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The Android Opportunity

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Re: The Android Opportunity

#81

Post by jrockway »

jacobian wrote: post #71
jrockway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can do the "death by a thousand cuts" thing to the iPhone just as easily as you can do it to Android. Every user has different priorities. (You also mentioned Xorg.conf. I have not had one of those for years.)

Ah, so if the iPhone is flawed that makes all of Android's flaws go away. Finally, I understand! Thanks!

Actually, yes. There's a limit to what a $200 phone can do. If nobody has The Ideal Device, you will have to choose an approximation. How those approximations are flawed vary between devices.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#82

Post by jrockway »

unalone wrote: post #77
krschultz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Normal people", by which I mean myself, want to plug their iPhone in and NOT have it sync, because I have more music than can fit on it, so auto-sync for a subset of my playlist is nice, but even that's more of a hassle than I care to bother with.

...which is why iTunes also supports drag-n-drop, and subset syncing. Are you trying to make a point?

Are you?

Re: The Android Opportunity

#83

Post by unalone »

mattmaroon wrote: post #78
unalone wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They partnered with AT&T because they needed a company that would let it add things like visual voicemail to its existing system, and rolling that out with a single company would be easier. The argument against Verizon is that Verizon insists on adding branding to every Verizon phone, which Apple is against. Neither Verizon nor Apple is stupid. If network choice really starts hurting the iPhone, which it isn't becaus…

Wrong and wronger. You can't say that because the iPhone sells very well, network choice isn't hurting it. There might be 2x as many iPhones in consumers hands in the U.S. if they were on Verizon too, and 3x if it were on the other majors on top. I'm clearly just making those numbers up, but they seem reasonable. The exclusivity was about a lot more than visual voice mail. It had to do with sales channel and profits…

I didn't say network choice wasn't hurting it, Matt. I said network choice wasn't hurting it enough to make a difference to Apple.

I agree that part of a product is its network. However, neither Apple nor its competitors manufacture networks. It would be incredibly lazy to hope to make money solely because you use one third-party network rather than another. In this case I agree with you, it might work, but Gruber doesn't just want a phone that makes money. He wants a phone that competes.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#84

Post by unalone »

igorgue wrote: post #79
unalone wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Normal people", by which I mean myself, want to plug in their iPhone and have all of their stuff synced without ever clicking any button. Drag-n-drop is nice, but even that's more of a hassle than I care to bother with.

I don't use iTunes, how do I copy music to my iphone? btw, I use Ubuntu... On the Android part I sync my music with Banshee ;)

Simply by using Ubuntu, you've made yourself a very niche user. I get the point you're making, and for your case Android certainly works better, but the point I'm making is that most users are not like you, and that your set-up has many things that would irritate me that keep me on OS X and an iPhone.

This article isn't about Apple's doing everything perfectly, it's saying that there are a lot of things they do incredibly well that Android sucks at, and it's saying that it wishes Android would make itself less sucky at those things. That's what this conversation's focusing on, not "Does Android do some things better than the iPhone?". We know the answer to that is yes and it's foolish to argue it.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#85

Post by unalone »

jrockway wrote: post #82
unalone wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is why iTunes also supports drag-n-drop, and subset syncing. Are you trying to make a point?

Are you?

My point was that Apple offered a seamless system that works more fluidly than Android's for the people that want it. My current irritation comes from kr's snarky response suggesting that some people don't like Apple's syncing system, when Apple does in fact offer alternatives and doesn't default to syncing to begin with.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#86

Post by stepherm »

mattmaroon wrote: post #51
mechanical_fish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not so sure Apple will fix this. I mean, why did Apple tether themselves to AT&T in the first place? AT&T was a giant turd that everyone hated 2 years ago, just like it is now. If anything it's gotten far better in that time, and the iPhone has racked up serious sales. It wouldn't surprise me if both parties are very happy with their relationship, and AT&T willing to concede even more for exclusivity. They did it…

What I think a lot of people tend to forget is that Verizon and AT&T have based their networks on differing technology (GSM vs. CDMA).

Apple seems to like keeping their product lineups relatively simple. GSM tends to be the worldwide standard. Fracturing their product lineup for (generally speaking) one market doesn't sound like the sort of thing Apple would do. I imagine if Verizon was the major GSM network in the U.S.A., we'd see Verizon + Apple instead of AT&T + Apple.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#87

Post by jrockway »

unalone wrote: post #84
igorgue wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use iTunes, how do I copy music to my iphone? btw, I use Ubuntu... On the Android part I sync my music with Banshee ;)

Simply by using Ubuntu, you've made yourself a very niche user. I get the point you're making, and for your case Android certainly works better, but the point I'm making is that most users are not like you , and that your set-up has many things that would irritate me that keep me on OS X and an iPhone. This article isn't about Apple's doing everything perfectly, it's saying that there are a lot of things they do incr…

Most users that write smartphone software are like him, however. And the only reason you need users for a platform is so that people write apps to make it useful.

People write for the iPhone because of the imagined mass market (which brought the cost of every useful app down to 99 cents), and people write for Android because they are programmers and it's cooler. The end result is lots of apps in both cases.

Remember, you are not a Google or Apple shareholder, so all you should care about availability of good apps. Both phones both have the same good apps, with a slight edge towards Android (because of more capabilities).

Re: The Android Opportunity

#88

Post by unalone »

jrockway wrote: post #87
unalone wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply by using Ubuntu, you've made yourself a very niche user. I get the point you're making, and for your case Android certainly works better, but the point I'm making is that most users are not like you , and that your set-up has many things that would irritate me that keep me on OS X and an iPhone. This article isn't about Apple's doing everything perfectly, it's saying that there are a lot of things they do incr…

Most users that write smartphone software are like him, however. And the only reason you need users for a platform is so that people write apps to make it useful. People write for the iPhone because of the imagined mass market (which brought the cost of every useful app down to 99 cents), and people write for Android because they are programmers and it's cooler. The end result is lots of apps in both cases. Remember,…

We're not talking about apps. We're talking about people using phones. The iPhone is more consumer-friendly than Android in every way but the AT&T network. John Gruber wrote an article saying that Android should become a better phone. Apps don't figure in here whatsoever.

The argument over applications is one-sided. Apple's doing a shit job. But people still write more applications for it, because Apple offers a better product than Google does. Not a better development environment. Not a better marketplace (though that one's debatable). A better product.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#90

Post by dcurtis »

jrockway wrote: post #55
jacobian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, my friends, is what's called "missing the forest for the trees." Yes, every single one of my question has an easy answer. Yup, just need to install this app or activate this hidden preference or tweak my Xorg.conf, or learn to live with the problem... Using this device is like the death of a thousand cuts. None are even remotely fatal, but over time there's just a mounting list of little annoyances. Everything'…

I can do the "death by a thousand cuts" thing to the iPhone just as easily as you can do it to Android. Every user has different priorities. (You also mentioned Xorg.conf. I have not had one of those for years.)

The flaws in the iPhone are almost always made to improve the user experience. The flaws in Android seem to be made out of incompetence.
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