[wpietri]

Totally. I own Android phones and tablets. But when I pick up a friend's iPhone or iPad, it's clear that the user experience is more polished. Is that because Google has a lower caliber engineers than Apple? I doubt it. Certainly the people I know at both companies are equally smart.

[baq]

it's simply what is P1 and thus gets engineering bandwidth to fix. looks like UX is P1 at apple and just isn't at other companies ('isn't perfect but works', 'takes one click more than it could', etc.)

[ashtonkem]

I’d argue that Google has lower caliber designers than Apple.

[rsynnott]

I'd be surprised if that was the case; they should be in a similar hiring position to Apple. They just seem... less interested in it.

And it's not just designers; it's everything around user experience. For instance, both Terminal.app and the Apple bluetooth keyboard (when plugged into USB) have class-leading latency. That wasn't designers, but it probably also wasn't accidental.

Mind you, the Apple today arguably isn't as good at this stuff as the Apple of a decade or so, and they really fall down in some areas (Apple Music grumble mutter).

[ashtonkem]

Fair, from the outside it’s hard to tell the difference between low quality, poor management, or under staffing. What I can say is that Google’s design is somewhere between bad and inconsistent.