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The Android Opportunity

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Re: The Android Opportunity

#31

Post by litewulf »

jacobian wrote: post #19
jrockway wrote: post #8

As a recent Android convert, I am confused by all the "issues" that people keep mentioning. Everything on my phone Just Works. When I change the color of a calendar on Google Calendar, the color on my phone's calendar widget changes. When I change a contact on my phone, GMail and Google Voice update almost instantly. When I dial a number on the normal dialpad, my call is automatically routed through Google Voice. Whe…

Since you've got no problems with Android, maybe you can solve mine: - Why does the phone crash when I try to pair with my bluetooth headset? - Why do all eleventy-billion of my contacts show up in the dialer instead of the relatively small handful who've got phone numbers? - Why the *@#$% doesn't this thing have a proper headphone jack? - How do I sync music between my computer and my G1? - How about podcasts? - How…

For the second one, go to your contacts list, hit menu and select groups. There is an option to limit to contacts with phone numbers. I have no idea why that isn't the default.

Videos, there is an application called "Video Player" that actually, well, plays videos.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#32

Post by jrockway »

rimantas wrote: post #25
rimantas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just confused as to what these iPhone converts are doing. That's exactly why iPhone is superior (so far): it is not about what , it is about how

Btw, anyone downmoding me cares at least to say, which part you disagree with: do you think that Andoroid phones are superior, do you think it is not about how ; or both; or are you just not happy with the way things are? :)

I did not downmod you, but I don't really understand what you are trying to say. You emphasized some vague words, but adding stars everywhere does not really help get the point across.

Please explain in detail what you mean.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#33

Post by three14 »

nkurz wrote: post #20
georgekv wrote: post #3

"A monoculture benefits no one in the long run, because it’s competition that drives innovation." I found myself agreeing with this statement strongly.

To the contrary, I found myself shaking my head. Why is it in Apple's interest to be forced to constantly innovate simply to maintain market share? To say that 'a monoculture is not in the consumer's interest' make perfect sense, but why wouldn't Apple prefer a case where it has no strong competition? Their goal is profit via market share, not innovation for the sake of innovation.

Because companies that get complacent seem to lose the ability to innovate, so you get ten years of steady profits, and then finally someone eats your lunch.

Anyway, I have an ethical problem with companies maximizing profits at the expense of doing anything useful. Why not innovate even when not necessary? You can call it R&D and not be blamed for wasting shareholders' money.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#34

Post by jgfoot »

stcredzero wrote: post #4

I hope that someone over at Palm reads this and uses it as a playbook for the Pre. Actually, I hope that someone over at Palm already thought of all this, and that this is their playbook. And others as well. The platform you need to beat in this plan is not the iPhone. It's the jailbroken iPhone . Make something that the real tech-heads and first adopters cheer, and they will be your beachhead. Do that, and you can g…

Actually the Pre has all the features the article is recommending for Android: Over-the-air calendar, contact, and email syncing through Google services; background-capable apps; and no centralized App Store under one company’s ironclad control. (OK, there's no app store at all, although precentral.net and others are already distributing homebrew apps that can be installed if you download Palm's SDK).

Re: The Android Opportunity

#35

Post by Goladus »

jsz0 wrote: post #5

Probably the single biggest growth stunting problem with the Android platform is the lack of a good advertising campaign. Google, and the handset makers, are allowing Apple free reign of the air waves. If you didn't follow technology it might be easy to believe Apple is the only company selling SmartPhones with third party apps. Google needs to spearhead the campaign and show off a few different Android handset and s…

I wouldn't say advertising campaign specifically, so much as basically little marketing campaign targeting actual phone-buyers at all. I didn't hear about the Palm Pre via those creepy advertisements I saw a pile of tech reviews and youtube videos for it.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#36

Post by raganwald »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #14
mattmaroon wrote: post #6

He's missing the #1 area where you can compete with Apple (at least for now) and why I think the Palm Pre will do well: carriers. Most people, even high-end smart phone users, choose their carrier first and their phone second. You'd lose sight of that reading TechCrunch or Engadget too much, but talk to people in middle America and you realize it's overwhelming. Be it due to laziness, marketing, employer discounts, c…

the #1 area where you can compete with Apple (at least for now) Your qualifier here explains why Gruber doesn't dwell on this. He wants a competitor to Apple that can succeed in the long haul, not a bunch of scavengers who survive for another year or two, picking off the edges of the market that Apple hasn't gotten around to steamrolling yet. Indeed, my off-the-cuff take on the state of the market is that Apple's car…

+1

In the book "Marketing Warfare," Reis and Trout emphasize that a strategy should attack a competitor's strength, not its weakness.

Weaknesses will all be fixed over time, so attacking a weakness is simply making hay while the sun shines. Of course you should do it, but it shouldn't be a cornerstone of your strategy. It costs your competitor nothing to fix a weakness, they simply fix it and get better.

When you pick a competitor's strength and attack the strength, your competitor has a problem. Fixing the strength will cost them customers.

For example, it's a strength of Apple that they control the hardware and the software, so having Android run on multiple hardware devices from different vendors is attacking iPhone's strength, much as Windows attacks Macintosh's strength by running on commodity PCs.

Offering iPhone on other devices would cripple the user experience, so Apple can't respond without weakening itself. The AT&T deal, OTOH, is just a wekness. When it expires Apple loses nothing by offering iPhone through other carriers.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#37

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

jacobian wrote: post #19
jrockway wrote: post #8

As a recent Android convert, I am confused by all the "issues" that people keep mentioning. Everything on my phone Just Works. When I change the color of a calendar on Google Calendar, the color on my phone's calendar widget changes. When I change a contact on my phone, GMail and Google Voice update almost instantly. When I dial a number on the normal dialpad, my call is automatically routed through Google Voice. Whe…

Since you've got no problems with Android, maybe you can solve mine: - Why does the phone crash when I try to pair with my bluetooth headset? - Why do all eleventy-billion of my contacts show up in the dialer instead of the relatively small handful who've got phone numbers? - Why the *@#$% doesn't this thing have a proper headphone jack? - How do I sync music between my computer and my G1? - How about podcasts? - How…

- Why do all eleventy-billion of my contacts show up in the dialer instead of the relatively small handful who've got phone numbers?

Because the Dialer app is listing all of your contacts, because it serves as both the Dialer and the Contacts app all rolled into one.

- Why the @#$% doesn't this thing have a proper headphone jack?

Yell at HTC, not Android.

- How do I sync music between my computer and my G1?

Plug the included USB cable into your PC. Android will pop up a notification allowing you to choose if you want to mount the internal SD card as a drive on the host machine. Use Finder/Nautilus/Explorer to copy music to the drive, or Google for the proper file that tells the PC that your G1's SD card is actually a music device so that your music apps will sync with it.

Arguably, the G1 should do this for you, but what if you put your camera's SD card into the G1? It wouldn't know the difference, but you wouldn't want it to label the SD card as a music player without you asking it to...

- How about podcasts?

Get a podcast app, or see above?

- How do I play videos on this thing?

Use the included YouTube app, or download a file-manager app (I recommend the Linda File Manager) and click on the video from the file manager. Yes, Android should include this type of app out of the box.

- When I mark a contact as a "favorite", how do I change which phone number gets dialed from the favorite screen?

Open the contact, long-press on the desired number, and select Make Default Number.

- Why don't I get autocompletion when I use the hardware keyboard?

Because, arguably, most people using a real keyboard don't generally need/want auto-completion? Also because with the physical keyboard, there's no keyboard "app" being used in the first place, which is what provides the auto-completion you speak of.

- Why does the system freeze for about a second when I rotate it?

Because of the way Android handles apps. When the screen rotates, Android sends the "Stop" signal to the current activity, resets the framebuffer, and then sends the "restart" signal to the activity, more-or-less forcing the activity to save and load its state and rebuild the UI. This allows Android and the application to pick up new resources or new UI layouts based on the new conditions of the phone (new resolution, keyboard availability, etc). See my previous comment on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699223

- Why do about 25% of the apps I have not work with the soft keyboard?

Most likely because developers did some funky business under the expectation that the user would be using Android 1.0 and/or the G1's hardware keyboard. Please yell at developers to update their applications.

- Why do another 25% not work in horizontal mode?

Once again, developers can specify that applications only run in certain orientations, which can be useful in certain apps (eg, Solitaire really can't play well in portrait mode). Yell at the developers to knock it off if you disagree.

- Where's the PDF reader?

I believe there's one on the Market.

- Why can't I read Google documents on this thing?

I'm not sure why Google overlooked a native app for Docs, but they worked relatively well through the browser, last time I tried. There are also several "Office" apps on the Market, if you're interested...

Shall I continue?

I'd be happy to answer, refute, or agree with more complaints if you can keep them civil.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#38

Post by mrshoe »

jrockway wrote: post #29
jacobian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you've got no problems with Android, maybe you can solve mine: - Why does the phone crash when I try to pair with my bluetooth headset? - Why do all eleventy-billion of my contacts show up in the dialer instead of the relatively small handful who've got phone numbers? - Why the *@#$% doesn't this thing have a proper headphone jack? - How do I sync music between my computer and my G1? - How about podcasts? - How…

Dunno. I get Google Docs just fine. Google for "Google Docs", tap the first result, and there they all are. I sync my music with a Perl script that looks at my xmms2 playlist and copies the music in there to the phone. (Not possible with the iPhone, BTW.) What you consider major flaws are things I have never had a problem with. I do have a few contacts with no phone numbers, but I can also tap them to chat with them…

I sync my music with a Perl script that looks at my xmms2 playlist and copies the music in there to the phone.

For some reason I don't think this is exactly what Gruber had in mind when he said, "The goal should be to make a phone that is better than the iPhone. Better."

Re: The Android Opportunity

#39

Post by mcantelon »

rimantas wrote: post #15
jrockway wrote: post #8

As a recent Android convert, I am confused by all the "issues" that people keep mentioning. Everything on my phone Just Works. When I change the color of a calendar on Google Calendar, the color on my phone's calendar widget changes. When I change a contact on my phone, GMail and Google Voice update almost instantly. When I dial a number on the normal dialpad, my call is automatically routed through Google Voice. Whe…

I am just confused as to what these iPhone converts are doing. That's exactly why iPhone is superior (so far): it is not about what , it is about how

In other words, iPhone is about style over substance.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#40

Post by jrockway »

mrshoe wrote: post #38
jrockway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno. I get Google Docs just fine. Google for "Google Docs", tap the first result, and there they all are. I sync my music with a Perl script that looks at my xmms2 playlist and copies the music in there to the phone. (Not possible with the iPhone, BTW.) What you consider major flaws are things I have never had a problem with. I do have a few contacts with no phone numbers, but I can also tap them to chat with them…

I sync my music with a Perl script that looks at my xmms2 playlist and copies the music in there to the phone. For some reason I don't think this is exactly what Gruber had in mind when he said, "The goal should be to make a phone that is better than the iPhone. Better ."

It's better for me.

I think a lot of people design systems for imaginary users that don't actually exist. I try to make stuff that works for me, because then at least it works for one person.

(I assume "normal people" use some sort of GUI for this. If you are using Amarok, for example, it's a simple matter of drag-n-dropping your playlist to the icon that says "Android Phone".)

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