Change your launcher and the associated functionality. Some launchers are light and fast and sparse on features, some have all the bells and whistles and neat effects. Some are very similar to the stock Google Now Launcher, except with a few extra features or whatnot. Actually, just the simple fact that Android launchers separate your home screens from your app drawer is a huge advantage. On iOS, you basically have to hide little-used apps inside folders, right? It fits my brain better to have all my apps in the app drawer, and instead move my commonly-used apps onto a home screen. (Actually, my home screens have zero app icons, they are all widgets. I have a home row with folders where my often-used app icons live.)

"Intents": This is the name Android gives to what is basically its sharing functionality. I think Apple hard-coded Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. sharing into iOS. Like, if you're browsing your photos, you have a button to share a photo to Facebook, right? On Android, any app can hook into this Intents framework. So, if I am looking through pictures, I press the share button and any app that can handle pictures is in the list to share it to. Facebook, email, photo editors, photo sharing apps like imgur, etc. Another example, I can highlight a paragraph on a web page and share it to Evernote, or a text message, or a translation app, etc. It's just a really slick, smooth, and intuitive way to handle many common tasks. Maybe iOS can do this now, but it couldn't last I checked, and I think it would be big news if it could.

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Posted by TigerinATL

Member since Feb 2005

61646 posts

Posted on 6/9/14 at 2:02 pm to Korkstand

quote:
On iOS, you basically have to hide little-used apps inside folders, right? It fits my brain better to have all my apps in the app drawer, and instead move my commonly-used apps onto a home screen.

Since Apple doesn't allow App Launchers, that is certainly an issue where Android wins hands down, but you can move apps where ever you want now. In the past I remember having to hide "official" apps in a folder on the home page, but they fixed that in iOS 6 or 7. You can bury apps you don't want in a folder on the last app page if you like

quote:
"Intents"...Maybe iOS can do this now, but it couldn't last I checked, and I think it would be big news if it could.

That was one of the features mentioned for the upcoming iOS8 at WWDC last week.

quote:
Apple's annual developer conference is well underway, and it just revealed what could be a seismic shift in the iOS world: Third-party apps will soon be able talk to each other. Historically, applications on iOS have lived in their own silos, without being able to share data and features, but that's set to change in iOS 8. Apple has given developers "Extensibility" tools -- a suite of APIs, if you want to get technical -- that they can wield to let their apps share everything from documents to translation services. A demo onstage showed a Bing extension for Safari doing inline translation of a Japanese website, and using Pinterest to share a photo from a website in just a few taps.

Of course, info sharing is bound to be a boon for third-party Twitter apps and other social networking services. This kind of interaction between apps has existed on other platforms like Android and, of course, the best examples are support for third-party keyboards and widgets in notifications. Both features will be in the new iOS, but the implementation goes deeper. Apps can also select a default storage location that's accessible by other apps -- it's not exactly a traditional file browser, but it sounds close. As a security measure, iOS 8 will act as a middleman when it comes to sending data between apps, rather than letting applications chat directly with each other.

LINK /

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Posted by LSUdm21

Member since Nov 2008

17486 posts

Posted on 6/9/14 at 2:33 pm to Korkstand

quote:
Change your launcher and the associated functionality. Some launchers are light and fast and sparse on features, some have all the bells and whistles and neat effects. Some are very similar to the stock Google Now Launcher, except with a few extra features or whatnot. Actually, just the simple fact that Android launchers separate your home screens from your app drawer is a huge advantage. On iOS, you basically have to hide little-used apps inside folders, right? It fits my brain better to have all my apps in the app drawer, and instead move my commonly-used apps onto a home screen. (Actually, my home screens have zero app icons, they are all widgets. I have a home row with folders where my often-used app icons live.)

"Intents": This is the name Android gives to what is basically its sharing functionality. I think Apple hard-coded Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. sharing into iOS. Like, if you're browsing your photos, you have a button to share a photo to Facebook, right? On Android, any app can hook into this Intents framework. So, if I am looking through pictures, I press the share button and any app that can handle pictures is in the list to share it to. Facebook, email, photo editors, photo sharing apps like imgur, etc. Another example, I can highlight a paragraph on a web page and share it to Evernote, or a text message, or a translation app, etc. It's just a really slick, smooth, and intuitive way to handle many common tasks. Maybe iOS can do this now, but it couldn't last I checked, and I think it would be big news if it could.

Ok, none of this means anything to me.