How Apple got widgets right on iOS
Although, widgets arrived a little late on iOS, Apple nailed it.
Apple announced widgets for iOS this year at WWDC as a part of its Extensibility feature. They were the first ones to offer it on Desktop with the original Macintosh but are the last ones to do it on mobile. Anyway, it’s all about getting it right.
Android users have been enjoying widgets for a very long time on their home screens and Windows Phone offers tiles which act as both widgets and app launchers/icons. WWDC 14 has put an end to all the widget concepts people imagined for iOS. Apple first brought Weather and Stocks widgets in iOS 5 and later added interactive widgets of its apps — Remainders and Calendar in iOS 7. Now, third party apps can offer widgets that appear in ‘Today’ view on the Notification Center.
Simplicity
Widgets in Android can be added to the home screen by either long tapping on the home screen or from the ‘Widgets’ view in some versions. Windows Phone offers a Start screen where one can pin apps from the app list which acts as widgets if the tile size if either medium or large and becomes an icon if the tile is small. On iOS, widgets appear in the Today view when users add them by tapping the edit button. Apple made it so easy that all your widgets are just a swipe away from anywhere even if you are inside an app. Now, compare this to Android where one has to exit an app then tap home again to go to the home screen if the app was launched from the apps grid and then change to the desired home screen, view the widget information and then comeback to the app either from the recent apps or tapping from the home screen if it was added. To go the Start screen, one has to exit the app on Windows Phone which is something similar to Android. But the biggest limitation on Windows Phone is that the users can’t interact and most of the times apps show outdated data which makes the whole idea silly.
Smooth Scrolling
To view various widgets on Android multiple swipes are required from the current home screen to reach the desired home screen. On iOS, you just scroll. When Apple moved the Spotlight Search from the leftmost screen to a simple swipe down on the home screen in iOS 7, I imagined that they would bring widgets there with scrolling just like the ‘Today’ view. Thankfully they didn’t do it as that would have destroyed the simplicity of accessing the widgets anywhere. Google Now Cards offer something similar but the APIs are not opened for all third party apps and is limited currently to Google’s services.
No Redundancy
Android is always known for its redundancy or bloatware i.e at least two system apps(Photos-Gallery etc) for one task. With Google Now Cards, it has extended to quick glance info like widgets. Weather info can be seen on the home screen on a widget, in Google Now and again on the Google Now widget on the home screen if you have added it.
Apple never encourages redundancy and controls the whole experience to make it intuitive and simple. Siri replaced Voice Control feature and it was designed to be a personal assistant to a user and won’t perform any action unless a user asks it. That’s where ‘Today Extensions’ come into the game. It’s like Apple asked the developers (including Google) to build something more powerful than Google Now Cards for them. And, the extensions are widgets as well.
Multitasking
When iOS 8 launches, thousands of widgets will be available for users. So, the core functionality of all the apps becomes available in a single place. It is aptly named ‘Today’ as it displays all the info from your apps and their current states like a magazine app which displays news from your favorite sites. This is a better multitasking implementation as one can do various things like control lighting in the room using Philips widget to checking your tweets,news headlines etc without even leaving the current app you are in. Multitasking just doesn’t mean displaying more number of apps at a time on screen.
“We value utility above all else. We don’t add features simply because we can, because it’s technologically possible. We add features only when they’re truly useful. And we add them in a way that makes sense.” — Apple
Apple takes its own sweet time to implement something and they release it only when it gets it correct. They surely got it right with widgets.
