Google officially announces Android M

Molly McHugh and David Pierce for WIRED:

We’ve gotten our first official look at Android M, and it offers scores of subtle improvements that promise to make using Android 6.0 a whole lot better. It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary which is exactly what Android 6.0 needs to be.

I’m really excited for an update that doesn’t add as many features to the surface but rather cleans things up under the hood of the OS.

Android 5.0 brought some pretty serious changes aesthetically to just about everything and with those changes came some pretty serious bugs and design inconsistencies. With this latest release, Google is making a second pass over the system to reduce friction for the user rather than adding new features with a variety of new technical issues to attend to.

Not really mentioned here but Google Now On Tap seems like a pretty killer feature, giving users the ability to contextually find information based on what they’re currently reading or seeing with a press of a button. We’ve been seeing a similar idea of this taking shape in the latest builds of Chrome for Android and it’s definitely a great, simple, useful update.

WWDC kicks off today and the rumours have them pegged to announce a similar initiative with iOS 9. Will they follow Google’s lead and smooth out some of the rougher edges of iOS 8? Only time will tell.