Apple is known for fiercely protecting its “walled garden” platform by making sure its applications and services are only available on its platform and work on its hardware. The only exception to this has been iTunes which is also available on Windows machines. However, with an increasingly mobile world that has forced its competitors like Google and Microsoft to develop applications for its mobile operating system that are at times even better than those on their own platforms, Apple could slowly be letting go of this hardline stance as it courts even more users.
The first sign of that happening was the announcement during the unveiling of Apple Music that an Android application would become available before the end of the year while the service was also made available on Windows machines through iTunes. However, before the Apple Music application arrives, Apple has released its first ever Android application on the Google Play Store.
Move to iOS, like the name insinuates, is an application that targets those who’ve just purchased an iPhone or iPad. It helps them move all the essential data like contacts, calendar, web bookmarks, mail accounts, message history as well as photos and videos from their old Android devices to the new iOS devices.
There are several methods that already exist that have helped users do this but the Move to iOS app aims at making the process simpler for everybody by using a private Wi-Fi network that transfers data to iOS from Android on devices running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and later versions.
Apple’s competitors like Samsung have previously provided iPhone users with easy means of transferring the same to Android devices for quite some time. Samsung’s Smart Switch applicationhas not only made it easy to transfer contacts, text messages, call logs and even Wi-Fi settings for iPhone users shifting to its Galaxy devices but also for those using devices from other Android OEMs like HTC, Lenovo and others.
More information on how to go about the migration process can be found on the support pages on Apple’s website.
