
Android FTW - sant0sk1
http://mattmaroon.com/?p=430
======
sanj
This argument undervalues just how much carriers can undermine the experience.

Part of the success of the iPhone is that his Steve-i-ness managed to wrangle
concessions out of AT&T that make the iPhone work well. I'd be surprised if
something as simple as "Visual Voicemail" will exist anytime soon on Android
'in the wild'.

Apple's strength is in an excellent end-to-end experience. Until Android can
come close to matching this, I think the iPhone will continue to rule.

Unfortunately (for Android), this isn't about technology. It is about having
leverage over carriers. And I think that's where the iPhone will continue to
win.

~~~
yawn
It's pretty obvious that he's new to mobile development. The first thing to
understand is that the carriers completely control the playing field. It's
incredibly frustrating trying to write an app across multiple devices let
alone multiple carriers. Hardware on one device may be very easy to work with
on one carrier, yet a complete pain in the rear on another carrier. They just
have to get their hands on things and make adjustments.

Certification is also way more painful than it needs to be on some carriers.
Access to some portions of the APIs are blocked by the carriers unless
certified by the carrier. The certification process can be very painful if you
do not have elevated status inside the carrier.

We have had problems getting GPS to work reliably on a specific popular line
of smart phones with a specific carrier. The GPS on the same devices works
perfectly on other carriers. This kind of stuff happens at all levels of the
API.

Welcome to mobile development.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't pretend to know much about mobile development, and I've heard much the
same about carrier certification. That's exactly why I think Android will do
well.

"Google Developer Advocate Jason Chen told the Android breakout session that
developers won't need to get Android applications certified by anyone nor will
there be any hidden APIs accessible only to handset makers or mobile
operators."

from:
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/android_is_out_for_ipho...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/android_is_out_for_iphone_blood.php)

Has that since been proven incorrect and I just didn't hear about it? That's
possible, and if so I think it will be significantly less appealing to
developers.

~~~
notauser
Carrier certification works differently outside the US and can be much less
restrictive. In most of the world it isn't a Apple/Blackberry one point five
horse race, but rather a much more diverse fight. I would certainly encourage
anyone who is counting Nokia out to go and pick up a E71 and give it a go.

Don't let the local market distort your perspective unless you want to limit
your reach.

------
shimi
The Android SDK is in its early stages and suffers from some bugs which is
expectable.

It's a good set of Java namespaces that provides a good control over the
device resources. As it Java the environment is managed which makes the
application development process quite easy. The GUI development is using an
XML based documents that the developer can set widgets into.

No one outside google knows what the performance penalty of the managed
environment, and please don't start with the Java is slow blubber, blackberry
is all Java as well.

My vote: if google will deliver what they promise than they should be a strong
player in the market.

------
gamble
The marketing of Android as the 'open' smartphone OS has always seemed a bit
ad-hoc to me. When Google originally drew up its plans for Android, long
before the iPhone was public knowledge, they were much more worried about WiMo
shutting them out of the mobile search market. Android isn't any more open
than WiMo or Palm - the point was to be the smartphone that worked well. To be
the iPhone, really.

Unfortunately for Google, Apple beat them to the punch. Android was announced
three months after the iPhone was on shelves; the only way for Google to
distinguish their product was to emphasize how unconstrained it is compared to
the iPhone, even if there was nothing particularly special about allowing 3rd
party apps until Apple prohibited them.

The number of people who actually care about the openness of a platform is
very small, particularly in consumer electronics. It isn't a panacea. Openness
didn't help Plays-for-Sure beat the iPod, and the Palm ecosystem didn't save
it from Windows Mobile and Blackberry.

I wish people would stop dredging up the example of Windows and the Mac -
openness mattered in desktop operating systems because it enabled PCs to be
sold at a huge discount relative to Macs during the 90s. Spending $2000 versus
$3000 on a PC meant something, but the comparison isn't relevant to
smartphones. Openness will not make Android significantly cheaper than the
iPhone.

It may sound like I'm dumping on Android, but that's not my intention. It
seems like a nice enough platform - better than some geriatric OSs I could
mention. (ahem) It's the marketing spin I don't appreciate.

------
davidw
> It’s much like Apple vs. Microsoft in the early ’90s.

It's even better than that, it's like Apple vs Linux backed by the power of a
big company that also cares a lot about the user experience from the get go.
As long as Android has any market share, it'll be where I'm at.

------
samwise
Well put Matt. I agree 100%. It will be interesting to see if Steve Jobs
learned his lesson.

~~~
river_styx
What lesson should he have learned, exactly? I think rather that he has taught
us a big lesson of late -- open or not, if you create a compelling product,
people will break down your doors and line up for hours in order to get it.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm not so sure. The only thing Apple is dominant at right now are mp3
players, and to my knowledge those don't/can't compete against any sort of
open platform. There's no question that their computer sales are doing pretty
well, and that quality sells, but they're still far from dominant.

~~~
axod
Why isn't an open source mp3 player winning against the iPod? Customers don't
care if things are open or not. Unless android is put on drop dead sexy phones
with killer features, it'll fail.

~~~
mattmaroon
The end user doesn't care about openness directly, just as they didn't care
about it in the case of Windows vs. Mac or internet vs. AOL. It's the benefits
of openness they care about.

In the case of cell phones, the benefits are large and obvious. In the case of
mp3 players I can't think of any.

~~~
axod
They cared in the case of AOL vs internet, because AOL completely sucked.
Similarly, a growing number care in the case of Windows vs Mac/Linux, because
Windows is so awful.

Is the iPhone, or other smartphone for that matter broken enough to cause pain
to users?

I don't know, you could be right, but I don't see the problem that gets solved
by Android right now for the average user.

~~~
mattmaroon
Windows didn't take over the market because Mac OS sucked. It won because it
allowed scores of OEMs to make all sorts of computers targeted at all sorts of
consumers.

That's the same with the iPhone. Believe it or not, a lot of people hate AT&T.
Or they have family on Verizon, and get free minutes when talking to them, so
they sign up with Verizon. Or Sprint or T-mobile or whoever else. Or they get
15% off from work.

No matter how great the iPhone is, being tethered to AT&T means that >2/3 of
customers won't even consider it. What this means is that Android, by being on
whichever carriers want it, immediately appeals to at least 2x the number of
customers. It could be significantly less good than the iPhone, and it will
still sell more.

Then there's the form factors. It might be hard to believe, but most people
just want to talk on their phone. Android can be on a cheap-ass clamshell.
People with cheap-ass clamshells might still want to check the weather, play
simple games, etc, so there will still be a market for apps there.

A lot of people use their mobile for business. They care about call quality,
battery life, and a keypad, all things the iPhone sucks at. Those people will,
on whichever carrier their company has a deal with, have Android phones
available to them that fit that needs. (No idea if any will make inroads on
Blackberry though.)

The iPhone has Apple/AT&T's marketing budget. Android has Google, a bunch of
OEMs, and a bunch of carriers.

All of those are inherent benefits of openness.

------
utnick
For pay apps, I would much rather develop and sell on the app store and not
have to worry about license keys, copy protection, credit card merchants, and
testing on multiple devices like you probably will if you are selling an
android app.

------
stcredzero
iPhone 3G likely represents a mistake. Apple has been making tons of money by
building Ok hardware with superior design packaged with a seamless user
experience, for which they can charge a hefty premium. iPhone 3G was an
attempt to go mass market too quickly. They need to go back to their
strengths.

------
cmars232
How can we be sure Google or other wireless carriers won't restrict apps in a
similar manner as Apple?

~~~
shimi
You don't, but historically Google were more developer oriented then most
other IT Giants

------
rokhayakebe
Virtualization comes to mobile phones. Iphone supports Android. End of it.

~~~
drewcrawford
The OP is actually pretty close to the money. Android applications are
virtualized on Android phones (see: Dalvik). It wouldn't be impossible for
Apple to implement Dalvik and a few wrappers for the APIs and tie it to
Springboard.

Actually, apart from the Springboard part, and some questionable clauses in
the dev agreement, there's nothing to prevent any Joe Schmo from porting much
of Android to iPhone and putting it up on the App Store. Apps are written in
objective-C which is an ANSI C superset, so there wouldn't be any speed issue.

Compound this with the fact that Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board of
directors, and I would say some form of Android compatibility is pretty likely
in iPhone's future.

~~~
mattmaroon
If that's true, is that good or bad for Android? Seems like they get a more
vibrant developer ecosystem as a result.

------
sayrer
What exactly is open about it? It's not open source.

~~~
glymor
You're factually inaccurate.

Android being released under the Apache licence, it's taking it's sweet time
about it but that's what it should all be licenced under:
<http://code.google.com/android/kb/licensingandoss.html>

~~~
sayrer
I used the present tense. They say it will be open source at some point, but
it's not for now, and the license won't require them to release all of it.

