Ethan Smith:

These changes mean that users can now search for app content directly from Google search and even have app content pushed to them within the Android operating system. Apple recently announced its own search engine, launching with iOS 9 and El Capitan this fall. Users will be able to search for content directly from their devices via Spotlight and Safari search.

All these changes signal that Google and Apple are actively working to move search from the web directly to your device and to make app content as easy to discover as a web page. […]

In the new world of SEO, those who own the operating system own the search experience. Google’s Android operating system will give Google further leverage to increase its share of search. And with 43 percent of mobile users powered by iOS, Apple will immediately become a major player in search. The biggest losers will be companies like Microsoft, which has struggled to gain traction with Windows mobile devices, and Yahoo, Ask, and AOL, which have no mobile operating system strategy.

As an Apple enthusiast, this excites me.

As a web developer, this terrifies me.

As a person UX designer, I know that people will always naturally take the path of least resistance, which means this could very well become a reality.

A security writer, loyal Android user, and self-proclaimed Apple-hater, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, explains why he's saying goodbye to Android:

Google still has very little control over software updates, and Android users are basically at the mercy of their carriers and phone manufacturers when it comes to getting updates or new operating system versions. For example, it took Sony more than six months to push Android 5.0 Lollipop to its new line of Xperia Z phones, despite the fact that it had promised for a much shorter turnaround after Lollipop was released by Google. Just for comparison’s sake, when Apple released iOS 8 in September of last year, it immediately became available for all iPhone users, even those with an 2011 iPhone 4S.

As security expert Cem Paya put it, that was a conscious decision Google made when it created Android. Paya called it a Faustian deal: “cede control over Android, get market-share against iPhone.” Basically, Google was happy to let carriers put their bloatware on their Android phones in exchange to having a chance to fight Apple for in the mobile market. The tradeoff was giving carriers and manufacturers control over their Android releases, leaving Google unable to centrally push out operating system updates.

Some carriers and manufacturers are better than others, it’s true, but they all pretty much suck when it comes to pushing updates. There really isn’t a better way to put it.

As security researcher Nicholas Weaver put it in a (now deleted) tweet, ”Imagine if Windows patches had to pass through Dell and your ISP before they came to you? And neither cared? That is called Android.”

Some people look at the mobile landscape as a battle of brands/fanboys: Google vs. Apple.

Some people look at it as a battle of ideals: open vs. proprietary.

But really what it boils down to is a battle of execution. With a closed, proprietary system, Apple is able to execute their vision faster than anyone else. When Google wants to push security updates or new features to all Android users, they simply can't.

Mark D. Mill:

First, transit. Getting transit directions in China was far more important for Apple than getting US transit directions. Consider just a few numbers:

• The US has ten cities with a population over 1 million. China has 171.
• The US has 34 cities with a population over 500,000. China has 450.
• In 2014, China had 62M vehicles of all kinds registered, in a country of 1.3 billion. This is expected to reach 200M by 2020.

Most people in China get transportation by public transit. Having a mapping service in China without transit directions would be like having one in the US without driving directions. Apple hit this hard:

• Apple developed transit directions for just 10 cities in the non-China world, but over 300 cities in China.
• The non-China cities for which Apple has transit directions have a combined population of about 38M. Just the 9 listed cities in China have a combined population of over 130M.

Second, improved battery life & reduced OS upgrade size. These upgrades do not exclusively benefit China, but they were important upgrades in China. In the last years, as I’ve talked with non-Apple users in China, the number one reason they bought another brand was because of screen size, which Apple solved with iPhone 6/6+. The number two reason was poor battery life. Apple getting an extra hour of battery life was important; getting 3 more hours in battery savings mode is huge for the hundreds of millions of people who commute on public transportation without a power source.

Reducing the size of the OS upgrade, likewise, is important for China and the developing world, where the phone is often the only computer. When I didn’t have enough free space to upgrade, I could just upgrade via iTunes on my Mac. For many iPhone users in China for whom iPhone is their only computer, that was never an option. There are a lot of people still on iOS 7 in China as a result

Every once in a while, Apple puts out "Snow Leopard" type releases that are primarily filled with "boring" refinements. On the surface, people can look at that as a sign that Apple no longer innovates. But really, Apple uses these "boring" OS releases to add important updates that are actually huge to other specific markets.

In the past, Apple focused on features targeted at the enterprise market.

This time, with iOS 9, Apple is going all in on China.

9to5mac:

In order to avoid the sluggishness and bugginess that was most notably seen in iOS 7 for the iPhone 4, Apple has restructured its software engineering process to better support older hardware.

Instead of developing a feature-complete version of iOS 9 for older hardware and then removing a handful of features that do not perform well during testing, Apple is now building a core version of iOS 9 that runs efficiently on older A5 devices, then enabling each properly performing feature one-by-one. Thanks to this new approach, an entire generation (or two) of iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches will be iOS 9-compatible rather than reaching the end of the iOS line.

Great news. In addition to better performance on older devices:

• slow iPhone/iPad upgraders will be able to run the latest versions of third-party apps
• older iPhone/iPad users will get the latest security updates
• app developers can spend less time/resources on supporting older iOS versions
• third-party apps will progress faster

This is the perfect way to visualize the current smartphone landscape. While Apple has "only 20%," it completely dominates the premium end. Android dominates the rest of the current installed base (mostly the mid-range). The low-end market is all up for grabs.

Ben Bajarin brings up the important questions for Android going forward:

Google has a base of rapidly maturing customers (just over a billion of them) who will continue to expect innovation around the platform in areas they consider valuable. Areas around cloud, imaging, sensors, and so much more. Android’s current user base is increasing in their sophistication. As computing advances, so should Android for this customer set. Yet, in this next phase, Google is going to also want Android to appeal to a first time smartphone user, say a farmer in Africa, for example. So the question is, how does Google evolve Android to cater to both their most sophisticated, demanding, and profitable existing customers, and a first time customer in Africa who is absolutely not PC literate and may not be literate at all? This creates a fundamental problem at a platform level and at a business model level, for Google. This is why I say we can’t make assumptions about which platform will win with the next two billion. The user base in question is using feature phones today. They make calls and have type literacy around 10 key and or radio/TV dials. This is the extent of their technical literacy with electronics. It is in addressing this next phase of mobile where I believe the Android schism happens.

Could it be an Android fork like Cyanogen has the most potential in this next phase? Could it be Windows Phone has an opportunity? Or maybe a web platform version like FireFox OS, that simplifies everything to web apps? Or perhaps Google figures it out, or comes up with something completely different than Android to address this new set of customers. The point is, we have no idea. It is a green field. It is uncharted territory for computing.

Benedict Evans:

One way to look at this is that iOS and Android have been converging - they arrived with more or less the same capabilities despite starting from opposite ends. Apple has given up control where Google has taken it. And of course Google has had to add lots to Android just as Apple had to add lots to iOS (and they've generally 'inspired' each other on the way), and just as Apple has added cloud services Google has redesigned the user interface (twice, so far).

But the underlying philosophies remain very different - for Apple the device is smart and the cloud is dumb storage, while for Google the cloud is smart and the device is dumb glass. Those assumptions and trade-offs remain very strongly entrenched. Meanwhile, the next phases of smartphones (messaging apps as platforms and watches as a dominant interface?) will test all the assumptions again.

AppleInsider:

Now Android fans are probably already thinking, "well with an Android device, I can add an SD Card for more storage!" In fact, that's what Samsung itself recommended Galaxy S4 users do in early 2013 to make up for the fact that Android and bundled apps were wasting nearly half the available advertised storage.

However, SD Cards don't work like built-in storage; they're more like a floppy drive. They offer no security because they use Microsoft's FAT file system, which does not support file or user permissions, enabling any rogue app to read and steal personal data and making it far more difficult for end users or enterprises to secure their devices.

SD Card's lack of file and user account security—along with the related problems of potentially removable storage in a mobile device (there are many)—prompted Apple to never rely upon SD Cards for memory expansion on its iPods and iOS devices, even though it did make it possible to use external SD Cards with iPods, Macs and iOS devices via USB.

Google initially supported internal SD Card slots to help make Android devices cheaper, but the security and usability issues finally prompted Google to remove SD Card support in its 2013 release of Android 4.4 KitKat.

After installing KitKat, Android users found that their SD Cards no longer work, or can only be used in very specific ways, not as general purpose storage for things like apps and the user's photo library. Users who bought a Galaxy S4 and took Samsung's advice to make up for lost storage via SD Cards were subsequently left SD-out of luck.

I remember constantly hearing two arguments against Apple for omitting SD cards:

• "Apple is greedy and just scams everyone into buying the more expensive models!"
• "Apple doesn't innovate! They can't even put SD cards in their phones!"

The reality that these deaf ears refuse to understand: Apple always has and always will prioritize battery life and security for their mobile devices.

John Gruber:

I also understand the product marketing angle. That there are a lot of people who will look at the 16 GB models, see that they can get four times the storage for just $100 more, and buy the 64 GB model instead — when they would’ve bought the base model if it were 32 GB. I get it. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s good short-term business sense to go with a 16/64/128 lineup instead of 32/64/128. But Apple is not a short-term business. They’re a long-term business, built on a relationship of trust with repeat customers. 16 GB iPads work against the foundation of Apple’s brand, which is that they only make good products.

Apple has long used three-tier pricing structures within individual product categories. They often used to label them “Good”, “Better”, and “Best”. Now, with these 16 GB entry-level devices, it’s more like “Are you sure?”, “Better”, and “Best”.

Using the 16GB as a decoy price to make the 64GB more attractive is a great business strategy, but this only hurts customers and Apple in the longrun.

The biggest reason why people don't upgrade their iOS is because they don't have enough space on their devices and they have no idea how to manage it. Telling them, "just install via iTunes" is not enough. I know a lot of people that have never synced their devices with a PC. In fact, in many cases, they don't even have a PC to sync with in the first place. So what do they do? They don't upgrade. Ever.

The negative effects only grow from there. This Apple ecosystem becomes fragmented for developers because customers are spread out across different versions. This gives customers a fragmented experience because they have multiple Apple devices running different versions and can't take advantage of the killer integrations.

This is the exact opposite of Apple's "it just works" mantra.

Seriously, Apple. Don't turn into the greedy consumer electronics company that Apple-haters say you are. Don't sacrifice the ecosystem and user experience just to make more money in the short-term.

Customers like me are loyal to you for a reason. Please don't fuck it up.

Arstechnica has a great (somewhat technical) rundown of how iOS 8's implementation is much smarter and more secure than Android's.

Scott Hurff:

Apple's iMessage upgrades show how the company is embracing the ways people have evolved their use of iMessage, and shows a bold willingness to adapt the “most frequently used app on iOS” to the new daily habits of its customers.

This update shows that Apple is keenly aware of the changing habits of their customer base, and I think this is going to be the most important change in iOS since Apple added “swipe up” access to the Camera in iOS 6.

These design details are so, so good.

On top of this, there are two more great additions that I love:

• temporary location sharing, which makes coordinating nights out with friends a lot easier.
• the ability to send/receive text messages on my Mac.

For the first time ever, I'm considering giving up on Google Voice/Hangouts and committing to the new iMessage.