Why Android is the New Windows | Hacker News Reader

Why Android is the New Windows

blog.mobilesplease.co.uk

17 pointsm3mb3r12 comments

Since web services are the reason d'etre of smartphones, there are inherently few switching costs for jumping between leading smartphone platforms and therefore none of the lock-in that lead to Windows' dominance.

One area where android is similar to windows is that it runs on several hardware platforms from several vendors, whereas apple has a single (or three: ipad/ipod/iphone) target platform.

In the past, Apple feared IBM, sided with Microsoft and Microsoft beat it.

Recently, Apple feared Microsoft, sided with Google and Google beat it.

I wish someone would beat me the way Google beats Apple. Apple is making a bunch more money off iOS than Google makes off Android, and in the US they are only barely being beat in market share when Google is on all major carriers and Apple is on just one. When Verizon gets iPhone, Android will go back to second place.

Android is everybody's whore. Even sleazy ringtone vendors (I mean carriers) like verizon are able to adulterate android for their own purposes.

I see this as really no different then Dell's bloatware being installed on Dell sold PC's, though there are worrying exceptions.

AT&T limits some (all?) of it's phones to prevent them access to the standard Android market. However, I think to combat this behavior you can't call the phone a Google Experience phone or something without following some basic ground rules like allowing the standard market, and keeping up with updates.

Some phones do not allow the user to install a custom ROM or root the device. This is worrying because it would be like buying a Dell that won't let you reformat with *nix. Of course, there are plenty of vulnerabilities in the wild (akin to Jail Breaking) that get around this. I believe most vendors prevent the user from gaining root access to their device to upsell them on features that don't require any work on their part except flipping a bit in software, (tethering comes to mind, visual voice mail is another)

For the second part, I believe that carriers aren't going to let go of this income and become network infrastructure maintainers like cable companies without regulation, unfortunately.

Android cannot be the new "windows" because alot of decisions leading up to windows in it's current incarnation were driven by the anti-competitive nature of Microsoft. Android takes the best aspects of windows' business strategies and incorporates them in an open environment.

So I guess if you are saying android is the phone to run on a bunch of random hardware which will outsell apple, yes, android is the new windows of cellphones. In the end it's closer to a user-friendly linux.

If by 'user-friendly linux' you mean 'linux without any of the linux showing' then yes. I can't stand linux, but android is great.

Actually, what you can't stand is the GNU tool chain and other various accompaniments like X11 that are considerably long in the tooth. Technically, Linux is a very, very small part of the average Linux distribution. Hell, you can sub out Linux for one of the BSD kernels and the average user would have no idea.

Linux is a bit different than people expect:

To me linux is everything under the hood. The File System, The Kernel, the Open Sourcing of the two, and everything built on top of that.

"I can't stand linux" only tells me that you need to log off from the internet because guess what most is run on.

Right, but my issue is directed at the people who use Android. It didn't start outselling iPhone because of techies like us alone - 'normal' people use it, 'normal' people who would otherwise never use 'linux' and probably don't realize they're already using it on their phone, and the key to that is they got rid of all* the parts about linux that cause headaches for average users.

For those unfamiliar with the alot:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...

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