

Android still sucks but I’m impressed by Google - dave1619
http://heydave.org/post/27138552375/android-still-sucks-but-im-impressed-by-google

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Zigurd
The author misses at least a couple things that drive the success of Android,
and may have been critical in the early stages of success:

1\. Android was open enough that every chip maker for mobile devices and
interactive embedded systems saw it as a huge step forward: no more crappy UI
stacks licensed from proprietary technology providers.

2\. Being based on Linux, having a liberal open source license, and having
most of the code created by Google under this open source license, except for
a suite of proprietary applications that are not a critical part of the OS.

3\. Using Java and a familiar toolchain

On top of which, though this is a subjective measure, Android is elegant.
Android was a novel solution made by very capable people with a background
that gave them good taste and good judgement. When I first saw Android, the
first Macintosh immediately came to mind. Just like Macintosh, Android did
things differently in pursuit of doing more, with less, in a mass market
device.

