The Android Invasion Cometh; Is Resistance Futile? 410
DeviceGuru writes "Last month, we learned from Gartner that Android will probably be the number-two worldwide mobile OS this year, and may lead the pack by 2014. With Android's growing use as the OS embedded in phones, in tablets, in set-top boxes, and in LCD HDTVs, it seems like the Linux-based OS could end up dominating the entire non-PC consumer device operating system space. What do Slashdot readers think: Is resistance futile?"
There is still long way to go (Score:4, Interesting)
The "problem" is the same as with Opera. People think it's not as widespread as it's barely in news and their stuff isn't blastered all over your face all the time. However Opera dominates on embedded devices, televisions (especially in hotels!), mobile phones, even Nintendo Wii.
Windows variants are also the same. Windows 7, Windows CE and Windows Mobile are majorly used but it's not always so obvious. When you take a flight all the televisions in airports run Windows. When you go to ATM they run special version of Windows CE. Some hotel TV's also run Windows. With the upcoming Microsoft tablets and Windows Phone 7, it will get even more marketshare. Windows is also used pretty much in every organization and company.
If Android actually wants to take over all of that, it will be a long road. I hope they do, but I'm not so sure they will. Microsoft is good with business relationships and marketing and thats the point. It's not a small market and Windows is already dominating it.
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When you take a flight all the televisions in airports run Windows.
Agree with what you said for the most part, but I just wanted to point out that I think Linux is used behind the scenes too. For example, on a long flight back to the U.S. while I was flying with a major European carrier, the entertainment system crashed and I saw the Linux penguin pop up on the screen. I agree though: especially in the states, most of the displays you see on walls in buildings are Windows.
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...most of the displays you see on walls in buildings are Windows.
Yep. Don't forget about this incident! http://gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting [gizmodo.com]
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I've had the same thing happen on a Malaysia Airlines flight. Most of the in-flight entertainment seems to just be thin clients these days. If the system dies it just reboots.
Mine restarted and was fine for the rest of the flight.
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Re:There is still long way to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we sure we want Android taking over all of that? I don't. I think a single OS dominating is a bad idea - like growing nothing but potatoes. I'd like to see Android doing SOME of that.
Re:There is still long way to go (Score:5, Funny)
bad idea - like growing nothing but potatoes.
I'm having trouble with your analogy:
boiled
mashed
stuck in a stew
baked
french fries
stuffed
potato skins
chips
vodka!
Maybe if you'd used a car analogy instead...
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Yeah, you can do a million things with potatoes. But what if, suddenly [wikipedia.org], there were no potatoes [wikipedia.org]?
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Then you should stop exporting all your grain to England, as it was in Ireland, and feed your population.
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Re:There is still long way to go (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't have to worry about that. As an avid (and happy) Android user I can tell you: the open market is great, but the operating system is still a bit of a mess. Freezes, crashes and data losses are somewhat endemic. Each version is a little better, but it is years and years behind the iPhone for basic reliability, and all of the non-geek Android users I know plan to buy an iPhone when their contract is up. The geeks are happy and plan to stay.
My expectation is for smartphones (at least in the US) to eventually take the path of PCs, with Android as the Windows-analogue "most prevalent but somewhat buggy" OS, Apple as Apple, and everything else (Blackberry, WebOS, Maemo) as the "they work awesome but who uses them?" Linux distros.
Re:There is still long way to go (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't have to worry about that. As an avid (and happy) Android user I can tell you: the open market is great, but the operating system is still a bit of a mess. Freezes, crashes and data losses are somewhat endemic. Each version is a little better, but it is years and years behind the iPhone for basic reliability, and all of the non-geek Android users I know plan to buy an iPhone when their contract is up. The geeks are happy and plan to stay.
How on earth can you be HAPPY with that???
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What about those of us geeks that LIKE WebOS? I mean, I can do everything that an Android user can do and MORE with WebOS, and WebOS makes it easier to do.
Tell me you Android users, can you patch your Android device with a kernel that allows for multiple types of adaptive overclocking? No? funny, I can with my Gen1 Sprint Pre using WebOS 1.4.5.
Even funnier, It's not a feature i'd use.
In fact, I've been doing it for at least 3 point releases of WebOS.
Wait. Your Android device isn't getting an OTA update from your carrier? You can't even GET an OTA update because your only 6 month old device isn't compatible with Froyo? And you have to be even MORE of a carrier bitch and pay out more money just to get Froyo, but you can only get a gimped version with features missing?
REALLY?
Bought my nexus one without a contract, installed a modded os (Cyangoen) and installed a great deal of useful apps.
I just don't see how you people think Android is "open" when it looks like only the CARRIERS have any real access to the phone without a complex hack that is only really possible for Alpha Geeks and is as lkely to BRICK your phone or cause the carrier to drop your contract as it is to unlock it.
Documentation on how to flash your device so it doesn't end up bricked can easily be found and it's instructions are very clear. It does not take an an overly technical person to do this. I don't think it has a higher rate of being bricked than any other hardware being flashed.
Other than having a metric crap load of apps (about 99% garbage apps too.) you Android users appear to be getting LESS for your money than us WebOS users. Yeah, I have a device that's over a year old. At least my software is up to date, and uniform across all carriers and devices. Having a brand new Android device that's completely locked down and using a gimped old version of Android is like owning a Ferrari that has a Yugo engine and needs champagne as fuel. Flashy, expensive to use crap.
No thanks, I'll stick with WebOS.
Apps are what you make of them. The applications I find useful I install an
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On the iPhone, you have a full apt package system, a terminal running bash, OpenSSH/OpenSSL tools, server, client, etc. a full GCC dev environement, etc.
A lot of this stuff is stuff you just don't get on Android at any level. You get a terminal out of the box with android, but what do you get? Busybox. Guh. Want SSH? You get Dropbear. The package system sucks compared to APT. I've never tried getting GCC runnin
Why jailbreaking ? (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, but to obtain this geekdom paradise,you need to *jailbreak* the device. You have to jump through hoops to get the device do stuff that its makers don't want you to do. And you're at the mercy of the next update bricking your phone.
this doesn't make much sense,specially when there are perfectly valid alternatives.
systems which are homebrew friendly out-of-the box,and let you instal stuff out of the walled garden if you want (HP/Palm webOS has tonnes of interesting stuff you can instal on them. Including
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http://www.foogazi.com/2008/01/25/delta-airlines-runs-linux/ [foogazi.com]
Delta runs linux.
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Did you miss the important word in the summary?
I admit that I did on first read.
MOBILE
We're talking about mobile operating systems. FWIW, ATMs seem to use a 'normal' version of windows rather than CE. MS do embedded versions of their mainstream OS.
Also, ATMs, hotel televisions... not mobile.
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Don't say that on Slashdot. This site demands that the most used and popular programming language of this time is nothing more than a bad fad which will die away leaving people the open space to write Perl scripts just like they way they used to.
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I wouldn't be so sure of that. Oracle seems to be doing everything in their power to gut the core of the Java community, so until a strong non-Oracle/Sun maintainer with deep pockets (ahem, IBM) steps in to pick up the slack, I'd stay away from Java as the basis for building a full platform.
The bigger question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course. A culture of 'one', no matter how open, is bad.
Having the competition to allow other options makes sure there is advancement in the market, and, if there is a vulnerability in one of the options, the others are available to take up the slack.
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Yes. Everybody drinking water is bad. Doesn't matter that you can make juice out of it, or soda, or beer... water as the base for all of it is horribly insecure and dangerous!
Re:The bigger question is... (Score:5, Funny)
At room temperature; yes.
Hopefully not (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather see MeeGo taking a sizeable portion of market from Android. With MeeGo, desktop Linux skills suddenly become very relevant in job market, and we'll get more desktop software (eventually).
With Android, Java skills are everything and... um... we got more people capable of doing Websphere/JBoss stuff? What a victory would that be.
Re:Hopefully not (Score:5, Interesting)
Alas, Nokia kind of missed the boat with Maemo/MeeGo. They let Maemo idle for years on the no-cellular tablets that were interesting, but never really went anywhere. Then they tossed the N900 out the door - just as they decided to massively rework the OS, effectively EOLing the N900's OS before it was released. Unsurprisingly, app developer interest has been ... limited. *I* know you can upgrade an N900 to MeeGo (when it's properly ready, hopefully) but Nokia hasn't been too clear on this and it's unlikely app devs will want to target a platform where users have to reflash to a new OS to run their apps.
I love coding with Qt and have wanted it in phones for ages, so I was really excited to see Maemo move over - but the timing, amid a product launch, was horrifying.
MeeGo would've been great if it (instead of Maemo half-way through an API breaking transition to Qt) was released in finished form at about the time the N900 hit market. Now, by the time it sees real-world products, I think Android will be pretty much unstoppable, especially as it's now allowing native apps, the main advantage MeeGo had. I don't rate it's chances.
Personally I like MeeGo a lot more as a concept of how a phone OS works. It's my phone, not the carrier's / handset manufacturer's phone that I happened to pay for. Unfortunately, carriers (especially in the US) don't like that, and given the likely higher prices and limited app coverage of MeeGo, I don't see it going far.
Were I Intel and Nokia, I'd be thinking very hard about offering Dalvik and .apk support for apps without native code, at least for a subset of Android API features. Get some app coverage from the start, but encourage targeting of Qt by offering Qt Jambi from Java and offering better API access via the native interfaces. Be a better Android than Android.
Re:Hopefully not (Score:5, Interesting)
MeeGo (or in some cases Debian Lenny with MeeGo on top) will live on in some ways as a custom ROM for the Android phones. Many people are currently working on moving it over to phones like the Eris and the Droids. It gives these phones a useful lifetime beyond that of a phone. It can be useful having a phone sized device that can run things like snort or hit the local WiFi for a quick search while still leaving your phone free to make calls.
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It's already on the Eris, granted it's cumbersome to use at the moment but it does work.
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Userspace graphics drivers like those used for PowerVR and Qualcomm's chipsets aren't compatible with X11
Good thing nobody told my N900 that...
If Android is unstoppable I'll still look forward to using Meego as the "DD-WRT of phones," it'll be way better than running a rooted Android build. Maybe the community can even work on switching it back to apt-based package management.
Re:Hopefully not (Score:4, Interesting)
With Android, Java skills are everything and... um... we got more people capable of doing Websphere/JBoss stuff? What a victory would that be.
You are free to use the Android NDK, develop your entire app in some other language, and write only the front-end in Java. But let's not let the facts get in the way of a good mad or anything.
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You can also use other languages for the Dalvik, like Scala [assembla.com].
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Regarding apps, there the needed skill will be more likely Qt instead of Java. There the apps have the potential to run or be easily ported in more things than just MeeGo, like desktop operating sys
Re:Hopefully not (Score:5, Funny)
I'd rather see MeeGo taking a sizeable portion of market from Android. With MeeGo, desktop Linux skills suddenly become very relevant in job market, and we'll get more desktop software (eventually).
With Android, Java skills are everything and... um... we got more people capable of doing Websphere/JBoss stuff? What a victory would that be.
Nobody cares about you being unemployed with your irrelevant linux skills.
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I don't think so.
I am an iOS fanboy and I will talk a lot of smack about Android. The reality is though, for it's flaws, Android is very good but it's so close to being great it's frustrating.
What Google needs to do is set some pretty basic UI guidelines for apps or make better UI APIs and to crack down on handset lock down(I'm willing to put up with Apple's walled garden approach because they deliver what they claim. Google can't be hollering about how their OS is open and at the same time require people
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Enterprise Edition Java (J2EE) is an enormous amount of libraries, frameworks and standards which are designed for large Enterprise Systems and deal with things like Messaging, Distributed Transactions, Clustering and more (much more). Websphere and JBoss are two implementations of a J2EE application server which is a container server within which J2EE applications run. It takes several years of on-the-job experience to be proeficient with J2EE in addition to the time it takes to learn standard Java.
J2EE is
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Also, there is another way to construct your apps in Android [oreilly.com].
Well, not just Android -- from what I can see, that book's about making web apps. Cool, but nothing specific to Android!
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You also need to know XML
< tag > value < / tag >. phew, that was hard to learn!
IN B4... (Score:5, Funny)
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True, but B4 definitely is a better example of "Android Fragmentation", at least when they first find him...
iOS Short Term, Android Long Term (Score:4, Insightful)
The Android Invasion Cometh; Is Resistance Futile?
Look both options have their benefits. But I happen to agree with a recent survey [readwriteweb.com] that finds developers think Android is the long term solution while iOS is basically the immediate choice because of its dominance it has enjoyed with being the first. Given that the obvious is already happening [pcworld.com], it's just going to take two or three years for developers to really unseat anything else in favor over Android. I was never given a chance to tinker or code for iOS [slashdot.org] so of course I'm biased towards the one technology out there that is actually trying to empower me without restrictions.
In the end, that sort of empowerment is going to trump any sort of assured device capability or graphical power that Apple can offer me. You may have a different opinion (BWJones did [slashdot.org]) but I simply cannot see how Apple will retain their lead in this fight.
Resistance is never futile. You could stick to your guns and enjoy immediate sales then moderate sales then fewer and fewer sales. Or you could enjoy moderate sales and then increasingly more and more sales. You might have to do more development if you want to target both TVs and handhelds (inputs get tricky) but I think investing in only iOS at this point is not a prudent decision.
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In the end, that sort of empowerment is going to trump any sort of assured device capability or graphical power that Apple can offer me.
In the end, that sort of empowerment is going to take second seat to where the money is. Developers who do it for the passion of doing it will develop for whatever platform they enjoy developing on. The rest, who are trying to keep food on their tables, roofs over their heads, and retirement plans in mind will go where the money is. And, right now, and for the foreseeable future, that's _both_ Android and iOS. The only way that will change in the long term is if and when something unknown enters the market
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I simply cannot see how Apple will retain their lead in this fight.
Easy. They sell more hardware than any given OEM.
Apple doesn't need to pick fights with Google, they need to pick fights with RIM, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, et al.
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not if there will be different proprietary marketplaces for each handset. at which point entry costs for developer will become a problem.
Sorry, but...could you explain further? I know there are a ton of third-party app stores, but "the" android market is still by far the largest one, and is accessible from pretty much every android handset.
What are you referring to?
No Market on Archos Internet tablets (Score:3, Informative)
"the" android market is still by far the largest one, and is accessible from pretty much every android handset.
It's not accessible from any Android device made by Archos. In fact, it doesn't appear to be accessible from any available Android device without a cellular radio. (Samsung Galaxy Player 50 isn't out yet.)
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The Market app can operate over any network connection.
Say I have an Archos 43 and a working Wi-Fi connection. But Archos 43 doesn't come with the Market app. So now how do I use the Market?
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Oui, (Score:2)
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And if iOS is the best platform ever, but no developers are developing for it... consumers (eventually) won't buy it, because they can get all the cool apps and features they want on Android.
I like iOS, don't get me wrong. I also think Google missed a huge opportunity to do right by consumers by forcing some of the 'if you want to call it Android, customers must be able to do X, Y, Z with this OS" issues (which may have prevented some of the increasingly carrier-restricted things we're seeing in Android).
Numbers, numbers (Score:2)
I sure don't see the kind of numbers Gartner is talking about. I see lots of iPhones, not many Androids, and never hear "civilians" talking about the Android. There is a Android kiosk in my local mall - I don't see any lines in front of it.
So, pardon me if I doubt.
Numbers. (Score:2)
Here are the only numbers that matter:
Phones that use Android [wikipedia.org] (spoiler: ~80, ~110 including tablets)
Phones that use iOS [wikipedia.org] (spoiler: 3, including tablets)
Number of Android carriers: 4
Number of iPhone carriers: 1
The fact (and it is a fact) that Android outsells iOS should come as no surprise.
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It's kind of hard to compete with market share when the other guys are doing 2-for-1 specials.
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Prepare to be modded to hell.
Droidbois have issues with anyone that mentions BOGOs and their precious OS.
Re:Numbers. (Score:5, Insightful)
2-for-1 specials are basically equivalent to selling at half the price. Being overpriced compared to the competition is no virtue, though I can understand how Apple fans would see it that way (or, rather, I can see how people who see it that way would tend to become Apple fans.)
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Android is [...] the default platform for people who don't think to ask what platform they want.
I thought the default platform was BREW, seen on feature phones. People who get a smartphone in the first place are already "ask[ing] what platform they want" to some extent.
desktops next (Score:5, Interesting)
most people reading here are desktop-centric, and the smartphone os is a secondary platform, in terms of work, play, and psychological orientation
but we are rapidly entering a world that is smartphone-centric, and the desktop os is a secondary platform, in terms of work, play, and psychological orientation. the whole desktop segment will be marginal
google can ride this psychological shift to get android/ chrome os onto the desktop market. the shift will be second nature, not an alien intrusion. and it will happen with a whimper, not a bang: who cares about the desktop except old people?
the only people making noise about this "big deal", this great promise of unseating microsoft in the desktop market, chattered about on slashdot for over a decade, will be old people. the idea of using a desktop will be a fossil idea, that only fossils will care about. like looking at greybeards from the 80s with their funny unix command line interfaces
in which case, "resistance is futile" is a good allusion, because google will be the new microsoft. cue bill gates slashdot borg icon morphing into a sergey brin/ larry page borg icon. nevermind that even the idea of "the borg" is a silly scifi notion from last century that only old people even care or know about
slashdot, we're showing our age
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but we are rapidly entering a world that is smartphone-centric
So I've heard, for about ten years, from the "tech journalist" crowd. But only from them, not the rest of the world. Most folks simply nod their head in unthinking agreement, or simply ignore them, but no one believes them.
slashdot, we're showing our age
aka wisdom
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I doubt that the reason desktops will stay relevant. Most people will probably have a keyboard/screen combo they connect their smartphone to, which would take care of that problem, and even use the TV for other content.
The Acer Stream (Android phone) already has an HDMI port, so you can plug it to your TV or TFT screen, no need for a full desktop.
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I disagree that desktops will disappear. They'll probably turn into professional only devices, that work with one all day and have more requirements than a smartphone can provide (and no, a smartphone will *never* be as powerful as a desktop, by the simple fact that you can put more components into it).
Someone has to produce that massive platform the smartphones/TVs/etc rely on.
Re:desktops next (Score:5, Insightful)
And people with jobs actually working with data. I work in local government. Call me crazy, but I just don't see a future where our permitting clerks are sitting at the counter entering new permits and printing invoices from a phone screen. I don't see us entering tax payments on that either. The same applies to most existing industry.
Now, those devices certainly DO have uses. For instance, we have building inspectors that I'd LOVE to setup with touch screen phones or pads so that they could do inspections in the field and upload the results back. Same with property appraisers and possibly even our EMS people.
You have to stop trying to look at it as one technology "winning out" over the other. The simple fact is that for a ton of things the desktop is a better UI. For a ton of other things handheld touch devices are. If you try to shoehorn either into working in all situations, you're going to end up being terrible in many situations.
Consider it this way: a wrench works pretty poorly for driving nails. You can make it work, but it's aggravating. Once you finally get a hammer, everything might start looking like a nail for a while, but realistically, there are still a lot of things you're going to need that old wrench for - don't throw it out.
The desktop will continue to be relevant for decades - quite possibly for as long as we have a technological future. The only change is that it won't be the ONLY thing that's relevant anymore.
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Call me crazy, but I just don't see a future where our permitting clerks are sitting at the counter entering new permits and printing invoices from a phone screen.
No, but they could be easily be working on an Android, ChromeOS or iOS tablet/nettop entering data into a web-based application. Far easier to administer than a separate instance of your software on every single workstation.
I think this is the real target market for ChromeOS (which is no good for mobiles until mobile internet gets far more reliable).
Thin-client computing is a jolly good idea which has, so far, been blocked because everybody and their dog wants to run MS Office.
Is it going to be "hype" for the next few years? (Score:2)
I hate to use ESX as an example, but its hard to say "no" to a VM farm. Skewed analogy, but if you have those brain cells rubbing together yet (I don't - stupid decaf) then you'll get my drift.
I still don't see that much android in NYC (Score:3, Interesting)
i take the subway and lately i've been seeing more iPhone 4's than Android phones. i've noticed that a lot of android phones look like an iphone 4, but overall i see a lot more iCrap than Andoid. could be all the people with ipod touches i see have android phones in their bags they aren't showing, but then what is the point of 2 devices?
when people ask me what they should buy i tell them that it doesn't really matter since they are 90% the same
I still don't see many Nintendo DS in the subway (Score:2)
NYC subways for whatever reason seems to present a very different ecosystem than the rest of the country.
From looking around, you'd think that Sony PSP are absolutely dominating the Nintendo DS. However, in reality [vgchartz.com] the DS has sold more than twice as many as the PSP.
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there are 20 million people here during the workday, it's a pretty good sample of the US. i know more people with android phones than iphones, but overall i see a lot more iphones in the street here
Re:I still don't see that much android in NYC (Score:4, Insightful)
there are 20 million people here during the workday, it's a pretty good sample of the US. i know more people with android phones than iphones, but overall i see a lot more iphones in the street here
Yes, and overall, 80% of all cars in the US are probably yellow Crown Vics - I see a lot more of them on the street in NYC than any other car ;-)
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Wouldn't it be more compact to carry around your phone and a spare battery rather than your phone and an mp3 player?
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Battery life is one of the few things that the iPhone 4 has bested every other touchscreen smartphone I've seen in. I can stream music or play the iPod for both
Depends... (Score:2)
I honestly don't care what wins (Score:4, Insightful)
The way I feel about it is: It's my phone, I payed for it, if you don't like what I'm doing with my own property, well, that's just too bad for you.
Resistance is Futile, Further Innovation is Not (Score:2)
Symbian, RIM, Windows and Apple are all going to have to come up with something better, or collaborate to survive.
The year of Linux on Everything HOORAY!!! (Score:5, Funny)
This is the year of Linux on Everything! *
* Everything excludes the desktop
Palm WebOS (Score:2, Insightful)
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You and me both, pal. A consistent interface and a fully open Linux-based phone that you can root with the developers' blessing. And yet, it seems to be an also-ran for most geeks. Maybe the Pre2 will change that.
The more diversity, the better (Score:2)
My guess it will be tough to have one OS that spans many device types simply due to the complexity and permutations of hardware/software that occur as devices get more complex. That is, I have a very different expectation of a home PC and it's capabilities vs. a workstation or a so-called smartphone. Writing an OS that spans that gamut of hardware/software reliably and with a user experience that can be described as acceptable should be difficult for the time being. I see Android slowly gobbling up market s
The question is futile (Score:2, Funny)
Not futile (Score:2)
I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
...this "either/or" mentality. That if Android succeeds, everyone else has failed.
Let's look at computers. Microsoft and OEM's that use Windows have about 90% market-share, while Apple and OS X has a bit under 10%. Does that mean that Apple has "failed"? Not really. They seem to be having highly succesful computer-business, happy users, and lots of profits. Apple earns more money on their computers than HP, the market-leader, does with theirs. yet for some reason some people say that Apple should be like HP and Dell, since licensing OS from someone else is "the way this business works". Even though it seems that the OEM's are not earning that much, while Intel and Microsoft are the companies that reap the profits.
If we look at phones, we can see that Apple is earning lots of money there as well. More than Nokia is earning, even though Apple is a lot smaller. It seems that people are expecting Apple to gain iPod-like dominance in the phone-business, and if/when Android overtakes iOS, people decide that iOS has "failed", since history did not repeat itself. Well, Symbian dwarfs both iOS and Android, yet no-one is calling iOS or Android failures because of that fact. And gaining iPod-like share in a mature market like phones is quite hard, if not impossible. When Nokia was at it's biggest, it had something like 60-70% share of the market. But that was a market that wasn't all that mature yet. and they managed that for only few years.
What if Android gets 50% share in few years? Great! Android is a good OS, and we need more good phones. does that mean that everyone else has failed? I don't think so. It seems that people have this strange idea that there must be a clear winner and a clear loser(s). We got that in computers, when Microsoft ended up dominating the market. So we MUST have something similar elsewhere as well, right? I don't think so. And even in computers the "niche player" is earning quite nice profits. Even though they have single-digits market-share does not seem to be hurting them. You do not need to be big, biggest or dominating in order to have a good business.
Not impressed with Android (Score:2)
I have been a person who has been getting upset with my iPhone. I hate the huge bills, I hate the restriciton that Apple places on the app store.
Or rather, I hated.
What changed my mind? Had a friend who picked up an android phone a couple of weeks ago, and we played with it. Suddenly, I love Apple. The Android app store seemed to rarely have what I was looking for, and when I did find something, it was either a generic clone, or a virus, according to the comments. There seems to be zippo quality control. Ot
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I think Apple might have a thing or two to say about that...
Apple doesn't sell competing products to this, Microsoft does.
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I think Apple might have a thing or two to say about that...
Apple doesn't sell competing products to this, Microsoft does.
We are talking about phones, tablets, set top boxes and TV's.
Microsoft phones have been terrible. We'll see how their new offerings do. From what I can tell, it's doesn't do anything that Android doesn't do. It's a race to the "cloud" and Google is already there.
Tablets? Where can I purchase a Microsoft powered tablet? Sure, I've seen them, but they are running nothing more than the desktop version of Windows with a tablet front end... and they have all sucked.
Set top boxes? I see no Microsoft boxes t
Among industrialized anglophone countries (Score:3, Insightful)
Or are you referring to just the US?
From the FAQ: Assume the United States market unless otherwise specified [slashdot.org]. Among industrialized anglophone countries, the United States has two-thirds of the population.
Re:I think ... (Score:4, Insightful)
this is exactly what statistics are for, it's way better than your anecdotal evidence.
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> I'll see 4 iPhones, a couple Nokia's and one Android based device.
So what you see is that Android is third. Isn't that what the article says?
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And if I sit down in a group of 8 people, I'll see 6 Android devices, 1 iPhone, and a dumbphone. It happens consistently with me, too. Sample bias?
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... voltage over current
Resistor is... (Score:5, Funny)
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Even as a very satisfied HTC Desire user (read: rabid Android fanboy), I've got to say that I quite disagree with you there.
The iPhone4 is simply a stunning piece of hardware that has yet to be matched by any of the Android offerings. The OS, while clunky, is smoother and more intuitive in many parts, and offers pretty much everything rooted Android offers when jailbroken.
If the iPhone4 was as cheap as the Desire or Galaxy S, I doubt those devices would have anywhere near this many users. Sad, but likely tr
... if Android focuses on the user experience (Score:4, Informative)
Most people don't care about Flash, HD video or dual-core phones. People want phones that can do well the basic stuff one wants to do on a smart phone (email, news, maps. weather, calls (!)). And the iPhone is terribly good at that.
I've had an iPhone for 2 years. Now that it's renewal time, I looked at all sorts of Android devices since I want to move away from the walled garden of Eden^H^H^H^H Jobs. The answer was simply that there is no match for the iPhone out there.
My advice to Google: focus on the Android user experience. That's the only way you'll ever beat Apple (and I hope you do).
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The problem now is that carriers have been slow to get their phones updated to 2.2. That makes the system much smoother, and even the default interface is both functional and attractive. Android doesn't have the power of the iPhone where it can force those kinds of updates across the board, but in exchange for that you get a much more powerful and flexible phone. It's a matter of priorities. Yours are obviously with shiny, walled gardens that control the user experience to a high degree. I'm not sold on tha
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Most people don't care about Flash, HD video or dual-core phones. People want phones that can do well the basic stuff one wants to do on a smart phone (email, news, maps. weather, calls (!)). And the iPhone is terribly good at that.
"Terribly Good" does describe calls on the iPhone. If I can make and connect on an iPhone, the call quality is good. But I wouldn't use it for long or important calls because I drop calls on AT&T multiple times a day no matter where I am. And I think that the longest call I've had without dropping is about 10-15 minutes. People just get used to you calling them back when a call drops with mobile phones now and AT&T / iPhone 3 are big offenders.
The one thing about calls I wish they'd fix on iPh
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The last time, the Board forced Steve out of the company and Apple stopped creating dramatically new products, favoring incremental improvements instead.
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the android mascot looks just like the robot from a Nick Jr show called Team Umizoomi for pre-schoolers.