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I own an Android Wear watch, and the only thing it has in common with Android for phones is the name. "Google says you can shrink smartphone UX to a smartwatch" is a gross misrepresentation.

> Google says you can shrink smartphone UX to a smartwatch; Apple says you shouldn't, and you should do these other things instead.

The fact that you believe what Apple says about Google rather than taking the two minutes to actually look at how Android Wear works and see that that statement is completely false shows that the distortion field is in full effect.

I mean, this is the same company that, during the keynote today, repeated the lie that they're the mob that brought us the computer mouse. People just accept Apple's misstatements and half-truths and outright lies as fact now.

Did they actually say that? What's the exact quote? I thought they said something about all their products using innovative interfaces, not that the innovations were theirs.

Still, when they were talking about the digital crown, they did make it sound like they were trying to claim they invented the optical rotary encoder.

"Macintosh introduced the mouse." from the official liveblog:

http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept-event/2cd7d38c-f769-4fc4...

"Introduced" is a subjective word. The Alto had a mouse, but I don't think it was used outside PARC. It doesn't seem too far from the truth to say that the Macintosh introduced the mouse to the world.

It was the first PC that was widely available, that shipped with a mouse. There were mice before that of course. But the Macintosh was centered around the use of the mouse.

The Apple Lisa had a mouse so if we are looking for inaccuracies that is a better argument to start with..

During the keynote stream they retweeted someone saying the iPhone 6 Plus would render games at a higher resolution than next-gen consoles!

Marketing departments have always had a tenuous relationship with reality.

That's a real pity. It sours their other statements and makes them untrustworthy if even just one false statement is made.

They were the first company to make a successful mouse based computer. What are you claiming is a lie?

> Google says you can shrink smartphone UX to a smartwatch

Citation needed. As GP said, the Android Wear team has considered the UX for wearables from the ground up.

You're delusional.

I agree with your point, but there's no need for name-calling.

"The Apple Watch's relationship to the Moto 360 looks to me less like the iPhone 6's relationship to the Moto X than like the original iPhone's relationship to other high-end smartphones of 2007: obviously a lot of shared DNA, but trying to address the same problem space in a measurably different way."

If you ignore the LG Prada.

The LG Prada was an impressive piece of hardware and certainly pointed in the same direction, sure, but it was essentially a feature phone -- a smaller, lower-resolution, grayscale display with no Internet capability to speak of. You had to use a virtual phone keyboard for text messaging, even. There was certainly nothing like Safari, for instance, or any of Apple's messaging applications.

Actually, I'd say that the best iPhone-before-iPhone was the Danger Hiptop (a/k/a T-Mobile Sidekick). Much more data capability than almost anything else, a reasonably good browser, and even an app store. It'd be interesting to see where that evolutionary line would have been in 2014 if it hadn't been killed by iOS and Android. (And by Microsoft buying Danger and mangling it to hell, of course.)

The standard definition of "featurephone" is not having the ability to install apps. Like the original iPhone, which intended you to use web apps apart from those built in.

As you say, others had app stores first. If Android had launched without the ability to install apps then some Apple blogs would still be talking about how it was fundemantally not designed for the current smartphone era and would never be as good as the iPhone, as they currently do based on misinterpretation of whether touchscreens were intended to be supported from the start.

> The standard definition of "featurephone" is not having the ability to install apps.

I disagree with that definition: For example all cheapest Nokia phones since a long time ago supported (roughly when they got color screens, some even before that) installing J2ME applications. Same for cheap Samsungs and LGs of the same time.

And these are definitely not smart phones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3410 ""Downloadable personal applications via Java technology""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition

Didn't wxWidgets have dynamic layout before Qt? Also, didn't Gtk 1 rely on sizers too?

but I'd argue it's with notions like "Apple has never announced a major product months before availability" and "nobody has ever made a large square watch."

You've soundly beaten down notions that I certainly didn't state. Nor have I seen everyone else. However the narrative among the Apple camp was that competitors were desperately rushing to deliver vapour, and that their stodgy square mega watches were non-starters.

Yes, Android had dynamic layout before iOS. And? Qt had it before everyone.

Again, you've firmly argued against something not being discussed. No one ever claimed that Android was first, however Android was quite specifically criticized by Apple (as were, tellingly, larger smartphones, and smaller tablets, and people eat it up). Because it turns out that Apple just says today whatever benefits their contemporary product line, much like just about every other company. And that's fine, but somehow it turns into higher meaning.

Sorry but you keep bringing up dynamic layouts without having a clue why they were introduced.

It wasn't to create a "one app, run many" type system that Android has. It was merely to help developers support the different screen sizes within each category (iPhone, iPad). Apple still encourages developers to have UIs that are specifically tailored to the iPhone or iPad experience.

Apple still encourages developers to have UIs that are specifically tailored to the iPhone or iPad experience.

You mean exactly like Android.

Pretty remarkable having clueless people telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about: I develop in both Android and iOS. But please, inform me.

No. Android doesn't have controls that behave very differently on tablets versus phones (regardless of screen sizes) e.g. UIActionSheet or only exist on tablets e.g. UIPopoverController.

Apple baked into the SDK what it tells developers: iPhones and iPads are different devices that need different UIs. Android doesn't have this clear delineation.

What would be the point of behaving differently regardless of screen size? The screen size is the difference that causes different behavior between tablet and phone, or at least it should be so. If the screen size is the same, why have different UI?

I can't speak to Apple's intentions but it is what makes iOS fundamentally different to Android. It could be related to product marketing. People buy iPads for fundamentally different use cases than buying a phone (even a large one).

Edit: Because I am being downvoted so heavily for this let me be clear. I don't agree with what Apple did only trying to explain it. I would imagine that Apple never expected to be releasing phones and tablets that are so close in physical size to each other.

Okay, can you give me an example of a ui element that would be usefully different on a 6" phone vs a 6" tablet?

Unlock screen. Inactivity timer. Lockscreen alert message. Wifi configuration. Notification center.

Yes, those are OS elements. Not so much app widgets...

They are part of the UI. That's all the question asked.

Maybe I'm blind to evidence but why should they be different?

Phones are single-user, tablets can support multiple. Tablets are more often out when unused, phones are typically in your pocket. Phones are always with you, tablets are more likely to be left at home.

Ok for the multiple user support. I didn't think about that. However http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/06/android-smartphones-are-a...

Furthermore if the phone is as large as the tablet maybe your tablet is your phone or viceversa. There are tablets that can make phone calls with regular phone SIM cards. Example: the Galaxy Tab 3 which starts at 7". I've seen people doing that without a earpiece. An odd sight.

This looks like putting the cart before the horse to me. One can say "we have one-user UI and multi-user UI", etc. - that's good. But saying "this is a tablet so you always get multi user UI and this is a phone so you always get single user UI" looks wrong for me - the purpose of the user should be driving the UI, not the other way around. Of course, maybe the whole point of Apple is to drive user's choice and thus make them comfortable by not confusing them with too much variety and options. I see how this can appeal to some people though I am definitely not one of them. That's why the only Apple device I've ever owned - an iPad - has been collecting dust in a desk drawer since the minute I've got an Android tablet. I guess these are just two different models of user interaction that appeal to different kinds of people.

> Apple still encourages developers to have UIs that are specifically tailored to the iPhone or iPad experience.

iOS 8 introduces a concept called Size Classes, and the tl;dr is that the iPhone 6+ in landscape is considered a tablet.