

Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense - JonSkeptic
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-06/there-nothing-keeping-apple-from-making-an-android-phone-except-common-sense#r=hp-ls

======
bitwize
Apple has been doing the right thing all along. Because the very thing that
enabled Apple to rise from near bankruptcy to just about the most profitable
company in the history of capitalism is providing and controlling an
integrated, soup-to-nuts hardware and software ecosystem. A big part of the
reason why Android still feels so janky is that it has to cater to multiple
hardware vendors and other stakeholders (carriers), as well as Google's
advertising business, with the end user a secondary concern. Apple's total
control enables it to make the user the highest priority.

~~~
WildUtah
The jankiest thing about Android (well, aside from crappy manufacturer skins
and undeletable carrier spamware) is the pauses and delays in user response.
Those all come from the disastrous choice to use Java as a programming
language. User facing software always feels slow when it's subject to the
performance losses of automatic memory management. Java is inherently garbage
collected and low power mobile devices just multiply the performance failures
inherent in that design.

Garbage collection is actually better for performance where instant response
isn't important, such as in servers. In UI and realtime it always seems janky
and slow.

But even the choice of Java is related to multiple hardware vendors. There was
some idea initially that Android might run on non-ARM platforms. That hasn't
turned out to be an important use of Android, but it probably helped push
Android to Java initially.

~~~
Consultant32452
It's important to note that it's the Java language, but not the Java bytecode
or Java Virtual Machine that are used in Android. It could easily have been
really any language that Google wished to provide a compiler for towards their
custom bytecode/VM. It was somewhat arbitrarily the Java language but was a
good business choice IMHO due to the prevalence of Java developers in the
market.

Secondly, there's nothing stopping you from writing your apps in C/C++ to get
whatever sort of response you need.

~~~
melling
From what I've read on the net, using the NDK is not an ideal way to write
Android apps. It's fine if you want to write an OpenGL game, but it doesn't
interface well with the Android API.

------
Pxtl
The company that really disappointed everyone is Sony. Sony was Apple when
Apple was beige boxes, and then Sony turned into just another commodity vendor
when it comes to non-playstation hardware.

The new Xperia products give the hint that Sony is crawling out of that hole,
but they have a long way to go.

~~~
twistedpair
Too true. I remember some of the razor thin VAIO's from many years before the
Air was every a prototype. And that from a company that was a leading maker of
floppy disks no less.

------
nicholassmith
If it wasn't for that quote from Woz, pretty much everyone would go 'well
that's ridiculous'. And it is, it is ridiculous, Apple would _still_ want a
hardware premium because that's the business model, so they wouldn't be able
to try and out price the other manufacturers. They'd gain _nothing_ from it.
People that want an iPhone want it for the hardware software combination.

~~~
fossuser
> People that want an iPhone want it for the hardware software combination.

I'm not so certain that's case. Today the iPhone is at least feature
comparative to Android (turn by turn navigation, LTE, decent google
integration and hangouts) - but Android still doesn't have as nice hardware as
Apple.

I really wanted Nokia to start making Android devices because they do make
beautiful hardware, but unfortunately they went to Windows phone. I'd imagine
many android users would switch to apple made hardware if it was available.

Then apple would likely dominate the hardware market for both operating
systems - which would be interesting.

~~~
nicholassmith
I found the HTC One to be pretty solid, not _as_ good as Apple but very nice
and very well built. If I remember rightly the stats show a lot of the Android
sales are low-to-mid range hardware, so there's possibly not as much reason
for companies to build really high end phones if they don't think there's a
market.

~~~
fossuser
The HTC One is beautiful, but the battery is atrocious - the iPhone has an
incredible battery. The Nexus 5 is also a really nice phone, but the hardware
is still not as nice as the iPhone (I admit this is a bit subjective though).

I think you're right that most of the android sales are low to midrange
hardware, but there are no real high end options except for the HTC One and
Nexus 5 which are not readily available in stores. The Moto X was solid though
too - shouldn't not mention that one.

I think people who use iOS probably would not jump to an Apple device running
Android, but there are Android users who would jump from their samsung device
to an Apple one.

I don't think Apple would do this because they want control over their
ecosystem and they want to force people into iTunes, Apple TV, iBooks,
iMessage etc, but I don't think it's necessarily a terrible idea.

~~~
nicholassmith
I'd heard about the battery life, which is a shame as I thought the HTC One
could be the one (no pun indeed) to get me to think about switching to Android
for a while.

I do see your point about bringing people from Samsung to Apple, but I'm not
sure there's enough that would be tempted that it'd make it worthwhile for
Apple to actively pursue and put money into it.

Apple do want people actively in their ecosystem, but they could spread that
to Android whenever they want anyway with some development time, as it is it
keeps everything nicely uniform for users of iOS/OS X.

------
forgottenpass
Everyone's boring opinions always appear to themselves as common sense. You
see this all the time in politics too, and I'm becoming more and more
suspicious every time someone uses it in an argument. If you have a good case,
your best foot forward shouldn't be that it's popular and makes sense to you.
Show, don't tell.

------
blueskin_
All the article really needed to say was "but then Apple fans would try an
Android phone, realise the software is better (and likely start experimenting
with having root access to their own hardware, which apple certainly dislike),
then get an Android phone comparably specced to and cheaper than the iphone 6
instead of one come upgrade time".

~~~
mark_integerdsv
>realise the software is better

At the risk of noshing down some trollbait, could you perhaps qualify this
statement or are you just going to go with your subjectiuve view as fact?

~~~
Consultant32452
As someone that owns both an Android and iOS phone I think Apple has nicer
form factor than the various Android options but Android has superior
software. Here's my quick thoughts. iOS has caught up in a lot of the features
it was missing early on (multi-tasking) but it still lacks widgets. It may not
be for everyone, but I use two widgets on my desktop daily and Apple's answer
to it in the notification center is bleh. I originally liked Apple's Passbook
but Google's Wallet and Now surpass it in features and in some ways usability.
By this I mean Google automatically creates cards for my packages from UPS
without any effort for me at all. It also keeps track of my boarding passes,
tickets, etc with no effort. Apple's solution requires (generally) that I open
an e-mail attachment or something. Last but not least are the Google Apps,
most notably Maps but it does include the others. iOS is made better by Google
software and most iOS users I know use one or more Google apps. In a full
Google platform though the integration is superior. Let's say I'm sitting at
my desktop and search for a restaurant. The next time I open Google Now it'll
have a card with that restaurant and allow me to navigate there in a single
touch.

~~~
mark_integerdsv
Google Now is just the coolest thing. I really hope we see more of thin kind
of thin, especially in terms of integration.

Noticing that Now and Glass are clearly made for one another - this gives me a
lot of hope for where Glass might be in say, five years.

------
frade33
>People like the precious looks of stylings and manufacturing that we do in
our product compared to the other Android offerings.

Is he essentially saying, people who admire the iPhone hardware, do not really
admire iOS? Or Am I missing something. Taking into account the premise of
Steve, Apple should make Windows Laptops too?

~~~
officemonkey
They do make Windows Laptops. All you have to do is provide a copy of Windows.

That being said, few people would buy an Apple phone without getting the iOS.

Samsung has pretty much captured the market for Android phones for people who
admire iPhone hardware, so Woz isn't completely misguided.

I just don't see the upside for Apple. Does he think Apple can gobble up the
Android market with well-made, high-quality Android handsets? It's not worth
using your resources to manufacture lower-margin equipment when it could be
used to make/sell higher-margin equipment.

~~~
frade33
From my understanding of how Apple Inc work, they are not really focused on
market share. It could be one of their goals, but not their entire focus,
instead they solely focus on producing products the best human can do and
produce. Much like Merce or BMW, are they focused on market share like Toyota?
No.

------
al2o3cr
"And Android is outpacing Apple in the cheaper markets that are gaining
importance, so there’s a sort of intuitive sense in the move, if you’re
willing to twist the logic into uncomfortable directions."

s/Android/Windows/, move it back ten years, and then count how many PC OEMs
are still in the business today.

Did I miss the part where "Businessweek" became a "how to light your money on
fire" journal?

------
greenwalls
Instead of making an Android phone Apple should offer Bootcamp for iOS devices
so any OS can run there. This works on Macs so why not offer it on iOS
devices?

~~~
blueskin_
That only works as macs have an x86 architecture.

~~~
phlo
Most current smartphones are ARMv7, Apple's A7 stands out as a(n albeit
slower) ARMv8 SoC. I'm not quite sure about the compatibility between the two,
but at least iPhones 5/5C should be architecturally compatible.

Performance might be questionable, as current Android phones tend to be quad-
core models clocked around 2 GHz while A6/A7 feature only two cores at around
1.3-1.4 GHz.

~~~
sp332
It's not just the CPU, they would have to provide Android drivers for
networking, bluetooth, cameras, etc. ARM platforms aren't standardized like
PCs.

~~~
bentcorner
I feel like it's almost a quirk of history that the PC has become home to so
many different operating systems.

Hardware platforms that allow me to swap software on them are very few and far
between. The fact that PCs were like this over 20 years ago and continue to be
so to this day is amazing.

It's a shame that phone hardware didn't follow the same path. Android's
openness (for varying levels of "open") is great and all, but I'm more
interested in hardware openness. The Nexus line seems to be the current leader
in openness + consumer availability + quality, but it's a shame there aren't
more.

