But like I said, there can be only one right way to do it and more often than not, Apple is the one to get there first. They did it with the MacBook Pro, the iMac and even the iPhone. The iPhone 4 is perhaps the best looking phone ever manufactured. It’s not quite perfect, but there’s nothing better out there right now.
[…]
In the case of notifications in iOS 5, the reverse happened. Android had pretty much perfected the notification system. So if Apple had to create a perfect notifications system it was going to be difficult for them to not make it look like the one on Android. For their part, they actually went a step ahead and improved upon what was already an excellent notification system on Android. It’s not quite perfect yet, but if anyone does manage to do that, I believe it won’t look far too different from what Apple has done here.
Category: Google
Tolerable
Ryan Paul, reviewing the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1:
The single biggest problem with Honeycomb at launch was the platform-wide instability. Many applications, including Google’s own first-party software, crashed repeatedly during use. The number of force-closes that we encountered while testing the Xoom made it look like the software was pushed out the door without enough testing.
Stability has fortunately gotten a boost in Android 3.1. Application crashes still cropped up during our week of testing the Tab 10.1, but these were well within tolerable boundaries. The software is finally stable enough for comfortable day-to-day use, and this is frankly the level of quality that should have been in place for the Xoom at launch.
iCloud: A Study of Apple and Google
Of all the things Apple announced at WWDC, iCloud is the most difficult to explain. After watching the keynote and reading Apple’s site, the whole thing is so big it is hard to think about.
As John Gruber pointed out in this week’s The Talk Show, not everything in iCloud is actually new. iBooks has been using the “it just works” sync-like features since the service launched over a year ago. MobileMe’s contact and calendar sync has been pushing data between devices for years.
Motorola CEO: Open Android store leads to issues
Apple and Google go to Washington
For Sale
Apple’s latest ad wants you to buy a $500+ tablet computer to run App Store apps on. Apple wants to sell you shiny things to make money.
Google’s latest ad wants you to store personal details about your child’s life, from birth, on their servers. Google wants your data so they can sell it (aggregated and anonymized, of course) to others to make money.
Taken in that context, Apple’s ad might be obnoxious and highly commercial, but Google’s is downright creepy.
New on the Android Market: A Software Firewall
Another Example of Android Openness
Chris Ziegler, at This is my Next:
It seems a few American carriers have started working with Google to disable access to tethering apps in the Android Market in recent weeks, ostensibly because they make it easier for users to circumvent the official tethering capabilities offered on many recent smartphones — capabilities that carry a plan surcharge. Sure, it’s a shame that they’re doing it, but from Verizon’s perspective, it’s all about protecting revenue — business as usual. It’s Google’s role in this soap opera that’s a cause for greater concern.
On iPhone and Android Marketshare
There is an endless stream of reports coming out these days about how Android stacks up against the iPhone. The problem is, most of them are flawed.
Here is the first giant flaw — you may have noticed in the headline of this story. You cannot compare Android to an iPhone. That’s comparing an operating system to a hardware device.
There is no compelling argument that anyone can give that says that comparing an operating system to a hardware device makes sense. None.
Google Docs Makes it to Android
Weird this is just now happening, as I thought Google made both of these products.
Magic
Chairmen Gruber, in a conversation on Tweetbot:
In a sense, then, perhaps there is something droid-like about the Android user experience. Not in the artistic, warm, humanist way that the Tapbots aesthetic is bot-like, but in the cool, rational, science-not-art, thinking-as-opposed-to-feeling sense of artificial intelligence. The difference between iOS and Android, design-wise, can be summed in a single word: magic. iOS aims for it. Android doesn’t want it.
On Apple, Samsung and ‘Look and Feel’
Go read Nilay Patel’s coverage of the new Apple v. Samsung lawsuit. I’ll wait for you to come back.
Ok. Welcome back. Crazy stuff right? To me, its pretty clear that Samsung intentionally ripped off the look and feel of iOS and Apple’s hardware design when making its phones and Android UI, TouchWiz.
This is about Samsung’s design choices. And while Patel is careful not to draw parallels between this suit and the one Apple had against Microsoft in the mid–1990s.