Dieter Bohn, writing for The Verge:
iOS 10 moves some of your stuff around a little and makes other stuff look a little different, but fundamentally it acts very much like what you’re used to underneath those new notification bubbles and 3D Touch gimmicks.
But layered underneath those cosmetic changes are some features that push your apps even further, beyond just their icons, into various corners of the operating system. It’s easy to look down your nose at Widgets and iMessage stickers, but when they’re combined with extensions, you begin to see a system where you have access to information from ESPN, Weather, Uber, and much more, all without opening those apps at all. It’s like Android’s widgets, but with a developer ecosystem that might actually be incentivized to support them.
Interesting point. Apple is slowly opening doors into that famously walled garden, enriching the information at its core, making for a better experience for users.
With all the complaints about the iPhone and iOS, I think it’s worth spending a few minutes thinking about how far we’ve come, how much richer our current experience is, warts and all, when compared with the slow and relatively plain experience of years past.
My 2 cents? Apple is right to step very slowly, even if it means Siri can’t immediately tell us what time the Emmys are on. Think bigger picture. Take small, precise steps, release into the wild, measure, learn from your mistakes, rinse and repeat. We’re getting there.
“With all the complaints about the iPhone and iOS, I think it’s worth spending a few minutes thinking about how far we’ve come, how much richer our current experience is, warts and all, when compared with the slow and relatively plain experience of years past.”
We all get incredibly spoiled because our natural inclination is ‘what have you done lately, tech world?’ but stop and think… 10 years isn’t that long… and 10 years ago there was no iPhone and no smartphones as we think of them today. Not primitive ones, etc. None. The Blackberry was around but it’s nothing like what Android and iOS offer today – it was mostly a PDA and a cellphone mashup.
Sure, 10 years might sound like a lot to someone who’s 25… but it’s not much time at all in reality.
Yeah, Nokia was getting there too with little innovation, small risks and huge profits, until a certain Mr.Jobs took the stage. You obviously don’t believe Apple would follow that path. Well Apple does understand the slippery road ahead, that’s why is is expanding as desperately as Apple Watch (failed fashion model) shows and as Apple Car ambitions show. They KNOW the fat iPhone cow is not forever.
It’s worth noting that these type of deeper 3rd party integrations helps to boost iOS’s status as the platform you develop for first. When an app becomes a series of extensions rather than just an traditional app, it’s not as easily ported to Android.
Umm, you can’t possibly be comparing Apples movements today to Nokias in the mid 2000s…Apple is moving about a million times faster than Nokia ever did.
Anyone who claims Apple is standing still simply doesn’t understand technology. End of story.
Not so fast, it seems. We are a long time around to remember ALL their social apps/services fail miserably and the company insists on keeping their OS half closed. Can you name ONE Apple app or service that anyone would care using in another nonApple device? No? I thought so. That says much about the quality of their software as standalone product. So, why don’t they let iPhone be flexible enough to connect to any app/service we like? Well, one reason may be that developing their own software makes it easier to use the minimum hardware components and still have a speedy phone that lasts long (as do profits). Until your customer starts using 3rd party (and better) apps and services. So, no, I don’t understand why I should bend my usage to meet iPhone’s specs. Its the iPhones job to keep up with the apps and services I actually like and not the Apple favorites.
Consumers in China are used to and desire this kind of deep integration. I can do numerous activities within wechat, ostensively ‘just’ a chat app.
Oh you have a short memory.
I’m fairly certain that iTunes runs on Windows and indeed Apple Music runs on Android. You might not care to run it on another non Apple device but there are plenty who do.
Indeed FaceTime would have been opened up to the world had Apple not been hit with a court case from a patent troll immediately after release.