The History of Android Operating System

History of Android Operating System
Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy Rubin (co-founder of Danger), Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire Communications, Inc.), Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (headed design and interface development at WebTV) to develop. Google acquired Android Inc. on August 17, 2005, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. Key employees of Android Inc., including Rubin, Miner and White, stayed at the company after the acquisition. Not much was known about Android Inc. at the time, but many assumed that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market with this move. At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradable system. Google had lined up a series of hardware component and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation on their part. Speculation about Google's intention to enter the mobile communications market continued to build through December 2006. Reports from the BBC and The Wall Street Journal noted that Google wanted its search and applications on mobile phones and it was working hard to deliver that. Android was unveiled as its first product, a mobile device platform built on the Linux kernel version 2.6. The first commercially available phone to run Android was the HTC Dream, released on October 22, 2008. Since 2008, Android has improved the operating system, adding new features and fixing bugs in previous releases. Each major release is named in alphabetical order ,for example, version 1.5 Cupcake was followed by 1.6 Donut. The latest release is 4.2 Jelly Bean. In 2010, Google launched its Nexus series of devices - a line of smart phones and tablets running the Android operating system, and built by a manufacturer partner. HTC collaborated with Google to release the first Nexus smart phone, the Nexus One. The series has since been updated with newer devices, such as the Nexus 4 phone and Nexus 10 tablet, made by LG and Samsung respectively. Google releases the Nexus phones and tablets to act as their flagship Android devices, demonstrating Android's latest software and hardware features.
History of iOS (iPhone Operating System)
The operating system was unveiled with the iPhone in January 9, 2007, and released in June of that year. At first, Apple did not specify a separate name for the operating system, stating simply that the "iPhone runs OS X”. On October 17, 2007, Apple announced that a native Software Development Kit (SDK) was under development and that they planned to put it "in developers' hands in February". On March 6, 2008, Apple released a new name for the operating system: "iPhone OS".
Apple had released the iPod touch, which had most of the non-phone capabilities of the iPhone. Apple also sold more than one million iPhones during the 2007 holiday season.]On January 27, 2010, Apple announced the iPad, featuring a larger screen than the iPhone and iPod touch, and designed for web browsing, media consumption, and reading iBooks.
In June 2010, Apple rebranded iPhone OS as "iOS". The trademark "IOS" had been used by Cisco .To avoid any potential lawsuit, Apple licensed the "IOS" trademark from Cisco.
By late 2011, iOS accounted for 60 percent of the market share for smartphones and tablet computers, however by mid 2012 iOS had slipped to just 16.9% of the Smartphone market and Android had taken over with 68.1% global share. Since the release of the iPhone 5 this has again changed with both operating systems about equal for Smartphones, with iOS well ahead in Tablets and portable music devices.

System Architecture Building Blocks of Android
What is Architecture Building Blocks? Building blocks can be defined at various levels of detail, depending on what stage of architecture development has been reached. For instance, at an early stage, a building block can simply consist of a grouping of functionality such as a customer database and some retrieval tools. Building blocks at this functional level of definition are described in TOGAF as Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs). Later on, real products or specific custom developments replace these simple definitions of functionality, and the building blocks are then described as Solution Building Blocks (SBBs).Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs) relate to the Architecture Continuum (The Architecture Continuum), and are defined or selected as a result of the application of the ADM.
Characteristics of ABBs : * Define what functionality will be implemented * Capture business and technical requirements * Are technology aware * Direct and guide the development of SBBs
Building Blocks in Architecture Design
An architecture is a set of building blocks in an architecture model, also a specification of how those building clocks are connected to meet the overall requirements of an information system.
There are four building blocks for an Android application : * Activity
-a single screen

* Intent Receiver
-to execute in reaction to an external event(Phone Ring)

* Service
-codehat is long-lived and runs without a UI(Media Player)

* Content Provider
-an application's data to be shared with other applications

These are the most important parts of the Android APIs: * AndroidManifest.xml -the control file-tells the system what to do with the top-levelcomponents * Activities -an object that has a life cycle-is a chunk of code that does somework * Views -an object that knows how to draw itself to the screen * Intents
-a simple message object that represents an "intention" to dosomething

* Notifications -is a small icon that appears in the status bar(SMS messages)-for alerting the user

System Architecture Building Blocks of iOS * iMessage blocking: iOS 6 supports a policy that disables iOS's iMessage texting service that allows OS X and iOS users to send messages to each other without incurring SMS charges. As Fiberlink senior product manager Josh Lambert notes, this policy will appeal to financial services and other companies that need to regulate or monitor the communications between, for example, employees and customers. * Passbook, Game Center, iBookstore, and shared Photo Stream blocking: The Passbook app for the iPhone is a great tool for keeping airline, theater, and other tickets, as well as coupons, available in one location. But iOS 6 also lets companies disable Passbook on managed devices, notes AirWatch spokesman Victor Cooper. iOS 6 also adds blocking for the Game Center social networking service for gamers, Apple's iBookstore online bookstore, and the new ability to share the device's photos and images with other iOS and OS X users via the Photo Stream service in iCloud, iOS 6, and OS X Mountain Lion. * Global corporate proxy: iOS 6 has a policy that lets you force all Internet communications through a single Internet proxy server of your choosing; you can filter all communication, both business and personal, such as for use by data loss prevention tools. * Single-app mode: Available only on the iPad, the new Guided Access capability lets you restrict users to a specific application and even disable some features of that application. It also disables the Home button. (To access the rest of the iPad, users need to know the Guided Access PIN set for their device.) Lambert says this feature will appeal to both kiosk uses and to retail, surveying, and other venues where the iPad works as an appliance rather than as a portable computer. * Time-limited profiles: iOS has long supported certificate-based profiles that can restrict the device's capabilities, as well as preconfigure standard settings, and those profiles could be locked against user change or removal. iOS 6 now lets IT set expirations for such profiles, so they automatically uninstall at a specified date and time, even if the device is not connected to the Internet. That allows a device to have temporary access to a server or other resource, without IT manually removing the permission later. * Improved certificate and profile management: iOS extends its support for certificates and profiles with a policy that can block installation of certificates and profiles from other servers. That way, "foreign" certificates and profiles can't be added to managed devices. * Forced wallpapers: iOS can force devices to use specific wallpapers on the home screen and/or lock screen, such as the company logo. That seems a bit Big Brotherish to me, but it could be handy for retail environments for branding, as well as a way to quickly tell a customer's iPhone or iPad from the retailer's own.

Comparison between Android and the iOS (Apple) on Interface designs, Security and Reliability
Security
All iPhone apps must be approved by Apple and only a very small number have ever been found to be malicious after being published. And because no iOS apps are given low-level access to the device’s systems and can only very occasionally interact with each other, security risks are cut down even further. It is possible to “jailbreak” your iPhone to allow it to install third-party apps from outside the approved app store, but since this is not part of Apple’s original design, I’m not considering it in this comparison.
Android is much more like a PC in that you can install software on it from anywhere on the Web, so the user is required to be much more vigilant, and even software released on Google Play is notorious for being riddled with malware even though Google supposedly controls submissions, but come on - the Android ecosystem’s security is woefully lacking. It would be nice to see some kind of built-in security suite for Android from Google in the future.
The one area of security that Android shines over Apple is its device-locking schemes. Apple will let you lock your iPhone with either a PIN or a more complex password. Android ups these offerings by piling on pattern locks, biometric locks, and even face recognition, depending on the phone.
So while Android is definitely the device to own if you're prone to losing expensive things, Apple still beats it in terms of overall security.So, Apple still the best in security.
Interface Designs 1. How the Android and IOS show the message in Twitter If you are a Twitter user, and even if you’re not, you are probably familiar with the @ message protocol. For those who aren’t, @ messages are the method you use for contacting other users on twitter. As a very simple, very common task, this should really take no time to complete. As it’s the first question in test, we might expect people to take a few seconds longer as they are familiarising themselves with the interface. The results for both for the Android and iOS versions were very similar; the most surprising thing here was the amount of people who clicked the direct message button instead of the @ message button. 2. How the Android and IOS show in google translate

Again, quite similar results. The Android version had a shorter response time at the time of writing by 2 seconds (possibly because of the addition of the arrows on the dropdown?) but also had slightly bigger spread of results. More or less a tie for these two.

3. Soundhound

Soundhound is a handy app for finding the name of songs you are listening to but (obviously) don’t know the name of. The social aspect is obviously a big part of making a successful app in this day and age, so it’s essential that users can find and understand these task very quickly. the average click time is really very different. The iOS version took around 13 seconds longer in our test than the Android version. A win for Android.

4. Facebook

Another preference test with an app that most people would be familiar with. Facebook has made a couple of changes between these two apps, and it will be interesting to see what the results show about the differences. Definitely the majority support the iOS version of the Facebook app here. I wonder how much of this is because they are already familiar with the design? The final results was 74% for iOS and 26% for Android. A win for iOS.

What we can conclude though, is that Android and iOS are very similar in terms of usability, at least in the apps we have tested. Of course, there are apps on both platforms that are really very well designed, and apps which should never have been let into the store/market. One thing have to admit about Apple is that their hardware is of a very high (and well designed) quality.

Realibility
Apple’s iOS has always been one of the more stable, reliable and well-performing platforms on the market with a level of operational smoothness by which others are measured. The optimisation is second-to-none.
While Apple’s performance might not have been usurped by its competitors, they’ve certainly now managed to match it. Windows Phone was already there while Android had a reputation for being chuggier, but with Jelly Bean 4.1 it’s a whole other story: thanks to Google’s ‘Butter UI’ tweaks it’s now just as fast as iOS.
Jelly Bean has also updated the drop-down notifications bar and you can now see more information in your alerts via the use of a simple gesture. Want to read a whole text message without leaving the notification bar? Now you can. It’s a small thing, but the ramifications are big and that’s generally the vibe we get from most of Google’s changes here.
With Android having closed the gap on performance and stability, as well as having nearly the same number of apps at its disposal, it’s now on as even a footing with Apple’s system as it has ever been.