133 thoughts on “∞ Open or closed, what's better Android or iOS?”

1. It’s saddening really.

2. The Loop sides with Apple. Never saw that coming.

3. Your friend couldn’t explain his ideology. Does he develop?

4. Now you’re just making sense again.

   As an example, Linux is an open platform. And it’s great for certain things. But it hasn’t advanced the state of PCs for most people. Moms and Pops still find it confusing. And it’s still a hassle to get a lot of things done on it for most people, things that work easily in OS X (and even Windows). I like Linux (we use it at work on some of our systems for controlling test measurement systems) but I would never recommend it to the average person as a desktop OS.

   Open in and of itself means nothing as far as the end user is concerned. It has no bearing on user experience. Actually, sometimes it DOES, in a negative fashion. UI by committee and volunteers often means inconsistent work.

5. It’s an Apple-focused site, in case you missed that.

   Jim’s friend couldn’t explain the reasons for his ideology, which somehow supersedes the value and utility of a device for the consumer who pays good money.

   Can you?

6. “Yeah, but they all work for Apple.” Not true. There are hundreds of thousands of thirty-party developers writing apps for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch and they DON’T work for Apple. Why do you perpetuate false statements such as this? At this time there have been more developers working on Apps for iPhone and iPad than working on Android. Frankly, I am surprised given the “hype” that Android is “open” and that Apple is not that there isn’t a larger development community for Android. Probably what you mean to say is that Android is less secure, more buggy, and prone to virus/malware/spyware and that is a more important distinction that saying Android is open and Apple is not.

7. I think @angrymacbastard sums it up nicely. When Google says Android is open, it means handset makers and phone companies can do whatever they want with it. It doesn’t mean anything to (most) end users.

   When phone companies determine whether you get an OS upgrade for your phone, it’s not open _for_you_.

8. “The Loop sides with Apple. Never saw that coming.”

   No… Jim who writes for the Loop, which IS a Mac centric site, sides with Apple or should I say prefers the iOS to Android. So what?

9. George Lakoff (geek trivia note: tv writer Jane Espenson was a research assistant for him at one point) had been advising the Democratic Party in 2004, I think, about how to redefine the terms of the national discourse. “Pro-life”, in one example, could be appropriated to mean pro-Social Security, pro-living wage, pro-education, pro-gun control. Steve Jobs hinted at this in calling iOS “free from worry”, free from malware, free from porn….

   So the Android community has, rather like the Republican Party, done a better job in getting these words into the discourse to mean what they want them to mean, but that’s not a permanent state of affairs. To say that “better == open == free == better” becomes, as the dialog above shows, endlessly circular until those words are actually defined, in which case I nominate “open” to refer to your backend, as far as a good rogering by your carrier of choice is concerned.

10. The irony here is that many of the “other people” actually working Android’s OS are working on things like Motoblur or HTC sense.

    I find this especially ironic when spoken by people like Fred Wilson, who only use the “pure google” nexus devices.

11. At least with iOS I can count on a couple year’s worth of OS updates …with Android, you’ve got the carriers looking out for your best interests.

12. With every day that passes I become more comfortable with having having saved all of my CD and DVDs into a format advocated by Apple.
    Not a single concern I had about stepping into the golden cage — file format platform lock-in in the iPod days and software platform lock-in and file format platform lock-in since the App Store was opened — has materialised in seven years that I’ve been using Apple products.

    I consider myself a geek in some respects and I’ve tinkered with many OSes (desktop and mobile), but I’m glad that I’m not some neck beard who refuses to see the advantages a closed ecosystem offers, just because it is closed.

    As a geek and a consumer I couldn’t give less of a fuck about “open” or “closed”.
    On a geek level the thing that matters most to me is the support of standards.
    But above all looms the question “Does it work for me?” If I can’t honestly answer that question with a “yes”, everything else becomes irrelevant.

13. The trouble with Android is too many cooks spoiling the soup in part because they don’t have access to the original recipe.

    If Google wants to allow for customizing why not restrict it to code created in house. Then the engineers could create ‘widgets’ that are tested to work. Rather that these in house ones by the hardware folks that sometimes work and sometimes don’t.

14. In the end of the day, open is a marketing campaign from Google and it seems to be a decent one among geeks but I have yet to see any evidence at all that the mainstream audience of mobile phone users cares whether something is open or not. Google created this campaign to advertise to a percentage of geeks and get them on their site and they have succeed for now but as time goes on and people see past Google’s marketing I think it will fail.

15. Love the conversation and it’s absolutely true that Google’s Android OS is an open operating system, but that’s only good for manufacturers and phone companies so they can embed they’re crapware/user experiences on top of the fast OS that Google developed.

    And there’s over 87% of Android app developers which complain about the fragmentation present on the platform because its open. Another reason why the marketplace doesn’t have as many applications as there are on the Apple’s App Store.

    Apple has also built a solid platform with iOS so developers would succeed.

16. not sure what is saddening?

17. In this respect Google has effectively worked against their own customers, because it gave carriers a way to screw customers over again.
    Every headway Apple made, slowly putting carriers in their rightful place, has been negated by Google’s oh-so-open OS.

    Why? Because Google is power-hungry and greedy. That is all.

    To put it bluntly: They convinced a part of the population that they don’t need the lube when being serviced by the carriers.

18. My, what a great comment and it added so much to the conversation.

19. If you’re going to let multiple vendors make the hardware and multiple carriers sell the phones, you have to lock down the process or you’ll end up with fragmentation of the OS. And don’t even think about letting the carriers be the distributors of the updates.

20. Google’s only customers worth considering are people buying advertisements. Never lose sight of that.

21. Absolutely correct! And that is exactly what Microsoft did with their Windows Phone 7 Series OS, no matter which windows phone you pick up, you’ll be home to using it since the user experience is exactly the same on all devices.. no matter the size of the screen, keyboard or no keyboard etc.

22. The fact that the friend doesn’t have much of an argument.

23. In the context of OSes Google has achieved in making “open” void of meaning, degrading it to a marketing buzz word used to drum-up press.
    When I read an article in which “open” isn’t immediately followed by “source” or “standards” the article isn’t worth a penny in most cases.

    I agree with you on Linux. It is a great OS (I particularly like Ubuntu and Fedora), but to make it usable for mom and dad you have to customise it to their needs and lock it down; then it might be the best thing that ever happened to them.

24. (Channeling @angrymacbastard again…) Android users aren’t the customers, Google advertisers (and to a certain extent, handset makers and phone companies) are the customers. The users are the product.

    I don’t think Google is actively working against Android users. They just haven’t been stepping up _for_ them. Maybe that’s changing with them not releasing Honeycomb and requiring approvals by Rubin? Maybe Android will become more refined and more of a challenger to iOS. That would be awesome.

    Remember the RAZR? It was a great phone which looked cool and had a nice interface. But Verizon screwed theirs up. Crappy red ‘branded’ skin. Hiding everything behind their “get it now” service. Disabling sync, etc. Verizon was Motorola’s customer. I wasn’t. And it was a shitty phone as a result. I couldn’t wait to get to the end of my contract to dump that thing. I even jumped early, paying the ETF, so I could get an iPhone 3G. An _Apple_ phone. Not an AT&T phone.

25. Dammit. I need to quit being so long winded. Yeah, what he said.

26. Sure, it’s an Apple news site. But a lot of users of Apple products — including me — like them over the competition because, in our experience, they’re better at getting out of our of way. We sit down in front of our computers or pull out our iPads to do something, whether it’s write code or watch a movie or play a game. While no computing device is truly “maintenance free,” Apple’s devices tend, by and large, to require a lot less fiddling. Open source advocates tend to place a higher value on, well, “open,” in several senses, than they do on ease of use. This doesn’t mean that open source products can’t be easy to use, but it does mean that ease of use isn’t generally prioritized.

    When it comes to Android vs. iOS, Android’s most vocal defenders aren’t out there trumpeting how Motorola Droids represent quantum leaps in usability over iOS — they’re trumpeting how much better it is to not have to go through the Apple App Store for everything and how important it is that you can get the source for the operating system. I don’t want to put words in Jim’s mouth, but it seems to me he was basically challenging his friend to explain why, in the daily use of even “power” users, those actually matter. His friend couldn’t. And it’s a really difficult case to make — how many people do you know who are capable of compiling a new build of Android and getting it onto their phone? (With many Android devices, doing that requires “rooting” the phone, which is basically jailbreaking it; I feel the Android community displays hypocrisy over that — iOS is bad because you have to jailbreak it to modify it, but Android is okay even if you have to root it to modify it.)

    In practice it’s awfully difficult to point to significant uses that Android’s “openness” makes possible that iOS’s “closed-ness” makes impossible. This doesn’t make Android *bad* by any stretch, and it’s not a comment about market share projections nor a slight on Android fans, who I’m sure love their children and cute puppies, too. It’s just an argument that for the vast majority of users — even the pretty geeky ones — Android is not pixie dust that makes their phones unimaginably more powerful through the power of Open.

27. RAZR was a good phone? Could have fooled me. I had one and it SUCKED big time. Like everything sucked about that phone. You cannot seriously compare a RAZR with any smartphone today. But maybe that’s your point.

28. Thanks, I know. I edited the comment to make my views clearer.

29. Yeah I agree, wish there was more to the side of why the friend thought android was better.

30. The trouble with Android is the same as with Windows. So many versions, so many OEMs, all poor implementations of user interface, too many cooks off in all different directions and it collapses under its won weight.

31. (Good catch, let me rephrase.) It was the must-have phone of its time. When the bar was considerably lower, and it ran stock firmware instead of Verizon’s nonsense, it was a good phone.

32. See edited comment 🙂

    And you’re right. Here in Germany the only thing carriers used their influence over the OS of cell phones for, was advertising the shit out of their customers and assigning any idle key to start an internet connection at a time when you paid €10,- for one MB.

    Oh and they refused to flash your phone with a universally usable version of the OS even after the contract was over.

    Thank Q for legislation that made all of this illegal.

33. Just curious who is the “you” that you mentioned in your statement? It can’t be Jim Dalrymple, because it was his friend who made the claim “Yeah, but they all work for Apple”. Or is this a rebuttel for Jim to use on his friend?

34. Once Microsoft get’s its act together — I hope that day comes sooner than later — we’re going to get an actual competitor for iOS.

    HP should do the same, BTW:

35. I hated the phone, used it for a week and returned it.
    Got myself a Samsung SGH-E620 instead. Solid construction, great reception, equally crappy software. It had a bug that irrevocably bricked the phone upon sending a SMS that the phone didn’t understand.
    I had three of them over the course of six months 😀

36. I’m pulling for MS and HP, just like I am for Android. Personally, I can’t see switching away from iOS, I’m just too invested (e.g., the perfect customer, hint hint to other phone OS makers). But if the other platforms become compelling, that can only make Apple better. And if it doesn’t, well, my contract will be over by then… 🙂

37. This isn’t about apps. It’s about the OS. all tje engineers for it work at Apple.

38. Look the real question is who is an Android buyer? Its normal users — not open source proponents. My niece moved to Vienna this week from Germany, and decided to get a new mobile contract due to the better deals available in Austria which also includes free minutes when calling to Germany. I ask her why she choose a Samsung Galaxy model and she answered it was what’s available for chosen tariff and would cost her only 19 €. She also wishes that its battery will last longer than her present LG model which is over a year old (receive with her german contract). She said that the iPhone was too expensive and the Galaxy seemed to be close enough.

    That’s the problem with the internet tech universe — it believes its all encompassing and represents the real world.

39. Exactly right. Competition is what we need.

    I’m a similarly perfect customer and that’s my story so far:

    1. Install iTunes on Windows
    » 2. Buy 4th gen. iPod (20 GB)
    »» 3. Buy 5th gen. iPod (30 GB)
    »»» 4. Sell 5th gen. iPod, buy 2nd gen. iPod Nano (4 GB, green, engraved)
    »»»» 5. Give 2nd gen. iPod Nano to little sister, buy 1st gen. iPod Touch (32 GB)
    »»»»» 6. Buy 15″ MacBook Pro
    »»»»»» 7. Sell 1st gen. iPod Touch, buy iPhone 3G (16 GB, white)
    »»»»»»» 8. Sell iPhone 3GS (16 GB, black, replacement for iPhone 3G), buy iPhone 4

    On a side note: I had to correct “iPad” to “iPod” three times in this comment.

40. I’m in much the same camp minus the iOS investment (with easily 400% the productivity of the ‘standard’ AAPL platform: I run GIS/CAD, Adobe/GIMP, dev suites & VMWare).

    WebOS is looking good & having Palm technology in the mix/out ‘in the open’ again will help the entire market.

    The keys will be Silverlight, HTML5, and meshed technologies.

    ALSO 802.11s is coming on strong & wireless USB is poised to kill Bluetooth in NFC.

    As an early adopter of DIY Shuttle microPCs, Android, Meraki, and Deutsche Telekom US (T-Mobile), I’m pretty stoked to see (a) hardware costs decrease (b) retro apps comeback

41. In fact, what has “open” done for Android? Nothing as far as anyone can tell. What it should have done is attracted thousands of more developers and hundreds of thousands more apps than Apple. Has it? No. It should have created a Android marketplace burgeoning with incredible new third party products for Android users that are not available to iPhone. Has it? No. There are still more apps, accessories, and options for the iPhone than Android. Is there an incredible marketplace outside Android market for apps for Honeycomb or older versions? No. You can probably buy more apps for iPhone from Cydia than Android marketplace and otehr combined. What gives? Android has a huge advantage in terms of sales because they are not restricted to one service provider and many handset developers have Android products. Have they maximized this advantage? No. Why? Well, because you have Android 1.6, 2.3, and 3 or Honeycomb and not all the handsets support different platforms. Google has basically balkanized their own market into segments. So I am at a huge loss to see the big advantage of Android…

42. In terms of how the users benefits from owning an iPhone it is about the OS and it is about the Apps.

43. Watts, that’s a great comment and, for me, far more valuable than the article itself.

    I get incredibly frustrated by the “the device I choose is better than the device you choose” arguments because, although sometimes logical argument has a part to play in our purchases, it generally comes down to what feels right for the buyer. Some people buy because it looks nice, because their friends have the same model, because they like or dislike the public figures of the companies that make them. Most of the time, it’s down to that x-factor that you can’t quite put your finger on.

    This article frustrated me more than most because there’s absolutely no new or valuable information in here. It’s the same tired old my phone/OS/sports team/ideology is better than yours. There is no right answer, so what’s the point of going over the same ground over and over again, especially when the forum consists mainly of followers of the same team?

    Some people like the closed system due to things like quality control and consistency. Others like the open system due to the choices it enables (such as handset type and widgets on the lock screen). Most, though, like the followers of any ideology, follow because they feel like they should, even if that doesn’t come with logical arguments.

    I have an iPhone (it’s my 3rd) and an iPad (my 2nd) and have never owned an Android device. Just to set some context.

44. I hated the phone also. The software was constantly broke. It claimed to sync with other devices (desktop and laptop computers) and it didn’t. The address books software sucked. The camera and video software sucked. the voice mail was linear… everything about it sucked. Try to type text — IT SUCKED typing text on a numeric pad. There is nothing about that phone anyone can stand up for.

45. The iPhone is too expensive? Maybe in Austria or Germany. Right now you can get an iPhone 3GS for US$49. And you can get an iPhone 4G for US$199. My pocket digital video camera cost more than that. My digital voice recorder costs more than that. I can name five or six digital media and computing devices I used to haul around in my pocket, briefcase, or backpack that easily cost more than a new iPhone. And the iPhone performs the function of them all better. The iPhone is thousands of times more powerful than my first IBM desktop computer and it cost $3,000+ US dollars. People, you have no perspective, no rational basis for these statements. The iPhone get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper as it gets more powerful, more useful, and a better tool.

46. I am not sure what you mean by generically calling people geeks or who the geeks are. For instance, there is a huge community of software developers in the Valley who are historically and traditionally the geeks. They were once called the hobbyist computing clubs and the two Steve’s (Wozniak and Jobs) came out of this culture of geeks. This is precisely the army of software writers who are writing games, and a wealth of other apps for iPhone and iPad. They still out number Android developers and they are geeks. Go to an Apple developers conference sometime and the army they call fanboys are really app developers.

47. I see your point, and I mostly agree. However, there are some things that I can’t do with my iPhone that I want/need to do… so I jailbreak it, and have bought a few Cydia apps. As much as I love Apple software, they have a habit of overlooking bugs and missing features (or the software is just obviously poorly designed, even for Apple)… plus their “We know what’s right for you, so take it or leave it, there are no options” attitude kind of sucks.

    For instance, I want:

    – A lock screen that is useful (upcoming calendar events, weather, notifications, etc)
    – An SMS app that doesn’t suck (how long did it take Apple to add character counting?)
    – A way to change preferences quickly (turn WiFi, 3G, Airplane mode, etc on/off)
    – A notification system that doesn’t suck

    Apple, with its nearly infinite resources, could and should have already addressed these issues long ago. But they don’t, so we are left with sub-par implementations of these types of features. Even something as simple as adding the character count to the Messages app didn’t happen until recently, and it took what, probably 5 lines of code? I mean come on. It’s essential to know how many messages you are sending out when you have a limited texting plan. To not include it from the very beginning is just inexcusable and ridiculous.

    There’s a lot that Apple gets right, but there’s a lot that they get wrong, too. And for the stuff that they get wrong, they often do not provide a way for 3rd party developers to do much better (restricted APIs and all that). At least with Android, the system is “open” enough for 3rd party developers to be able to hook into things like the SMS system and the lock screen to improve upon what’s built in (at least that’s my impression — I don’t own an Android phone).

48. I just this past weekend switched from a 3GS to an Android device. I’ve had it with AT&T, and am not really interested in signing up for a 2-year commitment with any other carrier. I picked up an LG Optimus from Virgin Mobile, because of their dirt-cheap basic smartphone plan ($25 US for unlimited texts and data and 300 voice minutes – my iPhone had 400 voice minutes, the minimum texts (100? I don’t remember for sure), and unlimited data (grandfathered from my original iPhone), and ran over $70 per month at time of termination with some ridiculous number of rollover minutes). This for a phone that I bought outright, and brought onto AT&T – not a subsidized purchase.
    I was pleasantly suprised to see that the LG from VM didn’t come preloaded with any sort of UI nonsense that some of the other carriers decide to use to “improve” their phones, and is pretty much vanilla Android 2.2.1. The phone’s CPU is roughly comparable to my 3GS’ – 600MHz Qualcomm, but the storage was sorely lacking (2GB vs 32GB on my iPhone). It’s been an interesting experience so far. The notification system is pretty cool. Widgets are likewise really neat, as is the ‘pattern’ lock system.
    On the flip side, there are little niggling issues: the stock ‘Launcher’ is adequate, but lags in UI response and is jerky with any sort of animation turned on. The stock web browser is a pile of crap (I cannot believe that Google, of all companies, apparently does not know how to make a decent web browser for a smartphone) – no bookmark folders, slow page render times, jerky scroll and zoom, etc. The calendar/contacts/email setup is OK, but not particularly awesome if you’re not using GMail (which I don’t). No CalDAV support without purchasing a third-party app (again, I cannot believe this).
    I’m still getting used to the ‘Android’ way of things, but I can say, coming from iOS, that the people who designed this platform do not think the way that Apple designers do. I have to manage it like it’s a little computer – keep track of how much internal storage space I’m using, mount and unmount my storage card, and so on. Many parts of the phone’s OS feel like they are not quite finished. I particularly felt this way when I picked up a third-party replacement for the Launcher; the new one has very smooth animations, excellent scrolling, and so forth, but I had to pay a third-party to get this. I find the GMail integration thing particularly annoying. I only within the past month picked up MobileMe – the entire time I owned my original iPhone, and most of the time I had my 3GS I used it with every mail service under the sun EXCEPT MobileMe, and never felt like I was somehow hamstrung. The functionality of this phone is drastically reduced because I don’t do everything using a Google account.
    It’s a decent little phone, and Android is still useable. I honestly won’t miss paying $70 per month for a smartphone service plan, but if the opportunity ever came to use my iPhone on a non-contract basis with another carrier, I’d ditch this thing in a New York Minute and go back to my 3GS.

49. Scott below says it best. The term “open” is becoming a tech phrase that really most people don’t understand but think it’s good. I’m fairly tech savvy but don’t program and don’t care too. Thank you apple for keeping it “Closed” because I want you to be responsible for it. I just want it to work.

50. He was making a statement about the developers of the OS, and not about the developers of the Apps. The apps do not make the OS “open”. It’s the developers of the OS that make it “open” and ‘yeah, but they all work for Apple’!

51. thoughtful, dude. very nice. I was just thinking – maybe it’s not the AMOUNT of apps, it what some of those apps enable you to do. even thought there aren’t a lot of apps, there are those that enable you to do stuff that I can’t do with my iphone; skinning, running a shell [i guess; i don’t know for sure; i got a friend, iphone to evo convert, who tells me this] or almost any sort of customization, that make an alternative to iOS desirable.

52. There’s an old saying: “I am not everyone”.

    I can safely say that other than getting rid of the modal dialogs, none of the things you need mean diddly to me, so i don’t actually care if Apple fixes them or not. I have a list of things that are much higher priority to me that YOU might not care about. (counting characters in SMS means nothing to me in terms of priorities. I pay the extra dosh for unlimited, so I don’t have to care.) Neither of us are wrong, we’re just different.

    Also, seriously, “nearly infinite resources”? That’s not even vaguely correct. and, unlike the world of “haxx0riffic just add code”, when you’re working on something where even five lines of code will affect billions of people, no, you don’t just slap stuff in there. I’ve watched far fewer than five lines of code cause all kinds of interesting problems. (it’s also amusing that at least one of your problems exists as a free application or 12 in the App store)

    A missing feature is not a bug. Apple not doing what you want is not a bug. really

53. How many patches has Google accepted for Android from outside of Google (and, perhaps, partners)?

54. Rich do you completely read posts before you answer them? Which people are you saying have no perspective or rational basis and for what statements? With your comparison of iPhones to other devices it seems to me that you are preaching to the choir. I myself have a iPhone that I brought for full price and contract free.

    I was discussing my niece who is just starting out on her career. She walked into a mobile operator’s storefront and left with a Samsung Galaxy. First she decided for a tariff. She had then chosen a cell phone that was available with that tariff at a price she found to be reasonable. She did not enter looking for an iPhone and she really believes that her chosen phone will serve her needs — to make and receive calls and SMS’s. Just like millions of other normal people. As far as what’s expensive; it came down to paying 25€ a month plus a one time fee of 19€ for the galaxy or 249€ for the iPhone.

    The whole point about my post was that the normal user does not know about Android or iOS. She does not cared about open or closed. All she wants to do is be able to make and take calls as well as send SMS’s.

    I repeat: That’s the problem with the internet tech universe — it believes its all encompassing and represents the real world.

55. The English have a phrase, “That’s not a bug; that’s a feature.”

    Android was supposed to solve the Windows PC conundrum: In the PC market, Windows PC are perceived as all being the same, which means they have to compete on the features/price playing field. Mac OS X is perceived as unique, which means it competes on its own terms. Android was initially marketed as an open platform that OEMs could use to jumpstart their way to their own unique OS. A number of OEMs adopted Android and used it to do exactly that.

    The conundrum is that while sameness is a problem that OEMs are trying to avoid, sameness is a feature that consumers want. For every Mac lover, there are 10 Mac haters. They love the comforting sameness that Windows provides, allowing them to avoid being locked into Dell, HP, etc. by being locked to Microsoft instead – the whole being better than the sum of its parts, or some such…. Meanwhile, Windows OEMs envy Apple for its customer loyalty. The fragmentation critics need to wake up and smell the feces ricocheting off the fan. If you hate fragmentation, then you are an Android hater, and a closet WP7 lover.

    Then there is the Google “bait and switch”. The dirty little not-so-secret is that Google doesn’t want to be the next Apple; Google wants to be the next Microsoft. The problem they are discovering is that if they act like Microsoft, then they can’t keep up with Apple any better than Microsoft. As for the feces: Microsoft has figured out how to be Apple – align themselves with ONE OEM, Nokia.

    The above has very little to do with Open. FOSS is like the Salvation army. To get the free meal, you have to listen to the free speech. Some people like the speech, others dislike the broken record. If they were offering free beer, the speech would be more palatable.

56. The thing that irritates me is that Google has turned the Open/Closed argument into a moral issue. Vic Gundotra, Andy Rubin and Tim Bray are all using “Open” in the context of Open = Good. If you’re not Open you’re Closed and therefore Evil/Draconian/etc.

    I think this is what Jim’s friend is thinking when he says that Open is better than Closed – it’s a matter of what is morally right rather than what can be explained in logical terms.

    Wether or not Google has any moral high ground over Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Sony, Nintendo, Nokia, Intel, IBM, Samsung, Acer or any other tech company is certainly debatable. But the way Google’s evangelists paint the picture, they certainly think Google is morally better than any other tech company.

57. Snarky troll has no argument. Did see that coming.

58. I don’t understand your bit about preferences. Airplane mode is two taps. Tap Settings, Tap the Airplane mode switch. How do you present lots and lots of preferences in an easier method?

59. First of all a disclaimer: I have a Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini in my living room. I love Apple computers. Secondly I also have an Android phone (Nexus S and Droid X – for work) and there is no way I would go back to an iPhone. To be fair, it seems to me that this article is making fun of an individual who had no real idea of how to defend their position. This in itself is deplorable and speaks volumes about the author.
    I could do the same thing with most of my iPhone wielding friends and drive them to similar “conclusions” as did the author in this post. While I don’t want to get into a debate about Android vs iPhone (because I think both have their merits) I do take issue with the fact that the author of this article seems a dim witted moron who, in his inherent wisdom, is capable of finding an even greater moron who cannot, in a logical debate, expose his/her point of view in a clear, concise, and convincing manner. While, in general, this is called politics throughout the world, I simply call it bullying and find it demeaning – but mostly towards the author.

    Here is a piece of advice towards the author: next time you want to argue the merits/demerits of any subject, please find an individual at least close to as intelligent as yourself. Otherwise you simply seem a “smart ass” and not much else.

60. English is not my first language so please forgive any grammatical errors.

61. You know, Jim didn’t put the name of that friend of his up here, thus protecting the anonymity of said friend. Furthermore I don’t believe that Jim’s intention was to make fun of this person, but to show how stupid and illogical it is to debate the merits of “open” and “closed”.

    Google and other companies are trying to connect being “open” to having the moral high ground and some people are starting to believe it, ignoring instance after instance in which Android’s “closed-ness” is demonstrated.

    At this point the mantra of “open-ness” — a term devoid of meaning and substance — is being used to define what is good and what is evil in the tech world, without any consideration of facts and reality, for that matter.
    People, like Jim’s friend in this instance, start to believe that anything that isn’t “open” is evil.

    A few weeks ago there was a troll on The Loop, ending every comment with “Don’t join the cult, any cult!” rambling something about heterophobic propaganda and a pro-gay conspiracy.
    And look here, it’s what’s happening with Android and Flash: People start to preach about “open-ness”, about it being the saviour of the tech world, without even understanding its meaning, it starts to look very cult-ish to me.

62. None of those bar the 4th point about notifications are things that would be useful/handy to me. I’d be kind of upset if they added a WiFi shortcut to my home screen similarly if they changed the messaging app or put crap on my lock screen.

    I am pretty much just echoing John’s sentiment here.

63. Jim can we change the name from friend to Shawn King just to really screw up his friday? 😉

64. Just to join in on this argument you’re making:

    Two of the features you mentioned I’d love to have on the iPhone, too: Firstly a better notification system and secondly a more useful lock screen.
    SMS on the other hand, I hate with a passion. In Germany they are overpriced money making machines for the carriers and I use them as seldom as possible. Emails are so much more useful.

    But I agree fully with John and Vamsmack. Things that are useful to you might not be useful to others or the greater population.
    I believe Apple might be working on a better notification system, but I don’t want them to go around adding features left and right, or allow third parties to do it. That’d negate all what good in iOS for me.

65. User definable hot keys. It’s about the only thing I miss from my old Nokias.

66. That some things are useful to some more than others is exactly the point of having it open enough to customise.

67. if a device doesn’t do what you want without jailbreaking/rooting/etc., don’t use it. Seriously.

68. Yeah, and open source has done so much to allow Linux to dominate the personal computer space, eh?

69. If you take the exact opposite of that sentiment, you get to the root of most innovation. The best software on offer today is borne from the fact that the device didn’t do what the author wanted it to do.

    Mod culture was (and continues to be) the cause of some of the greatest technology of our time. And not just technology – it’s the reason our suitcases have wheels (long story*) and our trousers have zips on the front.

    iOS, for me, has far more redeeming qualities than Android, so I’d never switch. But for many people, it’s either worth the quality sacrifice to be able to tinker or, more often, they don’t care enough for it to matter. It would just be nice to stop giving them a hard time just because they choose Andriod over iOS.

    * if you’re interested in the suitcase story, Google “what can apple learn from the suitcase makers”

70. I mean geeks in the market Android serves, open-source geeks and geeks who dislike everything Apple.

71. The entire problem with your thesis is that it requires Apple to NEVER LISTEN TO ANYONE. That’s a popular meme, and it’s blatantly, provably bullshit. Apple does listen, a lot more than people want to admit. They just don’t bend over backwards to talk about it. The return of the screen lock functionality on the iPad 2/iOS 4.3? You think they changed that back because no one complained and Steve just realized it was wrong?

    Or the Apple logo being in the middle of the menu bar in the Mac OS X Public Beta. etc. There are a string of examples of Apple listening to customer feedback, yet this inane meme of “APPLE NEVER LISTENS” persists, just like your silly story about suitcases implies.

    And, amusingly, the end of your story shows why Apple doesn’t do certain things, like cluttering up the lock screen. They actually ponder battery life, because they understand it means something. but you don’t see that, so you assume some kind of malicious intent, in spite of no proof whatsoever.

72. One minor correction. Mom and Pop have no idea what Linux is or what role it plays in their banking or workplace. Some of them don’t even know the difference between a browser and an operating system.

73. It’s not the amount of apps but, in every respect, the scope and scale of tasks you can accomplish with iOS apps far, far, far exceeds anything written for Android, Palm or any of the other mobile operating systems. I have good friends who have Android phones and Palm Pre as well as others and we run down category by category (tarvel, news and info, games, augmented reality, readers and books, multimedia and graphics, photography, productivity, maps & gps, music & audio, borwsers, social networking, arts & museums, etc.) and all the other platforms don’t even come close either for FREE apps or paid apps. It’s a no brainer. While I don’t think all 300,000+ iPhone and iPad apps are useful, iOS has a gigantic lead over the others in terms of usefulness and apps that make the mobile devices a better tool.

74. I’d be very happy to see new WebOS phones on the market that could get some serious attention.

75. “Nearly infinite resources”? You’re confusing a big pile of cash in the bank with the willingness to spend it on adding programmers to a problem until the team becomes unmanageable. Apple doesn’t do that.

76. That’s not just an English quip, we used to say “that’s not a bug but a feature” back in the mid-1980s when the software features wars were going full-blast.

77. I know my needs don’t represent those of everyone. On the other hand, there are many things that the iPhone DOES do that I don’t care a nit about. But do I complain that those features shouldn’t be there because I don’t need them? No. Likewise, people shouldn’t excuse Apple for not adding certain features (or adding them with a horrible implementation) to the iPhone just because they don’t need it.

    I know there’s a fine line between giving people options, versus turning the software into a pile of crap because there are too many options (from trying to please everyone). But to dismiss ideas as junk just because you don’t want/need it (or rather, possibly, you can’t imagine that you’d want it because you’ve never seen/used it) is not going to make the iPhone better.

    I’m sure Apple will improve the notification system and give us some way to add useful information to the lock screen. One day. And I’m sure that all of you naysayers will love it. I just don’t understand how, with the iPhone having been out for almost 4 years now, they haven’t implemented these features yet. Yes, they don’t really have infinite resources, but it seems that billions of dollars in the bank could have bought enough engineers to get it done by now. Especially if some one-man shops that make apps to run on jailbroken iPhones have already solved it for me.

78. Open or closed, it doesn’t matter in the long run as long as the system works. If I were in my geekier younger days, I might have gone with Android. However as I get older, I just want things to work without monkeying around with settings and configurations. iOS just works. The system isn’t without it’s flaws but the plug and play nature overrides those.

    I don’t think I would get the same experience with Android. Multiple OS versions, OEM modifications, and carrier lockdowns all add up to hassle and aggravation.

79. It looks as though Jim’s friend is meant to represent a lot of consumers who absorb very little about Android after hearing Google’s marketing about how much better it’s supposed to be. The marketing is effective if you repeat the buzzwords often enough in conversation and online to form an ideology around it, however thin.

    I asked @andycairns a question above and didn’t get an answer. Jim’s friend couldn’t explain the reasoning behind his ideology, which somehow supersedes the value and utility of a device for the consumer who pays good money. Can you?

80. I agree Ben that Apple needs to concentrate its efforts on fixing areas that it is weak at. For instance, I’ve been a MobileMe subscriber for, gee, I think for ten years and while it is indispensable for families who use iPhone and multiple laptop computers, Apple needs to look around the internet and at cloud computing and improve the design, features, and organization of MobileMe. They can learn from Flickr, Google Docs, how to manage calendars and mail services, and other multimedia sites on how to better organize media and they just have been dropping the ball. You should defintely go to: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html and send your comments because Apple does read these and make changes and you have very specific points I think would improve the UI and iOS for iPhone.

81. The iPhone iOS works so much better than anything jailbroke so you miss the Welch.

82. .

    (this story has accumulated a few comments – and I don’t have time to dig through ALL of them – so sorry for any possible redundancy)

    .

    Here’s an analogy-metaphor … probably not an elegant fit, but should give you something to consider and you can fill in any ‘missing blanks’ (ok? – smile)

    Let’s think of all this as a Freeway – or Interstate Highway System

    The “open” allows any and all vehicles – no matter if it’s a Semi Trailer Truck, a 500 Horsepower Corvette, or Mom and Pop in their Clunker Station Wagon. And although can expect some of them to ‘stay in their lane’ and not tail-gate, not always – might have some Slow Trucks in the Fast Lanes, and some Corvettes cutting off Mom and Pop with rapid lane changes, and no signal/warning … etc etc

    The “closed” however – requires all vehicles to meet certain criteria like a minimum speed and makes sure the different types of Vehicles stay in their proper lanes and keep correct spacing … etc etc

    If driving that Corvette in the “open” and a Good Fast Driver – maybe not a hassle since able to negotiate most problems and haul ass to get to where you want, yes ? But if those Semi Trucks gum up enough lanes, side by side – not going to get past them. Or if not truly a Good Fast Driver – crash and burn baby.

    etc etc etc … seeing this picture ?? (even if it’s in ‘broad brush strokes’)

    Most “Systems” are a compromise between “open anarchy” and “closed dictatorship” – survival of the fittest -vs- individual sacrifice for greater good of the whole

    Each has its pulses/minuses – but “compromise” is key word – least as far as we Humans are concerned with what little we know ( Mother Nature may be able to manage any ‘extremes’ but we ain’t Her, yes? – smile)

    So, imho, as we continue to invent and develop our Global Digital Systems – we’d probably be wise to err on the side of “closed”.

    Later, as we learn and grow, we an always “open” it more, but for now let’s stay “closed” until we know/understand what we’re creating, and how we’ll use it (so “IT” works for us, not other way around, dig?)

    Otherwise – “open” it all now, faster faster, hurry hurry – let’s get there yesterday

    Just beware of those “wrecks and traffic jams” up the road (cough Windoze cough Microsoft cough cough)

    .

83. Did you at least used http://www.apple.com/feedback to report your wishes, desires and complaints?

84. I don’t notice any reduction in battery life with my jailbroken phone (with LockInfo installed) compared to a stock iPhone. If anything, the jailbreak apps help me conserve battery life since I can quickly glance at my lock screen to get the info I need, versus having to unlock it, launch an app, navigate to the info I need, and lock it again. Plus other jailbreak apps (like SBSettings) let me quickly turn WiFi or 3G on and off so it’s not using battery when I don’t need it. Try again.

85. Bravo my friend, bravo. Nicely said.

86. And another jailbreak app, BiteSMS, lets me reply to SMS messages from my lock screen (or from within any app), further reducing the time I need to interact with my phone (and use up battery life) to get things done. Why is it so hard to admit that sometimes the hoops that Apple makes us jump through is NOT the best way to do things? They get a lot right, but not EVERYTHING.

87. you do realize that for your applications to work like that, they have to be continuously running on some level, therefore, using battery life whether you look at them or not. Live updates have an engineering cost, whether you like that or not.

88. No one says they get everything right. But your insistence that YOUR way is better enough than someone else’s way to be a part of the OS is not based on any data, just your personal preferences. I dislike that busy crap with a passion. I don’t want it there, i don’t want to have to turn it off, I don’t want it wasting space on my bloody phone.

    Why should I have to jump through hoops, or even have them in the room for you? You seem to be pretty pissed off about getting stuck without your hoops, but what makes my hoops, or yours better?

    In addition, BiteSMS has to do some pretty hardcore things to the sandbox to work the way it does. Why should every application developer have to worry about what BiteSMS is doing to its process space? I thought the crap with haxies showed why that’s such a bad idea, letting random code modify an application sans developer-provided way to do it. All those always-on applications you love on your home screen? Exactly what, besides the battery do you think is powering them? Unicorns?

89. Yes, indeed. Billions of dollars could have bought enough engineers to require a management structure that would actually slow down development. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always create efficiency.

    Let’s split duties on the UI for an app of some kind, and then hire yet another manager to make certain we’re being consistent with each other. I’m sure there are smart guys here who could describe familiar companies where this is done, with poor results.

    Apple found the formula that works for them. I’m willing to bet money their managers don’t measure their self-worth by the size of their departments, but by what their people get done with cohesive, demonstrably superior work.

90. Yes, indeed. Billions of dollars could have bought enough engineers to require a management structure that would actually slow down development. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always create efficiency.

    Let’s split duties on the UI for an app of some kind, and then hire yet another manager to make certain we’re being consistent with each other. I’m sure there are smart guys here who could describe familiar companies where this is done, with poor results.

    Apple found the formula that works for them. I’m willing to bet money their managers don’t measure their self-worth by the size of their departments, but by what their people get done with cohesive, demonstrably superior work.

91. bad analogy

92. You sound like a tea party member.

93. .

    Appreciate your input petedt …

    But is a bit thin, yes ?

    Care to elaborate, maybe give some specifics ?

    Or offer a metaphor of your own ?

    (smile)

    .

94. Isn’t being able to send SMS from a locked phone somewhat of a security problem? What if someone nicks your phone?

95. My biggest fear for WebOS is that it may be too late to develop a compelling ecosystem. Without that, any iOS competitor is at a huge disadvantage.

    I assume there could always be some ‘big new thing’, feature wise, that would offset a deficient ecosystem, but I lack the imagination necessary to think of what that could be.

96. I’m hoping there are enough potential customers for a WebOS phone that does, say, a dozen things very well. Something for consumers who aren’t necessarily interested in additional functionality, or who might just want to opt out of perceived complication they hear from advocates of bigger platforms.

    If HP can get WebOS up to speed as a basic, functional smartphone OS, they might be able to build a following.

97. I think you’re right. HP needs to look for a stable WebOS, good hardware and excellent core functionality.

    But I think that HP would be well advised to think about a compelling application ecosystem.The cost of entry is low for many developers, due to the technologies used for apps and they should communicate that.

    To continue along Jack’s lines: My biggest fear for WebOS is that HP will water it down too much. From their presentation two months back, I gathered they will embed it in everything but the kitchen sink, which might communicate a low value to customers — just to name one of the potential problems.

98. Android on any day!!..

99. If your “open” operating system requires me to manage my phone as though it was a PC, I’ll go with the closed option. This is what most consumers will decide as well.

    Non-geeks are realizing, in greater numbers, how much time and expense it takes to manage (and de-malware) a Windows desktop. I’m guessing those who bought Android phones on the strength of a careless comparison will also get pretty tired of seeing similar annoyances in a smartphone.

100. How to you define hot keys on a device with no keys?

101. It’s a form of Stockholm Syndrome. There was a time where I prized (and by tech illiterate friends, was prized) for my ability to ferret out the most obscure driver file for a reinstall of Windows on some no longer supported laptop or desktop, or set up their mail or configure their wireless. The tweaking and twisting of the desktop operating system makes you a resource to people who do not have the time or the inclination to develop these “skills” themselves.

     I now find find I cannot wait to own a Mac laptop so I, personally never have to play “driver, driver whose got the driver?” with my own hardware again. A coworker has had a 15″ Mac Pro laptop for two years, and he partitioned his hard drive immediately, knowing that most of the work with software we do requires Windows. He never booted into that partition any meaningful number of times and shortly thereafter deleted it. When he needs Windows, he run a VM. Everything else one does on a daily basis (web surfing, file downloads, email) he does in OSX, and for those programs that require Windows, he just invokes a VM. Windows is just another piece of software he must run at times. ANd that’s the way it should be.

102. Indeed. This issue gets a lot of heated contention from geeks who take it as a point of pride that they can do all the tweaking you describe, and therefore can feel superior to those long-suffering Stockholm Syndrome victims who, after all, are just losers for not knowing all this stuff and shouldn’t be using computers in the first place.

     I dislike this priesthood subspecies, and am looking forward to seeing it disappear from the lives of normal consumers and take up exclusive residence in one of the few remaining places where it actually belongs: the server rooms of big companies.

103. It’s not just the non-geeks realising that.
     I would only go back ton Windows when forced at gunpoint, though I’m still having to manage three Windows PCs for my parents and sister. It’s gruelling.
     She’s getting a Mac in a few weeks, though 🙂

     The worst part about a Windows PC isn’t the occasional maintenance. It’s knowing that one innocent click by someone who doesn’t really know what a button does will put you back to square one.

     With the exception of people who I really care about, if something can’t be fixed or explained in five to ten minutes, I send people to a repair shop. I just don’t have the patience anymore.

     Imagining having to deal with this kind of crap for smart phones, cold shivers run down my spine.

104. My first reaction to a “Holier than Thou” type of neck beard is usually “GTFO”.

     I’m not a super nerd, but I know my way around Windows, Linux, Mac OS and the underlying hardware.
     Like the sane people posting on The Loop, I believe taking the stance of the Ba’ku makes for a comfortable, less stressful life.

105. I agree. Making Open vs. Closed a moral issue is blind and ignorant. It turns a rational discussion into demagoguery.

106. Likewise, you’re also insisting that Apple’s way is better than everyone else’s too, aren’t you? Just because an idea didn’t come from Apple, it’s no good? What “busy crap” are you talking about, anyway? Information on your lock screen?

     “I don’t want it there, i don’t want to have to turn it off, I don’t want it wasting space on my bloody phone.”

     I could say that about a lot of stuff that Apple includes in the iPhone that I never use. Does that mean I want them to remove it to the detriment of the people who actually do use it? No. It’s simple, really, I just don’t use it! I move it to a folder on the last page of my springboard and that’s that… to me, it’s gone.

     “BiteSMS has to do some pretty hardcore things to the sandbox to work the way it does. Why should every application developer have to worry about what BiteSMS is doing to its process space?”

     And you know this how? And how is this different from Apple’s notification system popping up on top of everything else? I can tell you for a FACT that my jailbroken iPhone does not use any more battery than when it was a stock iPhone. In fact, I already outlined why this is the case (it lets me get things done more quickly, or easily turn off 3G/WiFi when I don’t need it). And I don’t think LockInfo really does all that much in the background. It doesn’t check the weather or update my calendar events while the phone is in standby (screen off) from best I can tell, since it updates it whenever I activate the lockscreen. And it gets mail notifications from the mail service running in the background (which is built-in to iOS). So yeah, I don’t think I need to defend this position any more since I am basing my statements on real-world facts and usage data, and you’re basing everything on conjecture — and defending Apple without any facts or a willingness to admit that Apple can do wrong.

107. I’m saying it’s better *for me*. I’m under no delusions that my way is anything but A right way, not THE right way.

     “Just because an idea didn’t come from Apple, it’s no good? What “busy crap” are you talking about, anyway? Information on your lock screen?”

     Nice strawman, hope it doesn’t get heavy, the way you keep slinging it around. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. All I want on my lock screen is the time and the date. If i could kill all notifications for it, I’d do so. Time, date, nothing else.

     “And you know this how? And how is this different from Apple’s notification system popping up on top of everything else? ”

     If BiteSMS is able to function on top of other running applications, it’s breaking the sandbox, or doing weasly things to get around it. This isn’t magic, it’s software. As to how it’s different, it isn’t. But let’s just say I have more confidence in Apple’s OS code than in that of a random developer. Ask Google how well that “do as thou wilt, so mete it be” worked out for them and about 40-50 applications. To date, the only malware issues on the iPhone come from…applications that require jailbreaking.

     “I can tell you for a FACT that my jailbroken iPhone does not use any more battery than when it was a stock iPhone.”

     Links to actual battery life evaluation data please showing both.

     “n fact, I already outlined why this is the case (it lets me get things done more quickly, or easily turn off 3G/WiFi when I don’t need it). ”

     One tap vs 2-3. Yeah. Feel the speed.

     “So yeah, I don’t think I need to defend this position any more since I am basing my statements on real-world facts and usage data, and you’re basing everything on conjecture — and defending Apple without any facts or a willingness to admit that Apple can do wrong.”

     The plural of anecdote is not data, and again with that strawman. But I imagine it makes your image of anyone who disagrees with you more intellectually satisfying, so why let reality pollute it.

108. security? that’s for suckers, this is about EFFICIENCY

109. I think the fact that Google encourages hackers is the ultimate downfall of the system. A hacker, by nature, is someone who modifies something to do a task which was not it’s intended use. When you encourage someone to do a task whose core incentive is the rush of sticking it to the man, you get a bunch of unmotivated developers. Here are a few reasons why the iOS app store CRUSHES the Android Market.
     1. iOS apps are pre-screened so they are guaranteed to work with the OS. Google doesn’t do this and the fact that Android is ported across several different phones means centralized apps are hard to create. (for example if you create an app to work on devices with vga screens, the resolution will be different when downloaded on devices with hd screens)
     2. The iOS app store has a proprietary payment system. This makes easy for people to purchase apps and keep their information on file for future purchases. The Android Market relies on third party payment systems to handle purchases and while it works fine, you lose seamless integration.
     3. iOS apps are sandboxed meaning they are only allowed to perform write operations within the directory they are downloaded to. This prevents any apps from editing system files and potentially breaking your phone. Android apps are allowed to edit any files they wish within the os’s filesystem which means more customization but much less stability.
     4. Games.

110. For the same reasons that I don’t like Windows and the variety of poor Linux distros available; Although seemingly more ‘closed’, at least a certain level of quality is maintained. iOS and Mac OS are certainly for me and I’ve been using it since OS 8.

111. ios do not have flash player but android can do it

112. android claims to have an open source but you cannot flash their unit with custom firmware? what what with signing firmware. 

113. obviously you don’t know android system at all…

     and try to get a live wallpaper on iphone4, or a good free alarm clock apps, or perhaps put a widget on your homescreen? there are countless times i try to find the same/similar apps on applestore which android’s have, but fails badly.

     don’t get me wrong, i like my iph4, i got both in fact, iph4 is smooth as compare to many android phones (however the newest ios4 update crashes more than my android 2.1 on a 600mhz phone..), but that “applestore is way better than android market” ended at the android 1.6 age. androids have much more and often better apps now. BUT, they do have LESS “OFFICIAL” apps like KONAMI GAMES!! ;D so applestore is still awesome hahahahaha :):)

     in conclusion, both are good in their own way, just.. don’t get a windows phone hahaha, their market is costly and crap, doesn’t even have whatsapp yet.. geez..

114. ios cannot play flash, forward messages, bluetooth! oops did apple miss something 😛

115. YOU  CANNOT HAVE A GROUP OF CONTACTS o beuatiful widgets, easy, fast.. 
     android REAL MULTITASKING, 
     you ask what have android that ios dont have…’

116. A lot of people who buy Apple products don’t seem to care. Did _you_ miss something?

117. “A lot of people who buy Apple products don’t seem to care.”

     *chuckle*  That’s like saying that a lot of people who bought their music off iTunes two or more years ago didn’t mind the DRM.  (Which was fine for them, but a hell of a lot of other people certainly minded it.)

     i.e. I would expect that the group of people “who buy Apple products” doesn’t include people for whom having these (and many other) functions was not merely optional.

     Just like Apple finally removed their iTunes DRM after other music services had been DRM-free for years, and just like iOS continues to copy or mimic Android features (e.g. Android-style notifications in iOS5), maybe Steve Jobs will one day let iPhones play one of the most common video formats in the world.

     *shrug*

118. Flash is not a video format, it is a platform. The flash applet often only works as a container for common video formats.
     Example? YouTube uses flash applets for their videos, but those only deliver the h.264 encoded video to machines that cannot natively decode this format.
     That’s why YouTube works without flash on iOS and Android devices; they utilise the hardware decoding capabilities of their respective graphics chips in conjunction with WebKit-based browsers.

119. Maybe Steve Jobs will one day let iPhones play one of the most common platforms in the world.

120. *chuckle*

     Funny how so many of the vital features you’re naming still don’t seem to affect the buying decisions of 15 million happy iPad owners… few of whom are tech geeks who live and die by a checklist and justify it by making false equivalences between unrelated issues.

     *chuckle*

121. What “live and die by a checklist”?

     I’ve been where you are, dude.  I owned iPhones for three years.  That was a blast while it lasted.

     I now own a Galaxy S phone and there is just no comparison.  If you want to wallow in iPhone-dom, that’s fine, whatever floats your boat.  But resorting to the argument that *more popular = better* really takes no effort at all to debunk.  Do I even have to do that, here?

     Apple lovers.  Sheesh.

122. Maybe Steve Jobs will one day let iPhones play one of the most common platforms in the world.
     — Not going to happen, because that would mean giving-up control over their own platform and enabling a company to control the future development of the iOS platform, that doesn’t have Apple’s best interest in mind.And multi-task.
     — Done, works beautifully. Will work even better in iOS 5And offer multiple home screen launchers.
     — Done. Been in there since the beginning.And play MKV-wrapped video. 
     — Doing that everyday with VLC and other apps.And allow users to browse the file system.
     — Why?And have widgets.
     — Why? The revamped notification system will provide this functionality to a certain extent. Still: Why?And offer diverse hardware. (Wait, sorry, Apple aficionados prefer to have *fewer* options, not more.)
     — I don’t see anyone but nerds screaming for more hardware options, the same people who year-after-year demand the xMac.
     I don’t care about hardware options as long as Apple continues to be the market leader in terms of build quality, finish and overall performance. Design options are a different topic.

     I will say this, Apple are doing an OK job of playing catch-up with iOS5. With the OS upgrade, you get Android-style notifications, no need to sync to a computer, and wireless transfer is better. They’ve got a long way to go, but good on them for effort.
     — Wireless transfer is in iOS 5 (but I still think syncing large amounts of data wirelessly sucks on any platform). The need for a PC vanishes in iOS 5, too.

123. Glad you found something that works better for you while disparaging lots of people you don’t know.

     Also while apparently making the assumption that the majority of those people are merely chasing what’s “popular” and are not in the least bit satisfied with something that works better for them than the alternative.

     Speaking of “popular.” Android phones appear to be gaining popularity, at least among those new users who aren’t planning to switch to something else when their contracts are up. Do you make the same argument about popularity for Android?

     Your tech superiority must be visible from space. Enjoy configuring whatever version of Android Samsung allows you to install on the iPhone lookalike.

124. More popular = works better for many people in this case.

     OTOH better specs != better, either.

125. OH SNAP! 🙂

     Yeah, heaven forbid the decision I made to un-jailbreak my 3GS was a conscious one, driven by the knowledge that the one desirable feature a jailbreak offers me isn’t worth the hassle.
     Or the fact that I actually tested a few Android phones and the Pre 2, prior to buying my iPhone 4.
     Or the fact that I have only switched to the Mac after getting fed-up with tinkering with two different Linux distributions, building custom kernels for my machines.

     We Apple fans clearly only care about popularity. >.<

126. Android is open which means if i buy an android phone and dont like something on it i can change it. for example if i get a droid and dont like the home application i can get a diffrent one, while an iphone is stuck with exactly what it came with

127. Multi-tasking: “Done, works beautifully. Will work even better in iOS 5″Wait, so iOS’s pretend multi-tasking is what Apple devotees call “working beautifully”?  (You acknowledge that it isn’t true multi-tasking; if it was, then Apple’s improving it — “will work even better,” in your words — would be a non-issue.)http://goo.gl/KmOqhttp://goo.gl/92kb6http://goo.gl/hd5u7Alternate launchers: “Done. Been in there since the beginning.”LOL!  If you hack the phone, yes.  Great device you got there, you have to hack into it to make it *kinda* do stuff that my Android phone does out of the box.  (Wanna compare my launchers to yours?)Browse file system: “Why?”LOL again!  Because (1) putting files into folders is still far and away the single best way to organize your data, (2) a ton of apps make use of this method of organization, and (3) it’s a universal method of organization that applies to file systems in general, across all platforms (e.g. I can drag a folder from my MacBook Pro to my Android phone to my Windows PC to my Linux NAS to my FTP server to my LAN network, and I know that the contents and presentation will remain essentially unchanged from platform to platform — no need to “figure out” how to get to my stuff, and no need to “figure out” how to tell my apps where to get my stuff, since I know that they’ll just access the same system of organization).  I think it’s really telling that you Apple people THAT defensive, that you’ll actually turn up your noses and poo-poo file browsing, which has long ago proven its usefulness in computing systems.Widgets: “Why?”*face palm* So I don’t have to open an app to get at key information or functionality.  I can access the data and/or functions of multiple apps on a single screen.  OBVIOUSLY.Diverse hardware: “I don’t care about hardware options as long as Apple continues to be the market leader in terms of build quality, finish and overall performance.”What do you, have grandkids?  These little computers we call smartphones can do a ton of stuff, Gramps — but only if the hardware is up to the task.  For example, I can increase or swap out the memory in my phone.  You can’t do that with an iPhone — not the 3GS, not the 4, not the 4S, NONE of them.  Also, if I want a hard keyboard, there are several Android phones available that offer that.  Ditto HDMI out, ditto a replaceable battery, et al.”Wireless transfer is in iOS 5 (but I still think syncing large amounts of data wirelessly sucks on any platform). The need for a PC vanishes in iOS 5, too.”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq-e0getf4M

128. hey, can anybody tell me if  iOS is compatible with android? 
     i would like to make an app that is compatible for both apple and android, is it possible? thank you!!!
     diane

129. Fu Q

130. Wanna develop your own program for your mobile device?  It’s free on Android.  Cost $99 bucks a year just to be able to test your programs on IOS.  That’s not including the rest of Apple’s draconian fees and policies.

131.  you’re  fucking idiot

132. Yes if you read this it’s all about Android and iOS security,

     http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3414593

133. without reading all the comments, let me tell you that android’s opensystem allows you to get to the bottom of your devices hardware. aka use your device at maxium, before it retires in years.

     for example, run emulator to play game so you don’t have to carry a phone and a psp or nds.

     it also saves the s*it load of your money to write a app on your phone,

     that’s why some dudes always want to jailbreak ios.