The Android and iOS War Is Not Mac vs Windows Part 2 | Hacker News Reader

The Android and iOS War Is Not Mac vs Windows Part 2

blog.louisgray.com

24 pointssamrat18 comments

Louis is remembering the wrong part of the PC vs Mac wars. Go back to Win2/3 vs Mac. The Mac looked much more like iOS then. Windows 3.11 is like Android now, and then Win95 is where it looks like Android is going. And then the 15 years after Win95 is what most people remember about Windows vs Mac.

It was a long war and each of us remembers different parts. :) In what way does this dismiss the Mac's ability to get all the software you need even if the numbers are not perfect?

In what way does this dismiss the Mac's ability to get all the software you need even if the numbers are not perfect?

My disagreement is not with this, but rather the contention that this battle is different because Apple was not the developer choice in the past. When Windows was introduced the Mac was almost strictly better, including 3rd party SW support.

Over the course of almost 10 years Windows chipped away at that culminating with Win95. Where the tables were turned with better 3rd party support, better dev support, and was technologically better.

This 10 year span is very similar to the Apple v Google battles of today. Google is slowly chipping away at all of the iOS advantages. I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years from now people honestly forgot for how long iOS was almost strictly superior to Android.

That's absolutely fair as well. In previous posts, I've argued the quality gap is decreasing, and I agree with your points.

how long iOS was almost strictly superior to Android.

Having had both a iPhone (3G) and an Android-phone (since 2.1) I have to ask in what ways you would argue this position, since IMO its seems strictly a matter of preference.

Right now I would actually say at least my opinion is the exact opposite. To me iOS seems utterly stagnant and my Android phone surpassed my iPhone in every way from the second I got it.

Not trying to provoke a flamewar or anything, just wondering if there is something I'm missing here and on what basis this argument is made.

If you have an iPhone 3G then your hardware is over two years old, and your iOS version, if updated, is still feature limited. Maybe that's why it feels so stagnant?

I fired up my old iPhone 3G to use as a gaming-device and MP3-player not too long back. I updated to latest iOS it would support, which iirc is iOS 4.2.1.

Interested in seeing how the iOS-development had been, I decided to enable all the features Apple had decided to disable. Basically a quick rooting with redsn0w where I only re-enabled the official features and I didn't add any 3rd-party hackware to compensate or otherwise distort the experience.

I still feel it is stagnant, but like I said, I realize this may be a personal preference. Just thought I'd clear up any confusion regarding my ability (and inability) to use iOS-features as they are available as per today.

I know you're talking about features more so than specific models, but I was tired of my iPhone 3G after using it for a couple of years. It was sufficient to me feature-wise, but the sluggish response time on every screen was just frustrating. However, after upgrading, iPhone 4 speed and retina display have been game-changing to me as a user.

I like Apple's products and using Android devices makes me angry but I wouldn't find it all that bad if Android/iOS were like PC/Mac.

Not with an half dead Apple as the end result but if Apple's position in the smartphone market were equal to its position in the PC market I wouldn't have a problem with that. I care about Apple making great products, they don't need to be a dominant player in the smartphone market in order to do that.

The biggest problem with articles such as these is that the author willfully ignores all of the other mobile platforms currently on the market (Windows Phone, Blackberry, WebOS (note: ignoring Nokia due the the expected retirement of their platforms in favor of WP7)). These platforms are much more compelling than any other OS was during the PC/Mac wars, and dramatically affect the overall market. Especially when you factor in the fact that all three of the platforms I mentioned are backed by companies which are willing to throw /billions/ of dollars into this space. To ignore them when discussing the difference between the desktop wars and mobile wars is ridiculous.

I was even more surprised when I searched for Part 1 of this article. Not only did I not find it, but I found this article instead: http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/02/windows-phone-7-is-best-wi... in which the author claims "I believe the Windows Phone 7 experience to be a serious challenger to both platforms in terms of quality, intuitive use and simplicity."

>These platforms are much more compelling than any other OS was during the PC/Mac wars

Seems a bit like historical revisionism to me. RISC OS, Amiga OS and NeXTSTEP were all pretty compelling at the time.

Dave, this post was in response to many other articles that have framed iOS vs Android as the 2 dominant smartphone platforms and made a parallel comparison to the Mac/Windows discussions of old.

I do like Windows Phone 7 a lot. I think the UI is fantastic. I do not think that its current app situation is fantastic, and it is starting with a serious deficit versus competitors. I will not dismiss it at all, but think to discuss it in the frame of this article would be distracting.

I have previously discussed Blackberry as well, but think they have a lot of work to do to be compared vs Android and iOS right now.

Here's a post that had iOS vs Android vs BlackBerry from May of last year: http://blog.louisgray.com/2010/05/in-todays-world-of-mobile-... where I said those who are centered on email are still in a great place with Blackberry.

there are many different things possible on [Mac] that can't be done on Windows

Like what?

Any comparison of the Microsoft / Apple wars to the iOS / Android wars needs to take into account one major difference: the presence of Steve Jobs.

Jobs left Apple in 1987, after which the company quickly became a stodgy computer company, a Dell wannabe. They lost their design mojo - anyone else here remember the dark days of all of the performas, and quadros and powermacs with impenetrable model numbers after the names? Beige boxes without any style running an increasingly creaky OS.

Jobs returned in 1997, and immediately the design chops came back, and the Mac's marketshare has been steadily climbing ever since, until today the Mac has enough presence in the US market that the platform is once again well supported by software and hardware vendors.

This time around, with the battle between iOS and Android, Apple is not as likely to drop the ball, like they did in the late 80s, early 90s. The end result, in my opinion, will be a market with two dominant platforms. Over time I would expect Android to become the budget choice with Apple picking off the high margin segment of the market. Indeed, this is the current market configuration that we see in the PC / Mac market.

Of course, the day is coming when Steve Jobs will no longer be at the helm of Apple. I would hope that the board has understood the lesson from the first Jobs-less period, by choosing a successor that understands the primacy of design for Apple.

Where is the hardware angle in this? One of the reasons that Macs lost the battle was because they couldn't compete with the latest and greatest hardware that that Intel churned out. Through most of the 90s Apple stuck with unpowered hardware while being clobbered by Dell and HP's prices (due to higher volumes and probably better supply chain management). This is no longer the case - in fact, because of Apple's massive iOS device volumes they can probably beat the bigger manufacturers on price this time around.

All they need to do is keep up with the hardware trends and keep refreshing their product line. So far they've done this (retina, dual core on iPad 2, cameras etc).

So, it's not like the old Win vs Mac battle since the hardware playing field is almost neutral (or perhaps there is a slight Apple advantage here).

So basically, all Mac has to do is never fall behind in any way to the rest of the world. I think back to the days of my Apple IIGS.

It was awesome. It showed the way. And then the clones destroyed it.

That's because Android vs. iOS is really Linux vs. BSD!

Louis forgot that there were other non-windows and on-mac desktop OSes hardware during the MAC vs Win wars in his debating points which contradict his points..

what ones?

Amiga BeOS plus several others

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