
The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics - alexandros
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2010/02/09/TheIPhoneObsessionAndLyingWithStatistics.aspx
======
daleharvey
you cant talk about biased statistics, and then use admob as a better source.

~~~
jlgosse
Agreed. You have to realize AdMob isn't even providing proper support for
BlackBerry in their APIs.

------
eplanit
Isn't the bigger point to be made is that Internet/Web applications should be
platform _independent_?

That is, is there any merit for targeting a single platform -- even if that
platform happens to currently enjoy a large market share? I wonder how many
people regret targeting IE, exclusively, during the early 2000s when it seemed
MS 'owned' the browser market at that time.

~~~
freetard
There's a difference between IE and webkit though. Webkit thrive on respecting
and implementing open and free web standards. Also, it doesn't have any
proprietary specific "extensions" and bugs are fixed ASAP. So developing for
the iPhone (and therefore webkit) is developing for the open web which is a
good thing and allows taking advantage of HTML5 which is the best way to offer
great features without ruining your battery (ie instead of using flash).

Note that Symbian and Android both use Webkit, granted with different versions
but eventually what works on Android or the iPhone works on Symbian too.

However IE was all the contrary of that: no respect for standards, proprietary
extensions, long standing bugs (didn't they just fix a 10 year old one?),
security issues, you name it. So let's not compare apples and oranges.

~~~
moron4hire
Users don't care about openness. They only care about workingness.

~~~
Knacker_Hughes
This is a long-standing argument of mine. Some of our users maintain that they
are only interested in the functionality rather than the quality of the
code/design/integration etc.

Then, six months later, when they need an enhancement and find that it is
going to take twice as long/cost twice as much to build something on top of
the quick & hacky solution that they originally insisted on, they still make
unhappy noises.

\- I love them really, like pets...

~~~
moron4hire
Exactly, and while it would be great if things were standardized to make this
job easier, we have to live in reality and do what is necessary for our users.

One thing that I struggle with to always keep in mind is that our users are
not stupid people. I keep the image of my father in my head -- an incredibly
brilliant man who taught me everything I know about arithmetic by the time I
was 5, algebra by the time I was 8, then stepped back as I voraciously
consumed all of the math books he bought for me, thereby basically ensuring my
current success in my current field -- and he can't remember how to send links
to websites to his friends. Actually, it's not that he can't remember, it's
that he can't decide on the best way, between IMing, or posting on Facebook,
or emailing (and if he emails, will he email the link or the HTML itself, and
then will it be just the HTML, or a web archive, and will the web archive work
for his brother who has always ran Apple hardware, etc. etc.).

Our users aren't dumb, for the most part. It's absolutely our failure as an
industry to hold each other to a standard of professionalism (and I mean
professionalism in the sense of Engineers, not MBAs) to ensure that things are
actually usable and adhering to standards. We were cursed by our early
adoption by counter culturalists.

------
enjo
Am I missing something?

From those numbers it appears that the iPhone accounts for merely about half
of North American traffic. The point of the original article wasn't that sites
shouldn't run well on the iPhone, it's that they shouldn't ONLY be locked into
the iPhone.

Those stats seem to back that up. If your going to toss half of the potential
user base over the side just to support the iPhone... well that would be a
huge mistake from what I can see.

------
yumraj
As Benjamin Disraeli said, and was quoted by Mark Twain : "There are three
kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics".

Depending on our own biases, and interests, all data and statistics can be
morphed to reflect our "truth". The reality is somewhere in the middle.

IMO, both articles have good points, if we remove the statistics and data.

------
moron4hire
Way to really miss the point of the original article.

