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Perhaps it's just me but I wonder if the gap between app availability on the two platforms is a bit of a red herring at this point. I've been saying this for a

Perhaps it's just me but I wonder if the gap between app availability on the two platforms is a bit of a red herring at this point. I've been saying this for a long time now. There's a rapidly diminishing return on app market size and the app experience gap between Android and iOS now for the average user is small. This is less true for tablets, of course, but that won't take long to change if any Android tablet starts making real headway in the market. And, as formidable as Apple is as an implementor I don't think they're going to be able to keep pace with the much more dynamic Android market as a whole. My 4S already feels like a relic compared to my S3.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
I still think app availability for iOS smartphones is better and significant (in terms of there being things that I'd hate to lose from my iPhone that I don't see on Android) but tablets I don't see what's selling one platform over the other from an app perspective. Yes I think Garageband is amazing but I don't really use it other than to show people and go "isn't this amazing"... I remember reading a piece DHH wrote about the default smartphone apps being where it was at was and thinking he was wrong, but I think from a tablet perspective that's where things are. Curious to know what you like about the S3. I've got a 4S and have played with the S3 and aside from the size (which is a matter of personal preference) I can't say I saw anything on there I was especially impressed by. It's a nice phone (and from a design perspective I prefer it to the S2), just nothing that would make me think about trading up.
- cageface 14y ago
  The top two things about the S3 are the much bigger screen and Swiftkey. Those two things alone would be enough to tip the scales for me but there are a bunch of other small things I appreciate. 1. The pull down menu to toggle wifi/gps/etc is much more ergonomic than fishing around in the settings menu on iOS. 2. Widgets can actually be a lot more useful than the typical clock/weather header. I have quick toggle widgets for alarms, a player widget for music etc. 3. Intents. I can share a picture directly to a dozen different apps, not only the ones with support manually coded into the parent app. I can choose my own default browser, mail client, photo editor, twitter client etc. 4. The photo gallery and integrated G+ uploading is so much better than iOS's photo app it's not even funny. 5. I can block incoming calls and SMS from people I don't want to hear from. 6. I can carry a spare battery if I'm going to be away from a charger for a long time. 7. I have a real choice of browsers and currently Mozilla Firefox Beta is better than Safari or Chrome (IMO). 8. I can buy books directly from the Kindle app instead of playing hopscotch around Apple's stupid rules. 10. Gmail is much better integrated and more functional than any mail client on iOS. 11. Background updating. I don't really think about app updates anymore. They just happen in the background. I can turn this off on a per-app basis if I really care. 12. The play store is a lot more pleasant to navigate and shows a lot more useful information than the iOS app store. In the last six months a lot of holes have been filled. Pinterest, Path, Flipboard, Instagram etc. I don't really miss any apps from the iPhone.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Without doing a point by point, intents is certainly the one that most people look at Android and wish iOS had and background updates would be nice. Most of the rest aren't a big deal for me personally but I can see why someone with different usage patterns and preferences would like the things you list.
Derbasti 14y ago
I completely agree with you as far as functionality is concerned. Both platforms have an abundance of apps for almost every possible application (hah, I used 'app' and 'application' with different meanings in one sentence!)/ That said, I feel like design-wise Android apps are seriously hampered by the multitude of available screen sizes. I have seen too many apps that seem to optimize for small screens and look ridiculously under-polished on big screens. K9 Mail or most Twitter apps for example rely on tiny text in undecorated rectangles. This is clearly appropriate if you want to cram as much information as possible on a tiny screen but looks out of place on a Samsung S3. A gradient and some text color/size differentiation would go a long way there, but look distracting on a small screen. Thus, I have trouble finding beautiful Twitter, RSS or Email apps for big Android phones. Of course, on iOS, there is not much choice for Email at all... (If you disagree, by all means tell me about those beautiful apps! I am still searching!)
- cageface 14y ago
  Well, obviously this is a matter of taste and certainly there are plenty of ugly apps on the store. But one of the things I really like about well-designed ICS+ apps is that they really feel like an integrated part of a task-centric UI and not some over-fetishized designer's extravagance. I think Apple's embrace of skeuomorphism has encouraged a flood of hyper-stylized but not particularly ergonomic apps that each exist in their own little unique aesthetic universe. For example, I'd much rather look at Tweet Lanes, even though it's pretty much a stock ICS app, than any iOS Twitter client loaded down with drop shadows and gradients and organic textures: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tweetlanes.android&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tweetlanes... If anything I'd like to see a move in the direction of Windows Phone, with an information-centric focus on clean typography and presentation of data.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

I still think app availability for iOS smartphones is better and significant (in terms of there being things that I'd hate to lose from my iPhone that I don't see on Android) but tablets I don't see what's selling one platform over the other from an app perspective. Yes I think Garageband is amazing but I don't really use it other than to show people and go "isn't this amazing"... I remember reading a piece DHH wrote about the default smartphone apps being where it was at was and thinking he was wrong, but I think from a tablet perspective that's where things are. Curious to know what you like about the S3. I've got a 4S and have played with the S3 and aside from the size (which is a matter of personal preference) I can't say I saw anything on there I was especially impressed by. It's a nice phone (and from a design perspective I prefer it to the S2), just nothing that would make me think about trading up.

cageface 14y ago
The top two things about the S3 are the much bigger screen and Swiftkey. Those two things alone would be enough to tip the scales for me but there are a bunch of other small things I appreciate. 1. The pull down menu to toggle wifi/gps/etc is much more ergonomic than fishing around in the settings menu on iOS. 2. Widgets can actually be a lot more useful than the typical clock/weather header. I have quick toggle widgets for alarms, a player widget for music etc. 3. Intents. I can share a picture directly to a dozen different apps, not only the ones with support manually coded into the parent app. I can choose my own default browser, mail client, photo editor, twitter client etc. 4. The photo gallery and integrated G+ uploading is so much better than iOS's photo app it's not even funny. 5. I can block incoming calls and SMS from people I don't want to hear from. 6. I can carry a spare battery if I'm going to be away from a charger for a long time. 7. I have a real choice of browsers and currently Mozilla Firefox Beta is better than Safari or Chrome (IMO). 8. I can buy books directly from the Kindle app instead of playing hopscotch around Apple's stupid rules. 10. Gmail is much better integrated and more functional than any mail client on iOS. 11. Background updating. I don't really think about app updates anymore. They just happen in the background. I can turn this off on a per-app basis if I really care. 12. The play store is a lot more pleasant to navigate and shows a lot more useful information than the iOS app store. In the last six months a lot of holes have been filled. Pinterest, Path, Flipboard, Instagram etc. I don't really miss any apps from the iPhone.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Without doing a point by point, intents is certainly the one that most people look at Android and wish iOS had and background updates would be nice. Most of the rest aren't a big deal for me personally but I can see why someone with different usage patterns and preferences would like the things you list.

Derbasti 14y ago

I completely agree with you as far as functionality is concerned. Both platforms have an abundance of apps for almost every possible application (hah, I used 'app' and 'application' with different meanings in one sentence!)/ That said, I feel like design-wise Android apps are seriously hampered by the multitude of available screen sizes. I have seen too many apps that seem to optimize for small screens and look ridiculously under-polished on big screens. K9 Mail or most Twitter apps for example rely on tiny text in undecorated rectangles. This is clearly appropriate if you want to cram as much information as possible on a tiny screen but looks out of place on a Samsung S3. A gradient and some text color/size differentiation would go a long way there, but look distracting on a small screen. Thus, I have trouble finding beautiful Twitter, RSS or Email apps for big Android phones. Of course, on iOS, there is not much choice for Email at all... (If you disagree, by all means tell me about those beautiful apps! I am still searching!)

cageface 14y ago
Well, obviously this is a matter of taste and certainly there are plenty of ugly apps on the store. But one of the things I really like about well-designed ICS+ apps is that they really feel like an integrated part of a task-centric UI and not some over-fetishized designer's extravagance. I think Apple's embrace of skeuomorphism has encouraged a flood of hyper-stylized but not particularly ergonomic apps that each exist in their own little unique aesthetic universe. For example, I'd much rather look at Tweet Lanes, even though it's pretty much a stock ICS app, than any iOS Twitter client loaded down with drop shadows and gradients and organic textures: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tweetlanes.android&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tweetlanes... If anything I'd like to see a move in the direction of Windows Phone, with an information-centric focus on clean typography and presentation of data.