Why Betting on IPhone Over Android Is Wrong | Hacker News Reader

Why Betting on IPhone Over Android Is Wrong

blindreason.org

14 pointsjboydyhacker24 comments

We'll have to wait and see how it plays out. Being "open" hasn't propelled Linux over Windows. And it should be noted that most people aren't using Android in a way that's more open than the iPhone - people get their programs from the Android Market, OS updates are provided by the handset manufacturer/carrier, etc. In some ways, the iPhone is more freeing since one doesn't have to worry about the carrier or device manufacturer abandoning it for OS updates - as my roommate looks forward to a 6 month wait for an update to his HTC Hero which is now two versions behind!

I think what it really comes down to is who provides the best experience. Freedom is part of that experience - can you use the device how you want. Part of that is open-ness, but part of that is having something that works right. No one would say that anti-virus software enhances the user experience in its own right, but millions use it because it prevents something worse. Likewise, restrictions on what you can install can have two sides.

It's a balancing act. Whether Android or the iPhone will get it right is debatable, but I think it's definitely a balancing act.

Linux has grown way faster than windows over the past 10 years... Check again in another 5 years.

Not on the desktop.

On the server is where it's kicking ass.

It is easy to show fast "growth" when you are starting from what is effectively a zero percent usage. Microsoft will ship more copies of Windows 7 this month than there are people who have ever run a non-embedded Linux over the entirety of it's existence. The first ten percent or so of growth is easy, the rest is much harder.

Especially when you're gaining at the expense of a dying competitor. I don't claim to know how much Linux will grow in the future but there's no doubt it's growth over the last 5 years has had a lot to do with Sun collapsing and companies moving away from Solaris. That's a market that's all but dried up at this point.

Windows is shrinking -- losing significant amounts of market share to Apple. It's not hard to grow faster than something that is shrinking.

And for the record, I cannot find any data which would suggest that Linux is growing at more than a fifth the rate of its closed-and-growing competitor, Mac OS X.

Being "open enough" made Windows more popular than Macintosh, which is probably a fairer comparison in some ways. Linux didn't even really get started in terms of 'desktop' stuff until around 2000. Also, Linux is way more popular in the server world than Windows.

Agreed. The comparison between Windows and Mac seems much closer to the Android/iPhone situation than comparisons between Windows and Linux. In fact the parallels to the early days of Windows/Mac seem pretty striking.

Much like the iPhone, the Mac came out first and was stunning it redefined how people thought of not just the market, but their relationship to the device and the potentials of the device.

Much like the iPhone, you could only get MacOS on Mac hardware (although to be fair, Apple did have a few brief, tepid flirtations with licensed clones).

In the end though, even though the Mac remained technologically superior for a long time, and had a superior UI.... well forever apparently, it still wasn't able to hold market dominance against the vast army of PC manufacturers pushing Windows.

Of course, the story wasn't entirely sad for Apple, as they continued to enjoy a profitable nitch with much higher profit margins than most of the PC clone manufacturers. :-)

I'd say if anything, the difference today is that Apple is facing much stiffer competition from Android than it faced from early versions of Windows.

I don't know how many of you are old enough to have used Windows 3.0 and the equivalent time period MacOS, but the differences were fucking amazing. MacOS wasn't just prettier, it was better in every conceivable way!

Whereas, IMHO, the iPhone OS and Android are quite close, each having some advantages over the other.

I think user experience wise Apple is good enough to be the winner but user experience probably isn't the deciding factor. Eventually phone manufacturers will commoditize smart phones. Those phones will need an OS preferably a common one. Rim, Apple, and Palm don't seem poised to share. Therefore they probably won't win. Now we just need to wait for the players to realize and accept this is the likely end game.

People pay 2.7 times what a PC costs, for the Apple product with the exactly same interior components.

In what parallel universe is this guy living in? Why is his number so exact? Is there a citation?

I'm pretty sure if you want Apple hardware specs for a third of the cost you need to own your own factory in China.

all you need is to buy Dell, HP or even Lenovo. Or do you have exact numbers that show you CANNOT get hardware with the same specs as Apple's for a fraction of the price...?

People are really voting this illiterate mess of a blog post up?

A market can exist with more than one product, free doesn't instantly beat paid, and this entire conversation has been repeated nonstop for three years. Why are we all still such fuckholes?

People are voting it because they want it to be true, not because it's likely. Our mask of rationality is only a thin disguise over the truth, which is just that we don't care about those topics about which we are capable of being rational.

Gah! That's even worse than upvoting based purely on agreement.

The iPhone is $100. Wintel was able to beat Macintosh due to pricing, not due to quality. Windows was the next best option for people who didn't want to shell out $$$$.

iPhone is the nobrainer choice for anyone with a clue, unless they are specifically looking for something open source. That's maybe .5% of the market.

Android's market is as an alternative to the iPhone on carriers that don't have the iPhone- a market that's being shut down abroad as Apple expands beyond their launch partners.

Edit: it helps if I use the right words :) Don't post on HN before coffee!

Macintosh beats wintel on pricing? Could you give an example of that?

I've heard a lot of people complain about how bad aspects of the iPhone are... it was a bold and game changing device, but I don't think a product that has changed minimally since the first version launched should be getting too confident about continued market share.

Consistency matters.

The iPhone 3G and 3GS are incremental improvements over the earlier models; they don't need to be revolutionary in the hardware—the software is key to most of the iPhone experience.

I hear a lot of people complain about the iPhone, but I wonder how much of those complaints are about the piss-poor U.S. carrier. I've heard no complaints from my circle in Toronto, and I've heard of few complaints in Europe.

My biggest problem is that I can't roam with it for a reasonable price when I go to Europe this summer.

Truphone/Skype

> product that has changed minimally

No different screen sizes or shapes to support, few memory or processing speed or peripheral availability changes.

Everything that made developing Java for cellphones horrible, it doesn't have.

Dumb article. Darby Lines has a great article on x-killers that is infinitely better than this article.

http://www.theangrydrunk.com/2009/12/14/ive-seen-things-you-...

Some people will prefer iPhone; others will prefer Android. The only way to get applications that work on both is through web standards or to write them separately. Both can win without the other being a loser.

I think you're 100% correct that the smartphone market is more than big enough for both to win. IMHO, RIM, Palm, and Windows Mobile are much more at risk than either Apple or Android.

BTW. For getting native applications to work on both, this looks pretty promising: http://www.appcelerator.com/ Haven't had a chance to try it myself yet though.

But thats only half the story, right? The other half is that people (enough for apple to be successful) decided they wanted apple again and have been switching to apple products for the last half a decade. Where does this fit into the analysis? He has only looked at half of the history here and the other half seems to contradict his main point.

I see developers and power users switching over in droves. Android is advancing much faster than iPhones on the tech side.

I do think it'll unseat the iPhone in market share within a few years.

this article is barely legible.

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