> TL;DR the roadmap was "let's burn ourselves out doing an 60% copy of what Apple did last year and call that focus."
This doesn't resonate. I've been a loyal Android user since Gingerbread (2010), and maybe for the first couple of years it was catching up to Apple, but i would say since pretty much KitKat, it's Apple that's been accused of just copying Android features. (And arguably putting them out with more stability and polish).
Throughout the main feature that Android was behind on and had to "copy" was performance. iPhones used to (and still) blow even top-tier Android phones away on basic things like scroll smoothness.
> it's Apple that's been accused of just copying Android features.
I think you might be in a bit of an Android bubble. Android is plenty "accused" of copying Apple features as well. Really, both copy plenty of ideas from each other.
I think he may be referring to Android Wear. While I agree with you, Android is rock solid and great to use on most phones in the last few years, Android Wear is anything but. It's buggy, unstable and a long long way behind the Apple platform.
I love my Android phone, but, having had way too many Android Wear devices, it's complete crap.
I'd say y'all are thinking macroscopically of Android as a whole, whereas I'm thinking about my corner of 100-200 on launcher / system UI. There's very explicit examples I can think of, but now that I think of it...it might impossible to tell from the outside because you can't really tell what's The Cool Project from year to year
From the outside, my perspective has been that Android was a free for all in the beginning and had to tighten down permissions later for battery drain problems while iPhone was too locked down initially and had to figure out how to make their devices actually useful for third party apps.
It is just an impression I remember so may not be completely accurate but android made huge progress from a user's perspective in my opinion in terms of battery management (new phones having huge batteries I guess but 5Ah battery means nothing if Android kept wasting it unnecessarily.
I remember at some point there was a funny example something like if you forget your android tablet at home on wifi when you go on a three day trip, you should not come back to see a dead battery on your tablet. It was funny but also got the point across I think. I appreciate that.
For example, on this phone I am typing on, I have set it so by default battery saving kicks in as soon as I drop down to 75%. Then I turn it off manually if I need to do something important (rare).
One thing that bothered me about Android as a user was by default there was no feature for me to say don't allow this app to do anything on boot or in the background without my permission. Don't allow this app to connect to anything on the Internet or don't allow this app to connect to any network at all unless I say it is ok to do so. Any ideas why?
This doesn't resonate. I've been a loyal Android user since Gingerbread (2010), and maybe for the first couple of years it was catching up to Apple, but i would say since pretty much KitKat, it's Apple that's been accused of just copying Android features. (And arguably putting them out with more stability and polish).
Throughout the main feature that Android was behind on and had to "copy" was performance. iPhones used to (and still) blow even top-tier Android phones away on basic things like scroll smoothness.