Neat release, but the amount of stuff Google adds to Android every year simply pales in comparison to what Apple is doing. Nevermind the fact that 80% of Android users won't see this stuff for another 3 years.
That said, I do kind of agree with Gruber, it kind of feels like the passion for Android has burned out at Google and they are just dialing in a lot of this.
The Pixel specific updates seem particularly weird to me too.
This is just speculation... but maybe it's because they are getting ready to finally kill Android and switch to Fuchsia.
Android has been getting better over the last 4-5 years and the KitKat days are very far away, but it wouldn't surprise me if Google was ready to start fresh with everything they've learned.
Also I'm sure Google want stricter control on customisation which would be a good thing (easier updates). It'll be hard to take that back from Android vendors but I bet Fuchsia won't have it.
Any source on that?
That doesn't seem like a good strategy for a competing product.
If a person has a good point, they have a good point. This isn't a very strong Android update and neither was last year's.
With third-party apps there was a bit of a lag in support but the same goes for dark mode on iOS. Even now some apps don't support that.
But right now the main apps I use on Android all support it. Samsung Mail, OSMAnd for maps, Firefox (with dark reader extension that automatically matches the system dark mode!), most chat apps I use, password store, MS apps I use for work, etc. It's really amazing to have this. I'm sensitive to too-bright displays and most displays these days are tuned for maximum output, not minimum.
Random example: filesystem journaling so that you don't have to wait minutes to hours for fsck every time your computer hard resets. It showed up in Windows first -- but only in Windows Server. It was very intentionally excluded from consumer Windows. Then it showed up in Mac OS X. For a decade, hard restarts were painful on Windows and smooth on Mac. Finally, in Windows 8, just in time for SSDs to make it moot, it showed up in consumer Windows.
This story repeats over and over. Cameras and video chat out-of-the-box, backlit keyboards, desktop search, retained and GPU composited GUIs, Webkit, and so on. Apple wasn't first, but they were the first to do it well and get it in front of lots of people. People complain about apple users being sheep inside a bubble, but it goes both ways.
I'd answer your question more specifically, but I'm currently on the wrong side of the bubble in Android land. When I buy my next phone, I'll do my research, which will include swinging by an apple store to experience qualitative things like stylus/AR latency first-hand. You should too :)
I was using Windows on a daily basis across multiple computers and this wasn't a subtle thing. In fact, I still regularly use Windows 7 (oscilloscope, can't update) and occasionally get "reminded" about this, even though I also remember a number of gnarly examples from my everyday computer use.
Most people just skipped it, and I did too, until one time it got into a state where no programs would run...
Not only that, journaled HFS+ was introduced in OSX 10.2, not in 10.0. It was enabled by default in 10.3. Way later than NTFS.
However, there's a reason for all that, and why Windows 9X used FAT filesystem: it was much faster. Computers in '90s didn't have any spare perfomance, and journaling was not needed by most users. It was introduced into consumer releases only when they were fast enough for users not no notice.
I'm even being generous by using past tense here because I still have to live with Win 7 and this particular problem (no, I can't just upgrade, it's a $40k industrial tool). I'd be ecstatic to learn that the ungodly slow fscks are redundant or easily disabled and the whole thing is just a matter of extremely poor defaults.
Normally, it took few minutes. The only way to avoid slow chkdsks in the future is to fix the underlying issue.
Also note that I'm not telling you to upgrade. I know that it is impossible with systems that have lab equipment attached. If you want support from the vendor, that is. So the question is, why don't you ask the vendor for support? This is in their scope.
Also, it was very easy to have damaged HFS+ and not know about it. There was a thriving market of third party utilities (Disk Warrior & co) that would gladly tell you and fix it, but most users didn't use them.
The computer that used to take hours to chkdisk was a home computer with a couple 1TB (IIRC) 5200RPM drives containing a lot of files. Chkdisk didn't typically find errors and Windows small-file-access is notoriously slow. I don't think this is a "me" problem or a "my hard drive" problem, I think it's a "chkdisk is slow and obnoxious" problem. Windows users just put up with it and didn't resent it as much as I did because they didn't know there was a better way.
Apple cited journaling as the feature that let them drop the slow checks. Maybe that was puffery. Maybe it was uninformed risk tolerance (the NTFS ecosystem has an ecosystem of recovery tools too, so that's hardly an indication of anything). Or maybe it was informed risk tolerance, or better journaling, or better defaults.
In any case, the point holds: Windows was first across the "technological accomplishment" finish line while Apple was first across the "relevant to me" finish line, and that seems to happen a lot, even though I have feet firmly planted in both ecosystems.
Even Nearby Sharing (Android's Airdrop clone) was released as a Google Play Services update and is not part of the OS: https://blog.google/products/android/nearby-share/
Which is Google's weakness. Not only are the core apps not developed by the Android team, but each app is done by a separate team and there is a lack of consistency across the board with different colors, placement of icons, and dark mode support. It took Gmail six months after the release of Android 10 to get dark mode. And dark mode has existed (in limited form) since Android 9. Dark mode for Maps followed Gmail.
Oh, and let us not forget Maps had white navigation buttons on a white background, with light grey shadows for a few months with the release of Android 10. When I first upgraded my Pixel, I thought they had removed the bottom navigation because of this regression. Supposedly these are the best and brightest programmers on the planet.
Password API works with third-party password managers. Not perfect, but LastPass works pretty well this way. Security Code autofill is also great for 2FA SMS things.
Device performance/reliability, mostly related to launching the camera, although this probably applies all-round. There's nothing worse than trying to take pictures for a group and your camera app just... won't work.
Feature polish (although limited). There are a lot of features that I wish existed, and features that I wish I had more control over, but the overall polish on a feature's functionality and feel is great.
Airdrop. Supposedly Android has a good competitor coming?
Share Wi-Fi password with contacts.
Sign in with Apple + Auto-hide your email.
:( Shortcuts. This is great, except writing them sucks for anyone even slightly code-proficient. Next to impossible to set up on phones. But again, polished but limited vs Android.
Facetime. I really wish Duo was better integrated into Android and marketed.
I'm sure I'm missing some, and I'm purposely not listing the things I miss from Android. There are other Apple-specific reasons that I've decided to stick with iOS for the time being that are also good to consider.
Third party password manager autofill has been around for a few years now (Android 8), and their Airdrop clone was released last month: https://blog.google/products/android/nearby-share/
- Android password api integrates with 3rd parties. Android SMS app does security code copy thought not native autofill (apps implement it themselves)
- AirDrop equivalent is nearby sharing: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-nearby-share-file-shar...
By asking access to all of your text messages last time I checked.
- Nearby Sharing has already started rollout across even older Android devices as a feature equivalent to Airdrop.
- Camera is usually device-specific, but my Pixel/OnePlus devices have usually been very good at this
- Google released the "Nearby Share" feature a couple weeks ago
- Wi-Fi sharing can be done with standard QR codes, but I don't know if this OS-specific
- Tasker is different from Shortcuts, but a viable option. Very powerful, but more complex too
- I agree with the Duo point. It's a great service, but not well known. Google being Google I guess.
(To be clear, not disagreeing with you, just adding to the conversation)
...and insisted to bring it to the top of the share menu without a way to disable it.
I don't even think it was malicious intent, like growth hacking or something. It's just a sloppy implementation.
... like Googles camera and photos apps that stopped respecting the accessibility setting not to use haptic feedback and enabled it for some rare and random ui elements, like tilting an image or changing camera modes.
Or how Android 11 new (and random?) background animations during notification bar pull down does not honor disabled animations, another accessibility feature.
... or the new button right next to the screenshot button in the app switcher that just does not appear to do anything? It just makes the app switcher unresponsive until you press the "x"-button. They probably just forgot to add a feature there.
It's a pixel 3a. There it got a full, dedicated column above all regular share sheet items.
I have to scroll past it many times a day, which feels like some form of absurd punishment.
- Nearby Share looks great! Looks like its only Android -> Android or Android -> Chromebook right now. Hopefully we get Windows/MacOS/iOS support.
- What is the workflow for sharing a Wi-Fi password as a QR code? I looked in to this a while ago, and Android doesn't even let you access saved Wi-Fi passwords without root, and the stock camera app didn't have a QR reader built in.
- Tasker was pretty powerful, but the polish and user experience was lacking. Haven't kept up with Tasker's development, but I hope they take some inspiration from Shortcuts/Workflows and streamline their interface for general cases. There was a lot of additional features that were separated out into separate apps, which also made it more difficult to manage.
Thanks!