Woz has always about being open and modular and extensible. Jobs has always been about the opposite -- and for good reason; the early Macs were typically more stable and functioned better simply because of that lock-in.
But history has played this over and over again, and Woz always wins. Vendors work out standards; the user experience consolidates.
If you give people the freedom and trust them, they'll work it out. Or you can trust a benevolent dictator to work it out for you. Most Apple afficianados will say the most people don't want that freedom; I'm here to tell you that they do.
We don't have to debate. Let's just tune in and watch the sales of the iPad starting next month, after the faithful have all bought theirs. Woz will win. Woz always wins.
What's with this constant invoking of the 'faithful'? I work at a place that sells the iPad and I've had a lot of people ask me about it. The people who are buying the iPad aren't exactly fanboys, who have been slavering over anything that Apple would put out. They're normal folks. A lot of them don't know any real specifics about the iPad, but they have the feeling that it would really be more enjoyable to use than their netbook. The notion that these Apple products only have niche appeal (because normal people value functionality and openness over prettiness) is kind of bonkers in the face of the extremely strong mainstream popularity of the various iPods as well as the iPhone.
The iPhone is really open and functional compared to the phones that preceded it. Just downloading a ringtone for most prior phones was more expensive than full-fledged games on the iPhone. The app store is far from perfect, but it's a very open market compared to anything I've seen out of Nokia or any of the Japanese handset makers.
Its funny how easily people forget this - Apple created the first MARKET for mobile apps. Thats openness. Before the iPhone the mobile game was one big scam, with someone reaching into your pocket at each and every step in a long chain.
> Apple created the first MARKET for mobile apps. Thats openness.
I distinctly remember being able to install software I downloaded (or made) on my Sony Ericsson P-800 a good couple years before the iPhone was announced. In fact, digging a little back, I am sure you could install PalmOS apps on your Treos since the first day they were launched.
And anyone could develop for both platforms (actually, there was Java ME too), anyone could host the file you would have to download to install and specify how, and if, you would pay for the download. In fact, many application stores appeared hosting zillions of smartphone apps you could download and install.
Apple's market is not open at all. Apple decides if you will be able to sell the fruits of your development work.
What Apple did is to corner both users and developers. And that's bad.
How many people did? Why so few? No market to speak of.
They made things one level free-er, which is the best they could have done given the constraints of the market and the technology. There are issues. They aren't villains for having issues.
A lot of carrier-branded phones have features like that disabled in favor of only allowing the user to purchase ringtones from the carrier's marketplace where you pay upwards of $3-$4 per ringtone (i.e. ringtones, at 30s or less, cost more than buying the entire song on iTunes). It is/was vendor lock-in at it's worst: create a captive audience, and then price gouge them because they don't know any better (i.e. "My old phone didn't have ringtones, but now I can buy ringtones from Verizon! Yay!"; without realizing that the phone itself supports user-created ringtones that you don't have to pay for).
It's sort of the same for the iPhone now. People think it's great because they are used to phones with limited functionality, openness and usability. Compared to those phones that iPhone is a breath of fresh air. Apple's just playing a game of, "what they don't know can't hurt them." People don't sit down and think about exactly what their ideal device is like. They see the iPhone/iPad and thing that it's neat and mold their expectation around what they see (especially if their expectations were lower to begin with).
A lot of carrier-branded phones have features like that disabled in favor of only allowing the user to purchase ringtones from the carrier's marketplace where you pay upwards of $3-$4 per ringtone (i.e. ringtones, at 30s or less, cost more than buying the entire song on iTunes).
I would like to point out this is an American phenomenon. At least in India, the mobile market is completely open.
This. I think the iPhone was a complete boon to the US mobile market, which was suffering and locked down. In America, the iPhone is one of the most open handsets out there. However, everywhere else, where carriers have less of an ability to be quite as locked-down and evil, they're one of the least open.
So if someone pre-generates a strange file-format for you - it's almost as simple as my 5 year old nokia.
Or there's a 17 step process.
The way the iPhone handles it's ringtones is a step back from how most normal phones did. (// Note to American readers - if your carrier blocks a function - it means you have a bad carrier - not a bad phone)
The iPhone excelled in having a great browser. And looking gorgeous. As far as Phone parts go (crap reception/quality, struggles with group sms, ringtones, etc) it was a step backwards from most phones on the market. Now that might be an acceptable trade-off, but it still needs to be stated.
> Let's just tune in and watch the sales of the iPad starting next month
We already watched the sales of the iPhone, and we saw how that went. Same type of device, same type of complaints by openness advocate, and what was the result? Are you guys going to just keep on saying this stuff until some closed Apple product fails, then say that's proof that people want openness, ignoring the litany of preceding closed devices that succeeded? I'm here to tell you that this is not a very good argument.
In all likelihood both will continue to be part of the mobile ecosystem for some time, or until Google gets tired of throwing money at the problem.
But as I said to another responder, the iPhone is one device on one carrier per country, and Android is many devices on all carriers. They are hardly on equal footing for a purely numerical battle for superiority, but still iPhone is winning.
Google is making real money with Android, and even if it's a loss leader it's just another medium to expand their search business. They can afford to lose the millions in Android develoment and they still come out winning.
What money do you suppose they are making? It's probably cheaper to pay Apple to maintain Google as the default search engine on the phone than to make their own. It's unlikely that a whole lot more internet searches are happening because of Android that wouldn't have happened in any other arrangement of the ecosystem, so I still don't see how Google benefits.
Yes, that's an option. But consider this: the iPhone becomes the number one smartphone out there -> Mobile Safari has the highest mobile marketshare of any web browser -> Apple controls the mobile web. What Google ultimately want is an open web so they keep making money from AdSense/AdWords.
"They are hardly on equal footing for a purely numerical battle for superiority"
Thats Apples choice. Those chose to lock in with AT&T they could have not locked in and sold many MANY more. So yes it equal if anything its less equal for the android because it came in later.
Considering that the Android product options prior to November were pretty weak, the momentum in Android is partially based on decent products finally being available to consumers. Unfortunately, I think Google's N1 distribution strategy isn't helping matters.
Granted, but irrelevant to the claim I was making. Also I'd like to point out that that's one device on (normally) one carrier per country, being pushed by only one company. The others are all being pushed by consortiums or multiple phone companies and are available normally on all carriers yet they still lag behind.
The consumer isn't choosing the iPhone or iPad because it is closed, they are choosing it because it is easy to use, sexy, and supported by lots of apps. You can still have those things and be open, and Android is proving it.
Android is neither as easy to use or as sexy as the iPhone. The dismal sales of the nexus one despite it's superior spec sheet and androidness are proof of this.
But I do agree with you, most people buy things out of which they get the most utility, and ease of use an sexiness are a big part of that. But the person I was responding to mad the claim that people won't buy the ipad because it is closed. It would only be possible to believe this if your head was buried deep in the sand.
Android is neither as easy to use or as sexy as the iPhone. The dismal sales of the nexus one despite it's superior spec sheet and androidness are proof of this.
True. But if you compared those numbers to the sales of the iPhone 3G or 3GS, they would look less rosy. What you've got there is a non-smartphone without an app store on a smaller carrier being compared with a smartphone with an app store on a larger carrier that's famous of not having many options in the phones you can select because of its CDMA network.
Anyway, the whole discussion of which is doing better is completely unrelated to my original objection to the top-level poster.
You should especially not say that since the comparison is not really fair, considering the iPhone OS was an unknown quantity, and iPhone lacked an app store, was on a smaller carrier, and was not launched during the holiday season.
Sales are not complete proof of sexiness, but they are evidence. It strikes me that if the iPhone on a single carrier can win out against an entire ecosystem of phones on many carriers, it probably has something they do not.
> The dismal sales of the nexus one despite it's superior spec sheet and androidness are proof of this.
In a carrier-locked-down market like the US, where the norm is to buy phones that are married to a given carrier, it only proves Apple has better marketing and carrier relations than other companies.
Also, Android is not a phone - it's a platform. The Nexus One is only one of many competing offerings - that compete not only with iPhones, but between themselves.
I think the effect is real, but of course it's not as direct as this. Now that the iPhone has a viable competitor that's more developer friendly, it seems likely that apps will start to appear first on Android, and then only later on the iPhone. I think that might effect consumers' perception of which is the sexier device.
Having a platform that's easier to develop, publish and distribute software for is only half of the "developer friendly" equation. The other half is having a user community that's willing to spend money on that software.
Are there many Android developers who've been able to quit their day jobs and make a living from app sales? (That's a serious question, not a snarky one -- I don't follow the market closely.)
Seems like if that were going to happen it would have happened already, or we'd at least have seen some sign of a sea-change. Yet the ports still flow in the opposite direction (when developers even bother). Maybe because Android appeals to the spendthrift, and iPhone to people more open with their wallets?
The other explanation is that iPhone is plenty open to developers who make the types of apps people want to buy, and closed only to the tinkerers who would not have been making salable apps anyway.
Is the Android really more developer friendly? A very profitable application category on the iPhone are audible applications. That category is a nonstarter on the Android because Java latency causes noticeable sound artifacts.
Keep in mind it's not 1976 or 1984. Things are different today. Technology is no longer reserved for the technical elite to enjoy or fetishize over exclusively. If you want to draw a line in the sand to figure out when things changed I'd say 2001 and the introduction of the iPod -- an incredibly closed but amazingly compelling and easy to use mainstream device that smashed its open competition with no mercy. This was about the same time we saw the rise of the cell phone in every pocket which was similarly closed and restricted. Around the same time we saw the release of the Playstation 2 which, again, is a closed and restricted platform that has gone on to be the best selling gaming console in history. 3 years later we see the release of the Nintendo DS -- one of the most successful mobile electronic devices in history. Closed & restricted.
I want both. People are getting anxious about the iphone/pad but overall, look at recent history. It's good to have several approaches gong at once. Linux/OSX/Windows is a good example. Go back in time and remove any of those from the game and you get a less good present.
I think Apple is largely less capable then MS of holding a problematic monopoly for long (at least with their current m.o.). That would require being every thing for every person to plug all potential competition holes. That comes with hairy compromises that Apple probably won't want to make.
So far, Apple hasn't done any net damage. They are getting things done and moving things along fast. It will take either a real slow down in their innovation or some serious damage to flip that balance.
But history has played this over and over again, and Woz always wins. Vendors work out standards; the user experience consolidates.
If you give people the freedom and trust them, they'll work it out. Or you can trust a benevolent dictator to work it out for you. Most Apple afficianados will say the most people don't want that freedom; I'm here to tell you that they do.
We don't have to debate. Let's just tune in and watch the sales of the iPad starting next month, after the faithful have all bought theirs. Woz will win. Woz always wins.