If you had asked me a few years ago whether I’d be interested in buying an Android device, I’d have laughed at you. I mean that literally: I would have laughed aloud. And yet, that’s exactly what I did a week ago. I bought a Nexus 5.
I’ve been using Google Apps for at least ten years, getting my first Gmail account just a few months after the service launched in beta in 2004. I’ve organized my entire life in Google Calendar, discovered countless writers through Google Reader (RIP), and hardly even fathomed any other search engine. And over those years, I’ve spent countless hours trying to get my beloved Google Apps to play nicely with Apple’s operating systems — time well spent, because iOS was far, far better than Android. But that’s not the case, anymore.
Last week, at Google I/O, they announced a new design language called “Material Design.” It’s goal is ambitious: to “develop a single underlying system that allows for a unified experience across platforms and device sizes.” Like a lot of people, I spent the next few days reading through the new design guidelines, and I was really taken aback by how beautifully well done it all was. “Material” made sense to me on an intuitive level, and the potential for finally elevating Google Apps to a first-class status in my toolkit was compelling. I wanted to try it myself — to see if it was as good as it looked on paper — so I bought a Nexus 5 and installed the Android L developer preview on it.
Now, it’s early days, and many of Android’s native apps have yet to receive the new “Material” treatment, but I’m pleasantly surprised to say that I’m loving it. In particular, the way that Google Apps is so heavily integrated throughout everything makes using the Nexus incredibly simple and intuitive for me. Things are always in sync between Google Apps and my phone with almost no effort required on my part, and because my Google account is integrated with the OS at a core level I can log into new services and apps seamlessly. It’s a fantastic level of cloud integration that I never even conceived of on iOS.
Now, this is only true for me because I’m such a heavy Google Apps user. In fact, as part of this shift I’ve consolidated all my many Google Apps accounts into a single login, and I’m using all the services directly through the web interface in Google Chrome. That’s been a game changer in my experience with Google’s software, because — as Apple is so fond of saying — everything “just works.” This is especially true of Google Now, which I’ve been increasingly finding a valuable “always on” service unlike anything Siri had ever offered me.
(A note on privacy concerns: as I mentioned, I’ve been using Google Apps for 10+ years. I understand their business model, and that they’re collecting massive amounts of data on what I do online. But unlike other businesses — Facebook, for example — Google is leveraging that data to provide me with an incredibly useful and interconnected suite of services. I’m willing to knowingly make that trade off.)
I read a blog post by Benedict Evans this morning in which he argued that this year’s WWDC and Google I/O events represented a significant shift in the companies’ approaches to the cloud. Apple is focused on the cloud as an enabler of rich native apps, while Google is aiming to blur the difference between the apps and the web entirely. I think that’s right, and in that dichotomy I’m finding myself solidly in agreement with Google’s approach.
I love that I get a consistent Google experience whether I’m on my Nexus or my desktop, and that’ll only be more true as “Material Design” is deployed across Google’s services. Moving to Android has allowed me to place the software that I actually use at the center of my digital experience across platforms and devices. And as for the third-party apps I “loved” so much on iOS? I haven’t found myself reaching for my iPhone once since I switched.