
IPhone vs Android? No. We're fighting the wrong fight - turoczy
http://eliainsider.com/2010/09/14/fighting-the-wrong-fight/
======
biafra
To me all those problems with carriers dictating anything looks like a US-only
problem.

You can fix this! Just buy more unlocked phones. Since 1994 I never bought a
net locked phone. Subsidizing does not have to be linked to a net lock.
Subsidizing was never (AFAIR) linked to a net lock in Germany. The iPhone was
a first for us (here in Europe). From here it looks like the iPhone brought
this consumer-unfriendly practice to us. Thank goodness no Android phone is
net locked here in Germany at least no net locked only.

~~~
sapphirecat
> Just buy more unlocked phones.

In my experience, if you buy an unlocked phone, you hand the carrier a bonus
payment of the cost of the phone. They don't give you any cheaper service.

And, when I went to replace a Nokia POS that died 3 days after warranty, I
discovered that Verizon even subsidizes their _prepaid_ phones: you can get an
LG VX5600 for $40 _with new service_ , but to replace the Nokia with the
existing account, they wanted $200. (Allegedly, they "don't sell" the Nokia in
question as a prepaid, and thus couldn't offer a direct replacement; which
raises the question of why phones they "don't sell" come with their branding
and work on their network.)

~~~
RK
T-mobile USA is (AFAIK) the only US provider that is making unlocked phones
better deals. They provide two service types: with contract and without
contract with the latter being cheaper.

~~~
qeorge
I can confirm this. I have T-Mobile with an unlocked Nexus One - $66/month
after all taxes and fees, 500 anytime minutes, unlimited everything else.

In addition to getting it cheaper for prepaying each month, I get $5 off for
letting them bill my card automatically.

(Incidentally, T-Mobile is a German company).

~~~
jrockway
BTW, my friend was considering a N1, so I did the math to see if you actually
save money by buying the phone for $600 upfront versus paying for it over two
years. You do.

(But if you are just going to put it on your credit card and pay it off over
those two years, then you lose. T-Mobile lends you the phone at a very low
interest rate. Or gouges you on service for the unsubsidized phone.)

------
ZeroGravitas
Android is only free of carrier abuse if you're geeky enough. However, Apple
is only free of carrier abuse if you're affluent enough. The average joe is
getting shafted either way. (Though, to continue the class theme, note how
offended people are that it's NASCAR apps that they can't uninstall, as
opposed to the stock market apps they can't uninstall from Apple). Remember
when Sony charged more to remove the junk they themselves put on their
machines? The subsidies earned by these bits of software lowered the price for
those who would struggle to afford them otherwise and for the geeks who repave
as an automatic response, similar to how people spending at the overpriced
hotel minibar reduce the room prices for everyone else.

If this is actually considered important for folk in the US, then they're
going to have to stop the Apple fanboys in the media using it as a stick to
beat Google with and face up to the reality that Apple has failed to change
the carrier business model too, just as Google's Nexus One failed. I seem to
recall that just like the Nexus One, the iPhone was supposed to be sold direct
to consumers at the full unsubsidized price.

~~~
orangecat
_I seem to recall that just like the Nexus One, the iPhone was supposed to be
sold direct to consumers at the full unsubsidized price._

Excellent point. It was sold unsubsidized initially, but people were
apoplectic about spending $600 for a phone. Apple quickly realized that
joining the subsidy model was better than fighting it, so they announced the
price "cut" on the 3G model and got glowing press, while hardly anyone noticed
that with the monthly rate increase customers would be paying more over two
years.

Apple has far better taste than the carriers, to be sure. But both agree that
you should not have control over "your" hardware.

~~~
kylec
It may have been unsubsidized, but it was _still locked to AT &T_ and only
available with a 2-year contract with an ETF. It was basically the cost of an
unsubsidized without any of the benefit.

------
nanairo
I agree with the main arguments. Although as others pointed out this is mostly
an american problem (though it still occurs abroad, but less so).

But I find this argument naive: "But this pipe dream is being crushed quickly.
The carriers, after giving up ground initially, are fighting back. They are
using Android’s openness against the company."

The point is: if Google hadn't done that, the carriers may very well not have
supported it. Let's remember that although now we consider Android a strong
contender, at the time Android was neither that strong, nor the only
contender. I'd be ready to bet that other carriers supported Android as much
to hurt Apple as because they knew they could control it.

Personally I'd go as far as to say that Google developed Android the way they
did fully aware that this could happen: the bottom line is that Google doesn't
make money from Android, and as nobody holds the market in the palm of their
hand Google is happy... even though it may mean basically subsidising other
companies fight against Apple (at the time).

~~~
illumin8
> The point is: if Google hadn't done that, the carriers may very well not
> have supported it.

I don't buy this argument. This is one of those slippery slope arguments that
are used to justify everything. Let's say you're a Cisco and you want to sell
routers and network gear to the Chinese. You can either give their government
back doors to spy on traffic and make it easy for them, guaranteeing the
business will go to you, or you can take the moral high ground and refuse to
build these features into your products. Too often big companies like Cisco,
Google, and Microsoft take the approach that money trumps all morality
concerns, and we end up with a big brother police state enabled by the very
technology companies that were supposed to save us from this future.

Google should do what Apple did and stick to their guns - refuse to let
carriers mess with Android.

~~~
wvenable
The first Android phones were nothing compared to the iPhone. Giving
everything (including revenues) to the carriers and manufacturers is exactly
why Android exists now.

Google could have stuck to their guns, but the situation would be unchanged.

------
moultano
It's pretty comical that half of the responses in this thread are trying to
place the blame on either Apple or Google.

~~~
lzw
I don't see it as the same as Apple vs. Google. Apple and Google both have to
fight the carriers and they have positions with different strengths and
weaknesses.

I think both want to break the carriers power and end up with open networks,
but their strategies are very different.

------
extension
A new 3G carrier, Videotron, just launched in Quebec and I was surprised to
see that they offer the Nexus One:

[http://www.videotron.com/mobile/service/mobile/appareils/det...](http://www.videotron.com/mobile/service/mobile/appareils/details.do@lang=ENGLISH&noAppareil=1012&init=true.html)

I'm not sure how much they've modded it though, or if it can be as easily
unlocked/rooted as one bought straight from Google.

------
PedroCandeias
Yesterday I gave a friend's Galaxy S a spin and was mighty impressed. It's
light as a feather, the screen is gorgeous and it's an order of magnitude more
responsive than my old iphone 3G. I was all set to buy an iphone4, but
samsung's device game me pause. So I asked about the apps. What good stuff was
there on the Android Market? "Well", he started, "there really isn't one,
because the carrier doesn't allow it. I just get the apps my carrier lists on
its website". I think that's preposterous, so as impressed as I am with the
Galaxy S, I'm afraid I'll be sticking with Apple's product (I live in
Portugal... experience will probably vary from carrier to carrier and country
to country).

~~~
auxbuss
Blocking the Market is something Google really should put a stop to. I've
never seen this, though, myself. Then again, buy unlocked and it's not a
problem

Still, if you you liked the phone, then get one via another carrier.

~~~
PedroCandeias
Yeah, I'm going to compare the two more thoroughly before I buy. Right now I'm
leaning towards the iphone4 but that's just because of the apps. Hardware-
wise, from what I've seen, they're about in the same league.

------
slantyyz
The carriers annoy me orders of magnitude more than even the worst iPhone or
Android troll could.

~~~
lzw
Back in the 1990s, Apple, as prescient as always, proposed to the FCC that
certain spectrum be set aside for "wireless internet use". This spectrum would
have been open to anybody, and would have allowed anybody, using spread
spectrum to operate a data network, nationwide.

The reason we're in the spot we're in, and the carriers have so much control,
is that the FCC issued only three licenses for each goegraphic area in the
spectrum auctions. This limits competition and ensures a near monopoly pricing
power for the big three carriers. Subsequent changes have loosened this a
little bit, but not a lot.

The real problem here is the idea that spectrum can be "owned" and that our
government gets to dictate (based on bribes- which is what spectrum "Sales"
are really) who gets to "own" the spectrum.

Apple tried, and I believe google tried recently, to create unowned spectrum.
Spread spectrum technology lets people share space-- hell Wifi works on the
same frequency as microwave ovens, and still manages to work when the
microwave is running. I cant think of a harsher environment than that!

So long as government has a ruthless grip on spectrum, and forces us to deal
with the three headed monopoly, there is a limit to how much freedom of choice
we can have.

~~~
slantyyz
As a Canadian, I'm still jealous of the wireless options you guys have. Sure,
we can have an iPhone on all major carriers, and we can tether too, but I
still feel like the rates and plans you guys get are more competitive than
ours.

------
bryanlarsen
In my opinion, Apple & the carriers are on the same side of this fight. Who
controls your phone? The user or some big corporation?

The difference between Apple & the carriers is that Apple is far more
competent in its control, carefully avoiding short term gains at the expense
of long term gains. Locking crappy adware apps into your phones is an obvious
long term mistake that Apple would never make.

Being more competent, Apple is much more dangerous.

------
cies
Clearly the carriers should be regulated. In the Netherlands they are and we
have the cheapest rates (between our narrow borders, outside the borders they
screw us double).

For instancen we can keep our number when switching carriers or unlock phones
after the contract's finished.

I'd say regulations are needed in order to keep the market from degrading into
customer-slavery. :)

~~~
gxti
> For instancen we can keep our number when switching carriers

This has also been possible in the U.S. for as long as cell phones have been
widespread. Presumably there is a regulatory reason because I can't imagine a
strong reason a carrier would implement it otherwise.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_This has also been possible in the U.S. for as long as cell phones have been
widespread._

For values of "as long as" shorter than fourteen years, that is:

 _In the US, local number portability was mandated by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) in 1996 with the First Report and Order on LNP
and Number Pooling._

Those of us who owned cell phones in the early 1990s remember very well how
screwed we used to be.

------
orangecat
_This is war. And this war will go nothing like Apple v. Microsoft. This is
about who controls the experience_

Quite disturbing that "the user" is not one of the plausible answers.

~~~
cheesey
In most wars, it's the people who don't have power that suffer.

~~~
Tichy
But they do have power: buying power. Maybe one could somehow give them the
information they require. Of course the operators have done a good job
obfuscating the information.

Maybe some people don't want to be helped, either.

------
amirmc
It seems that only Apple is left trying to maintain control over the
device/experience/software. This is a shame since with some decent competition
(read: Google), the grip of the carriers could have been loosened further.

Jobs deserves credit for convincing the carriers to relinquish some control
(despite the fact we might not like _who_ he made those deals with). It would
be tragic if things went back to the way they were before.

------
ankimal
".. reducing them to what they should be: regulated pipe providers just like
your gas and electric company."

I come from India, the second largest mobile market in the world. (Its a
complete mystery why we got 3G just a few months back, but atleast we re
getting there). The key in India is that the providers are just that,
regulated pipe providers and one only pays for service. I m free to go buy
whichever phone I want and do whatever the hell I want with it. I dont have to
be in "contract" and I dont have to keep going near windows to make phone
calls.

------
NumberFiveAlive
This has certainly been my experience with my Verizon DroidX. Fantastic
hardware, and I love Android, but it came loaded up with crapware I can't
uninstall. A _Blockbuster_ App!? Hell, why not put AOL on it while we're at
it.

------
egb
It's tempting to envision a world where phones are like PCs, that you'd just
pick one out from Fry's and then install any apps you want (after choosing an
app store that you liked) and then hooking up to some voice/text/data plan
that you liked, and competition makes all the players work hard for your
business...

But I think the paradox of choice kicks in, somewhat, in that users really
like the iPhone world's somewhat-curated experience, and that you get a base
set of well-built apps that are provided by Apple for the basics (phone,
texting, web, email) and they form the core of your mobile usage until you
start adding in your own apps.

Having said that, I'd love to be able to pick a carrier for my iPhone, but I
don't want the fractured environment/ecosystem of Android.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
The scenario you describe - where you just pick a phone like a PC - is what
the carriers are trying to avoid. That turns them into a commodity, a bunch of
wires.

They'll obviously fight that to the death, hence the customising of phones,
the exclusive models, the provision of non-transferable services, handset
subsidies and doing everything they can to prevent the average user seeing the
alternatives.

The problem is that so long as they keep doing handset subsidies, they'll
likely keep winning. I know someone who has just bought a Dell Streak on a two
year contract. He got it free but over time he's going to pay more for it than
he would for an iPad. Now he's a smart guy - if he's not thinking in those
terms you can bet the average consumer isn't.

Basically the networks are providing cheap credit to tie people in to
overpriced telecoms services and the consumers love it because it means that
for $50 a month (which you can afford) you can have a $600 phone (which you
can't, at least not easily).

~~~
auxbuss
At some point, someone will enter the market and provide "just the pipe". Or,
the telcos will fight themselves into that situation. We just have a lot of
historical baggage to work through first.

Telcos are already a commodity, there's just a bit of cognitive dissonance
going on.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
A network requires a massive investment to build, it sadly makes no sense for
someone to spend that money and then comoditize the market taking the bulk of
the profit out if it.

I think any change will be more gradual, each carrier having to relinquish
little bits more control over time to please users and other companies in the
market (such as Apple and maybe Google who could threaten to withdraw funding
for Android if the carriers keep screwing with it so much).

------
dikbrouwer
Let's not forget that this is all fairly US-centric; In Europe the handset
manufacturers are more powerful. As a consumer, you select a device first and
add-on the network operator after. That's 180 off from what's going on the in
US. However, it hasn't created the device innovation that we see now in the US
with Google and Apple weighing in...

~~~
aphexairlines
Can you install whichever OS you like in European handsets?

------
RexRollman
I am not a fan of the iPhone because of its dependency on iTunes. iTunes is an
overweight bloated piece of junk and I won't go back to Windows just to run
it.

I am not a fan of Android because each individual maker gets to decide if you
can have an update or not. That would be like buying a Dell PC and then having
to go through Dell, not Microsoft, for Windows Updates.

So for now, I will keep going with my non-smart phone. At least until things
change.

~~~
matwood
"I am not a fan of the iPhone because of its dependency on iTunes. iTunes is
an overweight bloated piece of junk and I won't go back to Windows just to run
it."

You do know they will activate for you in the store and then only time you
ever _have_ to use iTunes again is when an update comes out? Now, this means
your phone will not get backed up, but if you set Google up as an Exchange
server all your emails, contacts, and calendar items are stored on the cloud
anyway.

~~~
hasenj
You're wrong.

You still need iTunes to put music on your phone

~~~
matwood
On linux you have <http://www.libimobiledevice.org/> which worked until the
most recent update to iOS4. I'm going to assume they'll get it working again
shortly.

Doubletwist also syncs music on the iPhone.

Then you can always download music directly onto the phone or use any of the
streaming apps.

------
jackvalentine
Something else to question: is the GSM/CDMA split partially to blame here for
intensive carrier lock-ins? I like to follow the US carrier market, but from
the perspective that in my own country the last CDMA network was shut down in
2008. Here I can choose to buy a carrier branded phone with a subsidy, or as
many people do - just buy a phone outright and pay month-to-month swapping
carriers as simply as swapping the SIM card.

------
tyng
Android - good deeds fell in the wrong hands, nuff said. Welcome to Corporate
America

------
protomyth
Given Google's approach to Android, it looks like carriers are going to treat
Android phones as feature phones and not smart phones. This might be ok for
the user, but it certainly is looking like it will hurt developers and power
users.

The continued existence of non-commodity broadband providers is going to be a
pain for everything on top of the stack.

------
guelo
My question is who won this battle when Verizon and Apple negotiated the
iphone coming out next year. I'm guessing Verizon wasn't able to get any
crapware on there beyond Apple's standard crap, but you never know, Apple
really wanted to expand beyond AT&T.

As far as Android, I get the sense that Google is not happy with this
situation and they do have one big stick they can use, access to Android
Market.

I'd also like to remind the ridiculous Google haters that it was Google that
fought the FCC and the carriers to get open access rules added to the
bandwidth auctioned off in 2008, those rules should loosen at least what
Verizon does in the future.

~~~
loewenskind
>I'd also like to remind the ridiculous Google haters

Ugh, people who don't fall in love with the same things you do aren't
necessarily _haters_.

------
known
iPhone is a Gadget. Android is an Operating system. Why are we comparing them?

------
lzw
This article highlights why I'm a fan of apple more than google. Apple is
going to exert the power to control the carriers. Apple is about the only
company that can, or will, exert this kind of power.

I hope google changes, and starts getting control over os installation.... But
I can't see that happening.

In this case, the openness of android works against google.

As an app developer, I'm keen to put products out for android, but the
combination of fragmentation and very slow adoption of latest releases by the
android mass market are two of the biggest hurdles.

Apples market has little fragmentation and high hardware consistency.

But I digress. Without google imposing some licensing terms, android users are
always going to have a poor os upgrade experience, it seems.

And I thin android is at risk of carriers introducing bloatware that you
cannot uninstall.

~~~
martythemaniak
Let's not kid ourselves - all the power Apple wrestled away from AT&T it kept
for itself - the consumer didn't see much of a change, or saw a regression.

Prior to the iPhone, loading your own apps and changing settings on your
smartphone was standard practice. What Apple did was bring the featurephone
practice (jumping through somebody's beaurocracy to get to consumers) to the
smartphone market. Suddenly, being in control of your own smartphone is an
"openness feature".

Now, to loyal Apple fans, who love and trust Apple, this transfer of
power/control from AT&T to Apple is the same as them (the Apple consumer)
seeing benefits. To other people, it just means dealing with someone else,
without any change in the fact that you still have to go through somebody.

~~~
lzw
Prior to the iPhone, apps on an a phone were paying $3/month to a carrier for
crappy junk. The phones were locked down. It was far from "standard practice"
to load your own apps onto your own phone, and the apps you could choose to
use were highly limited and far more controlled.

I think people forget that before the Apple AppStore there really were very
few apps for phones.

~~~
jonknee
I think you're confusing smartphones and feature phones. You're right that the
experience of apps on feature phones was lackluster (it still is actually).
The iPhone helped catapult smartphones into the mainstream, but there wasn't a
lack of smartphone software before the iPhone. Palm, Symbian and Windows
Mobile (and BlackBerry to a lesser degree) all had a wide array of apps
available before the iPhone was ever announced.

~~~
jad
It's pretty clear to most people that the smartphone app market that exists
today is qualitatively different than the one that existed before the App
Store. I think that's the point the parent was trying to make.

~~~
jrockway
Definitely. The emphasis now is to get your potential users to spend 99c as
many times as possible (with "do one thing" and shiny graphics; see "fart
apps"). Previously, everything was either free, or something you found for $20
at some commercial vendor's website.

------
ergo98
Apple has a lot of very positive points going for it (moreso with their recent
changes to be less aggressive towards developers), however many of these pro-
iPhone pieces (make no mistake, that is what this submission is, with such a
distorted view of the world) could be mechanically written by simply parsing
the dominant talking points and mashing them together into some sort of
superficial slurry that passes a cursory scan test, but falls apart when you
actually look at it with any detail.

EDIT: For those without any sense of informational discretion, let me extract
the pertinent pieces-

-Apple made an exclusive deal with AT&T. Meaning they bound themselves to a carrier to a much greater degree than historically normal.

-Facetime doesn't work over anything but WiFi -- this is not a technical limitation. Tethering doesn't work without a tethering plan, after finally, grudgingly, being rolled out. Google Voice was strongly believed to be blocked (along with similar apps) because AT&T vetoed it.

-Apple's original resistance to the whole concept of apps was sold on the idea that apps would go crazy and destroy the network. This, again, was bowing to AT&T.

-Apple absolutely and completely controls everything you install on your device. Comments about AT&T not allowing side-loading seem extraordinary when the champion example is Apple, which simply bars that universally. At least consumers can choose to buy a different Android device, perhaps on another carrier. That option isn't avialable for iOS.

-The fact that the Skype example keeps getting brought up points to the extraordinary shallowness of this argument. Skype got paid money by Verizon, presumably, to provide software for its handsets. This is software business-as-usual as long as time. This has nothing to do with Android, and that it keeps getting conflating as some counter example of openness is pure stupidity.

-The installation of Bing on some Verizon phones is _exactly_ what the Android ecosystem allows. In fact Gruber some time back sarcastically (as such is the level of his wit) opined that maybe Android would get Bing given its "openness" (the point clearly being that of course it never would), yet here it is. That's the point. Consumers can choose to go elsewhere. Microsoft can completely coopt Android for their own purposes if they want, and that is how it is supposed to work.

Android is built on the assumption of competitive forces. Verizon's heavy-
handedness on the Galaxy S will lose them customers.

Many of the comments in this discussion point to the extraordinary ignorance
there is about the pre-iPhone world. Way prior to the iPhone I worked at a
business where we distributed Windows Mobile applications: We required no
blessing or grant from Microsoft, and on the handset we had pretty much
universal control.

Apple's recent moves have made them decidedly less evil, but these current
pro-Apple talking points are outrageous, and quite simply deceptively
ignorant.

The core problem is that people still have a mentality that handsets should be
from $49-$199, which means that you're going in with the carrier on your
device. Of course most carriers let you bring your own device (if this isn't
legally mandated, it nonetheless remains the practice), giving you an _actual_
claim to own the device.

------
lotusleaf1987
Why are we paying for voice/text/data when it is essentially all just data? We
should just be paying for data plans. It shouldn't cost extra to tether
either.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Surely what you mean is the only additional cost for tethering should be the
additional data you use as a result?

It's not unreasonable for the carriers to charge those who use their networks
more extra. It's all data but the differences between top end and bottom end
users is massive.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
If you're paying for a data plan it shouldn't matter how you use the data.
Especially if they are charging you for a set amount say 5GB, what does it
matter if that data is coming from tethering or streaming Netflix on an
iPhone?

~~~
thenduks
The problem is that while they're happy to _sell you_ 5GB, they will do pretty
much anything and everything they can to make sure you don't actually _use_
5GB.

~~~
orangecat
Walmart of all entities may be disrupting this dysfunctional market:
[http://money.blogs.time.com/2010/09/14/introducing-
walmarts-...](http://money.blogs.time.com/2010/09/14/introducing-walmarts-new-
no-contract-family-wireless-plan/). $40 per GB which sounds expensive, except
that it doesn't expire. If like most people you use a few hundred MB or less
per month, that's a great deal. It looks like it's only available on their
crappy phones for now, but hopefully the idea of paying only for data that you
actually use will spread.

