Apple swipes a thing or two from BlackBerry

Apple today in its WWDC keynote address unveiled its most magical, its most revolutionary -- and its most thieving version of iOS yet. It's a pretty big overhaul that includes a new look, new icons and some familiar new features.

And we couldn't help but notice just how similar some of those features are to what we've already seen on current BlackBerry devices.

Over the years we have seen everybody borrow a little here and there from the competition. Big features from one platform are bound to show up on another and that's just the way it is. But there were a few noticeable things in the upcoming version of iOS that look very similar to some features of BlackBerry 10 and even the BlackBerry PlayBook (oh and Windows Phone too!)

Apple has added some things that are arguably "borrowed" from BlackBerry. Here are the big ones.

• Slide to Unlock: From the looks of it, Apple is going with an up gesture from the lock screen that brings up control center while the unlock remains left-to-right (corrected!)
• Multitasking: The multitasking view on iOS 7 looks much like that of the Blackberry PlayBook (and arguably Web OS)  as you can swipe to scroll through your open apps. You can also use the swipe up gesture to quickly close an app from this view. This is essentially the same idea as Active Frames on BlackBerry 10 with apps being open in the background for quick access. 
• Control Center: The Control Center in iOS is a popup of quick settings that you can access from anywhere by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Very similar to the BlackBerry 10 settings which are accessed from the homescreen by swiping down from the top. The controls give access to Bluetooth, Wifi and other settings. 
• Lock Screen Notifications: Notification Center on iOS is now available from the lock screen, making it much like the notifications you can view from the BlackBerry 10 lock screen. Including the "at a glance" view which shows your calendar appointments for the given day.
• Gestures: iOS 7 features some swiping gestures that resemble those on BlackBerry 10. They are present in the browser as well as messages app (and maybe other areas too) - swiping to navigate forward or backward between screens.
• Facetime: The latest version of BBM allows for both video calls and voice only calls. Facetime, which was previously video only, will now also allow for voice-only calls as well. 
• Photo Filters: BlackBerry 10 is sporting an amazing photo editor that includes a full set of filters. iOS 7 adds a very similar feature to their photos app (but no editor from what we've seen). 

While these are just some of the features that will be in iOS 7 it's certainly not all of them. We can't help but think that plenty of these were borrowed from BlackBerry as they are very similar in many ways. As we said earlier however, it isn't uncommon for companies to build upon ideas from one another. Apple does it, Google does it, even BlackBerry does it. As BlackBerry fans, it just irks us a bit to see so many awesome BlackBerry features turn up in iOS 7. 

If you want to get in on the discussion or know of any more similarities we didn't touch on here, be sure to hit up the forums thread below. You can head over to iMore for more WWDC news as well.

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