We Need to Talk About Android • Hacker News Board

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#11

Post by bunderbunder » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:36 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

If the only goal were market share then yes, Android is virtually guaranteed to dominate the market for the same reason Windows has been, and that would be a trump card in this conversation.

However, I don't really think the criticisms about Android fragmentation amount to nothing but beating around the "market share" bush. I think that, believe it or not, folks who are criticizing Android mean what they're saying. With all due respect to Groucho, sometimes a complaint that the Android platform's combination of failure to deliver software updates to existing users and lack of a decent wall around the garden raises serious security and privacy concerns is just a complaint that the Android platform's combination of failure to deliver software updates to existing users and lack of a decent wall around the garden raises serious security and privacy concerns.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#12

Post by elithrar » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:36 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

> Circa 2002 they had '95, 98, ME, and XP spread across over half a billion units. With further varied patch configurations and service packs.

It's worth pointing out that this comparison isn't the same. You could, in 2002, run the latest version of Office on all of their operating systems. With Android, there are situations where even Google's own software (see Chrome on Android) only runs on the absolute latest version.

Further, in 2002, all the big name vendors were generally shipping Windows XP on their machines. With Android, vendors are still shipping devices with 2.3. It's still a good OS, but it has to be frustrating as a non-tech user to understand why your brand new Android device can't run software released last week.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#13

Post by eykanal » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:36 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

There's an excellent line in the middle of the Android Support Visualization article he links to (http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphan...):

"In other words, Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one."

85% is good enough to have someone buy your crap, but it's not enough to make them loyal to your crap.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#14

Post by grourk » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:38 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

This has nothing to do with his post. Did you read it beyond "What's wrong with Android?" and "Fragmentation"?

He's saying that for his purposes Android is not up to snuff, and then lays out the reasons -- fragmentation was one of them.

There can be an discussions about topics besides market domination. Such as what sucks about Android and how it could be better. An "endless parade" of such discussions doesn't prove that people don't understand what wins a market at all.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#15

Post by xsmasher » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:42 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

The nontech users may not know or care what fragmentation means, but they do wonder why each phone the buy has different icons, interface, and even apps, and they do get frustrated when thy can't figure out their new phone because it's so different from the last one.

Windows had tremendous hardware variety, but it never han the inconsistency - even in the same version of the os - that android has.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#16

Post by bunderbunder » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:44 AM UTC

elithrar wrote: post #12

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

> Circa 2002 they had '95, 98, ME, and XP spread across over half a billion units. With further varied patch configurations and service packs. It's worth pointing out that this comparison isn't the same. You could, in 2002, run the latest version of Office on all of their operating systems. With Android, there are situations where even Google's own software (see Chrome on Android) only runs on the absolute latest ver…

And Microsoft was pushing updates and security patches to all those XP machines. Still are, over 10 years after initial release.

Whereas Android users are lucky if they're still getting updates and security patches after 10 months.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#17

Post by mikeash » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:45 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

This article is not talking about what wins a market. In fact, it explicitly disclaims any attempt to apply these lessons to the wider world. It's simply a discussion of where Android falls short as relates to his particular needs. As such, this comment seems awfully off topic.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#18

Post by hammersend » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 3:54 AM UTC

elithrar wrote: post #12

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

> Circa 2002 they had '95, 98, ME, and XP spread across over half a billion units. With further varied patch configurations and service packs. It's worth pointing out that this comparison isn't the same. You could, in 2002, run the latest version of Office on all of their operating systems. With Android, there are situations where even Google's own software (see Chrome on Android) only runs on the absolute latest ver…

My understanding is that Chrome on Android is still very much in Beta and they are intentionally doing a very limited release while the major bugs are being worked on. Isn't IE9 only available for Vista and 7 while XP still has neck and neck market share with 7?

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#19

Post by beloch » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 4:01 AM UTC

Google needs to do one thing before anything else:

Build a reference phone chipset.

Every Android phone consists of a patchwork of vendor specific hardware. The chips in Samsung's phones are not the same as the chips in HTC's or LG's, etc.. It gets even worse, since the same model of phone made by the same manufacturer may have different chips for different cell carriers. This is a big reason why the second most recent "reference" google phone, the Nexus S, has yet to receive an official ICS update more than 3 months after ICS was released. If google is this slow, how can anyone expect other vendors to be quick? Hell, it's starting to look like other vendors may be faster than google. That's also not good.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#20

Post by marquis » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 4:06 AM UTC

This leaves a really good space for the Android manufacturer who gets this right. I'm due to upgrade my phone and am seriously considering between iPhone and Android. The fact that my current Android phone, just a year old LG that only now runs 2.2, so quickly went out of usability makes me wonder exactly the same thing. If someone can deliver to me solid technology that keeps working with Android as it evolves (to a reasonable degree of course, I'm happy with a 2-3 year window), I will be a life-long loyal customer to that company. Right now I'm not even sure who to guess buying a new Android from and that's a shame on the industry that my choices are between several not-amazing options.