pace of development and somewhat closed development make android different then desktop Linux.
iPhone's big plus is providing value for long period of time. Still today original iPhone is useful device and except 3d games most of new apps can be used too. Which is great in fast changing market.
Apple is great on day one since it doesn't actually have many features.
I'm loving my Nexus One here, which has just been updated to 2.2 :) Different ringtones (Anything you like) for sms/email/facebook, tethering, portable hotspot! Flash? Simply in a different league than iPhone. The early Android hardware sucked, but the N1 is pretty solid.
>> The Android ecosystem doesn’t seem capable of producing devices that are great on day one. Yet Apple consistently pulls it off.
IDK, I've heard some things about the iPhone 4...
I had an iPhone for 3 years or so. It was a great device for what it did, but the whole hassle of having to use iTunes. No removable storage. Can't just stuff mp3's on it and use as ringtones. Can't just copy photos off it unless you go through the right software. It's just a PITA. Not to mention the mass of features that are just lacking on the iPhone but you take for granted on Android.
I had an iPhone for 3 years or so. It was a great device for what it did, but the whole hassle of having to use iTunes. No removable storage. Can't just stuff mp3's on it and use as ringtones. Can't just copy photos off it unless you go through the right software. It's just a PITA. Not to mention the mass of features that are just lacking on the iPhone but you take for granted on Android.
Exactly. Mobile doesn't mean you can copy your stuff onto something portable. It means you've got a window to your stuff in your pocket. Google's information-centric approach makes a lot more sense than Apple's device-centric approach.
Yup. And over the air updates are obviously a good idea. I plug my Nexus One into my computer when I want to, not when it needs to be plugged in (Unlike the iPhone). It stands up as a device on its own.
Makes a lot more sense to everybody, except for the majority of people who still don't quite understand what a folder is.
I agree, I like copying over mp3s and photos, finding out what folder they need to go in, if they have filename restrictions, that sort of thing. I have done that for a long time. I understand that, and find it easy.
What I have a problem with is people who think that everybody wants it that way. Do you not understand that the majority are not like us, do not understand computers, need point and click interfaces? Why does this always come up?
The only things I have to manually copy over to my Droid are music and video. Everything else (photos, contacts, email, docs) is just cached transparently from the cloud. This seems a lot simpler and more user-friendly to me than forcing a user to physically attach to a computer and worry about duplicates, overwrites, stale files etc. Isn't the whole idea to stop forcing users to think about files?
The only reason I have to manually copy music and video is bandwidth so it's likely that at some point in the near future those will also be handled for me.
Linux fans always say it’s “getting better”, and there’s always a major distribution update a few months away that’s about to be awesome. But it never is
Having a microSD card, and being able to mount it r/w mass storage from anything, is pretty nice. It's irritating that Apple don't recognize things like that.
It actually uses PTP protocol for transferring photos.
Once upon time I was trying to get data out of iPhone, that was paired to iTunes on a harddrive that went into the big bucket in the sky. To my surprise, connecting it to the Ubuntu box allowed me to copy out all the data I cared for, without any wonky iTunes.
But I agree with you, having microSD or at least USB mass storage is much better.
No removable storage - not an issue for me. My brother has often misplaced his microSD card for his Samsung phone though, so I'm not sure if this is something I'd like.
I jailbroke, unlocked, had bugs, heard about an update, waited for a new jailbreak to be announced, updated the OS in the hope they'd fix it, jailbroke again, unlocked again.
Personally it was a stupid thing to do, and I wish I never bothered buying the iPhone. I now have an HTC Desire.
Maybe so. I don't want to jailbreak a phone, don't want to have to install things to be able to work with it. I just want the thing to work properly :)
Desktop Linux has been getting better each year, though (at least on average). If it still hasn't crossed the threshold of being good enough for the mainstream, it's because their standards have also been increasing.
I think that's true, but also Linux on the desktop is the best system for some people right now (me for example). Even if money were no object, like if someone said you can have any Apple system you want, I'd still pick a normal PC with Linux on it.
I've always thought the whole "year of the linux desktop" was a meme mostly kept alive by people who never have and would never use Linux anyway. People who actually use Linux don't think it's going to suddenly take over. On the other hand, most think it is actually a good system today.
This is the first year I've installed a Linux distribution that just worked on my laptop (a Dell Inspiron).
Graphics, sound, built-in wireless, usb 3G modem, built-in webcam ... all of them worked out of the box.
The experience is great, although I'm still not recommending it to non-technical users ... once the Linux desktop is good enough, you still have the problem of apps running on top, and unfortunately the environment is not really friendly to proprietary software.
Yes, if something is great since day one, it probably stays away from the improving motivation. If you are willing to pay a price for what is being offered, you will get more pleased when it gets better and costs you nothing...
Desktop Linux _is_ the best system around. It's not about quality. People don't care about technical excellence, they care about _doing things_. And for now, Windows offers the easiest way of doing things, because everything works on it because a manufacturer will never release something that doesn't work on the general swath of Windows computers.
Pretty much the entire appeal of Mac is a) no viruses/spyware (because nobody writes viruses or spyware for Mac because its userbase is too insignificant to target) and b) big icons and prettier colors, making it "easier" to use.
Windows is an institution. It doesn't just give way once something becomes objectively superior; many systems have been superior to the their Microsoft contemporary and Windows didn't magically crumble. It's about installed base.
Didn't spell it out I guess, but "good enough for the mainstream" is here meant to imply "... according to the criteria the mainstream actually cares about".
I've always admired some of the things marco writes about, this is not one of them.
While article is a depressingly one-sided article (marco's prerogative, totally fine with me), he misses a very big point, that for the sake of full disclosure should at least be expounded upon beyond a dry-wit analogy to Desktop Linux.
Android and iOS are moving in two different directions, and have benefits for two different crowds. While they both enjoy their share of people who play by the party lines, and will gladly pull out their iPhone or Android Phone the minute the opportunity to use an application presents itself, it doesn't stray away from the fact that the two platforms should not be compared to one another.
Where the iPhone shines in brilliance, quality, and polish, Android reigns supreme when it comes down to making the phone do what you want to the core. That is not, however in the least bit to say that hacking the Android platform is inherent to its very existence. I'm not going to beat the "one is open the other is not" horse, because it's already dead, but it's very hard to ignore the obvious that Android is a pragmatic platform that prides itself on the berth of UX centric platform evolution where the iPhone gives users features, and expects them to work with those features withdrawn from the scope of downloading Apps.
Speaking of having benefits for different crowds: when he mentioned the "why-is-this-here moments" his inability to understand that different people like different things became pretty clear. Why is it so hard to believe that some people may actually want a physical keyboard? Yes, it typically makes the phone bulkier and/or uglier, but for some people the extra utility it provides is worth it.
Apple's approach has often been "we'll tell you what's good for you". That's how we got iMacs only available in Steve Jobs's favorite shade of blue (later more colors were added) the green "resize this window to Apple approved dimensions" button in Mac OS X, and now the one-size-fits-all iPhone.
Yeah, when he listed the physical keyboard as a "why is this here" example, I knew the guy had nothing to say that was of any value to me.
I certainly have no problem with people liking the Apple Way (typing this on a 13" MBP, charging my iPad in the other room), but I find it endlessly annoying when someone feels incredulous that someone else might want something outside the strictly-defined Apple bounds.
I don't think he was saying that any physical keyboard is superfluous, so much as that the Droid's keyboard, which is terrible, is superfluous.
Something about the design of the Droid keyboard - the flat keys, the squishy response, odd placements of some keys - makes it much harder to type on accurately than my Nokia E71 whose keyboard is nearly half the size. And the fairly decent predictive / autocorrect functionality of the Droid's virtual keyboard gets deactivated when you're using the physical keyboard, so there's nothing to rescue from typos.
It's actually faster to use the virtual keyboard, so you really do wonder why the physical keyboard is there.
No-one who's used a Blackberry for a while will be in any doubt of the value of a good physical keyboard.
Blackberry user here, and to this day I defend the primary point of me continuing to use a physical, full qwerty keyboard is the responsiveness, and the user centric design of the keyboard. Case in point of this having two shift buttons on either side of the spacebar, both iOS and the Android platform lack this logical affordance (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-mistakes.html).
I agree with everything, but couldn't disagree more strongly with the notion that they shouldn't be compared to each other. Big picture, it's MS, RIM, Apple, and Google in the smartphone market. It's undeniable that they will be compared in reviews, in consumers' minds, in businesses' when deciding which platform to go with internally.
OS X is different ... it is based on Darwin, which is a kernel inheriting parts from BSD ... but Apple fully controls its development and Darwin maintains binary compatibility. Also when they released OS X, they also distributed it with a compatibility layer for older OS 9 apps, and they also shipped the Carbon APIs for legacy code.
Unfortunately the Linux kernel itself breaks binary compatibility quite often, so you can't distribute binary blobs if you want to keep up-to-date (and you want that, since newer kernel versions have more hardware drivers). Linux distributions in general have a bad history on maintaining backwards-compatibility.
And without third-party proprietary applications being distributed for this "commercially supported" OS, it's not going to make any inroads.
Mac OS breaks compatibility too, so there is nothing that could be better than on Linux side.
Actually, if you really care, you can still run a.out and glibc5 ELF userland binaries on Linux. On the other side, any m68k or ppc for classic apps are no-go on OSX, as well as some ppc-for-osx. Also for third party drivers, you need version for specific OSX point release, they are not generally very compatible.
There are also entire classes of hardware that are unusable on OSX, period. (I remember wasting particularly lot of time on trying to get IrDA run on OSX with a little bit more than just IRCOMM. On Linux, it worked out of the box.)
It will probably never happen. Linux committed suicide by making the ideological decision to have an unstable ABI for the kernel, making it all but impossible for a 3rd party to ship binary drivers that work across multiple versions of the kernel. Microsoft could barely sustain this even across major revisions of their OS (see massive hostility to Vista because they broke the driver model). But linux does it with every point release of the kernel.
I don't think android is like the desktop linux situation. My mom & dad are happily using android phones, paying for all these wonderful apps and enjoying the phone. They would not really have the same experience with any linux installation.
Linux is getting better each year, Android is getting better each year.
But MS is getting better each year too, like Apple.
The main difference is that MS and Apple improve he overall user experience while Linux and Android center themselves on geeks. Witch is great, for geeks, but not as good for other people.
On Linux I can easily record any sound-video a program plays-displays , I can't do it on windows or Mac because of DRM. It's great for me, normal people don't care.
People care about being able to easily classify their weeding photos using face recognition tech like iphoto does. Linux could do it in complex( and more powerful) ways that my mom can't use.
Sorry, you say MS is getting better? No. I would gladly go back to Windows XP over 7. The only thing I like about 7 is the taskbar, everything else just gets in the way or annoys me. Why MS feel like shuffling around everything in the control panel every release I will never understand.
It depends on what criteria is used to judge greatness of course. By my evaluation, the iPhone's notifications and multitasking UI have been horrible since day one. That hasn't stopped Apple from oveloading push and local notifications with third-party multitasking, all without much change to the fundamental problems, making the experience worse over time. Marco's focus on the simple and shiny, at the expense of the functional and robust, indicates that we have different standards for greatness.
Why does this get on HN? It's one of three canned Android/iPhone articles. Yes, Android is free and the UI/UX has suffered at the hands of Google's engineers and rapid development. We get it.
I'll just be laughing when this argument sounds silly in 6 months after Gingerbread.
The iPhone was a poor device on day one. Limited to a poor carrier, it was a poor phone, with only a handful of built-in apps, no GPS, etc.
The Nexus One was a quite a nice device from day one, and in my opinion better than the iPhone 3GS.
But this is apples to oranges. The way a device is from day one is less relevant when the race is long. What was important in competing with Apple's first move was being first to a viable second place, which then iterates rapidly in a "aim, fire, ready" style. If Google had waited until they had a perfect second place, they'd still be starting with a tiny marketshare (hence lack of apps etc.), and perhaps Palm wouldn't have failed as it did. But Google didn't wait, and they're solidly in second place, and gaining.
Why would you even compare the Nexus One to the first generation iPhone? That's like saying "The first computer in existence sucked, my Mac Pro is way better."
I went from iPhone 3G to Nexus One and it was a massive step up. From what I've seen the Nexus One is still far superior in functionality to the iPhone 4.
I can take a photo/video and share it via email/youtube/facebook etc.
I can use any mp3 as a ringtone
I can have different ringtones for different things - sms/email/facebook
The browsers handling of windows is better - js doesn't stop running on background windows.
The level of detail in things like settings - battery usage is awesome. The other day my battery ran out in an hour, and I checked and found it was the facebook app using it all.
Tethering / wifi hotspot is awesome - I'll be using it when I'm on holiday.
Also syncing with contacts / calendars is great. Maybe you can do that on the iPhone easy enough, but it didn't seem like it. Now my wife just adds things to our shared calendar and it shows up on my phone.
As with everything though it's probably best to just try one for a week and see if you prefer it. I sold my iPhone 3G after I'd tried android for a day.
Poor relative to what? Maybe we need to hop in the time machine and relive what smart phones were like in January of 2007 before asking if you want to stick with such an asinine statement.
This is my own experience. Every user have different needs and preference.
My previous phone was Dopod with Windows Mobile 5 since 2005 (very long time huh). And during my first month using iPhone 3GS, I've been struggling using it (and iTunes). There are times when I want to use back my old phone.
It's a bad call to compare to Desktop Linux. A better comparison is looking at "iOS vs. Android" as "Mac OS vs. Windows" - - The strategy for iOS is very similar to the strategy of Mac OS and the strategy of Android is similar to the strategy of Windows.
Longer down the road I think Android will have a much larger market share (just like Windows) - - while iOS will provide a better and more streamlined experience (just like Mac OS).
Because you can't just get an Android phone and use it and be happy with it. There's always some hipster or yuppie or desperate-to-be-cool nerd that'll start going on and on and on about how amazingly great their iPhone is, was and always will be and how they have taste which you, as a non-Jobs product buyer, obviously don't. A lot of people like me switched from the iPhone to Android because we like it better, get over it. Also, there'll be more people that like and use Android than iOS, get over that as well.
And since we're reaching for snarky old jokes (ie desktop linux), how about this one: What can Android users do that iPhone users can't? Shut the fuck up.
I've never met any Android fanboys yet either, but then I've never really met someone with an Android phone that liked it.
I've met a lot of people who've switched to Android (mostly by buying the Nexus One) and sold it within a week to go back to their iPhones though. I've met a few people who bought non-Nexus-One phones but didn't like them and wanted to switch.
It seems like in Vancouver, everyone either has a feature phone, a Blackberry, or an iPhone, except that one kid I saw on the bus with a Palm Pre.
> Because you can't just get an Android phone and use it and be happy with it. There's always some hipster or yuppie or desperate-to-be-cool nerd that'll start going on and on and on about how amazingly great their iPhone is, was and always will be and how they have taste which you, as a non-Jobs product buyer, obviously don't.
This should only be a problem if your happiness completely depends on seeking validation from others.
Because you can't just get an iPhone and use it and be happy with it. There's always some hipster or yuppie or desperate-to-be-cool nerd that'll start going on and on and on about how amazingly great their Android is, was and always will be and how they have features which you, as a Jobs product buyer, obviously don't. A lot of people like me switched from the Android to iPhone because we like it better, get over it. Also, there'll be more people that like and use iOS than Android, get over that as well.
--
Transcribes quite nice to iPhone too, don't you think? What you have explained is the concept of fanboy, which I believe both exists in the iPhone and Android community.
The hatred of linux on the desktop is terribly cliche, especially on a site targeted towards hackers. Linux on my desktop is the greatest development environment I've ever used, having played extensively with OSX and Windows as well. I can easily install new libraries and "apt-get source" allows me to tinker with existing software easily and immediately build and execute the results. All of the development environment is thoroughly documented.
But now, some influential people start saying how much better their version is. Specifically their closed, sealed-off, experience-driven version. Arguing "ease of use" and "shiny end user experience" rings really hollow to me. I use vim -- think I care about easy to use or shiny user experiences? -- and I use it because it's a powerful tool for its job. I just don't get it when hackers start telling other hackers that they should use a more restrictive environment because it'll make them feel better or is easier to use. Instead, ask yourself: is it the most powerful tool for the job?
So sure, tell your parents and siblings to buy an iPhone. Hell, use your iPhone for anything you can -- it's a fantastic device. But stop telling future developers that it's worth giving up control for rounded corners and subtle shadows. And stop comparing its competition negatively to an environment that I, and others, find superior to any other.
You completely missed the point of this article, which I find odd because the author clearly explained why he compared Android with desktop Linux. By "Linux on the desktop", he means Linux on regular Joe's desktop, not the hacker's desktop. The author agrees with you that Linux is made for people like you that want/need the extra control, etc, whatever. This is not what the majority are looking for in a desktop distribution.
The only reason I don't recommend desktop Linux to people is that explaining ubuntu-restricted-extras to them is too much work. Other than that it 'just works' out of the box and anyone who is currently using Windows XP should upgrade.
anyone who is currently using Windows XP should upgrade
Can we stop this silly meme of calling a switch between two unrelated products an "upgrade"? WinXP => Linux is an "upgrade" that has 0% software compatibility, and requires a massive amount of retraining and reconfiguration. Which is to say, it isn't an "upgrade" at all.
There are a variety of accepted definitions of upgrade, and most of them agree with my usage. Only one agrees with your 'correct' usage.
Ubuntu is a software platform that provides improved performance in a variety of ways, including 90% software compatibility, since most of the important software is web, Flash, or Java based. (Of course, I'm talking about home use.)
I run the web site for a friend who has an antique book store here in Padova. He is not a power user kind of guy. And his friend put Ubuntu on his laptop after he got sick of getting viruses and random problems. So far, he's quite happy with it - which honestly surprised me, because I don't really push people to convert to Linux (I don't like doing desktop support). It's surprisingly good these days, though, and continues to improve.
I think it's a little harsh to say that I "completely missed the point" of this article. I get it -- Apple products are very polished and carefully designed and the Android lacks that polish but is feature rich. Is that an accurate description, or did I completely miss something else?
Marco is a developer with some very successful products, and I really respect his work. I feel that makes him influential in the hacker community and this post did make it rather high on HN. However, respecting Apple's products has gone too far when I can barely tell it from a PR piece. I don't know what it is, but it's not news.
I really don't want to begin discussing regular Joe's desktop experience -- summarizing people into 2 camps trivializes the actual wants and needs of a computer user. What I can tell you is that on a site devoted to hacker news, this post seems like 'dog bites man' with an easy shot at a strawman.
I don't mean this to be a biting criticism. As a developer, I just wish that I had started using linux earlier because I would have learned a lot more and it would be more second nature. Out there, someone 10 years younger than me is being turned off from using linux on the desktop because of posts like this, and that's a shame.
> I think it's a little harsh to say that I "completely missed the point" of this article. I get it -- Apple products are very polished and carefully designed and the Android lacks that polish but is feature rich. Is that an accurate description, or did I completely miss something else?
What you are missing is that what you are calling "polish" is 90% of the quality of a product to a consumer.
It's not about gradients or drop shadows. It's about saying no in the development process, and making sure everything just works.
To give a counter-example of polish, here is a problem I had on my work machine. It was recently upgraded to Fedora Core 11, a seemingly sensible choice. When I first logged in, the volume control mumbled something about having been deleted. I had a look for another one, only to discover that there is no simple volume control. For some development reason, which I don't give a shit about, someone has removed the existing volume control, and some other subsystem is meant to provide one, but they haven't gotten around to it yet.
That is why Linux on the desktop is dead, and as long as Linux is developed in the bazaar, it will always be dead (but great for geeks!)
"I really don't want to begin discussing regular Joe's desktop experience -- summarizing people into 2 camps trivializes the actual wants and needs of a computer user."
You can put people into two camps about most anything -- enthusiasts, and everyone else.
This applies to cooking. Cars. Television. Sports. Video games. Interior design. Phones. Music. Architecture. Computers. Gardening. Reading... and I'm running out of objects by looking about my apartment, but the crux is that some people give objects and activities a large amount of attention when compared to the vast majority of the population - that doesn't give a rat's tail about anything beyond the most basic functionality.
Many developers, or at least the ones that frequent forums on computing topics, are just that - enthusiasts. They are very savvy, very passionate, and sometimes considerably out of touch with everyone who doesn't care nearly as much. There's a distinct difference between someone who waits months and months for a specific type of TV to come out, pays 4x as much for it compared to other TVs for its size, and can take advantage of all the features they paid for. This isn't surprising as they've become a bit of a domain expert on the points that relate to their needs. However most people just want the biggest, flattest TV they can buy for the lowest price.
Would I like random mass storage on the iPhone? Sure, why not. My mom? My mother after 17 years still doesn't know what directories her files end up in (Profile\My Documents or \Profile). She has my father assist her in getting her music on her iPod. Recently I said, "Mom, you use a computer every day. You need to remember where (Windows, OS X) puts your files" in which she retorted, "No, I just want to send Lorraine some photos. I don't care how it works."
And that's it. Most people want to just get something done on a computer. Most people just want to drive to the store. Most people just want to have fun with a video game and don't care how critically acclaimed it is. Most people just want a roof over their head that looks familiar when compared to other homes they've been in. Most people just want mustard to put on their hot dog and aren't espousing the qualities of some mustard on online forums. And so forth.
Everyone else is an anorak. And that's fine as there's a market that caters to them, whereas the rest of the population is still plumbing the first 10% of depth. Everyone is passionate about different things. And most people aren't passionate about most things.
You bring up some interesting points. One question worth pondering, though, is "what does it mean for a tool to be powerful"? Since you brought up VIM let's take text editors as an example.
VIM is indeed a powerful editor. It gives you a lot of tools for quickly editing text. The problems I face, usually aren't related to typing. It's in figuring out what to type in the first place, and where to type it. When dealing with a large code base, the things I need most are code navigation capabilities. What is this? Where is it used? What does the call graph look like? Etc. Is VIM the most powerful tool for code navigation? No. It's far from it. One of the best is a tool called source insight. It's simple, fast and easy to use.
No one will ever tell you are cool for learning how to use it, because you don't have to learn how to use it. It just works. There's no sense of mastery involved. It just works. It brings the information to you, when you need it, in the context it's needed in. That makes it VERRY powerful.
You can say the same thing about a phone. Bringing you information in a way that is efortless and enjoyable is powerful.
It may not be "cool" with the same ubergeek street cred you get from learning VI. But that doesn't mean it's not powerful. Far from it.
Re: the iphone and android points, i completely agree. Android will get there in time and it's a great alternative (before android it was BBos or symbian, yuck).
As far as linux desktop goes, it's more of an OEM problem. Ubuntu is getting really close to being consumer friendly. Even if it WERE 110% consumer friendly, there isn't even one OEM who produces a great linux machine. I'm not talking Dell loading it on one random machine or other guys like system76. Someone needs to step up and be the "apple of ubuntu/linux" (don't charge the high high premium though).
The Linux on the desktop comparison feels right to me for a variety of reasons but there are two important differences that create a more level playing field: 1) Android comes preinstalled on the devices 2) People don't expect 10-15 years of legacy compatibility from SmartPhones. When you erase those two barriers there's a lot more room for choice.
Just because iPhone doesn't have a physical keyboard - doesn't make physical keyboards evil. Similar logic for trackball.
I have tried using physical keyboard on Blackberry and I felt pretty comfortable. I bet other manufacturers would come out with better physical keyboards. My flatmate has a Thinkpad with a trackball. Initially it was pretty tough to control it. Trackball and physical keyboard isn't bad just because I think it's bad.
So much from a Tumblr lead dev! I expected better.
The red thing on Thinkpads is called trackpoint (or clit, for simplicity). Trackballs are entirely different animals, it is a ball that you move (if you remember old ball mouses, it is basically ball mouse turned on its back, with bigger ball).
This post was brought to you by Thinkpad, with trackpoint as a sole pointing device ;).
I need more data. What else was, "Great since day one?" In particular, is there anything that's not Apple that fits this? Toyota and Honda, maybe? My Sennheiser wireless mics? The PS2? I'm looking around my apartment and I'm having a hard time finding non-Apple stuff that fits that description. My Gerber Suspension pocket tool fits the bill, I think. The Logitech VX Revolution mouse does as well. I think about half of the "Great since day one" stuff is made by Apple! Most everything else required tinkering. The BenQ 520MP projector just worked and was great. Ah, my old GE 2 alarm AM/FM clock radio. That thing was cheap as hell, it's as solidly built as something can be from plastic, and it just works great. Oh, and of course, my Nintendo DS! My apartment is full of stuff that takes tinkering!
Seems to me Android is "Linux on the desktop". It's a user facing Linux-derived operating system, and seems well on track to become the most widely used OS in a few years.
Pure desktop Linux never took off, for various reasons (at least some of them non-software related at all). It doesn't matter, the desktop is no longer the main way we use an OS.
While the article is correct that the iPhone was good on day one (not sure I'd say great) and Android was seriously lacking. I think it's fair to say now that Android and iPhone are running neck and neck. iPhone 4 leapfrogged Android, but note, they actually had to leapfrog Android.
The new Android devices (EVO and Samsung Galaxy in particular) are just as good, if not better in some respects than the iPhone. Froyo as an OS is better and worse than iOS4. And from what I've heard about Gingerbread,I think Android will again take a lead against the iPhone.
I think the real difference between Android and Apple is that Apple is good at finding a market and coming out with a compelling product. That's in their DNA. But what is also in their DNA is their ability to lose that market due to slow innovation after day one. The only real exception here is the iPod. And they won that battle on fashion as much as technology and UX.
If I were Apple I'd be really worried about Android. I think it's conceivable that iPhone sales could plummet in a given year. I plan on getting a Galaxy phone as my next one.
I disagree with his assertion that 'great since day one' is unequivocally better than the other - if I can get something earlier, but it's a little rougher around the edges, that's often better - particularly since having something out in the wild where people use it early means you can get good feedback to help you improve the product and avoid horrible untested issues slipping through (a certain antennae issue springs to mind).
Other than that though, his use of 'copy and paste' as an example is something that really depends on perspective. He argues that 'copy and paste' is a single isolated feature, and that Apple waited until they could make it great since day one. However, if you looked at 'copy and paste' as merely an element of a larger system, then launching that system without one of it's key features makes it not so 'great since day one'.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadiPhone's big plus is providing value for long period of time. Still today original iPhone is useful device and except 3d games most of new apps can be used too. Which is great in fast changing market.
Not true. I did all my updates with my computer.
I'm loving my Nexus One here, which has just been updated to 2.2 :) Different ringtones (Anything you like) for sms/email/facebook, tethering, portable hotspot! Flash? Simply in a different league than iPhone. The early Android hardware sucked, but the N1 is pretty solid.
>> The Android ecosystem doesn’t seem capable of producing devices that are great on day one. Yet Apple consistently pulls it off.
IDK, I've heard some things about the iPhone 4...
I had an iPhone for 3 years or so. It was a great device for what it did, but the whole hassle of having to use iTunes. No removable storage. Can't just stuff mp3's on it and use as ringtones. Can't just copy photos off it unless you go through the right software. It's just a PITA. Not to mention the mass of features that are just lacking on the iPhone but you take for granted on Android.
Exactly. Mobile doesn't mean you can copy your stuff onto something portable. It means you've got a window to your stuff in your pocket. Google's information-centric approach makes a lot more sense than Apple's device-centric approach.
I agree, I like copying over mp3s and photos, finding out what folder they need to go in, if they have filename restrictions, that sort of thing. I have done that for a long time. I understand that, and find it easy.
What I have a problem with is people who think that everybody wants it that way. Do you not understand that the majority are not like us, do not understand computers, need point and click interfaces? Why does this always come up?
The only reason I have to manually copy music and video is bandwidth so it's likely that at some point in the near future those will also be handled for me.
Plug it in to a windows pc, it appears as a read only drive with your pictures / videos on it for 'just' copying off.
Once upon time I was trying to get data out of iPhone, that was paired to iTunes on a harddrive that went into the big bucket in the sky. To my surprise, connecting it to the Ubuntu box allowed me to copy out all the data I cared for, without any wonky iTunes.
But I agree with you, having microSD or at least USB mass storage is much better.
No removable storage - not an issue for me. My brother has often misplaced his microSD card for his Samsung phone though, so I'm not sure if this is something I'd like.
MP3s: http://www.ehow.com/how_2111958_convert-itunes-mp-mp.html
Copying photos: http://www.macroplant.com/index.php (granted, this feature should be there by default)
The iPhone is a great phone once you jailbreak & unlock it, IMO ;-)
EDIT: Great smartphone comparison chart:
http://lifehacker.com/5575317/smartphone-comparison-chart-di...
Personally it was a stupid thing to do, and I wish I never bothered buying the iPhone. I now have an HTC Desire.
I've always thought the whole "year of the linux desktop" was a meme mostly kept alive by people who never have and would never use Linux anyway. People who actually use Linux don't think it's going to suddenly take over. On the other hand, most think it is actually a good system today.
Graphics, sound, built-in wireless, usb 3G modem, built-in webcam ... all of them worked out of the box.
The experience is great, although I'm still not recommending it to non-technical users ... once the Linux desktop is good enough, you still have the problem of apps running on top, and unfortunately the environment is not really friendly to proprietary software.
Pretty much the entire appeal of Mac is a) no viruses/spyware (because nobody writes viruses or spyware for Mac because its userbase is too insignificant to target) and b) big icons and prettier colors, making it "easier" to use.
Windows is an institution. It doesn't just give way once something becomes objectively superior; many systems have been superior to the their Microsoft contemporary and Windows didn't magically crumble. It's about installed base.
While article is a depressingly one-sided article (marco's prerogative, totally fine with me), he misses a very big point, that for the sake of full disclosure should at least be expounded upon beyond a dry-wit analogy to Desktop Linux.
Android and iOS are moving in two different directions, and have benefits for two different crowds. While they both enjoy their share of people who play by the party lines, and will gladly pull out their iPhone or Android Phone the minute the opportunity to use an application presents itself, it doesn't stray away from the fact that the two platforms should not be compared to one another.
Where the iPhone shines in brilliance, quality, and polish, Android reigns supreme when it comes down to making the phone do what you want to the core. That is not, however in the least bit to say that hacking the Android platform is inherent to its very existence. I'm not going to beat the "one is open the other is not" horse, because it's already dead, but it's very hard to ignore the obvious that Android is a pragmatic platform that prides itself on the berth of UX centric platform evolution where the iPhone gives users features, and expects them to work with those features withdrawn from the scope of downloading Apps.
Apple's approach has often been "we'll tell you what's good for you". That's how we got iMacs only available in Steve Jobs's favorite shade of blue (later more colors were added) the green "resize this window to Apple approved dimensions" button in Mac OS X, and now the one-size-fits-all iPhone.
I certainly have no problem with people liking the Apple Way (typing this on a 13" MBP, charging my iPad in the other room), but I find it endlessly annoying when someone feels incredulous that someone else might want something outside the strictly-defined Apple bounds.
Something about the design of the Droid keyboard - the flat keys, the squishy response, odd placements of some keys - makes it much harder to type on accurately than my Nokia E71 whose keyboard is nearly half the size. And the fairly decent predictive / autocorrect functionality of the Droid's virtual keyboard gets deactivated when you're using the physical keyboard, so there's nothing to rescue from typos.
It's actually faster to use the virtual keyboard, so you really do wonder why the physical keyboard is there.
No-one who's used a Blackberry for a while will be in any doubt of the value of a good physical keyboard.
Great points, Sam.
That is, like Apple. Vertical integration.
Unfortunately the Linux kernel itself breaks binary compatibility quite often, so you can't distribute binary blobs if you want to keep up-to-date (and you want that, since newer kernel versions have more hardware drivers). Linux distributions in general have a bad history on maintaining backwards-compatibility.
And without third-party proprietary applications being distributed for this "commercially supported" OS, it's not going to make any inroads.
Actually, if you really care, you can still run a.out and glibc5 ELF userland binaries on Linux. On the other side, any m68k or ppc for classic apps are no-go on OSX, as well as some ppc-for-osx. Also for third party drivers, you need version for specific OSX point release, they are not generally very compatible.
There are also entire classes of hardware that are unusable on OSX, period. (I remember wasting particularly lot of time on trying to get IrDA run on OSX with a little bit more than just IRCOMM. On Linux, it worked out of the box.)
But MS is getting better each year too, like Apple.
The main difference is that MS and Apple improve he overall user experience while Linux and Android center themselves on geeks. Witch is great, for geeks, but not as good for other people.
On Linux I can easily record any sound-video a program plays-displays , I can't do it on windows or Mac because of DRM. It's great for me, normal people don't care.
People care about being able to easily classify their weeding photos using face recognition tech like iphoto does. Linux could do it in complex( and more powerful) ways that my mom can't use.
I'll just be laughing when this argument sounds silly in 6 months after Gingerbread.
The Nexus One was a quite a nice device from day one, and in my opinion better than the iPhone 3GS.
But this is apples to oranges. The way a device is from day one is less relevant when the race is long. What was important in competing with Apple's first move was being first to a viable second place, which then iterates rapidly in a "aim, fire, ready" style. If Google had waited until they had a perfect second place, they'd still be starting with a tiny marketshare (hence lack of apps etc.), and perhaps Palm wouldn't have failed as it did. But Google didn't wait, and they're solidly in second place, and gaining.
I can take a photo/video and share it via email/youtube/facebook etc.
I can use any mp3 as a ringtone
I can have different ringtones for different things - sms/email/facebook
The browsers handling of windows is better - js doesn't stop running on background windows.
The level of detail in things like settings - battery usage is awesome. The other day my battery ran out in an hour, and I checked and found it was the facebook app using it all.
Tethering / wifi hotspot is awesome - I'll be using it when I'm on holiday.
Also syncing with contacts / calendars is great. Maybe you can do that on the iPhone easy enough, but it didn't seem like it. Now my wife just adds things to our shared calendar and it shows up on my phone.
As with everything though it's probably best to just try one for a week and see if you prefer it. I sold my iPhone 3G after I'd tried android for a day.
My previous phone was Dopod with Windows Mobile 5 since 2005 (very long time huh). And during my first month using iPhone 3GS, I've been struggling using it (and iTunes). There are times when I want to use back my old phone.
Longer down the road I think Android will have a much larger market share (just like Windows) - - while iOS will provide a better and more streamlined experience (just like Mac OS).
Because you can't just get an Android phone and use it and be happy with it. There's always some hipster or yuppie or desperate-to-be-cool nerd that'll start going on and on and on about how amazingly great their iPhone is, was and always will be and how they have taste which you, as a non-Jobs product buyer, obviously don't. A lot of people like me switched from the iPhone to Android because we like it better, get over it. Also, there'll be more people that like and use Android than iOS, get over that as well.
And since we're reaching for snarky old jokes (ie desktop linux), how about this one: What can Android users do that iPhone users can't? Shut the fuck up.
Also, I've yet to meet my first 'Android fanboy', but I've met plenty of Iphone fanboys in real life.
I'm sure they exist but either not around here or they're not as much 'in your face' about it.
I've met a lot of people who've switched to Android (mostly by buying the Nexus One) and sold it within a week to go back to their iPhones though. I've met a few people who bought non-Nexus-One phones but didn't like them and wanted to switch.
It seems like in Vancouver, everyone either has a feature phone, a Blackberry, or an iPhone, except that one kid I saw on the bus with a Palm Pre.
This should only be a problem if your happiness completely depends on seeking validation from others.
Because you can't just get an iPhone and use it and be happy with it. There's always some hipster or yuppie or desperate-to-be-cool nerd that'll start going on and on and on about how amazingly great their Android is, was and always will be and how they have features which you, as a Jobs product buyer, obviously don't. A lot of people like me switched from the Android to iPhone because we like it better, get over it. Also, there'll be more people that like and use iOS than Android, get over that as well.
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Transcribes quite nice to iPhone too, don't you think? What you have explained is the concept of fanboy, which I believe both exists in the iPhone and Android community.
But now, some influential people start saying how much better their version is. Specifically their closed, sealed-off, experience-driven version. Arguing "ease of use" and "shiny end user experience" rings really hollow to me. I use vim -- think I care about easy to use or shiny user experiences? -- and I use it because it's a powerful tool for its job. I just don't get it when hackers start telling other hackers that they should use a more restrictive environment because it'll make them feel better or is easier to use. Instead, ask yourself: is it the most powerful tool for the job?
So sure, tell your parents and siblings to buy an iPhone. Hell, use your iPhone for anything you can -- it's a fantastic device. But stop telling future developers that it's worth giving up control for rounded corners and subtle shadows. And stop comparing its competition negatively to an environment that I, and others, find superior to any other.
Can we stop this silly meme of calling a switch between two unrelated products an "upgrade"? WinXP => Linux is an "upgrade" that has 0% software compatibility, and requires a massive amount of retraining and reconfiguration. Which is to say, it isn't an "upgrade" at all.
Naaah. Too easy. No comment.
Ubuntu is a software platform that provides improved performance in a variety of ways, including 90% software compatibility, since most of the important software is web, Flash, or Java based. (Of course, I'm talking about home use.)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/upgrade
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upgrade
Marco is a developer with some very successful products, and I really respect his work. I feel that makes him influential in the hacker community and this post did make it rather high on HN. However, respecting Apple's products has gone too far when I can barely tell it from a PR piece. I don't know what it is, but it's not news.
I really don't want to begin discussing regular Joe's desktop experience -- summarizing people into 2 camps trivializes the actual wants and needs of a computer user. What I can tell you is that on a site devoted to hacker news, this post seems like 'dog bites man' with an easy shot at a strawman.
I don't mean this to be a biting criticism. As a developer, I just wish that I had started using linux earlier because I would have learned a lot more and it would be more second nature. Out there, someone 10 years younger than me is being turned off from using linux on the desktop because of posts like this, and that's a shame.
Total agree.
After years of windows, i moved to Linux Desktop since last 2 years. How i wish, i had done that earlier.
What you are missing is that what you are calling "polish" is 90% of the quality of a product to a consumer.
It's not about gradients or drop shadows. It's about saying no in the development process, and making sure everything just works.
To give a counter-example of polish, here is a problem I had on my work machine. It was recently upgraded to Fedora Core 11, a seemingly sensible choice. When I first logged in, the volume control mumbled something about having been deleted. I had a look for another one, only to discover that there is no simple volume control. For some development reason, which I don't give a shit about, someone has removed the existing volume control, and some other subsystem is meant to provide one, but they haven't gotten around to it yet.
That is why Linux on the desktop is dead, and as long as Linux is developed in the bazaar, it will always be dead (but great for geeks!)
You can put people into two camps about most anything -- enthusiasts, and everyone else.
This applies to cooking. Cars. Television. Sports. Video games. Interior design. Phones. Music. Architecture. Computers. Gardening. Reading... and I'm running out of objects by looking about my apartment, but the crux is that some people give objects and activities a large amount of attention when compared to the vast majority of the population - that doesn't give a rat's tail about anything beyond the most basic functionality.
Many developers, or at least the ones that frequent forums on computing topics, are just that - enthusiasts. They are very savvy, very passionate, and sometimes considerably out of touch with everyone who doesn't care nearly as much. There's a distinct difference between someone who waits months and months for a specific type of TV to come out, pays 4x as much for it compared to other TVs for its size, and can take advantage of all the features they paid for. This isn't surprising as they've become a bit of a domain expert on the points that relate to their needs. However most people just want the biggest, flattest TV they can buy for the lowest price.
Would I like random mass storage on the iPhone? Sure, why not. My mom? My mother after 17 years still doesn't know what directories her files end up in (Profile\My Documents or \Profile). She has my father assist her in getting her music on her iPod. Recently I said, "Mom, you use a computer every day. You need to remember where (Windows, OS X) puts your files" in which she retorted, "No, I just want to send Lorraine some photos. I don't care how it works."
And that's it. Most people want to just get something done on a computer. Most people just want to drive to the store. Most people just want to have fun with a video game and don't care how critically acclaimed it is. Most people just want a roof over their head that looks familiar when compared to other homes they've been in. Most people just want mustard to put on their hot dog and aren't espousing the qualities of some mustard on online forums. And so forth.
Everyone else is an anorak. And that's fine as there's a market that caters to them, whereas the rest of the population is still plumbing the first 10% of depth. Everyone is passionate about different things. And most people aren't passionate about most things.
VIM is indeed a powerful editor. It gives you a lot of tools for quickly editing text. The problems I face, usually aren't related to typing. It's in figuring out what to type in the first place, and where to type it. When dealing with a large code base, the things I need most are code navigation capabilities. What is this? Where is it used? What does the call graph look like? Etc. Is VIM the most powerful tool for code navigation? No. It's far from it. One of the best is a tool called source insight. It's simple, fast and easy to use.
No one will ever tell you are cool for learning how to use it, because you don't have to learn how to use it. It just works. There's no sense of mastery involved. It just works. It brings the information to you, when you need it, in the context it's needed in. That makes it VERRY powerful.
You can say the same thing about a phone. Bringing you information in a way that is efortless and enjoyable is powerful.
It may not be "cool" with the same ubergeek street cred you get from learning VI. But that doesn't mean it's not powerful. Far from it.
you can do the same thing on a mac, in a elegant way, so what's the advantage to do it on linux ?
I use vim
you can also use vim in a elegant mac terminal, what's the point here ?
And stop comparing its competition negatively
who was doing that ?
As far as linux desktop goes, it's more of an OEM problem. Ubuntu is getting really close to being consumer friendly. Even if it WERE 110% consumer friendly, there isn't even one OEM who produces a great linux machine. I'm not talking Dell loading it on one random machine or other guys like system76. Someone needs to step up and be the "apple of ubuntu/linux" (don't charge the high high premium though).
I have tried using physical keyboard on Blackberry and I felt pretty comfortable. I bet other manufacturers would come out with better physical keyboards. My flatmate has a Thinkpad with a trackball. Initially it was pretty tough to control it. Trackball and physical keyboard isn't bad just because I think it's bad.
So much from a Tumblr lead dev! I expected better.
This post was brought to you by Thinkpad, with trackpoint as a sole pointing device ;).
Pure desktop Linux never took off, for various reasons (at least some of them non-software related at all). It doesn't matter, the desktop is no longer the main way we use an OS.
The new Android devices (EVO and Samsung Galaxy in particular) are just as good, if not better in some respects than the iPhone. Froyo as an OS is better and worse than iOS4. And from what I've heard about Gingerbread,I think Android will again take a lead against the iPhone.
I think the real difference between Android and Apple is that Apple is good at finding a market and coming out with a compelling product. That's in their DNA. But what is also in their DNA is their ability to lose that market due to slow innovation after day one. The only real exception here is the iPod. And they won that battle on fashion as much as technology and UX.
If I were Apple I'd be really worried about Android. I think it's conceivable that iPhone sales could plummet in a given year. I plan on getting a Galaxy phone as my next one.
Other than that though, his use of 'copy and paste' as an example is something that really depends on perspective. He argues that 'copy and paste' is a single isolated feature, and that Apple waited until they could make it great since day one. However, if you looked at 'copy and paste' as merely an element of a larger system, then launching that system without one of it's key features makes it not so 'great since day one'.