

The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on Android - bluekitten
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479

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nakedrobot2
This sort of cements the idea that Android really is a copy of iOS in most
ways. Of course they've made some of their own innovations, and there are a
few things that work better than on iOS.

I think Steve Jobs was probably justified in his furious reaction to Android.

disclosure: Android user, I dislike many aspects of iOS, namely the
restrictive policies of the app store, and the totally broken app sharing UX.

~~~
cma
>I think Steve Jobs was probably justified in his furious reaction to Android.

iOS was more of a copy of palm (which in turn was a copy of Newton..) than
android was a copy of iOS.

The biggest innovation was realizing capactive screens made things much nicer,
and made browsing possible. But it is hard to fault Google for copying their
browser when Apple themselves based it on LGPLed KHTML; the license dictates
that they share.

~~~
pessimizer
>realizing capactive screens made things much nicer

In what way? Inaccuracy and the inability to use a stylus or wear gloves?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66RBfrBgL2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66RBfrBgL2E)

edit: surprised at the downvotes. Is there a capacitive screen even remotely
comparable to the accuracy and pressure response of a 4 year old resistant
N900? I'm open to examples.

~~~
Sephiroth87
If only someone could come up with a way to use a stylus on a capacitive
screen... Oh wait...

~~~
pessimizer
You can make a stylus for a capacitive screen by making a capacitive stylus.
My wonder is why one would make using a stylus a more difficult and expensive
proposition in order to have a lower quality screen input.

~~~
Sephiroth87
How many use cases are there for needing a so precise stylus? Apart from
drawing, I can't really think of anything that hasn't benefited from
capacitive screens + fingers...

If you need a stylus to read mails, use the web or normal stuff, you'll
probably need a better UI, not a stylus

~~~
pessimizer
Fingers work just as well on a resistive screen as on a capacitive screen.

------
publicfig
If you have the chance, it really is worth going back and watching the
original iPhone release video. It's pretty amazing to see some of the things
that were so new and exciting a few years ago now so much a part of the phone
landscape that we can't even imagine a phone without them. It's almost more
amazing to see how basic it seems compared to what we have now, just 6 years
later.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ)

~~~
bryanlarsen
Keep in mind that most of those things that were "new and exciting" weren't
new; it was just that most people hadn't seen them before, or not done well
before.

For example, nobody used capacitive touch screens because they were horribly
imprecise. The iPhone included some tricks to make them less precise, but
mostly they just embraced the imprecision: all tap targets on the iPhone are
thumb size.

Another thing that bothered me was Steve's description of the screen as the
highest resolution screen available on a phone, when there were several
gadgets available with much higher resolution screens, such as the Nokia N770.

My experience with the N770 definitely made me dismissive of the iPhone. The
n770 made me well aware of the value of having a web browser in your pocket.
But it had an 800 pixel screen at a time when that was the minimum width that
many web sites designed for, along with a highly accurate stylus that you
could use to accurately click on tiny links. There was no way the web was
going to be usable on a 480 pixel screen without an accurate stylus. Which
meant that every web site had to be rewritten to be iPhone friendly.

Who was going to buy an iPhone when virtually all websites were unusable?
(remember at that time there were no apps). And who would rewrite their
website to support an iPhone that nobody was buying? Classic chicken and egg
problem.

Steve told us the answer: an incredibly polished product and incredible
salesmanship.

~~~
Synaesthesia
The iphone may have had a lower resolution screen, but the performance and
responsiveness of the OS and browser were the real innovations. The power of
Safari as well as the way you could zoom made it a game changer for surfing
the web on your phone.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Blackberries from that era were very responsive. The web browser sucked, of
course.

------
AnotherDesigner
As someone that has a lot of Apple products I'm glad they have competition. I
don't think any one company should have a monopoly on the modern touchscreen
smartphone concept. That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that
Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition. And that's okay.
It would be one thing if Android looked like a direct copy of iOS but it
doesn't. It just uses the same technologies. On the other hand, when
unscrupulous companies like Samsung try to capitalize on Apples success by
directly copying the product they should be slapped down and reminded to do
their own thing. It's all about balancing the rights of innovators and the
protections for consumers.

~~~
DannyBee
"That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly
copied a lot of ideas from their competition"

1\. I wish Apple fans would accept that Apple does the same instead of
seemingly believing that every feature Apple has ever added was brought down
on chiseled stone tablets received on Mount Sinai :)

2\. FWIW: Roughly this exact same story could be written about any good
competitor reacting to any good launch by any company ever. It sounds
sensational because it's "Google" vs. "Apple" or whatever, but realistically,
companies react to each other.

~~~
gfodor
re: 1, obviously this is true in any element of creative work. there is, of
course, a line, where a creative work becomes distinctly new and reasonably
un-plagiaristic even though it clearly draws upon the work of others.

in other words, pointing out copying by a copier does not make them a
hypocrite, since there isn't just one definition of copying, and anyone doing
creative work is by definition a copier. Apple defenders would argue that all
of the other products they've built have been sufficiently innovative and
improvements over their predecessors so as to make them genuinely new things.
It's a hard case to make for Android if you consider iOS a predecessor to its
design process, which it sounds like was rebooted upon iOS's reveal.

~~~
chimeracoder
> re: 1, obviously this is true in any element of creative work. there is, of
> course, a line, where a creative work becomes distinctly new and reasonably
> un-plagiaristic even though it clearly draws upon the work of others. in
> other words, pointing out copying by a copier does not make them a
> hypocrite, since there isn't just one definition of copying, and anyone
> doing creative work is by definition a copier.

Exactly. As a wise man once said, "Good artists copy, and great artists
steal".

If only I could remember who....

~~~
gshubert17
Igor Stravinski may have said "Good composers don't borrow, they steal".

------
tomasien
Apple annoys me with how closed off they are in many ways, but this is the
example I always bring up when people are trying to HATE Apple for being so
closed off - they destroyed the most destructive force in mobile UX ever - the
phone company oligopoly. Besides also presenting the only ever true competitor
to the Microsoft PC, that's their biggest contribution to openness (whether
done intentionally or not).

------
bonaldi
> Larry Page: “We had a closet full of over 100 phones [that we were
> developing software for], and we were building our software pretty much one
> device at a time,” he said in his 2012 report to share­holders. In various
> remarks over the years he has described the experience as both “awful” and
> “incredibly painful.”

... and now nearly every Android dev shop I know has closets full of way more
than 100 phones, with feature white and blacklists all around.

~~~
kumarm
We are an Android Dev Shop with decent success (US Based). We don't carry more
than 4 models of android Devices.

Would you care to mention names of couple of dev shops that has 100 Android
models?

~~~
girvo
Some big game shops do, IIRC. That was a while back too, when there was 1.6
devices still being used. In my experience, 4 phone devices is about right for
Android (and 2-3 iPhones for full testing).

~~~
NickPollard
For game shops, the reason they might have more is for GPU compatibility -
where actual OpenGLES features can very between devices and you do have to
worry about different code paths.

------
ori_b
This is not actually true, although it makes a good myth.

Android seems to have been targeting a variety of form factors from pre-iPhone
times, and had a touchscreen interface implemented before Apple released the
iPhone:

[http://www.osnews.com/story/25264](http://www.osnews.com/story/25264)

~~~
jolan
From the article:

> Within weeks the Android team had completely reconfigured its objectives. A
> phone with a touchscreen, code-named Dream, that had been in the early
> stages of development, became the focus.

~~~
ori_b
So, "They prioritized a form factor they'd already been working on"?

I'm not sure that I'd describe that as "The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on
Android".

------
salient
Android already existed before Google bought it, and at the time it was built
mainly as a competitor to Blackberry (before Google bought them). So Google
continued on the same path, as they were less interested in "changing the
paradigm of mobile UX" than in killing the Real Fragmentation that existed
before, with each OEM having its own OS, and unifying them under the open
source Android.

There's something to be said about how fast they reacted to iPhone once they
saw it, though. I mean how many big companies react as fast the moment they
see a disruptive technology and realize its potential for the future? In
comparison it took Nokia 4 years after the iPhone, to even admit Symbian was a
dead-end, and it also took Microsoft 3 years to come up with something that
wasn't just an evolution of Windows Mobile. So kudos to Google for realizing
early on the potential of the iPhone-like user interfaces and iPhone-like
touchscreen smartphones.

~~~
ceejayoz
A big +1 here. Microsoft and Palm were quoted in articles at the time saying
stuff like "you can't just expect to enter the market and be successful
immediately" and "we're not worried, we're the dominant player in the market".
Google correctly went "well, shit, that's the new standard - let's catch up".

~~~
kenrikm
Always knew Balmer was a goof - however this one will go down in history.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U)

The best part is when he goes over the "checklist" of features their phones
have.. it'll do email! - quality products are more about checklists of
features, something Microsoft still does not get.

~~~
leoc
I think it's pretty clear that Ballmer is fronting in that clip. The fact that
he has a list of anti-iPhone talking points ready to run through doesn't
suggest that he's unconcerned about the iPhone, rather the opposite.

------
melling
Steve doesn't get enough credit with many HN types. He was also the spark that
launched the multi-billion dollar mobile industry. Samsung, Google, etc now
all aggressively compete with huge resources. Hopefully, Elon will do the same
with the electric car and rockets. If Elon, is successful enough with electric
cars, for example, then others will follow, and more resources will be thrown
at the problem.

------
mzs
I wondered what Sooner was like, closest I could find:

[http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-ve...](http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-version-
of-android-google.html)

There is also a video, pretty similar device.

~~~
joezydeco
That is definitely the Sooner. I used one while working at an OHA partner
company in 2007. It was just an HTC reflashed with Android.

------
ahomescu1
When I first saw the headline, I thought the article would be about throwing
Dalvik away and going with AOT compilation (as in the new ART). I've heard a
lot of people complain that Android is more laggy/less smooth than iOS, and I
always suspected Dalvik is a big part of that.

------
bane
It's a lesson that head starts, no matter how revolutionary, can always be
overcome.

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ffrryuu
Seems like an admission of guilt over patent infringement. /s

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shootaray
Could this be done if this was a startup going after a phone?

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credo
Interesting to see how this report has been buried on HN

This post is on page 3 and ranked 75. it says "59 points by bluekitten 2 hours
ago"

Meanwhile on page 1, the number 21 item says "35 points by cromulent 4 hours
ago" and the number-29 item says "64 points by AndrewDucker 8 hours ago"

~~~
quarterto
Having more comments than points it will have triggered the controversial
filter.

