folks: Smartphones (I guess I should say "iPhone-style smartphones", as the term existed long before that, but was used for devices that aren't meaningfully comparable) are now 5 years old, and are becoming a mature technology. We're at the stage now where desktop GUIs were in, say, 1991. The competing platforms have reached feature parity, and there aren't many great advances left to distinguish them in the near future (until the next big disruptive change, anyway). So while the OP is flamebait, I think the point is mostly valid. iOS 6 looks pretty tame compared to its recent ancestors.