Pocket Realities

Daring Fireball: Meanwhile, Over in Androidtown:

Google’s Android system software and first-party apps try. (The Chrome Android app in particular is iOS-caliber. Not iOS-style, but iOS-caliber, in terms of fluidity, originality, and attention to detail.) The Instagram app for Android tries. But for the most part, it seems like third-party Android apps don’t even try to achieve the look-and-feel comfort, fun, and panache of iOS apps. It’s a weird thing. The chasm between how iOS and Android apps look and feel is growing, not shrinking. The opposite happened with the Mac and Windows back in the ’90s. Windows itself and Windows software in the Window 3.x era were just awful. Starting with Windows 95, the gap closed significantly. Spending a few hours perusing the state of the art in Android Mastodon clients gives me the distinct impression that Android is forever stuck in its Window 3.x era of UI polish and design. It’s rough.