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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

New iOS features so far look like Android parity catchup. Finally, a way to remove apps from the home screen without uninstalling them, and an "all apps" view so you can still find them. And real home screen widgets. And picture in picture video. New Siri overlay design seems similar in function to the new Google Assistant overlay design. On device voice recognition for keyboard dictation, like GBoard on Pixel. Maps guides, bike directions, like Google Maps. App Clips, like Play Instant Apps. Incoming calls as notifications, like the Google Phone app.

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I always thought widgets were a huge deal and then I realized... and I played with them all the time but inevitably ... I used them less and less and less.

My phone as a sort of dashboard just doesn't work, I suspect it would require too much customization to really create to work for me and probably anyone else. Usually I want to just open a specific app anyway.

I find it really helpful having the calendar widget on my first homescreen

I need a calendar and todo list in my face. Notifications were okay but there's so many of them now it's mostly noise.

The only "widgets" I use are on my lock screen: time, weather, meetings. Everything else is just a distraction.

Widgets can definitely be overused. But I like having a calendar, a data usage meter, music player controls, and quick access to my top couple of contacts.

My android phone home screen has contained a weather widget and a music player widget for the past 7 years. I love having both of those things instantly viewable and interactive.

Widgets can be very useful if you set them up correctly. For example I am checking our KPIs daily with a single swipe.

Shameless plug, I've recently made an app for this, to create custom widgets: https://www.wowidget.com/

Widgets are the only way I can stand having smart home things. Whenever I want to control a light it's always right now and widgets give me that.

The ideal way for most "control something" widgets to work is the way the iOS "Apple TV Remote" app already works, when added as a Mission Control button.

It's 1. a regular app; plus 2. a shortcut to get into that app that can be accessed with one swipe from the lock screen; plus 3. a lock-screen widget that displays if the phone fell asleep while the app was in the foreground; and finally, 4. a separate "lock-screen embedded pseudo-app" (sort of like the Camera one you get to by swiping left on the lock screen), which you get to if you tap the "Remote" Mission Control button without first unlocking the phone. This last view allows people to still use your locked phone to pause the Apple TV it's controlling, if you're not there to unlock it for them.

It's too bad that no third-party app on iOS can achieve this same level of integration.

I wouldn't see much point in your 3 and 4 for home automation stuff. Homekit does 1 and 2, and for the bulbs I use it with, that's plenty.

I wouldn't say that's ideal because it's predicated on seeing & using the lockscreen, which is itself not ideal.

Ideal is the device is instantly unlocked when I pick it up - which is also the reality I have as an Android user, but you can experience this on iOS as well with jailbreak mods. And with widgets it's then zero swipes to get to my lightbulb controls, which is just sweet.

Ideally there would just be a button that could turn on the lights in the room (to the level I want). In olden times this button was mounted to the walls of said room, but in these modern times, it would be awesome if that button was a real button, on my phone, like the volume up/down buttons, and would just turn the lights on/off in the room the phone is in. That Apple's got this hacky solution thats suffciently functional shouldn't be taken as the end-state on what an ideal solution is.

I enjoyed widgets when I used Android. Being able to keep a few key contacts 1 tap away, the weather and calendar always visible, and being able to single tap to create a new todo, another single tap to open my groceries note, etc. was pretty cool.

With the latest iphones being as fast as they are it's not a game changer to not have widgets, but I definitely found them extremely convenient.

This is great, having every app, unsorted by default, on the homescreen/desktop was one of the most annoying things to me about iOS. I have a regular habit of running General->Reset->Reset Home Screen Layout to get an alphabetical list.

Auto creating homescreen icons is one of the first things I turn off when first setting up an android device.

It's not news that iOS trails Android in feature adoption. And as an iOS user, I appreciate all the unpaid beta testing Android users do on my behalf.

Not only Android catchup, stuff like widgets were a feature on OSX a decade+ ago before they removed it.

Default email and browser apps, finally...

Missed that one, awesome! But with Apple still blocking competition in browser engines, browser "choice" is not nearly as meaningful as it should be.

having a mobile browser that syncs your history and bookmarks over from your desktop browser of choice is arguably more important than having a choice in browser engines.

as a developer i get it, i would like to choose a different browser engine too, but that's mostly for philosophical reasons, not actual utility.

> having a mobile browser that syncs your history and bookmarks over from your desktop browser of choice is arguably more important than having a choice in browser engines.

This isn't an either/or scenario. Firefox and Chrome support this on Android. Apple blocking third party browsers has nothing to do with desktop sync.

The importance of real browser choice on iOS is not just "philosophical". It's not about bookmarks. It's about control of the web itself.

All major parts of the web now allow users to freely choose their browser with one glaring exception: iOS. Unfortunately, iOS is big enough that it has veto power over the entire web platform. If it won't work on iOS, it won't work on "the web". It's just like the old days of Internet Explorer or Java before it, where a proprietary platform maker had the precious ability to sabotage its open platform competition.

Without iOS enforcing Safari, Google will own the web. Safari being a requirement adds "test in other browsers" to the requirements list of any web app. If you can just tell iOS users to install Chrome, that development step goes away, and the incremental work to support for Firefox will also go away. And then we will have the real Internet Explorer web again, where it is owned by one company.

Unfortunately, iOS is big enough that it has veto power over the entire web platform.

This is so untrue. Google goes ahead and implements stuff regardless of what Apple does or doesn't do.

Any major feature gets worked out by Google, Apple and Mozilla—like Flexbox and Grid.

All of these companies operate on what's in their interest vs. what makes sense for the web.

Folks should be somewhat satisfied with Apple’s Safari/Webkit announcements today:

General New Features

* Added Safari Web Extensions support for macOS.

* Added Webpage Translation (Beta) for English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. Safari will automatically detect if a translation is available based on your Preferred Languages list.

* Added support for HTTP/3.

* Improved Web Platform Tests pass rate for WebDriver, XHR+Fetch, Service Workers, CSS, and SVG.

Removed Features * Safari no longer supports Flash.

Performance New Features

* Supported incremental loading of PDF files.

* Implemented asynchronous scrolling for overflow: scroll, and <iframe> on macOS.

* Improved tab closing performance.

* Improved IndexedDB performance.

* Improved JavaScript cookie access performance.

* Improved for-of performance.

Privacy New Features * Added a Privacy Report that shows the trackers that Intelligent Tracking Prevention prevented from accessing identifying information.

* Enabled full third-party cookie blocking, and the Storage Access API in Private Browsing mode.

Authentication and Passwords New Features

* Added a Web Authentication platform authenticator using Face ID or Touch ID, depending on which capability is present.

* Added support for PIN entry and account selection on external Web Authentication security keys.

* Added notifying users when one of their saved passwords in iCloud Keychain has shown up in a data breach; requesting a password change uses the well-known URL for changing passwords (https://example.com/.well-known/change-password), enabling websites to specify the page to open for updating a password.

* Added support to Security Code AutoFill for domain-bound, one-time codes sent over SMS; in the following 2FA SMS, Safari only offers to fill the code on example.com, and no other domain. Your Example code is 123446. @example.com #123446

JavaScript New Features * Added support for the BigInt data type.

* Added support for creating custom instances of EventTarget.

* Added logical assignment operator support.

* Added public class fields support.

Media New Features * Added WebP image support.

* Added HDR video playback support.

* Changed to derive <img> aspect ratio from size attributes.

* Support for the Picture-in-Picture API is now available in iOS on iPhone.

CSS New Features * Updated image-set() to support all other image functions including image(), -webkit-canvas(), -webkit-cross-fade(), and -webkit--gradient().

Added :is() pseudo-selector support as a synonym for :matches().

* Added :where() pseudo-selector support for specificity adjustment.

* Added support for image-orientation.

Web Inspector New Features * Added support for a bootstrap script.

* Added a Sources Tab that combines the Resources tab and Debugger tab.

* Added an HSL color picker with P3 support.

* Added information about Web Animations, CSS animations, and CSS transitions to the Timelines tab.

* Improved VoiceOver support.

>It's about control of the web itself.

yes, that's exactly what i mean by philosophical.

Yes, very much this time.

There's always a great cycle where they cherry pick the best from each other and Android adopted a bunch of things recently like gesture navigation but it's definitely seeming like it's a major catch up from Apple this time with things like on device voice dictation and the general layout / widgets. Less so for the simpler items but for various of these cutting edge items it's been a shame they've been so narrowly deployed on Android where they've mostly been for Pixel only.

Looks like they're adding instant apps as well.

And what id argue is even a better implementation. For times when you want to interact with an app, with some kind of an account, but dont want the app on your phone. No need to create an account, setup payments.

Scan something, pay for it, move on.

I’ve been getting annoyed lately, configured iOS to “offload” rarely used apps - but it means that I stop getting expected notifications.. and don’t realize it until I try to open the app.

Yeah, with Covid, a ton of apps were offloaded for me, and once I started to safely venture out into the world again, a bunch of things were missing (Starbucks, Lyft/Uber, etc).

Just wait until you see what the marketing people put in to those apps.

That's how they work on Android isn't it? It's how it worked when I saw it demoed at IO one year, anyway.

I dont believe android has anything quite like sign in with apple, that lets you make an account at a service with only your name, and provides you a one time use random email address as a forwarder to your real email.

I've only seen things like parking meters and transit terminals, in which case you just pay with google pay or something. I'm not sure what the purpose of signing up for an app you don't even install is.

Presumably for services beyond parking meters and transit terminals. The keynote showed cafés, and maybe other food ordering places, too. Having an account with the establishment could be used as a loyalty rewards programme or something, like at Subway where you have a card that you scan at the till.

I haven't seen that part yet, but to me the iOS app list was a killer feature.

I always hated Android's desktop, it feels redundant when there's already an app menu, and I can't stand the fact that newly installed apps decide to show up on the desktop. Never used widgets either, they have never made my daily workflow easier at all. YMMV

How can you simultaneously state that you prefer an app list (where all apps are listed and thus added automatically) and complain about how apps are automatically added to the Android home screen (which I presume is what you're referring to as desktop)?

And the thing you never used never made your daily workflow easier? That sounds... obvious? Try using it for a while and then decide if they're worth it.

> How can you simultaneously state that you prefer an app list (where all apps are listed and thus added automatically) and complain about how apps are automatically added to the Android home screen (which I presume is what you're referring to as desktop)?

Presumably because, if your primary "default" view was already the app list, then it'd be redundant for the home screen to have apps on it. If the "home screen" was secondary, it'd become more of a "widget screen" (like the iOS "widget page", but with the ability to add shortcuts to documents/bookmarks as well.)

Just like a PC desktop (which is secondary in function to the OS apps menu/launcher) is essentially a "widget page" + shortcuts to documents, bookmarks, and common locations.

So don't use the app list? I'm confused about the problem.

The nice thing about Android is that you can totally customise the desktop. There are multiple luncher that make it act more like iOS.

You know on Android you can just... download another launcher, right? You can change all of that in about 5 minutes flat.

>I can't stand the fact that newly installed apps decide to show up on the desktop

That is an option that you can disable

If you're the kind of person who is really picky about how your desktop behaves, but you also can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes configuring it, Android is not for you.

Picture in picture is nice but I am disappointed that there's no split screen for all models yet.

same here. for which models is split screen possible?

iPads

11 pro max is the only iPhone model that has it

Is not a feature check off, it’s the way it’s implemented and used. Remember copy and paste?

No default apps, which is the biggest reason I use Android.

They've let you delete default apps for a while now (a couple of years I think?)

I have never heard anyone ask for a way to remove an app without uninstalling it. Seems like weird feature creep to me. Edge case, just stick the app in a folder...

Think start vs desktop for windows or dock vs finder for mac os

You can already search for the app you want, though.

Ah ok. So the difference here is I do not think of my phone like I think about a computer.

Suddenly a lot of Android makes sense - they’re trying to build a little computer that fits in your pocket! Aha! I see!

I am not sure that’s a good model for designing something that is fundamentally not a little desktop computer.

You mentioned "sticking an app in a folder" -- that's as much a computer metaphor as anything.

A folder is an office metaphor, surely.

So is a desktop.

Speak for yourself. I use widgets heavily on Android and keep a clean app-less home screen. Every app is just in the drawer. As well, there are many things that one can do on Android that are simply not possible on iOS, such as using git to interface with files and querying a remote server. That's just me, though, I know the vast majority don't care about this functionality.

Yeah, totally, I get that for some people they'll see Android like that and for people like yourself the "mini computer" paradigm makes total sense.

Just not for the gigantic market that Android has.

I've always found Android's design to be really weird compared to iOS or Windows Phone, but seeing it as a "mini computer" explains why their design doesn't make sense to me - because I see phones as a separate form factor that fundamentally changes how it is used [by most people].

It's kinda like not putting all the app shortcuts on your desktop. Maybe people don't know that they want it.

I would love that. Extensions (ad blockers, keyboards, etc) in particular are super awkward because they install a full app. I also have a couple regional apps that I use every couple of months they really don't deserve home screen space even if its in a junk folder.

Nearly every iOS user has a folder called called "junk" to deal with apps they don't want on their home-screen but also can't uninstall. This isn't an edge case at all...

Is the solution not to allow people to uninstall them, rather than just a better way to hide them?

Often times the "junk" app is a third party app that the OS allows them to uninstall but they can't uninstall because they need to have it once a year for checking something.

There's also apps you just want for the integration they may provide (for example, a keyboard app) but don't want to install the entire app.

I have the Pocket app installed on my iPhone, because I want to be able to share stuff to Pocket, but I don't ever actually use the Pocket app to read stuff.

Then there are utility apps, such as the app that I used to setup my wifi, that I rarely open but still want to keep around in case something goes wrong.

There's all sorts of reasons to have apps installed but not showing in the most prime real estate in the world.

Nah, I have (for one example) a collection of apps that just exist to power the real version on my watch.

Note that these apps actually do something in some cases, like I have a Twitter app (Chirp) where I'm pretty sure the heavy lifting happens on my phone and the watch just does the display.

That's not what the post I replied to was saying:

> Finally, a way to remove apps from the home screen without uninstalling them

You're talking about a different problem.

The solution in your case is surely to allow the apps to be uninstalled!

What? This is a complaint I hear often from ios users. "I know you don't want to see this app, too bad just stick it in a folder you don't want to see either" is not the kind of super slick UX that made ios popular.

I have six apps on my Android homescreen: browser, mail, sms, clock, notes and maps. That's all I always use every week. I definitely need my TOTP app, Duo for work, the calculator and of course camera and phone apps, but I don't use any of them frequently enough to want them on the homescreen.

Apple don't 'catch up', they 'invent', 'craft' and 'hone'.

They let others prove a market and then they move in and throw vast resources at doing a better version, honestly it's a smart move if you have the cash.

I find it some what ironic though given how friendly they pretend to be to developers.

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