Hacker News Reader

Not all applications embed a UIWebView, and many that do also offer opening in Safari as an option. There are also between-app communications like Twitter's "Save Draft to Birdhouse..." or sending addresses to the Maps application. Not as flexible as the workflows you describe in Android, to be sure, but in that data is being passed between its apps, I believe it was overly broad to describe iOS as focusing only on "bite-sized" and "self-contained" apps.

View on HN

I really think the Android back button makes all this possible (and perhaps better than on iOS devices. If a link in the iOS twitter app opens Maps, the only way to get back to where you were (pre-iOS4) was to hit home and launch the twitter app... which may have saved its state. In Android, such a workflow would just involve pressing the universal back button. I suppose in iOS4, you can now double tap home and find the twitter app in the list of open apps.

That's not to say Android is better for opening map links from twitter... just that it's a different way of doing things. I would say that most criticisms people have when jumping from android to iOS (or vice versa) stem from trying to use one OS in exactly the same way you used the other OS.

I agree, the back button is one of the best parts of the Android experience. I find myself reaching for it every time I go back to my iPod Touch.

What about opening in Opera? Skyfire?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com