Due to a result by Glasner and Downarowicz [Isomorphic extensions and applications. Topol. Methods Nonlinear Anal. 48(1) (2016), 321–338], it is known that a minimal system is mean equicontinuous if and only if it is an isomorphic extension of its maximal equicontinuous factor. The majority of known examples of this type are almost automorphic, that is, the factor map to the maximal equicontinuous factor is almost one-to-one. The only cases of isomorphic extensions which are not almost automorphic are again due to Glasner and Downarowicz, who in the same article provide a construction of such systems in a rather general topological setting. Here, we use the Anosov–Katok method to provide an alternative route to such examples and to show that these may be realized as smooth skew product diffeomorphisms of the two-torus with an irrational rotation on the base. Moreover – and more importantly – a modification of the construction allows to ensure that lifts of these diffeomorphisms to finite covering spaces provide novel examples of finite-to-one topomorphic extensions of irrational rotations. These are still strictly ergodic and share the same dynamical eigenvalues as the original system, but show an additional singular continuous component of the dynamical spectrum.

We show that a cellular automaton (or shift-endomorphism) on a transitive subshift is either almost equicontinuous or sensitive. On the other hand, we construct a cellular automaton on a full shift (hence a transitive subshift) that is neither almost mean equicontinuous nor mean sensitive.

We study dynamical systems that have bounded complexity with respect to three kinds metrics: the Bowen metric $d_{n}$, the max-mean metric $\hat{d}_{n}$ and the mean metric $\bar{d}_{n}$, both in topological dynamics and ergodic theory. It is shown that a topological dynamical system $(X,T)$ has bounded complexity with respect to $d_{n}$ (respectively $\hat{d}_{n}$) if and only if it is equicontinuous (respectively equicontinuous in the mean). However, we construct minimal systems that have bounded complexity with respect to $\bar{d}_{n}$ but that are not equicontinuous in the mean. It turns out that an invariant measure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ on $(X,T)$ has bounded complexity with respect to $d_{n}$ if and only if $(X,T)$ is $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$-equicontinuous. Meanwhile, it is shown that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ has bounded complexity with respect to $\hat{d}_{n}$ if and only if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ has bounded complexity with respect to $\bar{d}_{n}$, if and only if $(X,T)$ is $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$-mean equicontinuous and if and only if it has discrete spectrum.

In this paper, it is shown that if a dynamical system is null and distal, then it is equicontinuous. It turns out that a null system with closed proximal relation is mean equicontinuous. As a direct application, it follows that a null dynamical system with dense minimal points is also mean equicontinuous. Meanwhile, a distal system with trivial $\text{Ind}_{\text{fip}}$-pairs and a non-trivial regionally proximal relation of order $\infty$ are constructed.