Comments on: Android hype vehicle set to crash in 2010

By: borker

borker — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:39:09 +0000

Hi SiSo, though I agree that apple (I’d say hands down) do have the best combo of user experience and industrial design I wouldn’t say that adds up to an automatic win.

Google doesn’t need to be the best, just good enough, if they can pair it with being the best in other areas (the ubiquitous information bit).

I think you’ve set up a bit of a false dichotomy by saying google is all function and no form. Apple certainly is *better* form but google’s apps aren’t the bottom end of form and some are highly functional (gmail, maps, youtube and of course search, with things like calendar, docs etc coming along a bit more slowly).

Also, saying Apple does both is not really a fair comparison; as ubiquitous in it’s market as iTunes is, Apple really can’t hold a candle at present to google’s sheer server capacity.

I’m not trying to come off as an apple basher or google cheer leader (I use products from both, very happily) but I do think the emerging mobile data access market (which apple excels at from the client side and google does from the server side) still has a lot of room for innovation and as good as Apple are in that area, they don’t have a monopoly on it, and if google can be good enough at the client side then their strength on the server side is something to be reckoned with.

Anecdotal evidence that Apple realizes they are not as strong in google’s market can be found in their recent purchase of an mobile advertising company Quattro after being beaten out in an attempt to buy AdMob.

By: MetalboySiSo

MetalboySiSo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:48:20 +0000

Sorry, borker, gonna have to disagree with you just a bit:

User *interface* can be copied, yes. User *experience*? Not so much. People have been trying to copy Apple’s user experience style(s) for a long time, and they just don’t seem to get it.

I also disagree with being able to compare Apple’s innovation, industrial design savvy, OS design, and general user experience (especially in the last 8 years or so) to Google’s “ubiquitous access to information.” In one way, it’s like comparing apples to oranges, but in another way, they almost cancel each other out: form without function is pretty, but useless, and function with bad form *would* be useful, if it were usable. Apple does both, but Google seems to me to be the second (for the most part). I like Gmail, but its user interface/experience leaves a bit to be desired.

I do, however, agree with your statement that the competition will be interesting, and if Apple takes it seriously, it will definitely leave us better off. As everyone says, competition is good for all of us. And *ANY* sort of competition will be more than we’ve seen in the desktop computer industry (at least up until the few years).

SiSo

By: borker

borker — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:36:57 +0000

@ChuckO agreed that apple have a big leg up on the OS / user experience department, but that can (and rapidly is) being copied, whereas what google has in cloud expertise and pure existing and future server capacity is a lot more expensive to come by. So both google and apple have strengths the other doesn’t, and I personally don’t think its a slam dunk that apple’ innovation and industrial and OS design will be automatically more compelling than what google can offer in it’s field of strength, ubiquitous access to information. And google have not been without innovation (some of it acquired, same as apple acquired chip design expertise. It is not inconceivable that google could acquire better industrial design in the same way.)

In the end it’ll be an interesting bit of competition that’ll hopefully leave us all better off. Two companies with great expertise in different areas competing on their strengths… a really refreshing change to the last 20 years of desktop computing, certainly.

By: gctwnl

gctwnl — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 06:42:09 +0000

@John E:
Hmm, yes, completely forgotten: that new server farm….

But buying Yahoo? Why? Would it sell more hardware if it did?

By: John E

John E — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:36:11 +0000

@ ChuckO and borker – agreed.

but Apple needs to keep expanding MobileMe, to have a decent “cloud” of its own. to start with, it should be free to Mac product owners, which would rapidly expand its user base. the amount of revenue it generates is miniscule anyway. maybe Apple is waiting to finish the big new server farm …

and if Google ever opens its own media store to compete with iTunes, then Apple ought to buy Yahoo!

By: ChuckO

ChuckO — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:11:17 +0000

borker, I think what you described is pretty close to Dan’s assessment from this and other of his posts. Android is all about keeping Google ads in front of eyeballs by offering an alternative to Microsoft mobile. I think beyond that he’s saying it will be tough for Google going forward to keep up innovating when compared with Apple for a number of important reasons: they are new to OS development, they aren’t known for interface design, they have to deal with hardware partners and the serious issues that causes such as OS version problems and needing to support lot’s of hardware variation, attracting developers and getting top notch apps for the platform. A lot of these problems interact with each other to make success even more unlikely. Apple has most of these problems handled pretty well already and is way ahead of Android.

By: borker

borker — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:54:30 +0000

I think that Dan’s analysis leaves out an important measure of success that google likely have for android: in the short term it stops MS from being able to run up its cloud service usage stats with low end consumer devices, thus taking away even an illusion of success for MS in this arena (no millions of handsets searching bing by default etc). In the long term it creates a vehicle that google can continue to ensure provides the best possible experience when accessing gmail, google docs, google earth etc etc. It’s not going to be about selling a better integrated hardware / software solution than apple, it’ll be about creating a better software / cloud solution.

If the iphone keeps eating up market, but readily allows high quality access to google services and if the rest of the market can be filled with android based devices that keep MS on the outs, I imagine google will be plenty happy

By: ChuckO

ChuckO — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:08:45 +0000

If anything Apple is more of the modern equivalent of Sony when it was successful than anything else. Apple isn’t in a battle to win the office anymore they are battling for the consumer and they’ve won.

By: ChuckO

ChuckO — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:16:57 +0000

Holy toledo, could you guys spend some more time rehashing what happened in tech in the 80’s?

By: David Dennis

David Dennis — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:26:03 +0000

Actually even an IBM Personal Computer AT or PS/2 Model 80 was cheaper than Macs.

The reason Compaq was so successful is that it offered the 386 – the red-hot processor of the time when IBM was sticking with the 286 so as to not compete with their more expensive computers. That caused people to look seriously at clones, and then they abandoned IBM in droves.

I was sad about this at the time because I loved IBM’s industrial design and thought Compaq was just a cheap knock-off of it. IBM made the world’s best keyboards in those days …

In any event, without lower prices or higher performance for the money, clones aren’t going to be successful. And I don’t think most people perceive iPhones as being low performance, while Android devices are frequently criticised as laggers.

In short, I don’t see the case for Android as being persuasive, except insofar as people prefer Verizon. (In my area, performance of Verizon and AT&T has been nearly identical.)