Mobile By Russell Holly Dec. 26, 2013 9:30 am
For some reason (let’s not get into it here), you’ve decided to make the switch from*Android*to iOS. The good news is that it’s much easier to make that transition than it used to be. If you’ve never use iOS before, however, there’s a few things you should know.
Android and iOS differ in one critical way: the level of control you have over the interface. In iOS you’ll find no homescreen replacements, keyboard alternatives, or tools to grant you rapid access to your favorite settings. You won’t be able to look up the best selling Android apps and just seek out the Apple counterparts, because most of those features will require a jailbreak. Apple’s UI is uniform, and unless you jailbreak your new iDevice that’s not going to change.
iOS is wildly different from Android, enough so that you may consider immediately jailbreaking, but for now let’s take a look at what apps you can use to help you move in to your new mobile OS home.
[h=3]Getting Google back[/h] If you’ve been an Android user for any length of time, chances are pretty high that you have been thoroughly integrated into the Google ecosystem. Fortunately, most of your Android experience can be re-created as long as you install all of the Google Apps.
The Google App used to act as a catch-all for Google’s service on iOS that didn’t have their own apps yet, but over the last year Google has made tremendous strides in making sure there are great apps available for their services. In fact, some of the iOS variants of Google’s apps include some fun visual flair that isn’t available on their Android counterparts yet. The Google+ app for iOS is a perfect example of this, complete with their parallax profile images. The Google App now is used primarily for Google Now, which offers a voice assistant service that easily rivals Siri but isn’t nearly as easy to access on iOS.
Google Hangouts and Google Music are also part of the iOS feature set now, but they work a little differently here. Hangouts delivers notifications as they are recognized by iOS instead of when hit your account, so you may occasionally notice delays in messaging unless you have push notifications enabled. If you’re a heavy IM user, having push notifications available can be expensive in terms of battery life, so be careful with how you have this set up. Google Music grants you access to the same music catalog from your account, but is usually one version behind Android in terms of features available.
Of course, there’s also Google Maps which offers all of the latest features from Google Navigation and delivers a far superior app over Apple’s current attempt at maps. Chrome for iOS exists as well, but the current iteration of the browser is not nearly as fast as Safari for iOS. If you live and die by the tab sync and unified login that Chrome provides then the browser works, but it’s worth giving Safari a try as well.
Because this is iOS, each of Google’s Apps will require you to log in to them separately, and in no way will you have a unified share or file access across these services (unless you are trying to access the camera roll).
[h=3]Entertainment[/h] Especially if you are using an iPad (or iPad Mini), the big advantage iOS has over Android right now is the wealth of entertainment apps. You’ll find that there is every kind of game for your iDevice offered in a wide variety of prices. Graphically intense games like Dead Trigger will be noticeably smoother on iOS than Android, and will consumer far less battery during extended play sessions.
Apple’s Game Center is well worth exploring, especially if you have friends you want to play games competitively with. Game Center unifies your scores for these games, so even if you wipe your iDevice there’s still a record of your accomplishments in those games. Game Center is an experience that doesn’t exist on Android, and if you play a lot of games is worth having even if you don’t think you will use it.
Streaming video is a big deal on iOS and Android, and while most of the big apps are available for Android there are certainly more of them currently available for all iDevices. You can use iTunes if you’re a fan of the rental experience or if you’d like to purchase and download your videos, but with everything from Netflix to HBO GO available on iOS it isn’t always necessary to use Apple’s service.
Many cable providers now include Live TV streaming services, like the Verizon FIOS app, and only require your login information from your account. If you’ve got a lot of digital content stored on your home network, Plex and other network capable apps can stream content from an available server with no problem.
[h=3]Everything is going to be OK[/h] Moving from an Android smartphone or tablet to iOS will feel a lot like you are borrowing someone else’s computer — it’s basically the same as yours, but nothing works exactly how you expect it to. The overall workflow for iOS and Android is fairly different, despite the platforms offering many of the same apps nowadays.
While Android functions very much like a computer in how it is capable of constantly performing tasks and suffers from the same power and task management drawbacks as a result, iOS offers a targeted approach to accomplishing tasks with some basic overlap for multitasking. It’s more like pausing one thing to go do another instead of actual multitasking in most cases, so it takes some getting used to. Dropbox, for example, is great for grabbing your photos and backing them up instantly on Android, where on iOS you need to open the Dropbox app occasionally in order for it to grab the things it hasn’t backed up since the last time you opened the app.
As you adjust to the new workflow of an iOS product, you’ll find more apps that suit individual purposes, instead of widgets that provide you with a snapshot of features. The Multitask menu, notification tray, and App Store will all feel less useful at first, but it doesn’t take long to realize that things are just done in a different order.
And, because everyone asks us this, here’s how to remove those annoying “Favorites” from Safari in iOS 7…
xxx
More...
Android and iOS differ in one critical way: the level of control you have over the interface. In iOS you’ll find no homescreen replacements, keyboard alternatives, or tools to grant you rapid access to your favorite settings. You won’t be able to look up the best selling Android apps and just seek out the Apple counterparts, because most of those features will require a jailbreak. Apple’s UI is uniform, and unless you jailbreak your new iDevice that’s not going to change.
iOS is wildly different from Android, enough so that you may consider immediately jailbreaking, but for now let’s take a look at what apps you can use to help you move in to your new mobile OS home.
[h=3]Getting Google back[/h] If you’ve been an Android user for any length of time, chances are pretty high that you have been thoroughly integrated into the Google ecosystem. Fortunately, most of your Android experience can be re-created as long as you install all of the Google Apps.
The Google App used to act as a catch-all for Google’s service on iOS that didn’t have their own apps yet, but over the last year Google has made tremendous strides in making sure there are great apps available for their services. In fact, some of the iOS variants of Google’s apps include some fun visual flair that isn’t available on their Android counterparts yet. The Google+ app for iOS is a perfect example of this, complete with their parallax profile images. The Google App now is used primarily for Google Now, which offers a voice assistant service that easily rivals Siri but isn’t nearly as easy to access on iOS.
Google Hangouts and Google Music are also part of the iOS feature set now, but they work a little differently here. Hangouts delivers notifications as they are recognized by iOS instead of when hit your account, so you may occasionally notice delays in messaging unless you have push notifications enabled. If you’re a heavy IM user, having push notifications available can be expensive in terms of battery life, so be careful with how you have this set up. Google Music grants you access to the same music catalog from your account, but is usually one version behind Android in terms of features available.
Of course, there’s also Google Maps which offers all of the latest features from Google Navigation and delivers a far superior app over Apple’s current attempt at maps. Chrome for iOS exists as well, but the current iteration of the browser is not nearly as fast as Safari for iOS. If you live and die by the tab sync and unified login that Chrome provides then the browser works, but it’s worth giving Safari a try as well.
Because this is iOS, each of Google’s Apps will require you to log in to them separately, and in no way will you have a unified share or file access across these services (unless you are trying to access the camera roll).
[h=3]Entertainment[/h] Especially if you are using an iPad (or iPad Mini), the big advantage iOS has over Android right now is the wealth of entertainment apps. You’ll find that there is every kind of game for your iDevice offered in a wide variety of prices. Graphically intense games like Dead Trigger will be noticeably smoother on iOS than Android, and will consumer far less battery during extended play sessions.
Apple’s Game Center is well worth exploring, especially if you have friends you want to play games competitively with. Game Center unifies your scores for these games, so even if you wipe your iDevice there’s still a record of your accomplishments in those games. Game Center is an experience that doesn’t exist on Android, and if you play a lot of games is worth having even if you don’t think you will use it.
Streaming video is a big deal on iOS and Android, and while most of the big apps are available for Android there are certainly more of them currently available for all iDevices. You can use iTunes if you’re a fan of the rental experience or if you’d like to purchase and download your videos, but with everything from Netflix to HBO GO available on iOS it isn’t always necessary to use Apple’s service.
Many cable providers now include Live TV streaming services, like the Verizon FIOS app, and only require your login information from your account. If you’ve got a lot of digital content stored on your home network, Plex and other network capable apps can stream content from an available server with no problem.
[h=3]Everything is going to be OK[/h] Moving from an Android smartphone or tablet to iOS will feel a lot like you are borrowing someone else’s computer — it’s basically the same as yours, but nothing works exactly how you expect it to. The overall workflow for iOS and Android is fairly different, despite the platforms offering many of the same apps nowadays.
While Android functions very much like a computer in how it is capable of constantly performing tasks and suffers from the same power and task management drawbacks as a result, iOS offers a targeted approach to accomplishing tasks with some basic overlap for multitasking. It’s more like pausing one thing to go do another instead of actual multitasking in most cases, so it takes some getting used to. Dropbox, for example, is great for grabbing your photos and backing them up instantly on Android, where on iOS you need to open the Dropbox app occasionally in order for it to grab the things it hasn’t backed up since the last time you opened the app.
As you adjust to the new workflow of an iOS product, you’ll find more apps that suit individual purposes, instead of widgets that provide you with a snapshot of features. The Multitask menu, notification tray, and App Store will all feel less useful at first, but it doesn’t take long to realize that things are just done in a different order.
And, because everyone asks us this, here’s how to remove those annoying “Favorites” from Safari in iOS 7…
xxx
More...
