As Sage notes, the functionality of the new apps is about the same on both Android and iOS, with some differences in the UI.
Like the beta Android version, we're using a sidebar ToC instead of collapsing sections (though it's a bit fancier looking on iOS right now!) and we've added basic login and editing ability. Note that in both OSs we do not yet have any talk page or notification support -- this should be coming a couple months down the line as we continue to tune up the editor-facing features.
We hope to iterate fairly quickly once we've got the first new version out!
Unfortunately due to Apple's store policies we can't have an open public "beta" version of the app easily installable like we do on Android. We're currently doing "in-house" betas with Apple's Enterprise Distribution program combined with the TestFlight beta distribution service; when they release upcoming improvements to TestFlight we'll be able to distribute betas much more publicly but this may not arrive until iOS 8 as well.
Regarding iOS 8 features -- they are very much on our minds, but we can't actually use them yet so we're working on polishing up the iOS 6/7-compatible release. :)
Aside from various nice internals updates in the OS, one of the main user-facing improvements is better app-to-app integration based on extension points. This would allow us to make Commons available as a "share" destination for photos directly from other apps as we do on Android, and other potential things.
-- brion
On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Thehelpfulone thehelpfulonewiki@gmail.com wrote:
Ahh, but some of us are on iOS which doesn’t seem to have been updated
on the App Store in a while! The latest status update (at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/status#2014-05-monthly) seems to suggest it’s in Alpha state. Please can someone from the Apps Team give me some insight into the ETA for a new app, and if some of the new features of iOS 8 could be integrated into it?
I believe the provisional release date is July 7.[1]
In broad strokes, the functionality of the new iOS app is pretty similar to the new Android app, although I must say the iOS version has a really cool way of handling the in-article navigation with both a ToC and a scrollable miniature view of the article. Someone who knows better can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think much attention has been given yet to potential iOS 8-specific features.
-Sage
[1] = http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2014-June/007331.html
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On 6/16/14, 4:27 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
As Sage notes, the functionality of the new apps is about the same on both Android and iOS, with some differences in the UI.
Is there something written on the intended relationship between the apps and the mobile website? I've long been mildly confused about how the goals for each relate, and what I "should" use. On my Android phone right now, I've got both the old app, and a bookmark to Wikipedia that opens in Firefox, and I seem to alternate between which I prefer, because neither is strictly a superset of the other's functionality.
-Mark
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