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Apple Ripped Off Android — and Made Its Features Much Better

‘The list of reasons to stay with Android has grown ever shorter’

Owen Williams
OneZero
Published in
4 min readJul 10, 2020

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Photo: Apple

When Apple unveiled iOS 14 at WWDC, its yearly developer conference, the company showed off some big features coming to the iPhone later this year — like widgets that allow users to bring content from inside their apps to the home screen, and picture-in-picture video. Android fans were quick to point out something obvious: Many of the features announced at WWDC have been available for years on their devices, and Apple is playing catch-up.

They aren’t wrong. Widgets have been a part of Android since its inception, allowing users to put weather, clocks, and whatever else they like on their home screens, rather than a sea of app icons. Similarly, picture-in-picture video debuted as a part of Android 8, released in 2017.

While it’s true that many of iOS’ features debut on Android in some form first, those same critics are missing a key point: Apple may be late to the game, but they’ll likely do a much better job of integrating these features into their products than the competition. I switched to Android a few years ago when Google released the Pixel because I was tired of waiting for some of these features, but after this year’s event, I find…

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Owen Williams
OneZero

Fascinated by how code and design is shaping the world. I write about the why behind tech news. Design Manager in Tech. https://twitter.com/ow