Two months ago, iOS 7 was introduced, Apple’s new mobile operating system. If you watched the official keynote, all attendees welcomed the news by cheering, but not everyone ended up convinced.
Nearly 200 million users will receive the update this fall, but without doubt, what people are talking the most about is the redesigned color palette that Jony Ive has created: departing from textures that simulate real world objects, the new interface is minimalist, colorful and it’s even the source for memes.
However, what I find more interesting about iOS 7 is the fact that several of the new features seem to be inspired by other products, and this isn’t in my opinion a bad thing necessarily . After the keynote, tens of blogs rushed to compare iOS 7 with Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry 10 and even WebOS, listing the features that Apple has “copied”; it was then when I started thinking of how used some people are to shout “copycats!”… does it really make sense?
Apple has not only been inspired by other products, but they have improved most of the features that they supposedly copied: Control Center seamlessly integrates with any other task that the user is currently doing thanks to the new transparencies that Android lacks, the multitasking interface is the perfect combination between WebOS and Windows Phone, etc.
The point is not how similar is iOS 7 to other operating systems, but what will be the next improvement that a simple feature like the interface to answer calls can receive so that the experience is even more natural and user-friendly. Which company will introduce the next big improvement for something that we already know?
That’s what makes technology move forward; in time, certain changes become the standard and users get so used to them that it’s almost impossible for them to imagine their experience without those changes. Who could imagine today a web browser without tabs?
In the end, this whole battle of alleged plagiarism leads to one point: the perfect mobile OS. The question is: who will arrive first?
Geek on record 