At WWDC 2019 on Monday, Apple's annual developer conference, the company had a few updates to show off.
One of them was iOS 13, with its bevy of new features coming to iPhones for the first time. Except... Android has had them for years now.?
Images courtesy: Apple
For one thing, iOS 13 is still just a row of icons with limited customization and no themes. Then again, whether that's good or bad is subjective, so we'll go beyond it.
One thing that's coming to iOS for the very first time is a new system-wide dark colour scheme. Toggling it on activates the scheme across all native iPhone apps, making it particularly useful for using your phone at night without being blinded. Dark Mode in iOS13 will also be available to third-party app developers for integration into their own apps. The thing is, Dark Mode has been around since Android 9.0 Pie launched almost a full year ago. And frankly, there's no reason for Apple to wait this long.
Another first for iOS 13 is something called QuickPath. It's a new keyboard typing alternative, that lets you swipe across characters in succession. You know, like Android's own multiple versions of this. In fact at least one of them, SwiftKey, has been around since way back in 2018. So Apple waiting until 2019 to launch this feature, it's a travesty. And people stuck with their iPhones for now (including my wife) are heaving a sigh of relief that at least one common sense feature has finally made a debut.
Another basic feature iOS should have had long ago, that also trails far behind Android, is segmented app permissions. You know, like being able to allow only certain access to an app instead of an all-or-nothing approach. Google figured this out in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and they've improved the modularity of them since then.
There was another topic that was actually covered in the iPadOS part of the presentation, and that's the new Files app. Arguably the biggest change from the event, it actually gives you a folder system with access to local storage on your device. You know, like even third party file apps have allowed you to do on Android for over a decade. This lets you, again need I say FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME, share folders with your iCloud Drive and access files from external storage devices.