What iOS8 features would Android users not care about..

WWDC  2014 has just kicked in and Apple announced its new mobile Operating System, iOS8 along with the new OS X Yosemite. Here we'll focus on the new features that iOS8 introduced and discuss those that Android users have been using for quite sometime.

Spoiler Alert- I'm an Android Enthusiast so this might seem a biased review to those iSheeps out there.

There were a whole lot of new features announced in iOS8 and developers can already get their hands on iOS8 on their device with a registered Developer ID. Among the most significant new features was Interactive notifications. Herein users can, on getting notifications like a new message, choose to either reply, mark as read or delete the message. This has been a feature that all Android users running JellyBean and up are enjoying. That makes up about 60.8% of Android users in the wild. And if we add those using KitKat, it comes in at 69.3% of people already use the actionable notification.
Update: I forgot to mention The only thing missing on Android is the ability to reply to messages directly from notification shade.



Another improvement was the new Keyboard with predictive texting. Apple calls its "QuickTpye" Keyboard to be the most accurate ever but lets face it. Predictive texting isn't a new thing. Nor is it an innovation. Android users all the way down to Gingerbread have been using predictive keyboards. Even BB OS10 had a Predictive keyboard that did more than just typing. So advertising this feature as Ground breaking or most accurate won't do any good except to those Apple loyalists. With the new QuickTpye keyboard, they also introduced support for 3rd party keyboards. This again is a feature that goes down the drain where we find Android Froyo users using 3rd party keyboards.

Apple also showed us the new iCloud Drive, Apple's new rival to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive etc. iCloud drive gives support to many new file types than originally supported by iCloud. This gives you privilage to store your Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, PDFs, and Images in the could. While iCloud gives you 5GB of free storage, Rival Google's Cloud storage gives you about 15GB of free storage and 10GB extra to those using QuickOffice. Also to note here is a plethora of file formats that Google Drive supports. So iCloud Drive was nothing than just a new competitor to the market like many others. Why care about it when you already get more storage for free and more file formats supported.



Apple's voice assistant Siri is now going to start responding to your, "Hey, Siri" command. Now this is a feature that I think Apple copied right from Moto X and GNL and said, "Magic happens when you call "Hey Siri"". Also to note is that "Hey Siri" works only when you are in car mode. While on GNL, you can "OK Google" from any of your HomeScreens. Whereas on the Moto X, this feature can work anytime as long as your phone can hear your voice. Siri now also recognizes songs thanks to shazam. Not just recognizing but you can also buy sings directly from Siri.



Apple didn't announce an iWatch-tied Healthbook app at WWDC, but it did unveil a more plainly named Health app and the developer-focused HealthKit API. Just when Google already had its fitness API launched to the market.

But other than the features copied from Android and other OSes, Apple did show us some new goodies. Apple plans to tie together smart home electronics with its HomeKit framework for connected devices so that you control everything without getting up off the couch.



Locking doors, turning off lights, adjusting the thermostat and shutting the garage won't even require tapping your iPhone 5S touchscreen, it turns out. Instead, these actions can be triggered with Siri voice commands as simple as saying "Siri, I'm going to bed" in order for the computerized assistant to put you into something of a human "safe mode."

Update 2: As Doug mentioned, Using Home Automation has also been done on Android. But this feature can't be included in this article as its not natively supported by Android right now.

iOS camera also got new features like burst mode for older phones, time-lapse recording and timer. These again are features that I enjoyed on my Android Froyo phone there's nothing new here that I can envy given that Apple's camera quality is better than most Android phones. When iOS7 brought Cellular data usage feature Android users felt really bad for those iSheeps who didn't even know what it was if they hadn't used a 3rd party app for it. With iOS8, Apple did the same thing but with battery life. Now you can see what apps use how much of your battery. Nothing we don't already use.



Now I know there will be a lots of people iSheeps who'll shout out that Android users don't have the latest version or that they don't have the newest set of APIs. But in reality, Android users don't really need the latest OS to use the new APIs. They just need the latest version of the Google Play Services to enjoy the latest APIs. Google Play Services is Google's way to fight fragmentation where Google can always add new APIs with updates through the Play Store. And for the features that iOS8 got, Android users have been using these features all the back up to Gingerbread and Froyo.

It seems like innovation at Apple has stopped and its more like Tim Cook is trying to catch up with other mobile OSes rather than showing us something Ground Breaking.

 

This post does not list all the features that iOS8 got, but just some of those that it copied from other OSes. So for a list of all the new features, you can jump over to google to find out more.