Hacker News Reader

Comment by codelust | Hacker News Reader

Agreed on all points with the exception that Guber actually gets it more or less right on that one. Apple products do have a huge emotional appeal to it. The price for which is weirdly, both the cause and effect at the same time. Most people who buy Apple will continue to buy Apple (they are already buying products that are not cheap by any means, so cheaper Android phones won't do much to dampen that enthusiasm).

Fact is that most people won't line up to buy Android and certainly not as many as Apple fans. Does that mean Android won't sell - hell, no. It will only sell more.

Most of the complaints about Android from Apple fans seem to be on the lines of - "hey it is imperfect and a lesser phone but why does it still sell?" For the Android fan club it seems to be a case of itching to see Apple in trouble.

People seem to forget a very basic fact: it is just a phone :)

View on HN

So the goalposts have moved from "won't line up for an Android phone" to "most people won't line up for an Android phone." Progress. Duly noted.

Let's not mince words. Gruber wasn't insisting that no human being would ever line up for an Android phone.

Hey, I am not setting any goalposts here. Also, using people-lining-up-at-stores as a metric is useful only as a measure of passion/lust you feel for the device/brand. Does not serve any other purpose, IMHO.

I am an Android user with a Galaxy GTI9000 and pretty happy with it. So it is not like I am batting for Apple either.

To summarize: Apple has a passionate user base, Android may not have an user base that is passionate to the same extent. In any case, long lines outside stores don't amount to much - the Palm Pre is a good pointer in that direction.

I'm not sure the original goalpost was at "nowhere in the world will even one single line be formed of people wanting to buy an Android phone".

I think it was at "people won't line up for an Android phone", which is a more general statement, which is still true. He's talking about things that tend to happen, not claiming that it will never EVER EVER EVER happen even ONCE.

Nobody's putting words into Gruber's mouth, he said "there will never be an Android phone that people line up for like they did for Windows 95". Taking it down a notch from there he meant "there will never be an Android phone that people feel extremely passionate about".

He's wrong on both counts already.

Which Android phone is people extremely passionate about?

I'm quite passionate about Android the platform. I love my incredible.

People lined up outside my local Sprint store to get the Evo 4G, but it was nowhere near what you would see at an Apple or AT&T store on iPhone release day. It's hard to measure passion for Android phones because on one hand there is the hardware, and the other is the Android platform. Aside from the Evo with a front-facing camera and 4G, or the Moment with a slide out keyboard, or the Droidx with a 4.5" screen, and a few other stand-outs, most Android phones are pretty vanilla hardware-wise. Android as a platform is great because it is free and open source, and has a lot of apps, but it is rough around the edges compared to iOS. It is easy to see why people are passionate about iPhone, because the hardware is amazing and the OS is polished. I love my Evo 4G, but I wouldn't love other Android phones like the Hero that are just generic Android phones.

That's because there are more Radioshack and Best Buys in a city than there are iPhones. I am pretty sure The Evo sold out for several day after launch.

Back when Windows95 was introduced, people around the world lined up in front of their local stores.

The Engadget story is about a line at one store, in one place in the world.

So no, this doesn't qualify as "an Android phone that people line up for like they did for Windows95".

Yep, but you cannot argue with pedants.

It's not just a phone, it's a classic case of people's need to separate themselves into groups (I am an x user, he is an y user) and then battle it out against those who pose a threat to our tribe, and to say negative things about those who are outsiders, while saying positive things about our fellow tribesmen.

It's the same thing that happens with football teams, rival schools, those who insist "in America, we speak English", etc.

Very true, I was just wishing it was otherwise. Both are fine platforms and miles away from the horror show mobile devices used to be half-a-decade ago.

In some cases, there is a legitimate worry about a market being 'winner take all', in which cases the positive network externalities will force even unwilling people onto a platform.

True, but that doesn't seem likely to happen now, unless someone writes a killer app and refuse to port it to the other platform.

I agree that it's not likely, as Apple seems basically happy with the market the way it is, rather than pursuing the market for cheaper phones. If they were everywhere, they might not have the same cachet...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com