Great artists steal: The iOS 8 features inspired by Android

Apple has taken the wraps off iOS 8, its newest mobile operating system, at its WWDC keynote. There were lots of new features added to iOS, but any observer familiar with Android saw quite a few things that seem... familiar. That's because many of Apple's announced upgrades were things the Android OS has boasted for years.

Typing suggestions

Apple added a little bar of suggestions to the top of the keyboard, which Android had (initially as an option) since the introduction of the on-screen keyboard in Android 1.5. While Android's keyboard just blindly does word pairs, iOS 8 seems to be able to intelligently offer suggestions in response to an "A" or "B" question. In the example, a friend asks about "dinner or a movie." Without typing anything, iOS offers "A movie," "Dinner," and "Not Sure." If this actually works reliably, it's a big step above the Android keyboard. Of course, we're just comparing this to the standard Google Keyboard available through Google Play. That's not the only typing solution on Android, which brings us to...

Third party keyboards

Apple finally relinquished its grip on the system keyboard, allowing third parties to replace Apple's solution with something of their own. This was another thing Android had with its initial implementation of on-screen typing in Android 1.5. Apple even showed off an iOS version of Swype, one of the most popular third-party Android keyboards. We've already heard from Swiftkey, the other most popular Android keyboard, that it is working on a system-wide iOS 8 version, too.

Until now, third-party iOS keyboards could only work as a standalone app with their own typing interface. For instance, Fleksy could only work in the Flexy app, not in any other app. Fleksy made a workaround for this with an API that other apps could plug in to, but this required developers to add support on an app by app basis. (Fleksy has also announced that it will be adapting its keyboard to use Apple's new APIs.)

With user-replaceable system-wide keyboards, iOS users should be in for a wild ride of text input nirvana. Opening up the keyboard to third parties on Android has enabled tons of innovation, sometimes very useful (like Swype) and sometimes downright weird. Even users that don't switch to a third-party keyboard will eventually see a benefit, as, like Google, Apple will be able to see which keyboards become popular with users and adopt some of those ideas (like Swyping).

Inter-app communication

 iOS apps are no longer siloed in their own little boxes in iOS 8. Apple has implemented cross-app communication that works much like the Intents system in Android, though Apple's APIs are more restrictive. The previous method for moving something from a photo editor to Google+ on iOS would involve saving the picture, going to the home screen, opening Google+, opening the camera roll, and finding the picture again. Now (presumably) you'll just be able to hit share from the photo editor and pick "Google+."

What Apple still doesn't do is allow third-party applications to be set as the default. In Android, you can also pick default apps for things like a browser, music player, maps, or photo picker, making those third-party apps feel more like native parts of the OS. It's hard to imagine Apple allowing users to completely replace its apps with an alternative, but yesterday we would have said it's hard to imagine Apple allowing users to replace its keyboard.

Hotwords, music recognition, and streaming voice recognition

Google released Voice Actions, Apple released Siri, then Google countered with Google Now. Since then, the two have been compared in countless voice recognition shoot outs.

Google was the first to experiment with hotword detection on Google Glass and again later on in the Google Now Launcher that shipped with the Nexus 5. As long as the device was awake, saying "OK Google" would fire up the voice recognizer without having to touch the device. Now, iOS 8 matches that with "Hey Siri," which you can shout at the device to have it start listening.

Hotword detection means the mic is hot all the time, and the device is constantly processing the input. This means battery life is a big concern. The Google Now Launcher and Google Glass only do hotword detection when the screen is on, but the Moto X managed to solve the battery problem with a dedicated voice processor, enabling always-on voice recognition with decent runtime. Apple's current hardware includes no such coprocessor, so iOS 8 hotword detection comes with a big caveat: it only works when the device is plugged in.

Another new Siri feature is integrated music recognition, powered by Shazam. Google released a sound search app in 2012, and it had music recognition integrated into Google voice search for a while now. Shazam was founded in 1999, so while Google integrated it into their devices first, Shazam is one of the earliest voice recognition programs (and the company has offered a dedicated iOS app for some time).

Siri is also getting streaming voice recognition in iOS 8, another feature Google Now already has. Siri currently does voice recognition in a big brick. You speak into the microphone, the entire phrase is packaged up, sent to Apple, processed, and sent back. Streaming voice recognition sends each word to the server and back, meaning you can see the recognition as you speak. It's much nicer than getting a big block of text back all at once, especially for voice typing.

Google Now is one of the big differentiators Google has over Apple. Google's voice assistant is all done in-house. The voice recognition technology is Google's, as is the music recognition and answer service. Siri was originally a third-party app done by a small development studio, and it's really a collection of third-party services that Apple doesn't own. Siri's voice recognition is powered by Nuance. As we just learned, the music recognition is powered by Shazam, and most of the answers come from Wolfram Alpha or Bing. Google's total control over everything allows it to implement things like hotword detection and streaming voice recognition sooner than Apple. Ultimately, voice recognition is really a search engine, so it makes sense that Google excels in this area.