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Comment by taurusnoises | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's very much on the outside of the Apple / Android debate (though I've never owned an iPhone, I do use a Mac and an iPad), and as someone who's relatively tech illiterate, how does this announcement read in light of Apple's latest liquid glass stuff, and the pushback I'm seeing from almost every angle. Is this Google announcement at all in response to the negative reaction Apple is getting? Does what Google is saying here get anyone excited? Maybe even excited enough to switch over?

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I've used an Android and Apple phone on and off since the first phones were available with the respective OSs. In general, I've found the Android UI to be more intuitive (although they've both had their boondoggles).

But lately it does seem like spinning wheels on the UI front for both. Without a distinct new feature to build the UI around, most UI changes just seem like change for the sake of change (ie. resume/executive driven design). Both OS seem to be approaching a very similar paradigm (Apple becoming more androidy IMO lately). Minor changes aren't going to cause major changes in popularity. "Liquid Glass" does seem to be uniquely disliked, and probably for good reasons, but Apple generally has ecosystem and brand lock-in that will put the brakes on much ship jumping.

Imagine how difficult it must be for the PM whose job it is to create a long term road map or strategy for phone UIs. Everything is already done.

The only strategy is to create work so the team isn't disbanded. Add gradients, and then remove them in a few years. But write high-brow text to explain the changes, like an artist who describes their solid gray oil on canvas so it can sell for a million dollars.

Android is a different beast since OEMs highly customize the UX. Samsung could easily make a horrible liquid glass ripoff and stick it on Android without Google doing anything.

Most of Google's work on Android seems to be around making smaller changes for the UX and bigger internal changes (splitting up the OS so individual parts can be updated without the OEM involvement, security changes, etc).

Google announced Material 3 Expressive a month or two ago, way before WWDC

And just to clarify, Material 3 Expressive is not shipping in these builds, that will be in a quarterly release build in probably in the first week of September.

I read that IOS will pepvide the battery percentage pn screen (e.g. your battery is 75% charged) and also estimated time to reach 100% capacity when charging

Android had this for 15 years or more...

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