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After watching the live blog of Apple’s WWDC, I was at the same time happy for Apple developers, and dismayed for Android and Google users. It seemed Apple was playing catch up to Google, giving Google little left to do to provide the same or better services in its next OS version and their cloud tools. While iOS5 is a great competitor to Gingerbread on phones and Honeycomb on tablets, Ice Cream Sandwich is expected out only a few months after iOS5 becomes publicly available, and is expected to dramatically improve both the phone and tablet OS’s. I enjoy the battles between iOS and Android, because they make both platforms better. I don’t think Google will spend too much time catching up in the few areas iOS 5 is better than Gingerbread/Honeycomb. Here’s a rundown of the new features in OSX, iOS, and iCloud, compared to Google’s offerings.

OSX Lion

Features 1 through 6 are very OS-centric, so we’re going to ignore them, as there’s no real comparison to a Google product, other than Chrome OS, which really is just a browser, not a multitasking machine. However, once we get to feature 7, we start seeing comparisons.

Autosave

Autosave will automatically be saving your text documents as you write them. Hasn’t Office had nearly the same feature for years? And I know Google Docs does, as it almost always says “Saved seconds ago”. Nothing impressive here. Moving along..

Versions

Versions will allow you to revert to previous versions, or combine parts from a previous revision with this revision. I’ve never used this feature on Office, but I believe it is there (correct me if I’m wrong) if you are using collaboration, and I certainly use this all the time on Google Docs (go to File -> See Revision History). Still, this is something I think Mac users rightfully expect, and is the evolution of Time Capsule technology.

Airdrop

Share a document! You could certainly share a document in Office, but it usually involved email. Airdrop will automatically find people using, presumably, your contacts. This is a standard, and one of the most useful, features of all of Google Docs. Not to mention, when you share a Doc in Google Docs, you also get in-Doc chatting, and watch as your collaborators type (thank you Google Wave!).

Mail

I know some people still use desktop mail clients. My first account was on AOL, then Hotmail, then GMail shortly after they released the invite only beta. I don’t see the appeal. Honestly, I thought the reason for a desktop mail client was because it was more powerful than a web client. It certainly looks better than GMail. However, the new features like search have been a central part of GMail since inception. Conversation view is similar to GMail’s but does look a bit better. Auto-completion also is added, and looked less intelligent compared to the GMail version. Mail still has all the shortcomings of a desktop client, such as not being available everywhere, with all data backed up and spread across the cloud.

iOS 5

Notifications

They might as well have just converted Android’s Java code directly to Objective C for this “new” feature. It even looks the same. Aren’t they suing Google manufacturers over stuff like this?

News Stand

Looks like the love child of iBooks and Google Reader. I don’t generally get e-magazines, so I can’t tell you if there’s any real advantage here, other than getting new issues automatically, like RSS always has. Looks gorgeous though.

Twitter Integration

This is a toss up. Android has provided integration to anyone who wanted to provide it, by simply registering with the “Share” menu. However, I’d assume the tight, OS level integration has some advantages. It comes down to personal choice whether you want more options or better integration. I’ll stick with Android, and my ability to share with Facebook, Picasa, Dropbox, etc.

Tabbed Safari

I can’t believe this wasn’t in the first version, honestly. It is in the desktop version, and makes sense for the iPad. Honeycomb had this on day one.

Reminders

Much like Twitter integration, this is a toss up over tighter integration vs. choice. Reminders gives you a standard task list for the OS. I enjoy using Google Tasks, as it shows up in my GMail, calendar, and my tasks widget/app on Android. I think Reminders is a good idea, but the lack of openness and accessibility outside iOS severely limits its usefulness to “call wife when I leave” and “get milk later”, rather than a full list of things I’d like to get done in the next few weeks, months, or years.

Camera on Lock Screen and Photo Editing

This one definitely goes to Apple. I have a camera slider on my lock screen, courtesy of Widget Locker, but it merely opens the app so I can take a picture, rather than just providing a way take a picture from the lock screen. I can imagine there will be a lot more pocket pictures though! Also, iOS now has photo editing integrated into the OS. Once again, the winner is decided by whether you want tight integration or to pick from the long list of existing editers.

Mail

Visually, I thought this was GMail for Honeycomb. However, Apple does add in rich text formatting (which I’ve never used), and SMIME support for enterprise (something both GMail and the clients could really use). Functionality looks pretty good on iOS.

iPad Thumb Keyboard

After using my Galaxy Tab 10.1 for a bit, I had to find a new keyboard. The aptly named Thumb Keyboard is a replacement keyboard, much like you can replace the stock keyboard with Swype. It moves the important letters to the edge of the screen to facilitate typing while holding the tablet. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t allow alternate keyboards, so if you want something else, better petition Steve Jobs.

PC Free

Probably one of the most annoying features of iOS devices was having to plug them in for syncing and upgrades. No more! It has to be mentioned that Android has had this since day 1, and I only plug in my phone to root it and occasionally sync music, though those days are gone due to Google Music.

Game Center

Apple gets a big thumbs up for this. Game Center allows you to game with friends and get a social spin on gaming. Great stuff, and rumors something similar may be on the way to Android. Both OS’s have games with private multiplayer similar to this, but not system wide like Game Center.

iMessage

Interesting combo of Blackberry Messenger (BBM) and texting. Apple wins out over Google Talk because it has photo and video sharing, and delivery/read receipts like BBM. On the other hand, Google Talk doesn’t have photo/video sharing (which can be done via email, MMS, etc) or delivery/read receipts. It does have video chat as of Android 2.3.4 and up (like Facetime), which is awesome. Both have push notifications for less battery usage and great speeds. Google Chat is available as a desktop client, in GMail, and can add people on AIM, making it more open and far more useful in my opinion. I’d hate to only be able to talk to people with a certain phone OS.

iCloud

Contacts, Calendar, Mail

Google Contacts, Google Calendar, GMail are about the same, but have been around for quite some time, and sync with Android in a glorious fashion.

App Store

On both OS’s, all purchased apps are available on all device with that OS. However, Android Market has a very helpful web interface, which the App Store could use.

Books

Synced across devices, just like Google Books/Google Market/Kindle (on both OS’s). Nothing amazing..

Backup

Backup will backup apps and user data. Google introduced an API doing the same in Android 2.2, though it seems the tight integration in iOS is better and more helpful.

Pages, Numbers, Keynote

Basically, Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Presentation.

Photo Stream

A winner for iOS! Take your pictures, and they are uploaded to the cloud for 30 days, and synced to all devices. Certainly appealing and helpful! Hopefully coming to Android soon!

Music

Apple’s iCloud Music was one of the most anticipated announcements of the keynote. iCloud and Google Music are on different levels though, since Google Music allows streaming, which isn’t available on iOS. On the other hand, iOS allows you to buy music directly from them without lengthy upload times.  Apple also allows you to scan your non-iTunes music to get it uploaded with a service called iTunes Match, with 5GB of storage costing $25/year. Google Music is free for now (and will likely remain free for most libraries, knowing Google). The two big differences are uploads and streaming. To get any music to Google Music, you upload your own files, which can (and did for about 2,000 songs for me) take a long time. Comparatively, if you buy the extra iTunes Match service, it will scan your music, and if it finds a copy, it will provide a high quality audio version of that song to all your devices. For purchased songs, they will be synced between all your devices. Google provides all of its music via streaming, with the ability to “pin” items to your devices, to make them available offline. Here’s the issue: if you have more music than space on a device (like the 100GB of music I have vs my 8GB phone or even 32GB tablet), Google Music will let me stream all of it, and store only what I really want offline. It is unclear how Apple will handle this, but based on the platform as it stands, you’ll just have to pick and choose which devices gets which music. It is also unclear if you will be able to stream those songs to a computer without your iTunes account, whereas Google Music just streams via a website on any computer. You can’t choose which is better until Apple explains how it will deal with this, and how much Google will charge (if anything). Both are compelling, and I love Google Music so far and use it every day.

What Android Has Over iOS

One of my favorite features that was announced for Android Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich is USB host mode. Your phone can be a host to any USB device, like your camera, a flash drive, external hard drive, or even a keyboard and mouse. This really changes how you sync things to your phone, and a keyboard and mouse plus a tablet opens up unlimited possibilities. Android also showed off some cool things at Google I/O, such as the Hardware Development Kit, allowing Android to interface with custom built hardware or even robots.

I know Apple is going for supreme simplicity with its launcher, but I think it is time widgets are introduced. Many daily tasks are preformed simply in widgets on both my phone and tablet. Weather updates, Google Analytics for some of my sites, settings control, music controls, and many others are controlled without finding and opening an app. This is even more pronounced on my tablet, where I have much more space, and nicer widgets as of Honeycomb 3.1. I think Apple dropped the ball by sticking to the boring launcher they have now. Hopefully they fix this soon.

Conclusion

Overall, I was disappointed by Apple. It wasn’t an impressive keynote, and there isn’t a single feature announced that would make me think twice about switching to OSX/iOS (though I do intend to buy a Macbook for the nicer hardware and run Linux on it). Maybe I’m just jaded from Google I/O. Apple didn’t give us that “glimpse of the future” that the Android ADK and Android @Home gave us. Hopefully, when the new Macbook Airs (fingers crossed) and iPhone 5 are announced, we’ll get a better showing. Competition is vital, and I don’t want to see Apple go the way of Windows Mobile, WebOS, and Blackberry OS.