Jamie on the Signals v. Noise blog:

It’s always harder to take away features that are already there. But, I have no doubt Apple will try to continue making iOS easy-to-use while they layer on new power user features. At the same time, Google’s not afraid to take away features. Maybe Google will keep simplifying Android, pushing all you need to know from their sentient “cloud”.

That’s an interesting comparison, but I think it misses a big point. Google is pruning features not for clarity, but to push users to use their cloud services (Google Now) for everything. It’s an “let us know everything and we can make your life easier” approach.

Apple on the other hand is saying: “Look we have a dead simple system and we are slowly adding in features that make it really powerful to use daily.”

The approaches are misunderstood if only broken down by number of features, or simplicity. Apple wants you to easily be able to do a lot of things, eventually. Google wants to tell you what you need without you asking.

That latter is massively creepy.