Marco Arment, the developer of Instapaper, shares his thoughts on why he sees iOS 7 as defense by Apple. In other words, it’s going to be difficult for competitors to replicate this version of the mobile operating system:
Copying iOS 7 is going to be a big problem for cheap hardware. iOS 7’s appearance and dynamics require a powerful GPU and advanced, finely tuned, fully hardware-accelerated graphics and animation APIs. This will hurt web imitators most, but it’s also going to be problematic for Android: while high-end Android phones have mostly caught up in GPU performance, and recent Android versions have improved UI acceleration, most Android devices sold are neither high-end nor up-to-date. The gap is much wider in tablets, and even “high-end” tablets usually have insufficient GPU power to drive their high-DPI screens.
Apple’s even attacking Android’s screen technologies by making heavy use of 1-pixel-wide lines on Retina screens. Most Android phones have high-DPI screens, too, but their feature-checklist battles have actually driven many of them to have too-dense resolutions for 1-pixel lines to be useful. And many Android phones, notably including almost all Samsung Galaxy models, cheat on resolution by using PenTile screens, which poorly render text and thin lines.
The theme is clear: iOS 7’s UI requires some of Apple’s biggest strengths, and efforts to copy it will be hindered by some of Android’s biggest weaknesses.
One thing is for sure: iOS 7 is polarizing. The design is so different compared to iOS 6, any attempts to replicate it will be obvious. Arment shares some interesting thoughts–check them out here.
Arment’s thoughts are similar along the lines of Allen Pike, who says:
iOS 7 was clearly designed to show off what’s possible in 2013. As a side effect, they’ve embraced conventions that will be hard to emulate with commodity hardware or web tech.
What do you think? Will we start to eventually see the ‘cloning’ of iOS 7?
[via Daring Fireball]
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Can’t tell if serious…
I really don’t get this.
Who is trying to copy iOS 7 may I ask? I don’t see anyone copying iOS 6, so why would anyone copy iOS 7? Many iOS 7 features such as the Control Center is actually a copy of practically a standard feature in other smart phones.
So I totally don’t see the point of this article at all.
Actually Control center is a and old JB tweak that others have on their phones now.
Read both source articles.
Didn’t iOS copy every other system? Who’s copying who?
Actually iOS hasn’t changed all that much in years. So no they haven’t. All the changes you have seen over the years have been seen before in JB not in Android.
While you all seem to forget, Samsung earlier attempts at a smart phone copied everything related to the iphone, including os. All the icon driven set up on Android was that way. As time moves on, they hide behind widgets and the like. but its the reason why they are getting sued by Apple. Now its a standard, and the only phone that hasn’t copied is WP7 original. And there are tons of copies in China even today. But since iOS 7 is finally the update that the phone needed, they feel it will be copied like iOS 3 was. You will see lots of cheap knockoffs that will try to look like iOS 7, but they wont have the power, or the screen res.
Gonna have to unfollow this blog soon if the crap posts keep coming.
Yeah, I am with ya. Put my hands up in protest and whine like a little baby because you’re unhappy with one post. Get over yourself, don’t forget to pick up your purse on the way out
So the HTC One is not a “high end” phone? In what world?
So does this mean that IOS 7 is going to bog down 4S phones to the point where a person wished they stayed with IOS 6?