The Android Opportunity • Hacker News Board

Re: The Android Opportunity

#111

Post by wayneb » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 12:36 AM UTC

stepherm wrote: post #86

mattmaroon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple approached Verizon before they approached AT&T, so I don't think that's the case.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#112

Post by whatusername » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 12:51 AM UTC

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 Palm Pre runs on 2 major US networks. 2. And just about no-where else in the world.

I can go to Optus, Telstra, Vodaphone, Virgin, 3 - and get a subsidised phone (even free upfront). Or I can even go to http://www.apple.com/au/iphone/buy/ and buy one - and put in whatever random sim card I like.

While googling for this comment I found that palm are looking at releasing a gsm phone soon - that might change things - but for now - the iPhone has a major advantage in carriers - it's called GSM.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#113

Post by krschultz » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 1:27 AM UTC

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?

That your personal experience is not the "normal", it is YOUR experience. Extrapolating from your preferences to "normal" is a common fallacy with hackers and you are making it right there.

Usability testing should trump hunches. I polled my room mates (small poll, but still 4 > 1), none of us have a music library small enough to fit on an iPhone and none of us want all of our music/videos/photos on our mobile device for a variety of reasons. Drag and drop in iTunes is preferable for us.

And I have an iPhone, I've had it wiped out by iTunes. I'd rather have drag and drop like a normal file system from Explorer.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#114

Post by joeyo » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 2:05 AM UTC

ezy wrote: post #106

jrockway wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

This is a wierd perspective. You need users other than developers on a platform to make money selling the platform and the devices. If the company doesn't make money, it can't continue to upgrade the platform and make new devices. Do you really think that a platform just for developers and gadget geeks is even sustainable over the long term? This is a whole new level of crazy...

Given that Android is open source, why does it need to make money exactly?

Re: The Android Opportunity

#115

Post by andreyf » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 2:05 AM UTC

mrshoe wrote: post #41

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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…

I'm not a huge fan of the iPhone's closed nature, but I think most of what you said above could be considered arguments in favor of it. For example: yell at the hardware manufacturer instead of the software developer; yell at the app developers; if you need that functionality, go buy a 3rd party app; it's slow because of OS implementation details; it doesn't work as you'd expect it because of implementation details;…

Agree about hardware, but when it comes to the app store, I think the market is a better decider than Apple is re: what works well and what's broken. The one Hard Problem there is to make sure users can make informed decisions about their apps - for example, which app is using extraneous processing/battery.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#116

Post by jamesbritt » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 5:18 AM UTC

alain94040 wrote: post #58

Here at FairSoftware, we are watching closely which platform developers are most interested in, and iPhone is almost 10X ahead of Android. I have been thinking for a year that Android would catch up, but I still don't see real signs.

"Here at FairSoftware, we are watching closely which platform developers are most interested in, and iPhone is almost 10X ahead of Android."

Why do you think that is? The sense I get from people interested in iPhone dev is that they think they'll make good coin from their apps.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#117

Post by AndrewO » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 5:57 AM UTC

unalone wrote: post #68

nkurz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their goal is profit via market share, not innovation for the sake of innovation. Apple's goal is making good products. If they wanted shitloads of cash, they could have sold out at any time in the last decade. Instead, they try to make things that people will love. If Apple has no competitor, they'll continue to innovate, have no doubts. However, they might not innovate in all ways at once, meaning they might not fo…

> If Apple has no competitor, they'll continue to innovate...

I immediately thought of MS Word when this sub-topic came up. Since establishing its dominance in, let's say 1997 or so, few features have come along that have truly changed the way that users word process (the last one for me was JIT spell checking). But MS has been adding more and more features in an attempt to continue innovating.

There's a Word monoculture and there's innovation of a sort. I think the interesting point that you make is that it's unfocused innovation that seems to be either incremental or aimed at preempting possible minor complaints, rather than exploring new ways for users to create documents. Not that I'm critiquing MS specifically of this—I think this may be a general symptom of monopoly (and I wonder if the same would hold for Apple).

Re: The Android Opportunity

#118

Post by AndrewO » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 6:05 AM UTC

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.

I disagree with the parent, but don't think he should be downmodded (at least not below 1 as it is now). He's making a point which goes against what most people here probably have, but it's prompted more discussion and was made civilly.

Re: The Android Opportunity

#119

Post by thwarted » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 6:29 AM UTC

unalone wrote: post #85

jrockway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoting you from earlier:

"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.

If syncing is on by default, having to turn it on doesn't sound like "ever clicking any button".

Re: The Android Opportunity

#120

Post by avinashv » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 7:53 AM UTC

jacobian wrote: post #52

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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…

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 stopped using Linux on the desktop because I didn't want to have to be a sysadmin on my personal hardware.

When did you stop using Linux? I have had either a laptop or desktop with Linux installed (Ubuntu, Gentoo and DSL) since 2003/4 and spend just as much time customizing it as my Mac or Windows installations. I actually save time in the long run, because of the magic of apt-get.

Everbody gives this logic, but I've installed Linux on plenty for non-techies, and they have no problems--at least, not more than they would have had.

(One of my laptops, for the life of me, would not hook up to an external monitor. That's it.)