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As John Grubber pointed out some time ago, the last time of that "fight", was with the iPod... You might say that this iPhone situation has very little to do w

As John Grubber pointed out some time ago, the last time of that "fight", was with the iPod... You might say that this iPhone situation has very little to do with the iPod one, but if so, so does the mac situation.

enjo 17y ago
I disagree... This is quite reminiscent of the Mac/PC battle in the 80's. It's a more open platform vs. a walled-garden. There was never a 'open' mp3 player battling the iPod. There was never really a developer eco-system of any kind. Mp3 players, the iPod included, where single purpose devices. The value proposition never rested on open development and innovation. I think Android will win this, provided that Google gets some kind of handle on the fragementation issues. They're pursuing a model quite close to what Series 60 has done for years. The entire Android eco-system is bringing a lot of phones to market. Some are hits and some are misses, but at the end of the day all of those phones results in HUGE numbers and ultimately a higher combined market share...even if no single phone ever sales as well as an iPhone.
- Alejandro 17y ago
  I was not trying to say it is like the iPod, but at the same time, I think it isn't like the mac/pc either, and lets face it, the pc has never been (pc = windows pc, at least here) a truly open development platform. Android will win this, if by win we mean more marketshare. But we all know that is not the only measure of success.
  - enjo 17y ago
    I suppose it really depends on how you define 'open'. Has windows ever been open in the open source sense? Of course not. However, the difference in the early days of windows vs. Mac was pretty stark. Microsoft did have a platform that was open in the sense that any developer could easily write software for it. The documentation was widely available. There where no hoops to jump through to actually sell the software. The whole thing was easy. That 'openess' gave Microsoft a huge advantage. It provided it with a bevy of applications that simply didn't exist for the Mac. In addition Microsoft was hardware neutral, meaning that the collective marketing machines of thousands of companies worked to push Windows over the Mac. It's the same thing here. As a developer, the release process is simpler and cleaner. The OS itself affords you more flexibility particularly with background apps. There are an entire classification of apps that you simply can't write for the iPhone that you can for Android. Over time, those become increasingly important. As Android devices proliferate, you'll begin to hear more and more about apps that are awesome... and they simply don't exist for the iPhone. That's when Android wins. In addition there are a lot of manufacturers and carriers wedded to Android. That collective marketing muscle is far greater than even the greatest marketing company since Barnum and Bailey (Apple). We already hear a lot of noise about Android, and that's only going to increase in intensity. Again, this is all for naught if Google doesn't fix those fragmentation issues. If the weight of supporting all of those phones individually becomes to heavy, the whole thing collapses. It's hard to innovate when your simply scrambling to keep up with the differences in hardware. If they're able to unify these things and come up with a sane way for developers to deal with it, well then I just don't think there is any contest.

enjo 17y ago

I disagree... This is quite reminiscent of the Mac/PC battle in the 80's. It's a more open platform vs. a walled-garden. There was never a 'open' mp3 player battling the iPod. There was never really a developer eco-system of any kind. Mp3 players, the iPod included, where single purpose devices. The value proposition never rested on open development and innovation. I think Android will win this, provided that Google gets some kind of handle on the fragementation issues. They're pursuing a model quite close to what Series 60 has done for years. The entire Android eco-system is bringing a lot of phones to market. Some are hits and some are misses, but at the end of the day all of those phones results in HUGE numbers and ultimately a higher combined market share...even if no single phone ever sales as well as an iPhone.

Alejandro 17y ago
I was not trying to say it is like the iPod, but at the same time, I think it isn't like the mac/pc either, and lets face it, the pc has never been (pc = windows pc, at least here) a truly open development platform. Android will win this, if by win we mean more marketshare. But we all know that is not the only measure of success.
- enjo 17y ago
  I suppose it really depends on how you define 'open'. Has windows ever been open in the open source sense? Of course not. However, the difference in the early days of windows vs. Mac was pretty stark. Microsoft did have a platform that was open in the sense that any developer could easily write software for it. The documentation was widely available. There where no hoops to jump through to actually sell the software. The whole thing was easy. That 'openess' gave Microsoft a huge advantage. It provided it with a bevy of applications that simply didn't exist for the Mac. In addition Microsoft was hardware neutral, meaning that the collective marketing machines of thousands of companies worked to push Windows over the Mac. It's the same thing here. As a developer, the release process is simpler and cleaner. The OS itself affords you more flexibility particularly with background apps. There are an entire classification of apps that you simply can't write for the iPhone that you can for Android. Over time, those become increasingly important. As Android devices proliferate, you'll begin to hear more and more about apps that are awesome... and they simply don't exist for the iPhone. That's when Android wins. In addition there are a lot of manufacturers and carriers wedded to Android. That collective marketing muscle is far greater than even the greatest marketing company since Barnum and Bailey (Apple). We already hear a lot of noise about Android, and that's only going to increase in intensity. Again, this is all for naught if Google doesn't fix those fragmentation issues. If the weight of supporting all of those phones individually becomes to heavy, the whole thing collapses. It's hard to innovate when your simply scrambling to keep up with the differences in hardware. If they're able to unify these things and come up with a sane way for developers to deal with it, well then I just don't think there is any contest.