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Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

I bought one, and it's awesome. It's obvious, to me, that this is going to be a slow burn product, but burn, it will...in a year, there will be a dozen Android phones, spread from low end to high, and the market will begin to look drastically different. Apple will likely find themselves in the same boat they were in two decades ago going up against the ridiculous variety of PC compatible machines, with a single somewhat pricey product. Apple is about to be engaged in war on a dozen fronts, and I suspect that it won't be able to withstand the onslaught (sales of iPhone may continue upward, since the smart phone market is growing so fast, but I think its market share can only go down from here, if they use the same playbook that used for Macintosh vs. PC).

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I've got one too and I'm very happy with it. I've used the iPhone quite a bit and it's ok. So far I like the G1 better. The buttons on the front and the scroll ball make it a little easier to navigate around. The standard applications work well. I like how the notification bar works. I was surprised at how much was already in the Android Market on day one. It seems like some of them are also on the iPhone, but there are some exclusives too. Locale is an especially cool application that isn't possible on the iPhone. There are quite a few that make use of the GPS. One that I found amusing, although still innovative, is iSafe. Among other things it can alert you when you enter a high crime neighborhood or when there is a registered sex offender nearby. Call quality and reception are generally good. I like how the screen automatically locks when I put the phone up to my ear during a call. Overall, I'm impressed by it. I had expected it to be much less polished than it is. It's also not nearly as ugly as it looks in the pictures. It's actually kind of nice looking in a minimalist way.

I do have a few gripes, though. First is battery life. I expected it would be mediocre, but it's downright terrible. I have to recharge it in the middle of the day. The silver lining here is that the battery is removable so I can carry a spare with me. I really hope they come out with a higher capacity battery soon. Another part that could have been better is the keyboard. The keys are just a little too flat and feel just a bit spongy. It's not a bad keyboard by any means, but I would prefer one more like the Sidekick. Multitouch would be a nice plus too.

It's also worth saying something about the first paragraph of the NYT article. The author says there was no one waiting in line at the store for the G1. That's because we didn't need to. People who preordered the G1 had it delivered. I even had mine delivered a day early. I'm not sure that there would be people lining up otherwise, but it's still a little misleading.

The author says there was no one waiting in line at the store for the G1.

This just pisses me off - it encourages companies like Apple to hype up a product and then slowly sell it in three locations in all of NYC. The news isn't that people want an iPhone, the news is that Apple can be a dick to their customers for publicity and they put up with it.

Good point. This has been going on a very long time too. It's not reserved just for Apple products. Video games are a prime example. I remember this stuff going on back when I was playing NES. It really pissed me off when they created artificial shortages when the original Zelda and Double Dragon were released. And don't forget about the GMail launch when it was invitation only. This kind of thing is just another tool in the standard marketing toolbox.

There can be actual shortages. Take Gmail as an example. Such a service requires a lot of resources - storage, computing power, support staff. . . It's a lot easier to provide those things for 100,000 people than for 10M people. The invites provided them a way of ramping up rather than having to meet all of the demand on day 1. It also allowed them to see exactly where they needed to optimize before they got millions of users.

If it was just a marketing thing, why didn't Yahoo and Microsoft roll out their increased storage all at once? No, those two increased their storage gradually because it's the only practical way. By limiting invites, Google got to increase storage in a similar, gradual way.

With Apple, many stores were at fire-code capacity when the iPhone came out. Apple didn't sell out of iPhones at most locations. The lines were due to the fact that Apple can only have so many people in a store at any given time because we can't have two different pieces of matter occupying the same space at the same time. So, trash Apple if you want, but the lines were real. More people wanted to get a peak at the iPhone than the stores had capacity to fit people in.

I think the iPhone is a defective device and want an Android phone when my carrier gets one, but one needs to be objective: the iPhone generated buzz that the G1 isn't. There are many factors including the relative size of T-Mobile and AT&T and the fact that the original iPhone allowed AT&T users to buy new wherever they were in their contract while the G1 mandates in-contract users have to pay an additional $220. The fact remains, the iPhone generated buzz that the G1 hasn't. The lines were real. People were excited.

No one here is trashing anyone. Maybe you misunderstood. I am also aware that there are real shortages, particularly when hardware requiring new manufacturing processes is involved. But the fact is that artificial shortages are a commonly used marketing tactic and that is the point the parent poster and I were trying to make. The article implies that the lack of lines and shortages is the result of a lack of interest. That may not necessarily be the case.

There are plenty of reasons why there isn't much hype around the G1 and you've pointed a couple of them out. I think it's also obvious that Android, and particularly the G1, were not marketed nearly as heavily as the iPhone. It also may be that the iPhone has achieved critical mass and people just aren't interested in the knock-offs that are coming out now.

Your statement about in-contract users having to pay an additional $220 is incorrect - at least it was a few weeks ago when I ordered mine. At the time I preordered I believe it was $199 for new customers. I was still in contract and mine came out to about $338 with some BS activation fee and sales tax. I did notice that the G1 is $179 now so that may have changed.

Keep in mind that unless when personal computers came out Apple was not the first one to release a smartphone. There are already hundreds of devices from Windows Mobile to RIM. I have to admit I haven't been too much attention to Android since I'm perfectly happy at the moment with my iPhone. How does the added competition from Android change anything for Apple?

That's an excellent way of phrasing this situation, actually. Android isn't the only competitor Apple's got. It's not iPhone versus Android. It's that versus Windows Mobile versus Blackberry versus...

I also don't see what open source would have to do with improving sales of the device. If Android succeeds, it'll have to be because it does something very special that RIM and Microsoft - and especially Apple - haven't done yet.

Considering the reports say that within another quarter Apple might have more iPhones out than there are versions of Windows Mobile everywhere, I'd want something a lot bigger than "This is a good product" to suggest Google has a chance of toppling Apple.

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers that the iPhone will take over Windows mobile within another quarter. From what I've found, Apple currently has a 2.8% market share in terms of OS use on smartphones and Windows Mobile is up at 12%. Not to mention how far back they all are from Symbian with it's 57.1%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Operating_systems

He's talking about total MS phone vs iPhone sales next year, assuming that iPhone sales double and MS phones sales are flat. Which is pretty pie in the sky, imo. But having said that, I've not seen a windows mobile device I would give a second thought to buying.

http://daringfireball.net/2008/10/the_phone_company

What allowed Apple to compete pretty successfully with zillions of mp3 players?

If mobile devices are the same as MP3 players in the minds of consumers, then that's a great argument. I don't think they are, though. I think mobile devices are going to be a replay of PC history: Specific applications will drive adoption of specific products. The iPhone and the G1 are both vastly more powerful than the first six personal computers I owned, and have better network bandwidth than several subsequent PCs. I think they will continue to get more interesting, and the application selection will become more important. If Apple continues to treat developers as competitors to be occasionally shut out if they get too uppity or too close to competing with Apple in some space, they won't keep those developers. Without the developers, the apps won't exist...without the apps, users will choose an alternative.

Others have mentioned that iPhone was "first" in this particular market (the market for "Buck Rogers magical computing devices that fit in your pocket"), and that has definite value (the PC was on the market for a couple of years before Macintosh), but I don't think it can beat openness in the long run.

In the long run, Apple found that they could get away with "just enough" openness in favor of a highly polished end-user experience. They could just as easily do that with the iPhone and make it the "high-end" choice.

I seriously doubt that the same pressure to consolidate will ever apply in the mobile phone market the way it did to early PCs.

Prior to the Internet, the only thing you could do with a PC was run software written specifically for each platform. The average computer in the late 80s/early 90s cost between $3-5000. It made sense that people would settle on a single standard that let them get the most out of a very large investment.

However, 90% of what people do with smartphones - calls, email, music, web browsing - is inevitably provided with the phone. 3rd-party apps are a nice addition, but hardly necessary. The iPhone and Blackberry got along just fine without them for years, whereas Palm and WiMo are floundering despite having allowed 3rd-party apps for the last decade.

I won't argue with that logic. It's the same market change that has led to Mac making a comeback, and Linux making a (small) move into the consumer desktop space, in ways that simply couldn't have happened in the 90's. If apps continue to move to the web, the key will be who has the best browsing experience--and right now, it's roughly tied, IMHO (and they're based on the same rendering engine, so that makes sense). This also explains why Windows Mobile has had so little impact--in all fairness, it ought to simply rule the roost (and it does have good raw numbers, but I don't think it has much mindshare)--the browser in Windows Mobile sucks dramatically worse than even IE on the desktop. The same can be said for Palm and the Symbian devices that I've seen. A smart phone with a crap browser is just a big ugly phone with some extra fancy crap bolted on.

It'll be interesting to see how cost, and other ancillary features (like GPS, to name just one) will effect buyers decisions. Fashion (as in, "who makes the prettiest accessory for my wardrobe?") may, in fact, rule the day...in which case, Apple still has the upper hand, and, if PC history is any indicator, they will hang on to the upper hand for years to come. Even today, it's pretty much impossible to buy a PC that looks as nice as an Apple (Dell has made a few effective moves in the area, and HP and Sony also seem interested in good design). Then again, PCs still outsell Macs many times over, both in lappies and desktops.

So, maybe you're right, and the market will shake out dramatically differently than the PC market. But, I'd sure hate to bet against history repeating itself given the wide array of similarities (many of the players are even the same, and they do appear to have the same playbooks).

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