

Is Android Only Surging Because Apple Is Letting It? - Ainab
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/05/apple-android/

======
zmmmmm
It's a shame he didn't really actually address the question that is the title
of his article. Whatever else we know about the Apple vs Google situation one
thing is sure: Jobs is seriously burned by Android's success and there is not
a chance in hell he is "letting" Android win. Whatever is happening out there
is happening _despite_ Jobs' best efforts to stop it, not because he is
"letting" it happen.

Personally, I think that just as there is a slightly delusional sense about
Apple's competitors that all they need to do is make something in the same
category as an Apple device without any of the design brilliance or attention
to detail to succeed, there is also a slightly delusional part of the Apple
camp where they believe that design and enforced simplicity is the be-all and
end all of the user experience. Like this guy who is simply confounded that
anybody is buying Android phones and hence comes up with, by process of
elimination more than anything else, that it must be AT&T's fault. In reality,
many people actually care about features, power and flexibility too. Nobody
likes to think of themselves as being paternalised and Apple does that all the
time. Not to mention that many people dislike being treated as a channel for
mass-market commercialism that Apple wants them to be.

My mother came to me last week for the third time to plead with me to tell her
some way - any way - to use something other than iTunes to manage her iPod
Touch. She doesn't understand it. It confounds her at every step. She hates
it. I told her what I always tell her: "Look, there are ways, but the bottom
line is, it is designed to be used a certain way, and only that way. Get to
know that way, try it out how it is intended to be used and you might find it
is wonderful - many people do. But in the end, Apple is not about choices and
alternatives, they are about simplification and control. If you really dislike
it after really trying it Apple's way, I think you should think about getting
a different device." She came back a bit later and asked me how much her iPod
Touch might sell for on ebay.

------
arnorhs
I found very few factual things in that article. He's trying to make a point
that android devices are worse or the only _feature_ they have is that you're
not forced to use Verizon. (where he's obviously forgetting that there's a
universe outside of the US)

 _There are a dozen or more elements that are better about the iPhone.
Everything from the big: the App Store versus the Android Market (from the
consumer perspective) — to the little: the multi-touch and overall touchscreen
responsiveness._

I would think Multi-touch/touch responsiveness has more to do with the devices
and not the operating system.

I myself believe that Android _will_ become the dominant OS on phones, because
they've got developers on their side. All my hacker friends and developers are
really excited to start hacking on android phones (as am I) and not so
interested in developing for iPhone. I believe the biggest reason there are a
lot of developers (more so companies) that flocked to iOS development is
because of the marketplace, the opportunities it brought and that there wasn't
any similar device available at that time.

A marketplace for apps will in the end become decentralized and the greatest
apps will be for android because the smartest people will want to develop for
it. History repeats itself.

~~~
xsmasher
There's more hacker affection for Linux than Windows, but somehow the year of
Linux on the desktop was always right around the corner. Palm also had a
devoted developer following, but it couldn't make up for mistakes at the
mothership. In short history may repeat itself, but not the way you hope.

~~~
Daishiman
Yet most of the software development done nowadays is web, and guess which is
the favorite target for web deployments?

Linux is coming of age in a post-desktop world, so the question is almost
irrelevant. What IS relevant is that the biggest web technologies being used
right now, as well as the technologies that will some day become dominant
(Ruby, Scala, Haskell, Node.js, and others) are primarily for Linux and by
Linux devs.

But as far as smartphones go, the question is still open, the market is still
up for grabs, so developer-friendliness is going to be a top priority. Right
now iPhone may be the top platform, but I would not underestimate Google's
ability to appeal to developers (neither Apple's ability to make successive,
giant leaps).

~~~
blub
Most of the technologies you have enumerated only have mind-share on places
like Reddit & HN. The exception is Ruby, which is still a drop in the ocean
when compared to big players like PHP or Java. I'll give you the benefit of
doubt and assume that you're just joking with Haskell and Scala. There are
exactly ZERO Haskell jobs available in my country.

Second of all, those technologies are not Linux-centric, they are all cross-
platform. A one-OS programming language/library is worthless in the present,
except in rare cases such as specialized hardware-software solutions or in-
house software.

------
happybuy
I think evidence points to this being true. For instance, in Australia - a
technically advanced market where the iPhone is available on every major
wireless carrier - the carrier exclusivity doesn't warp market share in
Androids favour:

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/surging-
iphone...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/surging-iphone-hot-
on-the-heels-of-nokia-as-australias-
no-1-smartphone/story-e6frgakx-1225879621669)

As of May 2010, Android is at 2.1% smartphone market share, the iPhone is at
40.3% smartphone market share.

In the US, the iPhone's AT&T exclusivity gives Android protection from true
competition. When the customer can select a phone on its own merits and not
due to network availability I'm sure that the market share picture may be
different.

~~~
Daishiman
That is highly dependent on the availability of handsets and plans, so there's
never a true disconnect between OS, handset, and plans.

In South America, Motorola pushed the Milestone model, hard, and it's just as
if not more popular than the iPhone, but both are dwarfed by Blackberry, and
the Milestone is the only real high-end Android device available. If the Nexus
One or Galaxy S were for sale the numbers would be very different.

Australia, just like many other countries, has fairly hefty import tariffs on
high-tech goods, so the country of origin of different devices has a
nontrivial influence on handset availability, and thus general popularity of
each platform.

------
russell_h
I've done some Android development and didn't think it was that bad. It was
definitely something of a struggle at first (not the least because I hadn't
used Java - er, a Java-like-language - since my freshman year of college), but
it grew on me quickly and it didn't take me long to internalize most of the
important design patterns. That being said, I've never done any iPhone
development, so I can't really compare.

As to the phones themselves, I don't think its as clear cut as the author
suggests. I bought a first generation iPhone, but when it eventually met its
demise I picked up a G1 on eBay. The G1 was obviously pretty horribly specced,
but I liked enough about it to eventually got a Nexus One and rather like it.
Its lacking a lot of the polish of iOS, but seems generally a lot more
capable. I don't know anything about the history of using a back button for
navigation through multiple applications, but that and a few other things (the
notification UI for example) really pay off for Android.

I'll probably get another iPhone at some point (I'm still on AT&T and have
never gotten a subsidized phone from them - I got that original iPhone before
they subsidized them) to play with development on it, if nothing else. But for
my primary phone I'm probably going to stick with Android, at least for the
foreseeable future. Its far from perfect but it works a lot better for me.

Of course I'm not at all your typical phone user, so what I think probably
doesn't mean that much.

------
Volscio
They shouldn't let MG Siegler write about iOS v. Android on TechCrunch. :)

~~~
rodh257
yep, saw the title, thought 'bet its MG Siegler', opened to confirm my
suspicions then closed it. Getting really old now IMO.

~~~
Volscio
I really like his social networking trends posts though. :)

------
wreel
Every time I see iPhone/Android articles like these I think of this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/science/06tier.html?_r=1&#...</a>

------
slmichalk
"But the iPhone does exist. And I simply can’t bring myself to use an Android
phone when I know a superior device is out there."

WTF?

That line reminds me of this video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg>

------
naner
The iPhone has many more deficiencies besides being limited to one carrier.
Though I suppose that is the only one that most consumers care about.

------
samiq
I can't but agree with MG... even when he is an apple fan boy diehard... for
the most part everything he writes has some point of trueness.

For me, as a entrepreneur and with a product targeting both platforms, the
experience with android has made me think twice the whole idea of iphone and
its appstore stupidity, in a way where it makes me believe they are there for
a reason.

Apple provides probably the best user experience for a mobile phone out there,
everything is consistent, simple and geared to make the life of their users
likewise... and apple enforces this but also they provide tools so that we as
developers stay that way with not too much pain.

Android on the other hand stays too much to its Linux parenthood... yes it's
open, yes you can do lots of stuff with it, it even can power the coffee pot
if you wanted it to... but everything comes at a price! And the price that
google has have to pay for that "flexibility" comes in direct impact of the
experience... and microsoft seems to have learnt this too, hence the level of
control they are putting back on the WP7.

Google has to pick up the ball while there is still time... provide developers
with the right tools so we don't go reinventing the warm water everything we
need to do something and provided them so that it remains consistent with the
experience the have created with the phone... and enforce OEMs to do the same.

Now will google do this before apple pulls the trigger on new carriers for the
iPhone or before WP7 takes power?... I hope so, as competition is always good
for innovation.

in the mean time I will keep my Galaxy (with its 12+ carrier stupid apps) at
lab for testing purposes and will carry my iPhone for the every day
experience.

------
miles
Has the author not used a Droid X? Swype and eerily accurate speech-to-text
are radically better than any input methods I've seen on the iPhone. Before
Swype, I couldn't have imagined giving up my Treo 755P keyboard. Now I
couldn't go back.

------
siglesias
I personally haven't seen this kind of discussion change a single opinion.

As for the title question, we've all seen the customer satisfaction numbers
and the willingness to switch numbers:
<http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/smartphones/?p=816>, so I think, hinging on
the credibility of these data, it's an empirical fact that iPhone stands a lot
to gain by going to Verizon. If you're an iPhone developer, like myself, these
data ought to be reassuring.

It's clear that the tech blogosphere and its core readership have a hint of
counter-consumerist taste which makes it very bad at predicting the success of
consumer products (we've seen a ghosts from 2007 this weekend on HN, and I
suspect the "iPad will fail" articles are bound to crop up and bite certain
bloggers later). The remedy (please) is some good old fashioned market
research if we're going to make business/startup decisions based on such
discussions. Eh?

PS: The top comment of this TechCrunch article is perpetrating this "Big
Brother" analogy with respect to Apple's app store approval. As an English
major, this has been bothering me for a while. Have these guys read 1984? "Big
Brother" is supposed to represent the panopticon surveillance state, you know,
one where your footsteps are tracked and recorded constantly. Sounds more like
someone else to me.

~~~
sprout
The people comparing Apple's approval process to 1984 are clearly drawing
parallels with the torture scenes where the protagonist is ultimately
convinced that he shouldn't have done what he did and Big Brother is
ultimately right - which sounds exactly like Apple. If you don't like it, it
was a good choice and you're just looking at it from the wrong angle.

You're speaking in black and white where shades of gray are clearly the order
of the day. Google exhibits certain traits of the 1984 state, Apple others.

~~~
siglesias
Then they are Winston Smith, not Big Brother.

~~~
sprout
No, in the perfectly valid analogy, we are Winston Smith, Apple is Big
Brother. Though it also might be argued that in this analogy you are O'Brien.

~~~
siglesias
Apple is not Big Brother: they don't use their technology to spy on and track
users. They don't opt users into new privacy-violating features, like Buzz.
The surveillance is the KEY reason why Orwell set it in the future--it's a
technology that he can take advantage of to make the society seem that much
more terrifying. If you're trying to find a random dictator whose rules
oppress us, you have a feast of other dictators to choose from. If you're
going to use Big Brother, if you don't have an analogy to draw with his
omniscience and omnipresence, then you aren't making a good analogy. Unless
you're in 10th grade and Big Brother is just a proxy for dictatorship.

You know, while we're on the topic, Google aren't exactly rushing full speed
ahead to make the best app experience on a phone. It's not their incentive to
work towards the best native app user experience, because that takes away from
the web traffic that makes them the real money. And they can't track us in
apps. But who cares, right? It's free. Another social contract of sorts.

~~~
sprout
Why is it so important to you that Google is evil and Apple is good? That's
why Apple is like Big Brother. Fanatical, unreasoning devotion is a key
component of Orwell's dystopia. Google doesn't have that.

~~~
siglesias
All I'm saying is that Big Brother is a stupid analogy and that it can just as
swiftly be applied to Google for its obsession with collecting personal data
with their free services. This ultimately damages customer value because it
commits them to pushing inferior web app experiences that must be downloaded
from scratch each time a user attempts to access a particular service.

I am not for strong accusations and name calling (and I deliberately didn't
mention Google by name in my original post), but evidently you have no problem
making this personal. If you look over this discussion, you're the one
affixing labels on everything (including me). I have no commitment to
maintaining intellectually impoverished rhetorical positions. In my opinion,
such positions are ruining the discourse. I still don't understand why free
and open-source advocates try to brush development, security, privacy,
usability, compatibility, and monetization issues under a rug. Can we not fix
a price to those elements? Are we so extreme that we can't accept that there
are tradeoffs inherent to the system, and that approval doesn't have to
necessarily equal malevolent control?

In tech, if we don't appreciate--and point out--the nuances of different kinds
of relationships and different stances regarding privacy, cost, and
experience, then ultimately we lose as entrepreneurs and developers because we
don't see the next big thing coming, or we overvalue something that consumers
are not necessarily interested in. Equating app store approval with Big
Brother doesn't help anybody, and it deliberately slants the discussion.

------
nostromo
There must have been some sort of "out" for Apple in their contract with AT&T.
I've never seen a contract without some sort of early termination section.
(I'm not a lawyer, but I work with them on business contracts often.)

It must be a prohibitively large dollar amount for Apple to end the agreement
early, which is surprising since I think it's been far more successful than
anyone could have imagined -- so I assume what would have at launch seemed
like a ridiculous sum would now be quite affordable for Apple to remove the
100lb gorilla in the room.

------
chubs
I'm so glad in australia we can have the iphone on all our networks... Just
one more reason that this is the best country in the world ;)

~~~
patrickaljord
Except for the internet censorship part ;)

~~~
stoney
There was a lot of noise about that, but in reality the internet "filtering"
proposals have not (yet) been enacted and thanks to the latest election result
look pretty much guaranteed to be unpassable now.

------
gojomo
What is the iPhone/Android proportion on AT&T?

How about in countries where the iPhone is available on all carriers?

That would be more instructive than a US/AT&T-centric analysis.

~~~
sandipc
I would guess that the iPhone/Android proportion on AT&T is heavily skewed
toward the iPhone because AT&T's Android devices are all underpowered and
locked down relative to their counterparts on every other US network.

------
lzw
This, and other coverage of the android vs. apple competition seems to alway
miss an important point. For instance he says "if the iPhone didn't exist, I'd
certainly use an android", and that they are much better than other phones
that are out there.

But if the iPhone didn't exist, the android phone wouldn't exist in its
current form.

~~~
Goladus
He didn't miss it, the point is not relevant to the article. The author is
focused on analyzing the present and speculating about the future. He's not
performing a rigorous "what if" alternate reality exercise.

