"Android ICS already offers more than what is coming in iOS 6"

ICS ecosystem is almost vaporware, it is supposed to be the best release yet, but i actually never saw it. Maybe its the best thing since sliced bread, but if nobody uses it, what exactly is the point?!<p>Your chances of getting ICS on your legacy device are virtually zero. whereas getting IOS 6 on the iphone 4S is assured.<p>[EDIT] I have been an android user since it was essentially released, and have only recently switched to IOS, there are many things that i find absolutely maddening with IOS and find some elements poor in comparison to android.<p>That said, I grew tired of upgrading my phone on my own. Cyanogen was great, but it became a real hassle, I just want a device that works, and upgrades easily.<p>I am very disappointed with Android, primarily because its unfulfilled promise. We can blame the phone manufacturers for this mess and we will be right, but a chunk of the blame goes to Google as well, it was blind to entrenched interests, and now the users are paying the price. It smacks of arrogance, and lack of strategy.

I'll answer this completely fanboyish article with a slightly fanboyish response.<p>First of all, just because ICS had it "first" doesn't mean that they did it better.<p>Let's add the fact that the feature being present in the operating system doesn't gauntness that Android users will get it on their phones like it does when Apple adds something to the operating system (with a few exceptions).<p>Counting your "3rd party apps" (which apple really had first, two can play at this game) as features of the operating system just doesn't count. I don't care that apps can add functionality to the operating system. If it isn't there by default, it doesn't count as a feature. Claiming that a 3rd party app offers the same functionality as passbook for instance, is moot because 3rd party apps on the iPhone could do the exact same thing.<p>Please don't compare your crappy voice actions or other skin specific implementations to Siri. She doesn't always work, but when she does, it's better than yours.<p>Yes email on iOS has been lacking a little bit. Doesn't make it any less of a feature when things get added to the email client.<p>I'm shocked that the author waited until the very end of the post to mention "glanceable widgets" since this seems like it's the champion of all Android users since it's really their "killer feature." Be that as it may, call your HTC One X more powerfull all you want, when it comes to platform integration and ease of use, the iPhone is still the king.

This is the old bullet-list fallacy. Quality is simply a measure of the bullet list of features, and no attempt is made to what is behind the items on the bullet list. Remember when the first iPhone was announced? The bullet list after it was announced had touchscreen at the top of the list, so every manufacturer thought that all they had to do was add a touch screen to their existing platform, and hordes of just like the "LG ENV Touch" flooded carriers. Feature phones had small app stores where you could buy a dozen useless apps, so they beat the iPhone on that bullet item.

It is weird to see the public discussion about ICS being one about dismay and vendors holding the platform back, but with those of us who took the time to research, hack, and even program for Android, I've enjoyed more control and flexibility than even a jailbroken iPhone could give me. So, on one hand, I completely agree with all of the negative press about the droid platform, but on the other hand, I couldn't be happier.

The thing this misses for me is what it can do and what it does do for most people.<p>Smartphones are now mass market which means that a lot of people buying and using them aren't engaging in a lot of config, customisation and so on, that 90% of what they do and how they work is how it comes out of the box.<p>Only about 7% of Android devices are using ICS 6 months after launch. By comparison 80% of iOS customers using iOS5 12 months on. What that means is that what's in iOS6.0 is probably way more relevant to your average iOS user than what's in ICS is to your average Android user.<p>I've not seen anyone say ICS isn't good, the issue seems to be that it's not what most people experience when the use Android.

This thread encapsulates everything wrong with the tech industry in one handy page. A flame bait OP, a bunch of fanboien leaping in to defend their favorite platform. Lots of rehashing of the Same Tired Old Arguments yet again, followed by the Standard Polemic Reply to those arguments, and the inevitable Ridiculous Digression Justifying Original Opinion. I swear, I got started out the top and realized I was about to downvote the whole thing before giving up.<p>Look folks: Smartphones (I guess I should say "iPhone-style smartphones", as the term existed long before that, but was used for devices that aren't meaningfully comparable) are now 5 years old, and are becoming a mature technology. We're at the stage now where desktop GUIs were in, say, 1991. The competing platforms have reached feature parity, and there aren't many great advances left to distinguish them in the near future (until the next big disruptive change, anyway).<p>So while the OP is flamebait, I think the point is mostly valid. iOS 6 looks pretty tame compared to its recent ancestors.

My Motorola RAZR could, in theory, do everything that the iPhone could do. Apps, email, web browser, three way calling, blah blah blah. I couldn't remember how to use any of it, and when I managed, it all sucked dog's balls.<p>When android boosters realize that compatibility, simplicity, ease of use, and even standardization are actually FEATURES they might get somewhere.<p>Meanwhile they've got phones from hardware vendors who expect no loyalty from their customers and don't show any loyalty to thei customers, because their customer will buy whatever gadget has the most blinking lights next time around. It's a self selecting group.

There is an advert for Steers (a hamburger take away franchise here in South Africa, their burgers are delicious!) that came out around about the same time that McDonalds came to the country. It depicts one guy unpacking a stack of tiny burgers onto the table, bragging to his buddy about how little he paid for all these tiny cheeseburgers (getting the picture?)<p>His buddy opens up a Steers bag, pulls out one great big Steer Burger, looks over to the other guy just before biting into it and says: "That's great, but now you have to eat them."<p>The point of the advert is clear, I think mine is too.

Why does "third party apps" get to count as Android already having a feature that iOS currently doesn't have?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I can see not a single feature that is compared in this article is exclusive to ICS.<p>Those features are also available on 2.2 and 2.3, so the whole discussion about "ICS is vaporware" is irrelevant when talking about those features.

I have an iPhone 4S (Work) and an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II (Personal - EU version with the physical button) and I am still to receive the ICS update here stateside!<p>By the time iOS6 is released to users, there will be many a people with Android phones who wouldn't have received ICS updates for their phone!

User experience is not a checklist. There's a big difference between having those features be usable out of the box to every customer versus giving a user an unfinished phone and making them do shitwork to make it work.

Predictably most of the comments are about the android upgrade issues, but the solution is simple, people who care about these features buy a google device, which receives timely upgrades, is cheaper than an iphone, and has its own advantages (+disadvantages) over iphone hardware<p>The people that dont care about these feature buy any random android and get this stuff later as the carriers catchup

I find it kind of humorous that we used to hear a lot of "but the App Store has way more apps than the Market" as a "feature" that made iOS more desirable. Hell, Apple even used the "There's an app for that" campaign for quite a while. And now we have people saying, "Well, so what if there was an app for that in ICS. Third party apps don't count". Oh how times change.

&#62;Travel and reward card management &#62;iOS6: Passbook &#62;ICS: 3rd party apps<p>This is missing the point, iOS has been doing this with third party apps for a while, passbook is like news stand or game centre and aims to consolidate lots of confusing implementation into one.

There appears to be a lot of discussion about market penetration of the two operating systems. This is a separate discussion. The author is comparing the new iOS functionality to that present on ICS.

Of course, only 7 percent of Android devices currently run it....

And yet, only 7% of Android phones run last year's OS, at least as of May 1...<p>I wonder what that number is today. I would expect it to be a little bit higher but not much.

Facebook and Twitter are not features.

<i>You can now have a different signature for each email account on your iOS device, WOW</i><p>I don't think this is possible with the stock ICS IMAP/POP mail app. It doesn't even have mali threading?

It's not how much you offer, but how well you pull it off.

The use of the words ICS and iOS is about equal among the comments.<p>In a year, iOS will still be a current term. ICS will not.

With less satisfaction for the user, if you are to believe Apple's keynote of yesterday.

This article seems relevant to the discussion, too:<p><a href="http://blog.bestvendor.com/2012/06/did-apple-steal-these-ios-6-features/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.bestvendor.com/2012/06/did-apple-steal-these-ios...</a><p>I've noticed that over the past couple of years, Apple has kept "stealing" the functionality of very popular apps from the App Store (starting with iBooks, and then others).

Ah yes, good old feature checklists. Those have been working <i>so</i> well for us these last couple of decades.