
Apple's iOS 5 coming this Fall - shadow
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/apples-ios-5-all-the-details/
======
ljlolel
EDIT: who would downvote this? (I'm saying that iOS 5 is nice, but it's mostly
just adding features that directly copy its competitor Android, and not even
all of them. Android had been copying in 2009-2010, but now it's Apple. A lot
of people, even devs, don't realize that Droid has had all these features for
months. I hadn't.)

I have an iPhone 4, I've had iPhones for 4 years. I love the iPhone.

I tried a Nexus S with the newest Android recently. Using it, I learned that
Android is, frankly, today, ahead of iOS on the phone side.

Android's notification system is better. It's so much better, that Apple
directly copied it. Android's hardware back button works, it works well, and
it frees up more screen real estate for useful content. Android's home button
is more consistent. Its apps are more powerful, google talk video works great.
Its wireless seamless binary-only updates are revolutionary.

Apple has fallen behind, and will only catch up with iOS 5 in the Fall. Of
course, I fully expect Google to innovate further and be even farther ahead in
2012.

The coolest thing by far, and this is something that Apple won't have in the
foreseeable near future, is voice recognition. Google's voice commands work
suspiciously well. I find it far easier to press a button and say "text John
Appleseed: Hey, let's go to the movies tomorrow at 3" than to navigate menus
and type it in. Google's tech recognizes words and phrases I wouldn't expect
it to.

Apple still has more apps, but that won't last for too much longer.

I have an iPad 2, and I love it, but my next phone will be a Droid.

~~~
rimantas
The subtle (and not so subtle to others) difference is that iOS will have
these features polished. Android just has them.

~~~
joebadmo
I generally prefer to have unpolished features available to me to use or not
use. If they are polished enough to be useable for me, then I use them. If
not, then I don't. I like being able to decide. Which is why I generally
prefer android to iOS, I guess. Many others obviously prefer otherwise.

------
steveb
Apple is trying to build a massive moat around their iOS/OSX ecosystem. If
they can execute, it will be difficult for competitors to convert iOS users to
other platforms.

    
    
      -Applications synced across multiple devices
      -music, photos, calendars, apps in iCloud (including your ripped content)
      -Integration with iTouch/iPad/iPhone docks and accessories
      -iMessage/Facetime lock in for user accounts
      -Gamecenter achievements
      -OSX integration and "feel" 
      -Reduce the need for a PC with wireless updates and sync (probably 75% of iOS users are on Windows)
    

The average user will have to face the prospect of changing out a lot of their
software as they become more integrated into Apple's ecosystem.

~~~
YooLi
I see it more as adding value I want instead of a moat/lock in. If integration
in Apple's ecosystem gets me _Applications synced across multiple devices_ ,
_music, photos, calendars, apps in iCloud (including your ripped content)_ ,
etc., count me in.

------
51Cards
I am going to make this comment and it might be unpopular but it is definitely
not meant to be a slag against iOS. I am noticing that a lot of the new iOS
features are "missing features" from other mobile OSs... and since I'm really
only familiar with iOS and Android so I can only compare those but a short
list:

\- centralized notification tray \- OTA activation \- OTA synching \- OTA
updates \- optimized updates \- reminders that sync with your calendar \-
hardware camera buttons \- data sych to the cloud (though iCloud is much more
complete than Google account sync) \- iMessage is being compared to BBM

This is a great for iOS and quite overdue. But at the risk of offending the
Apple fans, am I the only one who feels that this update to iOS contains a lot
of things that are just to maintain feature parity with other systems vs.
outright innovation? Just seemed that much of the features list for iOS this
year had a different feel from years past. Maybe it's just me.

~~~
bryanh
You are right, but this is exactly how Apple works. Start with very few
features and polish to a pristine sheen. Then add new features and proclaim
the world is changing.

It certainly has been working for them, and generally, isn't that the type of
product development advice anyone in HN would give you? Start simple, polish
and iterate.

~~~
ljlolel
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
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
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
> [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
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_
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.

------
ben1040
I wonder what the fallout from folks like Instapaper and Tap Tap Tap will be.

It seems kind of shady for Apple to say Tap Tap Tap's Camera+ couldn't have
volume button as a shutter (because it was a UX rule violation), then six
months later implement that feature right into iOS.

~~~
msbarnett
So what's the solution here? To me the outcry over this seems pretty
contradictory given the general antipathy around here towards software
patents.

Either ideas are something that an individual can own and control and others
are forbidden to use without permission, or everybody is free to implement
them and innovate around them.

Is Marco going to have to do some work now to differentiate himself from
Reading List? Totally. But is that a bad thing? He was no more entitled to a
competition-free perpetual business model than the Record Labels or Movie
Studios or Banking Industry or any other perennial target around here.

Marco is a smart and skilled guy and there's no way this is going to kill him
off unless he willingly lets it.

~~~
nathanb
I agree completely; you can't have it both ways.

However, the point in the OP about Camera+ seems a bit more legit. Rejecting
an app for doing X and then doing X yourself in the next release seems like a
huge double-standard, and where there are double standards there is foothold
for allegations of anti-competitive behavior.

That said, however, the difference between me (sitting in a cubicle typing
this) and the creative forces behind Instapaper and Camera+ is (hopefully)
that where I see small developers being turned into digital sharecroppers by a
dictatorial corporation, they see an opportunity to differentiate themselves
from the stock offering by excelling in the very specific area they're
focusing on.

~~~
alanfalcon
Actually, the Camera+ developers filed a feature request and _asked_ Apple to
add the volume-button-as-shutter feature. See:
<http://taptaptap.com/blog/cameraplus-volumesnap-rejected/>

So I imagine they're pretty happy with this development.

------
dendory
You don't need to watch the keynote, their video is pretty well done to show
all the new iOS 5 features:

<http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/gallery.html#video-ios>

~~~
hexley
They said there is 200 new features. That certainly isn't all of them.

------
blhack
Are we going to finally have the ability to upload photos out of safari?

How apple gets away with this is beyond me. There is no technical reason that
I can imagine why allowing photo uploads from mobile safari should be
disabled.

------
TheloniusPhunk
This is all pretty exciting, but I want more exterior button shortcuts. Also,
why can't I search text fields on my meager 3Gs?

------
rebelidealist
I would say less than 3% of local business owners can understand the items
that he is saying.

If your customers don't get it, getting them to signup is very costly.

------
kenjackson
iOS5 was surprisingly underwhelming, given how long its been since they
shipped iOS4. This certainly won't stop the train known as Android. I really
don't see this changing the iOS sales trajectory upward at all.

~~~
rimantas
Do you imply that current trajectory is downward? And Apple does not sell iOS,
it sells iPhone, iPod touch and iPads with that OS. I am sure iPad sales are
not going to go down any time soon.

~~~
kenjackson
No, I don't mean to imply that. I was trying to say that they have a current
relative trajectory (flat on iPhone/iPod, solidly up, but slower than
anticipated after Q1 launch on iPad) -- and this trajectory doesn't seem to
change any more upward after this. In particular relative to Android.

To put it another way, if they didn't do this release at all and just
continued to sell iPhones with iOS 4.x on it for the next 12 months, I don't
think we'd see a difference in their sales numbers.

I think this is a testament to the current quality of their devices and OS.
But it does feel like we've entered Mac circa 1991. It's getting long in the
tooth and the improvements are really small, while a competitor with a late
start is showing signs of accelerating.

~~~
rimantas
I am not so sure about flat sale of iPhone and iPod but have no data on that,
so won't argue. Comparison of Android vs. iOS devices bothers me a bit every
time, because it is just one manufacturer with handful of products vs. dozens
manufacturers with gazillion devices.

~~~
kenjackson
Here's one datapoint:

[http://gigaom.com/apple/iphone-flat-in-u-s-as-android-
takes-...](http://gigaom.com/apple/iphone-flat-in-u-s-as-android-takes-market-
share-lead/)

Apple has great margins, so they'll do fine, even if they stay at 25%
marketshare forever. But it seems to be clearer that Android is going to run
away with this.

The only real question is, who takes the #3 spot. RIM, MS, or HP? I think
there will be 3 players in this space. Two are locked in. The last has yet to
be decided.

