Call/SMS integration is great. It's worth noting that Google had absolutely everything they needed to do this years ago, and just... didn't. Hangouts is still inferior to iMessage today. It's a real shame.
Edit: this extensibility stuff might be enough to tempt me back to Apple from Android, at last. Third party keyboards, too (I've gotten quite attached to the Android swiping stuff). Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure what keeps me on Android. I confidently predict that iOS Active Notification usage will be far higher than on Android, even though Android has had it for years.
Google's ability to "release and stagnate" is one of the hallmarks of the company's rather prolific product output. I honestly don't know how products are run at Google, but from the outside it seems that most of them are built and then just kicked off the back of a truck into a waiting crowd. If you hear any news later about a product it seems like it's news about a shutdown.
It sounds like the real "nerdy" way to do things. Start with an exiting product, everybody is psyched cause it is new and everyone is giving 100%. First version is out and now, somehow the hype and enthusiasm is gone cause it is no long the "new thing". Refining it seems rather tedious and boring compared to just starting with a new and exciting product.
God knows I suffer from that. The beginning of something new is always awesome but as time progresses and the "new" feeling vanishes I find it harder and harder to keep working on it.
Yeah, it's really weird to see this pattern repeat again and again. Google has a few flagship products that get proper attention, but everything else...I just don't understand how it even gets developed in the first place, if they don't have a small team to continue working on it post-release.
> I just don't understand how it even gets developed in the first place, if they don't have a small team to continue working on it post-release.
From talking to PMs at Google, they have exactly this problem. Engineers are free to pick and choose what they work on.As soon as a product is released, hits "1.0", and the engineers have claimed whatever kudos they can, they move on to the "next big thing", leaving the PM alone with the product. That leads to situations where PMs can't even get basics like localizations to specifics countries / languages.
This sounds like a microcosm of the market. Engineers/investors want the largest possible returns on their capital, so they chase projects with the largest potential. This makes for big splashes and little follow through, even on things that the customer population has as core needs for the overall company. Welcome to capitalism.
They don't want to waste engineering talent on a product that doesn't even register on their bottom line, and shows no promise of explosive growth. But on the other hand, they want to build the next big thing in-house, rather than having to acquire it for billions or letting it grow into a competitor.
It's really tough predicting what the next big thing is, so they throw spaghetti at the wall.
the "next big thing" is an ecosystem that works well together. by neglecting all these individual systems, and not having them work together well, they're ensuring they're not the 'next big thing' and never will have it.
> Yeah, it's really weird to see this pattern repeat again and again.
If you think through the logic on 20% time and deliberately developing as many different crazy projects as possible in the hope that a few of them pan out and hit the big time, this is the inevitable outcome.
"It's worth noting that Google had absolutely everything they needed to do this years ago, and just... didn't."
This is so true and so sad. Google Voice, why are you so almost great and so neglected?
I have to say though that my disappointment in Google Voice is quickly being matched by my disappointment in Google Maps which actually was great but continually gets less so with each release.
I would have agreed with you except I'm actually liking the very latest bump. Telling me which lanes to get into to make an exit? Brilliant. I think it's also taking traffic into account now.
Telling you which lane to get in is like a 12 year old feature of car navigation systems isn't it? I certainly remember the car navigation systems in rental cars from 12 years ago having that feature.
Same with taking traffic into account, especially in Japanese systems which have done that since like 2004.
If Google finally got around to adding those features that's great but hardly worthy of "brilliant" praise for something that's been around for years.
> If Google finally got around to adding those features that's great but hardly worthy of "brilliant" praise for something that's been around for years.
In my town Google Maps has traffic “data” for every side street and it’s usually wrong or irrelevant. A red light at an intersection will show up as a traffic jam and then I’ll get weird routes trying to go around it.
Traffic for freeways, on the other hand, is amazing.
This likely has to do with the quality of traffic data provided by the municipality. But Apple Maps doesn’t have the same problem. Their side-street traffic data is reliable around here – very surprising.
Google Maps definitely made traffic-based time estimates for routes and (AFAICT) also made route choices based on traffic before the Waze acquisition, though its traffic data has gotten better since the Waze acquisition (particularly, it extends to more non-freeway routes) and it has more information on the source of traffic problems (which appears to be largely directly because of Waze, since it credits information to its source and "reported by Waze" seems to be by far the most common source of most kinds of reports).
This is true, Google Maps definitely has done traffic avoidance for years, even before the Waze acquisition. I think prior to Waze it was a completely self-contained reporting system though (other people using Google Nav on Android were automatically/anonymously feeding their speed/route back to the homebase and that was used to detect traffic anomalies). Presumably they now have more data to work from.
I've been an embedded user of google voice since it was grand central and tried to move over to android, but that OS seems to be a bigger mess than Windows Mobile phone. It's a bit ironic that the people who love it don't really do anything on their phone, they don't use the "openness" android supposedly gives. With Jailbreak, IOS is pretty amazing.
UX on the turn by turn directions is peerless. But the original promise (a search box for the real world) keeps coming up short. Indeed, the results seem to be getting more unfocused and incomplete as time goes by.
Yea, what's going on with Maps? It used to almost always get me to the right place when I searched, now, half the time it tries to send me to Bangalore or across the country until I add a city parameter.
It does seem to have got a bit silly - I searched recently for directions from Edinburgh to Falkland (a village less than an hour away, but a fairly popular tourist destination) and it thought I wanted to go from Edinburgh to the Falkland Islands....
I'm pretty sure Maps didn't used to do dumb things like that.
At this point both devices do the core functionality just as well as each other (email, browsing and maps). Android still has better "Google" integration which is important for me.
Also I have gotten use to paying $350 for a Nexus device + $18/mo for my plan. I have no intention of ever buying another $800+ device or spending upwards of $100/mo for something which is about the same experience as I have now.
I'm from Australia. There are a couple of low cost alternatives here for the moment. The plan I am on gives me 1.5gb/mo and pretty much unlimited talk/text for my use.
When I was in Canada/US I couldn't really find any low cost options without a contract.
I use 'Straight talk' (with AT&T based sim) in the US. It is not a lot, but still is cheaper than just being with AT&T and also gives me much more high speed data per month. Problems? The high speed internet might not be as reliable as AT&Ts (I feel I get 2G at more places when compared to AT&T), but mostly it is good.
US is really costly when it comes to phone bills. One of the most advanced countries in the world, and can't give cheap internet.
I have been very happy with Republic Wireless, but I am considering Ting because I am an Apple Fanboy. Black wireless looks very good. I am not sure I how I missed them before now.
You are probably Generation X. They were less susceptible to advertising.
People that pay more for a similar product are not just buying the product, they are also buying style and the ability to set themselves apart from their peers.
I used to be able to do this with my first color screen'd Sony/Erickson phone and OS X like, 10 years ago via Bluetooth. It was great to work with my Addressbook on the Mac, pick a contact and SMS/Call them. I could also use the phone as a remote control for iTunes, as well.
Same here! SMS'ing from the 10.4 Dashboard was fantastic. I even had a second Nokia with a GPRS flatrate in my backpack and could use it as an occasional hotspot throughout the week, then charge it on the weekends.
Turning on the iOS hotspot from OS X 10.10 even works exactly like tethering via Bluetooth used to work, from the menu bar.
If I also remember correctly, I was able to use this same phone (first phone I had with a camera, I believe - T610?) to snap a shot, and then email it to an address that piped that to a Perl script. That Perl script, then posted the photo to a very simple blog-like app I had written (also in Perl). I handed the site in as an art project I did, after a week road trip.
And then, Instagram happened. Seemed novel at the time - something I made 3 hours before hittin' the road.
You are right. Google has completely fractured message on Android. You have to install 10 different messengers to be able to talk to different factions of people. Also since they want to push Google Hangouts' online feature their messaging app is quite confusing.
I stick to Anroid for innovations like LastPass's 'fill into applications', link browser, Pocket, etc. They are so tightly integrated with Android that it is very pleasurable to use.
Because third party iOS developers are still second class citizens compared to Apple in-house developers.
Google doesn't make third party developers second class citizens: it makes apps using the same tools and apis as available to everyone, and distributes them the same way that everyone else distributes their apps.
This is a step forward for Apple, but for example: Safari will remain the only browser available on iOS, and Apple's version of Safari will remain versions ahead of UIWebView meaning that any non-Safari browser will remain inferior by intentional design. True competition is prevented by design, and it takes 5 years to open up something as basic as the keyboard. How many more years until browser is opened up? 5 more?
It's an interesting move as far as platforms go, but I know that it's no where near what I want from a platform. It's still locked down, under featured and heavily controlled. For a non-tech user or someone who wants a dead simple phone, it seems great. But for those of us who love our devices, love customizing them in and out, and love trying to create the best experiences, Apple still is not a choice: we can't compete with Apple apps, we can't use their in-house APIs, and they still offer us inferior versions of the software/APIs that they use inhouse.
> Google doesn't make third party developers second class citizens: it makes apps using the same tools and apis as available to everyone, and distributes them the same way that everyone else distributes their apps.
This is exactly my problem with Google. They seem to prioritise developers over users. Apple does the opposite. As a developer I prefer this — I've been rejected many times, and many times it was because I failed to do something for my users.
I don't trust most developers to do right by their users. I don't trust them to respect user privacy, store data securely, ensure decent battery life, not be lazy, and so on. Developers don't have the right to develop for and sell on whatever store they want; they should follow the rules if they want their software on someone else's store.
The Safari UIWebView thing relates to memory protection. And really, there's not that much of a difference (I use JavaScriptCore pretty heavily at times).
Which Apple APIs, specifically, are you complaining about? As far as I see, the vast majority of what we use, Apple uses. Their APIs are often elegant and very well thought out. Also powerful.
What's so awesome about Android is that Google can't reject you, since you can just install any APKs you want. If you can't appreciate that (among all the other freedom features, like root, ADB, customization, etc), you don't really get Android's philosophy.
That's true — I'd acknowledge that as a nice aspect of Android from a developer or enthusiast user point of view.
I believe that iOS would be less successful if it had similar capability, though. (I'm also the kind of person that doesn't really mind spending $100/year on a Dev account to install what I want.)
The point is that for the vast majority, and for developers looking to make a living, the play store can reject you. So for my purposes Google is pretty much in full control here.
You really think Apple is threatened by the competition posed by an alternative keyboard or browser ? Pretty sure they care far more about maintaining their "99% of malware" exists on Android record.
The official reason is security but given that webgl has been running on Android and desktop browsers without incident and that its present in Safari Mobile and merely disabled, its more likely that Apple doesn't want to have webgl based apps taking from app store sales. A true alternative browser would open the doors to breaking the app store monopoly on games.
Yeah I got the news an hour ago. That's amazing, very happy about it! Been working on a webgl pet project and concerned about adoption with the iDevice market out of reach.
iOS has definitely been a sore point for selling WebGL solution until now because the only option was doing it as an app, so that was limiting 3D
It might still need some tweaks here and there but I'm already amazed this demo for a customer of mine from January works as-is (except I need to tweak the background shader, it was a quick test anyway), in the browser without plugin or app on an old iPad 2: https://twitter.com/wildpeaks/status/473672792689639424
Please look past the hype, malware on phones is a near non-issue.
Need I remind you that it was iOS devices being hijacked by hackers, not Android devices?
Claims like "99% of malware exist on Android" didn't prevent Apple users across the west from having their devices hijacked for ransom.
And no, Apple isn't threatened by the "competition".
I'm just saying: from the perspective of a tech-forward developer who spends a lot of time on their mobile computing device, the locked down reality of iOS, while marginally improving, is still leagues away from a platform that gives developers a deep and powerful ability to create wonderful mobile experiences that transcend the concept of "sandboxed app".
Sure iOS apps have some great modern flat-ui navigation, but how many iOS developers are trying to re-imagine what mobile means, how we use phones? How many iOS developers are capable of adjusting how we use the phone, the screens and service we see the most?
On Android: most developers can. I have a list of a dozen apps that improve on Google's core functions, and I'm sure hundreds more amazing apps exist. On iOS: None can and none are, outside of the small jailbreak scene. Everyone uses stock everything because that's all that's allowed. #innovation
> Claims like "99% of malware exist on Android" didn't prevent Apple users across the west from having their devices hijacked for ransom.
The feature used for this - remote locking of a stolen/lost phone - is present on both Android and iOS, as are weak passwords. That you're acting like that's an issue with the hardware/software involved is a good indication that you're trolling or fanboying.
"That you're acting like that's an issue with the hardware/software involved is a good indication that you're trolling or fanboying."
I'm pointing out that just because Tim Cook makes a random hypey statement, it doesn't MEAN anything. I rightfully showed that iOS, without malware, is suffering from hijacks that aren't occurring in Android. Personally, if remote locking is capable of a hijack, I'd call that malware, but that's just semantics.
If the attack can be done in both platforms I'm not clear on your point. By your logic Gmail, HN, and essentially every other site are infested with "malware" because some people get hacked with vulnerable passwords.
> Personally, if remote locking is capable of a hijack, I'd call that malware, but that's just semantics.
This seems a curious view for a self-professed "tech-forward developer". Your logic can extend to a lot of things. My credit card... Is that malware in my bank if someone guesses my PIN?
I am used to being censored for being critical of Apple. Not just here, anywhere where an Apple fan is a moderator, I find that censorship is much more common than discussion.
I'm no expert (as I wrote), but afaik the app install process (iTunes style) is sidetracked by running a program to install an App on your trusted computer.
Then you run the app.
I only use iTunes when I update the music on the iPhone, not programs. I assume most people do the same these days. (iOS 5?)
(But certainly, there is a possibility here -- maybe iTunes might tell the iDevice to update an application without informing the user? I can't say, Objective C was too much like Java for me. :-) I don't keep music on the iPad, so that is no problem.)
I'm unclear how jailbreaking impacts your device security in a meaningful fashion. All it does is give you the possibility to install something that could cause you trouble, but absolutely nothing on its own.
Most of the jailbreak apps are open source anyways. (MobileSubstrate and the majority of things that use them, for instance)
Pointing at any kind of positive to the locked-down-ness that Apple strives for, regardless of its truth, personally makes me feel very wrong as someone who values openness.
Edit: I love how asking a question is grounds for being downvoted into the negatives now.
>> Apple's version of Safari will remain versions ahead of UIWebView meaning that any non-Safari browser will remain inferior by intentional design.
My hope is that deep-linking can make this somewhat irrelevant. If you can deep link to Safari from where you'd otherwise use UIWebView, and design a system that allows you to return to the app you were in when you finish (an easy one, like letting the back button take you back to the previous app), then a lot of these issues are somewhat solved.
More accurately, Safari is (and presumably will remain) the only browser engine, but its possible for third party apps to reskin the engine and provide certain limited differences in non-core functionality and call it a different "browser".
I covered that in my post, please keep up: Chrome for iOS is powered by Safari on iOS, because Apple refuses to allow any other developer use the developers own code and libraries. Chrome is prevented from using Google's inhouse Blink rendering engine and the majority of the rest of the Chrome code and features we know and love on every other platform including Android.
Chrome is forced to use UIWebView, which is an OUTDATED and OLDER version of Safari than Safari.
If you use Chrome on iOS, you are getting an INFERIOR browser because Apple dictated that all other browsers must A) use Safari as their internal and B) must use outdated and old versions of Safari so they don't and can't compete with Safari fairly.
Which is MY WHOLE POINT, really, that Apple holds back innovation.
Do you have a source for UIWebView being an older version of safari than MobileSafari? I thought they were the same except for the Nitro (JIT) stuff, and even that seems to be changing for iOS8, especially with the Modern Webkit thing that's been showing up in webkit git commits.
Yes, Android intends are great, and that's why I was surprised when I read "this extensibility stuff might be enough to tempt me back to Apple from Android".
What I meant to ask was, what do you mean by "enough"? Does this mean that:
On 1, better than iOS was. Not sure if you mean better than Android, in which case, that remains to be seen. But the target should be "good enough".
On 2, third-party apps have long supported opening in a different app. Of course, it's up to that developer to include the x-callback-url and Apple apps won't use that preference.
It came across as being sarcastic hence the down votes.
And yes iOS8 does provide better extensibility than it did before and yes you would be able to open content in alternative browsers. Not sure about apps like Mail however.
I am fine with the downvotes. It's pretty easy on any Apple/Android/iOS/Google thread.
> And yes iOS8 does provide better extensibility than it did before
That wasn't my point. I asked specifically if iOS provides better extendibility than _Android_ (as the OP seemed to infer by stating his move back to iOS for that reason alone).
> not sure about apps like Mail however.
That's the point. Browser was just an example. Extendibility of a system does not mean in one or two places.
it doesn't have to better, it has to be good enough, which is the point the OP was trying to make. There are some things about Android that are better and there are some things about iOS that are better. Intents were a thing that has been better in the past on Android (by virtue of not existing on iOS), and a reason that some people have stuck with Android even though they might prefer iOS for a lot of things.
If the extensions stuff is "good enough" for the reasons people like intents, then that could easily be enough for people to switch from Android to iOS assuming they like iOS better overall.
But how does anyone one know if they are "good enough" already? Just because Apple published some of it? Or the claim came from actually developing appls that make use of it? I don't think somebody gained the experience within few hours of Apple's event.
You don't. That's why he said "might". Since it's not even out yet, I doubt anyone is buying a device based on the announcement today. We'll find out at some point after they release it and the reviews come in.
Health: it's stepping on the toes of many partners, but might be groundbreaking. It's extremely hard to crack healtcare, it's very closed, defensive system of people and bureaucracy, Apple might just have the power to do it.
Extensibility: intents are basically _the_ reason Android can work so much better in many cases than iOS. I hope MS will bring it to WP very soon.
Per Healthcare: that is a really exciting new feature and there is a LOT of potential here. But I wonder how successful it can actually be in the grand scheme of things. I.e. not everyone can have or wants an iPhone.
Edit, expanding a bit:
On the flip side, I am huge advocate for personal health records (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_health_record), but no one really knows about them and no really uses them because they don't work with your doctor. I don't think Apple has even remotely come close to solving the overall problem of integration and usefulness, but maybe it will get more people interested and thinking about the concept of a personal health record.
You're right, app contracts have been there since ages, just not really used as much as they are on Android.
Re. Health: it can fly in the US, and if it does, then they've got the momentum to port the stuff to other mobile OSes. Health itself is such a big industry that they might not want/need to use it just as a promoter for their devices.
Really? It's my understanding that those with the least amount of money have the greatest need for healthcare. How is Apple with its premium product going to help those that cannot afford their products?
A cheap Android device could be used to help monitor the health of an elderly relative, however do you really perceive people leaving the latest iPhone with their dementia stricken parent?
Are expectant mothers going to be happy with having wireless transmissions constantly next to their unborn child (regardless of safety records)?
Are nurses going to have sterilised iPads for for the ward, where fluids are abound?
Health monitors haven't taken off because people do not care enough to want constant monitoring.
> It's extremely hard to crack healtcare, it's very closed, defensive system of people and bureaucracy, Apple might just have the power to do it.
Care delivery is also an industry in which Apple has virtually zero market share - it's Microsoft through and through. Inpatient and outpatient EHRs all target Windows, hospital IT all runs Windows Server, and some of the more "forward-thinking" hospitals are even eyeing Windows tablets (I kid you not).
Potentially huge upside for them (which is obviously why they want to do it), but it's very difficult to penetrate, and they have almost no foothold there so far.
> Inpatient and outpatient EHRs all target Windows
I believe this is primarily because the development environment is really simple for this class of software. Platforms such as .NET, COM, MFC and VB have been around a long time and it's easy to find programmers. It also doesn't hurt that the desktops running Windows are incredibly inexpensive and easy to procure and run Microsoft Windows.
But targeting the end users of healthcare (e.g. patients)... that's something else entirely which only recently has started to have any traction.
It certainly helps that Microsoft actually has Software for enterprise. Apple killed the Server stuff years ago and there have never been strong provisions for managing client installations.
While Microsoft has a large footprint in healthcare IT (and so do mainframes), SaaS is huge and becoming even more important, and there the server OS doesn't matter much to the customer.
That said, what Apple announced was patient data collection support in the client OS. App developers take care of shipping it to physicians and hospitals. Apple isn't taking the patient's information the last mile to physicians themselves.
Disclosure: I'm a co-founder of a startup dedicated to improving mobile patient and physician communication (Care Thread, http://www.carethread.com). We already integrate with hospital and doctor's office workflows, and we've been looking forward to the introduction of this feature in order to collect relevant patient data.
Yeh, I loved the health demo they did showing the Mayo Clinic app. Problem is that unless my local doctor integrates with it I'm never going to get to use most of this stuff. I think it's particularly going to be a problem outside the US where there are public systems. We might start missing out on these kinds of innovations and it's the sort of thing that would tempt me to go private (not the entire system, just personally).
Well, the same issue presented itself with Passbook and airline tickets, for example. I regularly fly Southwest and Alaska, and Southwest still doesn't have Passbook integration. Passbook was fantastic when I was flying American and Delta, but it just isn't great enough to get me to switch airlines.
When (not if) this happens with HealthKit/Health, it'll be slightly disappointing to see these kinds of integrations from behind a glass window. At least some aspects of HealthKit are already being integrated with major fitness companies (namely, Nike), so not everyone will miss the boat entirely.
Good point. I have never used passbook. The airlines I fly offer their own shitty QR code through web browser solution which I have to screenshot in case I lose the page and can't load it again.
Hopefully HealthKit will integrate well enough with third party hardware that you can do a lot of the stuff yourself and then bring the data to your doctor when you need to.
This strategy is classic apple. Consumer-based marketshare land grab on non-traditional medical devices like Fitbits et al. If popular enough, actual medical devices will start to integrate and grow marketshare. The beauty is, consumers get immediate benefit and will continue to do so even if the rest of the platform (actual medical devices) doesn't take off.
Love that I will be able to hook my Withings scale up. Best tool to aid weight loss. But their app sucks. (They showed some other Withings products during the Keynote, so I assume they are in.)
I don't have an iPhone, but I just can't understand why the keyboard cannot be lowercase when you're writing in lowercase. I just don't understand the motivation.
The original reason for that was simply because they hadn't thought of that. The ongoing nominal reason was that it was a continuing nod to skeuomorphism. But given Jobs' passing, and the otherwise massive ditching of skeuomorphism since then, I do not begin to understand myself why that's the still the case. I'll hope that iOS 8 might introduce that mode as we get closer to shipping.
Long tap for numbers and punctuation, ala android, is always annoying missing when using the iPad keyboard. Its so simple, plus saves so much time and mental processing hunting through the extra keyboard states.
I don't understand why every single keyboard on mobile doesn't have the .COM button. It's basically become as ubiquitous as any punctuation mark given how often emails are typed.
IIRC, this is exactly what happens for html5 forms: the default keyboards on ios/android/wp do display the "@"/".com"/".net" buttons next to the space bar depending on the input type.
I'm glad it doesn't. WebOS does this, and I find it jarring to have the entire keyboard twitch every time I hit the shift key. I much prefer Apple's approach.
Still no user accounts on iPad. The only thing I want, and 8 versions in, it's still not there. Why I can't create a login for my kids on my iPad that hides my mail, calendar, certain games, etc? I don't understand why this isn't possible.
Like I'm going to get my 5 year old an iPad. Not happening.
I let him use mine, and when he logs in, I want him to see a few educational apps... and that's it.
When we're at functions, we see parents let their kids use their iPads all the time, and they are always checking in to see if they've opened their email, or certain games, etc.
Maybe just a "Kids" login. It has NOTHING but a few apps of choice show up. Doesn't have to be a full user-account system, just a pseudo login that hides almost everything.
Oh man, I wish more services had a kids login/kids button. Watching videos with my daughter really messes up my youtube recommendations.
YT: "What do you want to watch? Some blood-drinking metal band from eastern Europe? Some fine ladies playing beach volleyball? Richard Hammond racing ice-cream trucks on fire? Or Bob the Builder?"
I took a look at the 'Kid Mode' feature on my HTC One. After you add a kid it shows some age-appropriate apps (I guess you can add more) and changes the homescreen activity, modifies the lock screen and intercepts access to other apps, so you can't get out of it unless you do so through the app.
It seems to work well enough, but it could really do with more OS integration e.g. prevent access to the notification drawer and multitasking.
However, given the number of people I know who bought an additional iPad specifically for their kid, Apple probably doesn't need to encourage device sharing!
It sure seems like it. In addition, the way Apple is starting to build out parental controls per app, it seems like they don't intend on having multiple user accounts on each device in the near future.
Because iOS devices are single-user by design. Think of the amount of cruft you could cut from your average desktop OS if you didn't have to support multiple users.
(I assume that, being UNIX under the hood, there actually are multiple users on an iOS device, for security. But these would presumably be invisible to the user, and not usable as login accounts).
Have a button somewhere that lets you switch to a different user. When you switch, you enter that other user's PIN or password. Then you see their apps, have their data, etc. When you switch back, you see your apps, have your data, etc.
It doesn't have to be very complicated. Even on a Mac, the "cruft" amounts to my name sitting in the menu bar, and having to choose who to log in as before I put in my password.
It sounds simple but it's not. Take android for example, i thought i could quickly set up a guest/party account without my email and things like that. Creating the account and selecting the allowed apps was very easy, the problems came later.
First, all my system settings wasn't cloned, to the new account i had to re-add things you take for granted like my localized keyboards and stuff like that, can't remember if wifi passwords were included or not. Then comes application settings, many apps are unusable before you configure them properly, even the web browser is unusable in the default state on high dpi devices, you must change the default zoom level. Then it seems some apps actually share state, and in some cases rightfully so, finding out how they share it is a mystery. Some are designed with multi user in mind so you can in fact have a mail app accessible on both accounts without sharing your mails as the system accounts are linked to different mail accounts. Others are the other way around, maybe you want your 10GB music collection to be accessible from every account? Drawing the line of where and what should be shared is very difficult.
I find it odd that your first comment is a complaint that setting up a new user actually acts like a new user. Of course your settings didn't carry over. That's the whole point of separate user accounts.
I see no need to overcomplicate it. A user account system where each account acts like a separate device (aside from the unfortunate realities of sharing storage resources) would be fine. What apps share state? None! What music gets shared? None! What settings get shared? None!
On fixed hardware devices things are a bit easier, but consider a desktop PC with Windows. If i install a driver for my new printer, should user B also have to install that driver? Should every family member have to install a printer driver?! To make things even worse replace printer with something necessary to even run the system properly like graphics card driver. Another food for thought is windows update.
I consider the keyboard localization in android to be of similar system-wide-configuration kind and shouldn't have to be redone for every user, someone else might not. (As a side note changing to a localized keyboard in android is in fact much harder than installing a driver in windows).
When does something cross the line from "system wide driver/configuration" to "user specific data/configuration"? If absolutely everything should act like a separate device you might as well dual boot or use virtual machines.
One of my scenarios for shared data is that when I'm working i want to listen to my music, but when i have a party i want to use the same device as a jukebox with the same music but not open up access to my documents. I know that i'm not alone with this problem. Trusting your friends to not dig around is another topic but with pop up notifications and active widgets on the desktop even your most trusted friends might get private emails shoved in their face even if they are trying to avoid them.
OK, but we're not actually talking about desktop PCs, but iOS devices. There are no drivers to install. There are almost no device-wide settings at all. Exceptions would be OS updates and stuff like Find My iPhone. Easy solution there: allow one and only one "owner" account to touch them.
The idea that keyboard localization should be system-wide is weird. Different people can speak and write different languages. Although it should be a non-issue, since a single person can speak and write multiple languages, and switching keyboards should be trivial.
Anyway, you can come up with scenarios where my "make it act like a fresh device" idea is inadequate. But my idea is still an absolute improvement over what we have now, and would be perfectly good for a lot of uses. You're describing a bunch of stuff you want but that is by no means required, and then using the complexity of that stuff to say that the whole feature is a bad idea. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Yes. How is that circular? The OP is asking why he can't create separate logins on iOS devices. My answer: because Apple decided to make them single-user, presumably because of the simplicity and UX benefits to be had from that.
> Why can't I create multiple accounts? I want this feature.
> Because iOS is single-user.
It's not circular sorry, I meant to say your answer is stating the question.
I don't mean to offend or start a fight. I just read the conversation similar to "I have X why can't I have Y" "Because you have "X". The "by design" is moot when Apple are the designers. It's not some real world construct or difficult problem to solve, they don't have multi-user because they don't want IOS to have multiuser.
Especially in an era with Touch ID. My kid should unlock it and see their apps and not go about accidentally deleting mine. I should unlock and have access to mine, private email and so on.
Of course, with the new family features, they want you to have a device each rather than share. Wasteful but drives up their earnings.
I'm personally excited about the possibility of creating an "Emergency Card" (http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/health/) that's accessible from the lock screen.
Currently, I use a screen-shotted contact screen as my wallpaper for my ICE contact - just in case the worst were to happen. This will let me put more information, and might even let me have a wallpaper again!
On the one side, yes; on the other, I doubt people will look at your phone in case of emergency. That is, at the moment - I guess it's quite possible this feature will change that. But that's a generation thing. Still best to have one of those medical bracelets with your blood type and allergies and the like.
Did you really link to material on an ad company's website in order to provide evidence that advertisements are effective? Would you expect anything other than "ads are useful and effective" from an ad company?
More importantly when OP said the slogans were annoying/disgusting, it was a statement of OP's personal opinion. OP never said in general the public finds these slogans disgusting/annoying.
An ad hominem if I have ever seen one! To answer your question though, yes as it gives a simple, researched and concise explanation as to why these are useful and might make the commenter think that they aren't as "meaningless" as they seem.
Slogans and mottos and such have a long history (to the extent that a lot of them are written in Latin because the practice was common when Latin was a living language) and rarely say much concrete.
Disgust includes a "feeling of strong disapproval". I didn't physically throw up reading them, but I did read out a couple aloud in the office and scoffed. They're so smug and grandiose that it's very off-putting and I wish they'd just let the product speak for itself. (I use an iPhone, iPad and MBP.)
Totally on a tangent here, but I find myself disappointed, again.
I'm a long time hobbyist programmer, got my start back in the days of Apple IIe, got my first Mac in 1984...and I'm still not switching back to iPhone until I can write my own software and run it on my own phone without paying Apple for the privilege.
I'm waiting for two simple words: "Unknown sources". Guess I have to wait some more. Not sure how low Apple's market share will have to go before they start allowing it.
Can't say I love programming for Android, Java just doesn't feel right to me, but I'm sticking with it as long as I can write my own software, run it on my phone or tablet, share it with others, even sell it without Google's permission.
I think you missed that the App Store is an iPhone afterthought -- the original, still supported, intent was to support HTML5 apps installed to your home screen.
You can write your own software, run it on any iOS device, share it with others, even sell it without anyone's permission.
It's an awful way to program. You don't get a choice of languages. There's no debugger. There isn't even an easily accessible console log to print to. It's like trying to assemble a watch, in the dark, while wearing mittens. You can do it, but it's not terribly fun.
There's a reason that there was a massive developer outcry at the "sweet solution" of HTML5 apps, causing Apple to release a native SDK instead.
You can actually attach desktop Safari's Web Inspector to both Mobile Safari and webviews running on a remote iPhone and get debugging, console logging, etc. The native stuff still has much better tooling, but the situation with webviews isn't as dire as you imagine.
We changed the url for this story from http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-introduces-ios-8. If we pick the wrong url, happy to change it again, so let us know. The goal is to have one discussion about each significant announcement, and have the best url for each.
So so happy to see the SceneKit API make it to iOS. Even though 'minor' compared to some of the other announcements, it was the number one thing I was looking for in today's keynote, and it was nice to see it featured. Can't wait to start using it.
Impress by All the announcements for developer in the WWDC.
But taking the perspective of a enduser, there are key features i was hopping to get in iOS 8 that i didn't:
-Spotlight Integration For third Party Apps.
-Multi-User Support Or Guest Mode
-iMessage For Android
-App Trials
-Fixing The Music App ( Artis-Album View is broken)
Can you expand a bit on what you mean by "third-party default apps?" I'm not sure I know any users who are particularly vexed that Apple doesn't allow carriers to load up their devices with crapware.
Wow, real dynamic linking. Xcode even let me do so when targeting 7.1. Does anyone know if you will be able to submit apps to the AppStore that use dynamic frameworks while still deploying to < iOS 8?
HealthKit and HomeKit are both really exciting (probably going to look at smartlocks now in particular). However, I'm easily most excited about being able to leave a group text.
Swiftkey already learns quite well. For example, I often type "Hey what's going on?" and it has now learned that if I type "Hey" it should suggest "what's" and so on, so in 4 taps I have the whole sentence.
What it doesn't have, is the context-aware switching. That is something really neat about the new keyboard. Switching context from a meeting being "postponed" to "boring" is great.
And the keyboard on Windows Phone is also really great, especially in WP8.1. So Apple needed to improve the keyboard, they were already far behind the competition.
It does. It sometimes blocks the main interface from updating (doesn't seem perfectly optimized or parallelized yet). It's also on an iPhone 4S which is the oldest iPhone they support.
I think all those features mentioned like attachments and sharing location and leaving/adding people to a conversation is a strictly-iMessage featureset. iOS Messages app doesn't even work well with Android phones in group texts. They way they package up the text is totally different.
"Touch ID-
For the first time, you’ll have the option of using Touch ID to sign in to third-party apps — there’s no need to enter a password. Your fingerprint data is protected and is never accessed by iOS or other apps."
It depends. For secure applications? I doubt it; fingerprints is identification, not authorization. Bank apps and the like won't consider it secure enough.
Apple's iOS support for older products has been stellar, though I'm betting iOS 8 will be the last update the iPad mini, iPad 2, and iPhone 4S receive -- they will have had a good run of four years (except for mini) by the time iOS 9 is released.
It wasn't made clear in the keynote and the page doesn't mention it--I hope this includes sharing contacts with "Family Sharing". That'll be huge for helping my older family members keep a coherent address book.
I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with the amount of stuff they've packed into iOS 8. Looks like it'll be more than enough to easily rip me away from jailbroken iOS 7.
The extensions for apps look very promising. I don't think Android intents provide this kind of deep integration between apps. But I would wait for some one to confirm that part.
i can confirm that intents are this deeply integrated in android. more so because they are custom, any app can fire or register an intent, so they don't need to be something baked into the OS from the start.
i do like the ideas for extensions apple presented, but they all seem to specific. the android intents i use day to day are way past this.
Sounds minor, but I would have loved to have been able to change the SMS screen so I could have a black background instead of a white one. Is it that hard to do?
I set up the accessibility feature called Invert Colors and assign it to a triple tap on the home button. That works great for things like Mail and Messages, especially first thing in the morning when my eyes are tired and I don't want my retinas seared by a crisp white screen.
I was really hoping for split screen multitasking (which Windows 8 on tablets does a good job of). I heard it was possible, but was having problems getting it out the door in time. I really hope it comes out in the final version of iOS 8, because that's the one thing that would tempt be to get a Surface over the next iteration of the iPad.
While jailbreak hacks are really cool, you can't really base any long-term decisions (like hardware purchases) around them, because jailbreaks are so unpredictable. It's a crapshoot as to whether any given OS version will have a jailbreak, and who knows how long it will take. Even if you wait for the jailbreak to be released, there's no real guarantee you can keep it. The next OS release will probably break it, and even if you refrain from upgrading, it's likely that you'll eventually be forced to upgrade due to a hardware failure, OS corruption, inadvertent button press, massive widespread security hole, etc. And good ol' Apple doesn't let you install older OSes after new versions come out, even on hardware that supports them.
Yea, having to awkwardly move around to answer a call when I have my phone charging is one of those little things that I suspect we'll all be surprised by how often this new feature improves our life.
It does seem to have promise. I didn't catch all of the details, was there a demo? Was it able to say, switch a call over to your mac with the ability to do something like FaceTime?
They did a demo call with Dr. Dre. They didn't showing switching a call between devices. I did notice a video button on the call on the Mac suggesting you might be able to switch from audio to video (presumably FaceTime).
I have read through the entire text on that page and I still have not found the answer to the question "What makes iOS 8 the world’s most advanced mobile operating system?".
I disagree. Continuity by itself will be a tremendous addition and well-worth the upgrade. It implies not only some App/OSX integration, but also some nifty telecommunications integration.
>"Plus, it also knows who you’re talking to, which is crazy. By knowing who you’re talking to, it will send up predictions that are right for the type of conversation you have with that particular person."
This is a bit scary... This means that Apple not only knows who I talk to but now actually maintain an index on how I talk with everyone. 1984 is getting closer and closer.
Edit: this extensibility stuff might be enough to tempt me back to Apple from Android, at last. Third party keyboards, too (I've gotten quite attached to the Android swiping stuff). Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure what keeps me on Android. I confidently predict that iOS Active Notification usage will be far higher than on Android, even though Android has had it for years.