It's true that the iPhone was a game changer. It's not surprising to see other companies stepping up to the challenge.
As an Android user (myTouch, 128MB RAM sucks), I often wish for the polish of the iPhone and for access to some much better apps, but in the end I can do things that the iPhone could never do.
I can tether via USB or WiFi, install apps from websites without using the Market and use free turn-by-turn navigation all while while taking a phone call. With Android I feel like I have freedom to do what I want with my pocket-sided computer without being treated like a baby and told what I can and cannot do with my own personal computing device. I have the freedom to choose phones with keyboards or without, with more RAM or less, from any carrier that I want. For me, that freedom is worth a lot.
I think the iPhone 4 is a great device from what I can see and certainly outshines most Android phones, but not by as much as the iPhone outshined BlackBerry at the time. If Google can take time for the next OS to work on the polish, I think they have a chance to really be a solid competitor. Heck, the Droid outsold the iPhone 3G in the first 30 days of sales. That says something.
USB and Bluetooth tethering available on the iPhone
> install apps from websites without using the Market
True.
> and use free turn-by-turn navigation all while while taking a phone call
Always been available on the iPhone, you can do whatever you want while taking a call. With iOS 4, users will be able to do even more.
> With Android I feel like I have freedom to do what I want
Yeah especially when you don't know what you can do on an iPhone, I find that interesting.
"Taking a call" is an example, an placeholder for X. You can say "use free turn-by-turn navigation all while chatting through Talk" or "use free turn-by-turn navigation all while tracking my progress using My Tracks" or "use free turn-by-turn navigation all while staring at Google Sky". The X is anything, not just specific vendor supplied apps (or in OS4, vendor approved activities).
Also, from everything I've read, AT&T has never supported tethering, and Google Maps doesn't have Navigation on the iPhone.
> USB and Bluetooth tethering available on the iPhone
Neither of which are wifi.
They're at a point now where the electronics are powerful enough (for the time being). Additionally with the hiring of the Palm UX team the 2.3+ user experience is sure to receive some much needed polish.
Now can someone build a phone with the materials and production refinement shown in the iPhone which is a BMW to the Android's Honda.
The N1 is a really nice phone - I prefer it to the iPhone 3G. The phone makers will continue to better each other, from keynote to keynote. Now Apple has the lead again (in some aspects), in a couple of months, there will be a cooler Android device, and so on.
Notice how a lot of the Apple marketing dwells on the production processes, which are completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the phone's body was hand carved by dwarves from middle earth out of Mithril, self-assembled by nano robots or cut out of aluminium in a single piece. What matters is that the end result works and looks nice.
Well, the HTC Evo, HTC Desire (like Droid Incredible), HTC Legend and something like the Samsung Galaxy S all meet these needs...
The multi-tasking is excellent- I was reading a book in FBReader last week and when I opened it yesterday it opened from RAM. With the Dolphin Browser, background tabs actually stay loaded in the background, and sites with auto-refresh actually keep content refreshed. For me, the browsing experience with Dolphin and the multi tasking are hard to beat. Also, the open market has some great advantages (along with disadvantages such as crappy apps), for e.g. MortPlayer (which was a great mp3/audiobook player for windows mobile) was recently released for Android without any fear of replicating functionality.
Like a lot of others, I'm glad for the iPhone vs Android war. It gives me lots of great, feature-rich phones to choose from, so why pick a side?
For developers, it will make more sense to distinguish between ideology/opinions of bloggers and cold market realities.
For starters, revenue returns of Android apps are generally a small fraction of revenue returns for identical iPhone apps in spite of the fact that iPhone owners have a lot more apps to choose from. For another, the Android fragmentation problem makes life even more difficult for developers. As an example, when Twitter released their official Android Twitter app, only 27.3% of Android owners could even consider downloading it. The app wouldn't run on 82.7 of devices because of the fragmentation problem.
Now it does make sense for some apps to be released only on Android. For instance, if you think that your app may be rejected by Apple, it will make more sense to just create an Android app. If you're not comfortable with Objective-C, it makes sense to go with Android because Android apps are a lot easier to develop.
Btw If first-mover advantage is really the goal, Windows Phone 7 will be a much better option. However, many Android enthusiasts don't like Microsoft. So I suspect that they won't concede this as a great reason for Android developers to do Windows Phone 7 development first and the do Android second :)
Hopefully Twitter will get motivated enough to support Android 110%!
Also, hopefully they do it in collaboration with the hardware manufacturers, instead of in spite of them.
Planned obsolescence is baked into the android ecosystem. Plan on buying a new andoid phone every 18 months to get all the new apps if you want to stay with the platform, it's all google is supporting (the newest stuff).
Yes, the revenue realities of today are true today. I am hoping that Google can work on the fragmentation issue and get that solved very soon, or at least made much more clear. Second, I think the Chrome Web Store will be a major help toward promoting the discovery and purchase of Android applications.
I know first-mover advantage has some weaknesses, but what I see is a growing user base with some needs. Where needs can be met, there is money to be made.
The Twitter app will work on any Android phone running the current version of Android (2.1) and above. It won't work on older versions of the OS. That's not so complicated or unusual is it?
I disagree here. Unless you're a java developer, objective C apps are a lot easier to develop. If you're not, the iPhone tools blow away the Android ones. It's only third party toolkits like Air for Android (which is quite sexy, and about to be publicly available soon), etc, which makes android easier. Android development is possible, sure, but it's not easier, especially when you look at all the screen resolutions, OS versions, etc.
A wise developer would just code something that would work on any version above 1.6
If I were making mobile apps, I'd probably make an iphone version and an android version.
Apple's objective isn't to become the largest. Apple does not see this as a winner-take-all platform war. Apple's core values are all about it's ability to change things, it's ability to think different, it's ability to move forward without obstacles.
Apple wants to make, and sell, the best and most beautiful devices they can imagine. For that they don't need to "own the market", their platform doesn't even need to "win". Whenever Apple thought that their platform was limiting their ability to innovate they have dumped the platform and build a better one. That's the kind of business Apple is.
Apple doesn't compete with Nokia for the €40 phone market, Nokia does a great job already in that market. Apple is competing in the high-end smart phone market and only in this small market does it want to "win" in any sense.
Apple sometimes finds itself in a situation where there is not competition, that's fine too. Just don't expect Apple to make something cheap for the lower-end of the market. More often then not, someone else will fill that niche soon enough.
Apple only needs two things: (one) An open market of multiple competing platforms with shared open standards and protocols so that devices can work together. (two) Something special to differentiate itself by, often a level of quality and total integration, the realization of a coherent idea.
About the only thing Apple can't accept is a market where someone else controls an essential part of the market, may it be either some piece of hardware, or software, a protocol, or even the structure of the market itself.
To have someone else control the market would mean that someone else controls the speed of change. It would severely limit Apple's ability to innovate. And it's ability to innovate is the heart and soul of Apple.
In the US (not everywhere), they aren't hitting that note because they continue to be weighed down by AT&T. All those awesome features don't mean anything if you spend all your time bitching to your friends about dropped calls (which is all I hear from my non-techie friends here).
AT&T were shamed at the last WWDC over tethering and such, and they've been shamed again over new price plans which aren't necessarily consumer friendly, over continued awful service, over what Jobs himself said was "things have to get worse to get better... which means things will get really great soon." It used to be that Jobs would cancel a supplier to spite anyone who dared accidentally unveil a release before Apple did, and now it's a company that will let its brand get tarnished by having consumers kicked in the balls for five years straight.
Apple's exclusivity deal is anything but friendly to their customer base, and that is the key difference between the Apple of old and the Apple of new. People are upset not because the iPhone isn't great, but because Apple are acting like pricks, like they have done with Google and Google Voice, like they have with other App Store rejections (I find the "replicating iPhone features" particularly rich in comparison with all the spam apps on the App Store), like they have done about saying nothing to the consumer about why AT&T is sucking and why Apple appear to be doing nothing about it.
The Apple of old wouldn't have hamstrung their customers the same way Apple is now doing. Putting the user first was their mission. In the US, on the iPhone (less so the iPad), that is starkly not the case.
I do think however that if Apple thought that there was a viable superior alternative then they would have taken it, which they have done in a few countries, I believe? Any operator would have difficulty supporting the iPhone, that's the whole point: The iPhone changes the game.
Maybe more competition would have been better? But then again, it might not. Data infrastructure is weird: The network is most valuable if it's cheap and stupid, all the value is added at its edges. http://www.worldofends.com/ This however means, as Davis Isenberg and others already understood many years ago, that the best network is the worst to make profitable. I would not want to be AT&T.
What I am seeing from Android is not just high market penetration, but also quality. They are doing a good enough job to have me switch. That they offered great quality, in addition to working with a top-notch voice carrier made it easier.
I am rooting for iPhone and Android. I think that's still allowed. :)
Share open standards? They won't even accept any other language for apps other than Objective-C? They have deliberately closed down any possibility for developers to be able to reuse code inside and outside of their platform. If they were really interested in an open market they'd be embracing efforts to port software to and from their OS.
The whole concept of a multi-platform framework is anti-innovation, anti-diversity: Its only purpose is to generalize, to make make everything uniform and the same by removing everything special, removing that which differentiates, that which makes the difference. It's about "think alike", "Move together".
Small wonder Apple doesn't accept it.
1) New Android phones become much faster and/or have longer battery lives 2) New iPhones become much more open and less locked-down
I think #1 is much more likely.
I think Android is going to have more handsets, manufacturers, carriers, and eventually users. Their products are going to continually improve. The recent past has shown momentum on the innovation side that is lapping iPhone, I believe. I don't think iPhone is going to open up at quite a rate.
More generally, flamebait articles that paint this as the great Android vs Apple war are maddening. They are pieces of software, not wrestlers. One does not have to fail for the other to succeed.
When this happens, I usually flag the article.
As I said elsewhere, I've talked a lot about Android and iPhone lately already, so I didn't think I needed to recap that here. Sorry if it seemed shallow.
Quick summary echoed elsewhere: What I saw today was iPhone achieving parity with some of Android's features. What I also see is Android having more handsets, more manufacturers and carriers, and eventually more users.
Assuming you're the author of the article, you're clearly not paying attention. Show me the android phone that has a 326 dpi screen, a 9mm case, an outrageously good battery life, or the attention to detail that a design-driven company like Apple puts into its products. If you're not willing to admit these things, you're not having an honest discussion.
(And this doesn't even get to the annoying Android v Apple deathmatch fallacy)
Many kinds of critiques, positive and negative, of both platforms are welcome. But this sort of fanboy service horse race punditry is not.
At this stage, the smartphone market is not a zero sum game. Nobody has to slow anybody down. Stop polarizing this space.
What I saw today was iPhone achieving parity with some of Android's features. What I also see is Android having more handsets, more manufacturers and carriers, and eventually more users. I think it is fair to say that the new iPhone was nice, but that it wasn't good enough to slow that momentum.
If it came off as fanboy, I apologize. Folks get deeply entrenched, so there's no way to make everyone happy.
I'm working on UI trees that can be rearranged with the mouse. It works OK, though a little awkward. I think with a touch screen, it would be incredibly intutive - like rearranging physical blocks.
The iPhone was originally so ahead of the competition (well, so was the iPod I guess) that its features were the 'wow' factor. It was a sleek, well designed object but I think its functionality overshadowed its beauty. Now that other phones have similar features, the time is right for Apple to revamp the design for aesthetic/form-factor reasons. Think about it: lots of people on the subway with these gorgeous, scratch-proof, slightly retro-looking, ultra-crisp smartphones shimmering beneath layers of glass on both sides, vs. a whole motley crew of less beautiful Android models rarely seen together. Which phone will people want?
Also: they compared the new glass to sapphire crystal, which in my experience NEVER gets scratches (its on my wrist watch cover). Does anyone know enough about the hardness of this material Apple are using to assert how scratch-resistant they'll really be?
Sapphire crystal is Al₂O₃, which has a hardness of 9. So it's hard, but not that hard.
it's also something the iPhone has had since iPhoneOS 3.0 a year ago, via bluetooth...
New standards are coming in next year. Makes little sense for Apple to make a CDMA phone now.
AT&T tells me its the phone. I go to New York City, it works fine. I guess they actually have a good network there. Go figure.
Apple tells me its the network, and I actually believe them. AT&T - if you are reading this - I'm not going to give you my money after you've hiked up your early cancellation fees, but you bet your ass me and everyone in my family will be on a different carrier in less than 2 years.
You guys must forget that families listen to their "computer guy" family members. Losing votes like mine is more akin to losing 10. Remember that.
Anyway, if I were to develop mobile apps instead of web apps, I would still go with iPhone first : much less splintering. But maybe I'm overestimating this issue ?
