Over the past few years I’ve invested a lot into Apple’s products and services. If you come by my house, you’d find four of the latest Apple TVs, two iMacs, the latest MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, more than five AirPort Express stations and Apple’s Time Capsule. You could touch every single iPhone, from the first up to the iPhone 5, iPads ranging from first generation to fourth and we recently added two iPad minis.
My iTunes Library comprises well over 8000 songs — all purchased via the iTunes Store.No matter whom you would ask, everybody will confirm that I’m what some folks call an Apple fanboy.
When the latest Google flagship Android device shipped, I almost expected it to turn out as yet another “take-a-look-and-sell-it-on-ebay” experience. Little did I know.
It’s now almost two weeks since I switched the Nexus 4 on for the first time — and meanwhile I completely moved to it, leaving my iPhone 5 at home. Do I miss anything? Nope. Except iMessage. More on that later.
My motivation is not to bash Platform A over Platform B. On the contrary: I will try to summarise my very personal findings and experiences based on years of using iOS. I’ve seen the Apple platform evolve while Android was playing catch-up for so long. When iOS 6 came out, for the first time I complained about the lack of innovation in this major new release. I asked myself, whether we might see Apple beginning to lose its leading position in mobile platforms.
I’m not the average smartphone owner, who makes just a couple of calls every now and then or runs an app once in a while. By the nature of my job and out of curiosity, I deal a lot with social media outlets, social networks and constantly try new services. With that said, my judgement might not be suitable for everyone. In case you consider yourself being a demanding power user, though, you might find this helpful.
I know there are benchmarks which measure all kinds of technical performance on a very detailed level. That’s not what I’ve done and, honestly, I’m not interested into that much. I’m talking about the performance I feel in my daily use.
Using the Nexus 4 with Android 4.2.1 is a pure pleasure when it comes to performance. I don’t exactly know what Google has done with “Project Butter” in Jelly Bean, but the result is astonishing. In the past, Android felt laggy, sometimes even slow and responses to gestures didn’t feel half as immediate as on iOS.
I’d say both platforms are at least even. In some cases, Android even feels a bit ahead of iOS 6. I especially got this impression when it comes to rapidly switching between apps — which I constantly do now — and scrolling through a huge number of more complex content.
While Android still doesn’t give you bouncing lists and scroll views — primarily, because Apple has a patent for this specific behaviour — every transition between views has been reworked, polished and modernised. In most cases, it feels more modern, clean and up-to-date than its iOS counterpart.
In fact, I think iOS has reached a point where usability starts to significantly decrease due to the many workarounds that Apple has introduced. All of these just to prevent exposing a paradigm like a file system or allowing apps to securely talk to each others. There is a better way of doing this. Apples knows about it but simply keeps ignoring the issues.
On Android, it’s quite the opposite. One can see the most obvious example when it comes to handling all sorts of files and sharing.
Let’s assume I receive an email with a PDF attachment which I’d like to use in some other apps and maybe post to a social network later.
On iOS, the user is forced to think around Apple’s constraints. There is no easy way to just detach the file from the email and subsequently use it in what ever way I want. Instead, all iOS apps that want to expose some sort of sharing feature, do have to completely take care for it themselves. The result is a fairly inconsistent, unsatisfying user experience.
On iOS, you might use the somewhat odd “Open in…” feature — in case the developer was so kind to implement it — to first move the file over to Dropbox, which gives you a virtual cloud-based file system. If you’re lucky, the other app, from which you want to use the file next, offers Dropbox integration, too, so you can re-download it and start from there. All because Apple denies the necessity of basic cross-app local storage.
I can detach the file to a local folder and further work with it from there. Leveraging every single app that handles PDF files. In case I receive a bunch of MP3 files, I can do the same. And every app that somehow can handle audio playback, can reuse those mp3 files.
Another great example: Sharing stuff on social networks. On iOS, I have to rely on the developers again. Flipboard, as one of the better examples, gives me the ability to directly share with Google+, Twitter and Facebook. On my Nexus 4, I have 20+ options. That is, because every app I install can register as a sharing provider. It’s a core feature of the Android operating system.
But it goes even further: On Android, I can change the default handlers for specific file types — much like I’m used to from desktop operating systems.
If, for example, you’re not happy with the stock Photo Gallery application, that shows up whenever an app wants you to pick an image, you can simply install one from over a hundred alternatives and tell Android to use it as its new default. The next time you post a photo with the Facebook app — or have to pick an image from within any other app — your favourite gallery picker shows up instead of Android’s own.
All of this is entirely impossible on iOS today. I’ve stopped counting how often I felt annoyed because I clicked a link to a location in Mobile Safari and would have loved the Google Maps app to launch. Instead, Apple’s own Maps app is hard-coded into the system. And there’s no way for me to change it.
First, the obvious one: The lack of a centralised quality control and review. It’s great for encouraging variety, but obviously it also allows for some really cheap productions to be published to the store. Usually, you can spot those immediately from the screenshots on Google Play.
The second reason is more low-level: The way developers declare user interfaces (it’s primarily done in an XML configuration file) allows for rapidly hammering together dirty UIs. That’s what happens a lot and users can see and feel it. iOS developers tend to be more aware to involve designers and iOS UIs cannot be crapped together as easily.
However, I no longer feel as though the apps I use most greatly fall behind their iOS counterparts.
The Facebook app is identical in terms of the look and feel and its features. As a plus, it has better cross-app integration. The Google+ app is better on Android, but that’s to be expected. Flipboard is fantastic on Android, plus better integration. The same is true for Pulse News. The list goes on: Instagram, Path, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Quora, Pocket, Amazon Kindle, Spotify, Shazam and Google Talk. They are all great on Android. Plus better integration. Plus home screen widgets. You sense a scheme here?
And if you want to experience some real UI magic — even if you just need an argument when you’re bumping into an iPhone owner the next time — install Zime, a highly addictive calendar for Android which features a smooth 3D animation and really innovative UI.
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