John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts • Hacker News Board

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#11

Post by symesc » Sat, May 22, 2010, 6:50 PM UTC

His footnote is interesting: "Although there’s still no decent Android-based equivalent to the iPod Touch."

He's right. Based on price, there is no equivalent.

On features, the equivalent is a Google Nexus One without a SIM card.

Trouble is, that's about to not be available from Google directly. I'm wondering whether we'll be able to buy an N1 without a contract ever again.

Disclosure: I bought an N1 directly from Google and loved the experience of not having to talk to a carrier or any staff member at a generic retail outlet.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#12

Post by dave1619 » Sat, May 22, 2010, 6:54 PM UTC

It appears to me the biggest news from google I/O was the release of flash on android, just a couple weeks after Steve Jobs says it wasn't practical. Google just didn't demo it and give a release date several months away, but they delivered it (with reports of folks getting 2.2 pushed already). Seems like Apple needs to reconsider their position on Flash... already.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#13

Post by sketerpot » Sat, May 22, 2010, 6:58 PM UTC

glhaynes wrote: post #3

mootymoots wrote: post #2

Gruber's comments on Microsoft are so dead on...

It's shocking how irrelevant they are in most of the things that are getting a lot of press these days. It's hard for me to imagine the scenario where Windows ever becomes a big player on mobile. I wonder where they'd be if they'd have been broken up by the US government a decade ago.

I remember the early 2000s. I devoutly hoped that Linux would get widely used in some way, even if it never really took off on the desktop. I wanted open source to be fairly common and well-accepted, and not just something that weird people wrote and talked about on Slashdot. And hacker-friendly open-source Linux-based smartphones would be great, but that was just too implausibly awesome to even hope for. I wanted pleasant languages like Python to get serious commercial use.

Now, all those things have happened or are happening. Want to get on board with cloud hosting in any way? The standard options involve Linux VM images. Languages like Ruby and Python are mainstream and well-supported. Android is disrupting the smartphone market, and has the kind of widespread commercial backing I never would have thought possible for an open, Linux-based thing. Microsoft is no longer an unstoppable leviathan; they've stopped being scary.

Occasionally I'll reflect on all this and chortle happily. I wasn't optimistic enough back in the early 2000s, and that's surprising.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#14

Post by frederickcook » Sat, May 22, 2010, 6:59 PM UTC

TomOfTTB wrote: post #4

His points on Microsoft are well made. Given the strategic importance of this market it amazes me how badly they've done. Realize they beat Apple to market by around 4 years (depending on how you count the PocketPC/Phone hybrids) and Google by almost 5 . Now they've tossed the whole thing out and started over with a product that won't be out for another 6 months and in terms of features seems to be equivalent to a fi…

In the PC market, Apple competes on quality, Microsoft (with hardware manufacturers) competes on price. This is the world Ballmer imagined for the smartphone market, but when Google knocked the floor out by giving away the OS (or even paying the carrier a cut of the search revenue), there is no place left for Microsoft to position itself.

Unless Windows Mobile is a vastly superior product to Android (and how likely is that?), it'll be left out of the smartphone market unless they can give it away and try to make it up in Bing search revenue.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#15

Post by mechanical_fish » Sat, May 22, 2010, 7:00 PM UTC

ssp wrote: post #8

Ballmer was not wrong about the iPhone. He said they would get 2-3% of the total phone market , not the smartphone market. He even makes that clear in the part that Gruber quoted: "... 1.3 billion phones ...". That's phones, not smartphones. According to http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-iphone-smartphone-market... in the first quarter of 2010 Apple had 16.1% of smartphones and smartphones were 18.8% of mobile phon…

Perhaps Ballmer did get the right answer, after all. But was he asking the right question?

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#16

Post by jackowayed » Sat, May 22, 2010, 7:02 PM UTC

symesc wrote: post #11

His footnote is interesting: "Although there’s still no decent Android-based equivalent to the iPod Touch." He's right. Based on price, there is no equivalent. On features, the equivalent is a Google Nexus One without a SIM card. Trouble is, that's about to not be available from Google directly. I'm wondering whether we'll be able to buy an N1 without a contract ever again. Disclosure: I bought an N1 directly from Go…

But the N1 isn't even a very good substitute.

Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music.

Not only is the N1 much more expensive, but it also has a much worse music-playing interface. Until someone fixes the Android music player or writes their own (luckily, an app can have all the privileges that the core apps have, so anyone could just write the Awesome Music Player app and put it in the market), the demand for a good Android iTouch competitor won't be there.

But I do think that getting an iTouch-like Android device out there is important. There are only so many people who are willing to pay $30/month for Internet on their phone, but pretty much everyone is willing to pay $200-$300 for a nice mp3 player with no recurring cost. And it's important to get as many Android devices out there as possible so that consumers believe that it's a good option (in many people's minds, popular == good) and app developers see more incentive to write good apps.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#17

Post by anr » Sat, May 22, 2010, 7:09 PM UTC

I'm not sure Apple is ahead on backup & restore with the iPhone / iPad.

You shouldn't need a desktop (with an OS that runs iTunes) in the first place. I read that the first thing you need to do with iPad is to connect it to iTunes.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#18

Post by watmough » Sat, May 22, 2010, 7:10 PM UTC

jackowayed wrote: post #16

symesc wrote: post #11

His footnote is interesting: "Although there’s still no decent Android-based equivalent to the iPod Touch." He's right. Based on price, there is no equivalent. On features, the equivalent is a Google Nexus One without a SIM card. Trouble is, that's about to not be available from Google directly. I'm wondering whether we'll be able to buy an N1 without a contract ever again. Disclosure: I bought an N1 directly from Go…

But the N1 isn't even a very good substitute. Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music. Not only is the N1 much more expensive, but it also has a much worse music-playing interface. Until someone fixes the Android music player or writes their own (luckily, a…

You wrote: Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music.

I'm not sure you're correct. I have a simless old iPhone, equivalent to an iPod Touch, and it runs apps exclusively. It has barely been used for playing music.

In fact, the beauty of apps means the hardwares purpose is completely malleable. In my case, it is primarily a mini-Bloomberg reader and alarm clock.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#19

Post by perpetuity » Sat, May 22, 2010, 7:14 PM UTC

The techerati's frothing over new Google announcements is goofy. As if GOOG is some saviour from an indescribable hell. The view from here is nice.

All the antipathy toward Apple is also overwrought. Apple doesn't force one to buy their product. I got modded down big time here just for saying so.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#20

Post by kenshi » Sat, May 22, 2010, 7:25 PM UTC

It's not just Microsoft who seem to be out of the game so to speak. What's going on with Nokia? It's taking them forever to come up with a device and/or platform that seems like a credible competitor to Android and iPhone OS.