While Samsung is trying to recruit current iPhone users as customers with a free “test drive,” Apple also wants to recruit new users for the iPhone. To make the move easier for future customers, Apple introduced its first-ever Android app to help them transition. This app is available in the Google Play store, so you can guess what happened next.
There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to move from one smartphone platform to another. Our staff is multi-platform, and we don’t judge. It’s also important to us to help people who have problems moving from iOS to other phone platforms. However, among some reviewers over at Google Play, the audacity of Apple to help people switch platforms and to design the app to look like their own products is simply too much.
Rages one reviewer:
An Android app looking like a iOS?? IMHO, Apple should have showed some respect and followed android material design! How does Google allow such kind of thing? Come on!!!
Its average review dipped to one star earlier today, and there were unfortunate references to lobotomies and brainwashing. Now the average score has now reached two stars, perhaps since some Apple fans or people with a sense of proportion stepped in.
The app moves over a user’s contacts, text message history, photos and videos, e-mail accounts, and calendars. That eases the transition, and if it works correctly would be a fun and very useful product.
However, it’s worth noting that an app meant to do the reverse wouldn’t appear in Apple’s own iOS App Store: its rules prohibit software that promotes other mobile operating systems. Whoops.
Apple’s New Android App Helps You Move to Apple [Digits]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist