Nothing in Android makes sense except in the light of its original vision
dcurt.is
dcurt.is
> And RIM’s BlackBerry was still the most popular smartphone in the world.
If your world was the USA. Symbian/S60 was the dominant smartphone OS.
> What Miner and Google gambled on, and it seems bizarre in retrospect, was that the carriers and the manufacturers would be good at customizing and improving the user experience of the base operating system.
No, the problem was that the available OS's had huge (leave it to the handset vendor) holes (Symbian), or that their competitors had control of the available 'easyish but hard' options (Nokia dominated Symbian). Or that the other options were crap (Windows Mobile), or required S/W engineering experience which was not easily obtained (generic Linux).
The miracle of Android was that though it had some gaps in it's implementation, was good enough, and sponsored by a somewhat benign entity (at the time).
However, the reason for the handset manufacturers trying to differentiate, no matter how incompetently, or not was that the problem that Android solved also holds a curse. That is that the handset manufacturers do not want to repeat the PC experience of comoditizing the hardware market - What has happened before will happen again - unless we try to retard things.
The only way Google can reduce manufacturer freedom is to become truly non-free, on the day that happens, Android will fork.
The other lesson that is still being battled is patents, Internet protocol is essentially free. Wireless is not.
The other main difference is carriers, they are the gatekeepers to the valuable, yet resource limited spectrum that mobile phones need and therefore have a much larger control over the value chain than ISPs do for the Wired Internet.
UIQ used by many of the other manufacturers was never developed by any of them and was effectively an orphaned UI company.
Symbian might have been a smartphone OS, but it was mainly deployed in featurephones.
The rest of the Symbian devices were real smartphones, for example the popular N95. (They didn't have QWERTY keyboards, but that doesn't make a smartphone.)
On the other hand, while they're not good at making the user-space software, it's something every OEM will think that they want to do. So if the goal is to get widespread adoption, it's a good hook.
To be fair, most companies are bad at writing software, regardless of type, and even software companies aren't always good at writing software. I don't blame hardware companies, it's just not their core competency, and a hardware-engineering mindset is a poor fit for software design.
Oh god yes. I work for a major hardware manufacturer. We are by far the dominant supplier in our field. We are making a web app that allows our customers to control, operate, and mange our products. It's garbage. Let alone the fact that it's written in Java using seam convos, there was just no thought whatsoever put into UX. For instance, if you press the back button, it takes you to the previous page. So far, so good. However, if you try to perform some (any) action after that, you get a Java stack track and, weirdly, a "your session has timed out" error.
I brought this to our development lead, and his official, written response was, "lots of web apps break if you use the back button. If you use the back button during a ticketmaster checkout, you get an error. This isn't a problem."
Again, our hardware is fantastic and we have well over 50% market share in a massive industry. We just don't have the institutional give-a-shit to go with it on the software side.
I get a sick enjoyment out of watching our sysadmins flip out about software GUIs designed for the hardware they're running.
We were having lots of trouble with our office ADSL, and decided to buy a cisco modem from our ISP ("because if they sell it, they must be able to support it, right?"). I was a bit nervous because I know a little about cisco gear, but not enough to be confident to configure a router.
This model was advertised as 'easy webif', and the ISP isn't a shoddy fly-by-nighter, so I took the gamble. Turns out the 'easy webif' was effectively IE-only and required java (refused to run in any of the linux browsers I tried)... took about a minute to intialise itself... and could barely configure the device (port forwarding? no, you can't do that here...). I have honestly never seen a worse webif in my life.
Ended up returning it. Discussing it with a friend, he said that the webif isn't ever supposed to be used, it's just there as a tickbox to satisfy beancounters.
It made sense in context. Miner was the head of the Orange/FT research lab in Cambridge. A lot of creative engineers worked there but they were hamstrung by the junky phone SDKs available at the time. Android would have been just what they needed.
At Orange we toyed with pushing an Android precursor from Savaje. However, the timing wasn't right - hardware wasn't powerful enough and Orange/FT didn't have the balls or corporate DNA to establish something like the OMA.
At Orange (or probably any carrier) getting a device out the door was a clusterfuck. You had to coordinate between the Device manufacturer (who never had any flexibility in their software schedule), the various operating companies who wanted phones in shop by Nov 1 for the Holiday or else, and various PM's running about trying to get features on the phone to help with their particular mandate (at the time it might have been music, IM, etc).
So yeah, anyone with half a technical clue could see that you could get shit done faster with a common OS. WHat's amazing is that with a little bit of juice from Google and a crack engineering team from Rubin they managed to totally dominate the non IOS smartphone market in a couple of years.
People seem to have this odd view that Android is deficient because it doesn't have some IOS optimizations. But look - if I told you to build something on one set of hardware and make it great that's 10x easier than building an open system. Yeah, closed systems may win in the end (and Apple is winning) but ANdroid couldn't be Android without a wider perspective.
The obvious point is that the cell phone industry is hard to break into and the most successful players adapt the realities of the marketplace. It's no surprise to anyone that Google changed Android to make it succeed. (Unless you're MG Siegler; I'm still waiting for the blog post on how he hates iOS because Apple sold out).
On the other hand, if you actually look at it objectively, manufacturers filled in many genuine gaps and made the early Android OS look much better than the default. Various innovations they introduced have been brought back into core Android and/or stolen by CyanogenMod etc. From a business perspective, a lot of Android's permissiveness towards their hardware and network partners has obviously succeeded beyond most people's expectations.
So the skins have both good points and bad and there are shades of gray but mostly you get the loud opinion of Android geeks (who want the very latest stock as a point of principle) and Apple geeks (who will tear down anything that Apple doesn't have e.g. big screens) usually with the assumption that what they think is important is the only reality.
It's also worth noting that Android is clearly aiming to be more than just a phone or tablet OS, so customisation is probably required to support e.g. car computers.
You need to consider the cost of preventing bad devices and bad UI extensions. The cost is just what you see in iOS: Limited choice of devices. Restrictive censorship rules for users and developers. No checks and balances.
Scolling works well on my Nexus S by the way.
GOOD.
Restrictive censorship rules for users and developers.
If the government isn't doing it, it ain't censorship. Look at what quality filtering through an approval process did for the video game industry. The same force is in effect on iOS, and the quality of iOS apps is consistently pretty high, especially when compared to Android.
Scrolling was total ass on my Epic 4G until I loaded some custom ROM where they did some sort of low-level magic to deliver an "ICS-like" experience on a Gingerbread code base.
It still sucks, though, because unless you have a GNex, to get this UX on Android you have to visit some forum where l33t kids hang out and dink about with your phone, flashing its ROMs and potentially bricking it, and only then can you have something that vaguely suggests an iPhone in smoothness.
With Apple, it comes with a butter-smooth UX right out of the box.
It is tantamount to censorship once you have chosen iOS, because that choice makes Apple the government of your content.
But whatever you choose to call it, fact is that they restrict content based on value judgements that go well beyond anything you could ever call "quality assurance". They ban everything controversial regardless of quality.
So scrolling is indeed a bit worse than IOS, but its not really painfull anymore. You should give this guy a Galaxy Nexus.
Also the UI extensions on top of android are actually one of its strong points. Differentiation is the key here. And they are not so bad.
The point here is: You do not have to be the best to rule the market! And Google knows that.
However the Galaxy Nexus is the best phone out there, much better than any iphone.
Mobile phones are still a very competitive market and manufacturers want to differentiate their products to attract customers from another
As Apple grew, the necessity to commit to Android grew.
Boring parables about why Android made a mistake because it isn't like iOS are as old as both operating systems, during the same time that Android has done gangbusters. My wife has a Captivate Glide with Gingerbread and Samsung's TouchWiz on it. She loves it. She doesn't know or care what ICS is, gets constant updates for the mapping and market and book reading and video viewing, etc. For the average real, non-blogging human being the model works remarkably well.
Mobile phone hardware is generally the same across most devices these days and most of the "Joe Public" don't care what's on the inside - so the software is where the manufacturers try to differentiate themselves from each other as a selling point
Also, while the GPU is now used to accelerate the UI, it is still simply not as smooth. The single-core Nokia Lumia 800 with Windows Phone is noticeably smoother at scrolling than my top-of-the-line Galaxy Nexus was.
I'm excited for where Google is going with Android, but it's still not quite there yet.
Open source isn't relevant here because that mandate is for any vendor wanting to distribute Google's proprietary apps (Market, Maps, Gmail, Google account sync, Face unlock, etc.) with their device. Every carrier and hardware vendor except Amazon falls into that category and is going to have to do whatever Google says to continue licensing those apps.
Yes, they can continue making their own themes, but unless app developers specifically choose to use it with DeviceDefault, those apps will use the unmodified Halo theme which must now look the same on every device.
The "unmodified Halo theme" is referring to the icons and interface elements included with the operating system that developers can use when building their apps.
Google even said this: "We have no desire to restrict manufacturers from building their own themed experience across their devices." (http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2012/01/holo-everywhe...)
Google even said this: "We have no desire to restrict manufacturers from building their own themed experience across their devices."
That is talking about a different theme called DeviceDefault. Why would any app developer use DeviceDefault instead of Holo when it would make testing difficult and give an inconsistent look to their app?
This is most noticeable when dragging things around - the output always trails your finger movement by just that much - not enough to appear extremely egregious, but enough that iOS still feels more responsive.
Google has done great work, but they ain't done yet.
The key to beating Apple, or even just matching Apple, is to deliver the same attention to detail, and things like touch lag is a major component of this.
Think about the MacBook sleep indicator. It has a soft "breathing" rhythm modeled on the frequency of human breathing. How many users do you think are actively looking at the sleep indicator on their laptop? Yet it has become an iconic and beloved feature of the product. Many competitors have tried to clone the "sleeping light", yet none of them could even be arsed enough to get the feel right.
Same goes for the "shines through metal" indicator lights on MacBooks webcams/battery indicators. Would a user consciously notice if they got rid of it? Probably not, but its presence lends a fit and finish that communicates quality.
> "which tries to make it look like this minor difference is important to the user"
That's just it though. It is important to the user, though you'd never know it if your only metric for measuring user happiness are conscious observations. Very few users can articulate "the time lag between input and action is too great" in those words - but I'm willing to bet 90% can feel it, and will fail to articulate it to a focus group or similar. The difference is magnified if the user is comparing the two products side by side.
I've heard it expressed in many ways. It's "laggy" (which is the most accurate term for it), it's "not snappy", it's "slow" (which is inaccurate, but the layman generally doesn't know the distinction between speed and lag). Sometimes a user will feel it and can't articulate it at all!
I'm willing to bet, if you could find someone who has never used either iOS or Android, and hand them one of each device, loaded with just a simple scroll list. Let them interact with it, and ask them something as simple as "which one felt better to use". Who do you think will win? One product has just won the entire contest by visceral reaction alone, before the conscious brain has even kicked in. Details matter.
> "There are so many other major differences between Android and iOS that are much more relevant to the user, like lock-in, choice of different handsets etc."
This is the RIM angle, and I'd have thought that by 2012 we'd have put this one to rest already. Competing on functionality and features doesn't win anything. "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame", anyone? The iPod, the iPhone, and hell, the MacBook all came out into a market where there already exist functionally superior products. Remember the guffaws when Steve marched on stage with an EDGE phone when the industry was already rolling out 3G? That sure put the kibosh on the iPhone launch, eh?
This is the problem with most technical types - we think the decision matrix is 80% function 20% experience, but in reality it's the opposite. Apple has taken this realization and made hundreds of billions betting on it.
The whole point I'm making is much better communicated in a great book: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. He's not a software or even electronics guy, but rather industrial design.
In the book, he posits a thesis: that a product is perceived at three levels: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. We're talking about the visceral reaction here - the immediate, subconscious reaction a user gets when they interact with Android vs. iOS. The texture of the screen, the responsiveness of the UI, the reaction of elements to touch. Without locking down the visceral reaction, your product will never feel "right".
Apple users are willing to pay for this. It is comparable to paying €1000 for a handbag. People often justify that it is worth it by pointing out the superior quality of an LV bag, which is true, but it wouldn't matter much to them if the brand wasn't known at all.
> "but it wouldn't matter much to them if the brand wasn't known at all."
But yet, it would. Consumers can feel quality when they come upon it. The LV bag without the luxury branding would still be far more successfully than a bag of lesser-quality and equally nameless brand.
Going back to what I started mentioning with the last post - a product is perceived at 3 levels. Visceral, behavioral, and reflective. We've already covered the visceral part.
Behavioral is the actual function of the product. How quickly does the kettle boil water? Does that teapot drip when poured? Does my phone actually send the SMS or will it leave me in limbo with no confirmation?
Reflective is the higher, consciously engaging aspect of the product. Does it make me look good to my peers? Does it bring back memories of a bygone era? Does it appeal to my ego? etc etc.
You're positing the Apple's claim to success can be largely accounted for via the reflective angle - whereas I'm saying it's impossible to be successful on that angle alone. A truly legendary product is wildly successful at all 3, and executing on all 3 is what has powered Apple's meteoric rise.
Android in its current state really nails behavioral, but it's half-assing visceral, and the reflective is practically non-existent.
Not from your post, but to aggregate my reply. To the mention that Android shouldn't be playing Apple's game by Apple's rules. These aren't Apple's rules. These are time-tested rules consumers will apply to any product they come across.
I'd say the key to beating Apple is to not play their game, on their turf, according to their rules.
The major thing that would prevent me switching to Android is precisely this issue. I've used a Galaxy Nexus, and while it has undoubtedly improved greatly, it is still not really there. Maybe Android 5...
I suspect that it's one of these things that you'll only be really irritated by if you've used a device with proper smooth scrolling for an extended period.
However in older other aspects android is by far superiour to API and functoinality compared to IOS.
He has little credible knowledge about Android. Has never said anything interesting or insightful about Android. Why does he bother with Android? I don't get it.
There is a massive documented history of discussions with Android engineers (not some second-hand claim of a discussion that reveals absolutely nothing) where they argue their case regarding GUI compromises. This blog entry adds less than nothing because it simply tosses more effluence in the information stream.
Or is it because Apple and Microsoft have been leaders in software engineering for more than a couple of decades and may have mastered the ins and outs of Operating Systems.. and since it has been only 5-6 years that Google has been working on Android, are they still competitively behind Apple and MS in this regard? and so that we can hope for improvement?
To the average user it is a complete non-issue: It's one of those things that you have to essentially point out to them. It is an issue for iOS boosters, however, because it's what they see as Android's Achilles heal.
Disclosure: I worked at Symbian between 1999-2003
Wouldn't that hardware- and network-specific code be more easily written by the handset manufacturers and network providers than a third-party software (only) company?
Hardware manufacturers and Cell providers won't support the extra cost of paying for the OS (in the long run).
This outcome isn't what I would like most, but it seems realistic.
If Google wanted to standardise Android they should have never released it as an OS for all and produced the phones themselves.