8 ms·

I don't even know where to begin. Apple is the one that made the decision to stay with ATT so it's their own damn fault. As Apple loves to say, it's the end use

I don't even know where to begin. Apple is the one that made the decision to stay with ATT so it's their own damn fault. As Apple loves to say, it's the end user experience that matters. Apple has stuck by ATT for two reasons: Control and Money. At a severe cost to users. You think his opinion has less merit because he got it for free? That is just laughable. Brad Feld has more credibility and money than you or I will probably have in our entire lifetime. Completely irrelevant.

tzs 16y ago
Apple has stuck with AT&T because they signed a long term contract to give AT&T exclusivity. They had to do that in order to get the phone out. They had approached the other carriers, and no one else was interested in carrying the phone unless the carrier got to control the design of the software. If Apple had not been willing to give exclusivity, its likely AT&T too would have passed on the iPhone. Without iPhone, there would not be Android. Even if Google had still developed it, they would have had the same problem Apple had--phone companies not willing to let Google be in charge of the software. It's only because Verizon and Sprint and the rest desperately needed something to compete with iPhone that they were willing to allow Android.
- shareme 16y ago
  without iphone there would be no androidd? August 2005 is when apple bought the android OS form android Inc..way before iphone OS was even coded.
  - easp 16y ago
    I think you mean Google bought android. And really, you have no idea when the iPhoneOS was even coded, but given that it is based on OSX coding started well before 2005. But I think the real question is what Android would have been without the iPhone, because even after the iPhone shipped, Android was looking rather a lot like a conventional smartphone OS.
halostatue 16y ago
You may not know where to begin with your comments about the Apple and AT&T relationship, but that would mostly be because you Don't Get It. It's not just about control and money; these matter, but less than you think. By choosing AT&T, Apple chose GSM, which gave the iPhone compatibility with most of the world. They looked at CDMA and realized that it was a dead-end technology; they looked at the expense of having to maintain two different radio chipsets; they looked at a lot of things and made the decision that, at least up until now, they didn't want to deal with it. Apple has relationships with three GSM carriers in Canada (Rogers/Fido, Bell, and Telus) and many more elsewhere in the world. If T-Mobile had used the more common GSM frequencies, Apple might not have gone with an exclusive deal with AT&T. Maybe. On the other hand, my immediate reaction on seeing the story title was "who is Brad Feld and why should I care that he's switching?" Seriously. Looking at his CrunchBase profile, I can see that he does VC stuff now and built a fairly large consulting company, but I am still not sure that I should care about his opinions about consumer electronics. So I do think that his opinion has less merit because he got this particular device for free. (Money isn't credibility. To me, he's just some random guy with a platform. A blogger with no relevance to anything that I do.) IMO, a consumer who has loyalty to a particular device or technology is a fool. If someone really comes up with something that I can unequivocally say is better than my iPhone, I will switch. So far, Android is "close but no cigar".
- megablast 16y ago
  You are completely wrong. The expense of maintaining two different radios is nothing compared to the extra millions of devices they would have sold. This is so wrong that it is embarrassing that people use this as a point. How much do you think it costs to buy a standard part, and hire a dozen engineers to get it all working??
  - brk 16y ago
    How much do you think it costs to buy a standard part, and hire a dozen engineers to get it all working?? My experience with embedded hardware type startups would lead me to think you would pretty much double your FCC registration process/expenses, add about 50% overhead to your QA budget to basically test everything twice, add about 20% to your hardware layout budget (unless the two chips are highly pin and form-factor compatible), and a few other incidentals. On top of the other extra basic engineering code to "get it all working". Then of course you also have to WANT to have the unit on the carrier that you added the CDMA chipset for in the first place. The harder part to gamble on in a situation like this is: how many people will switch carriers to get a truly hot device? If you get it right (as Apple has appeared to), a large majority of people will pick the phone over the carrier. I'm sure they would have sold more iPhones to date than the current number if they had a CDMA version, but I'm not convinced it would have been a truly significant number overall. Anyway, that's my rough experience with hardware design. What's your perspective on the added costs?
megablast 16y ago
I don't think it is that simple. Apple wanted a lot more control than carries were willing to allow. They approached Verizon, since they were the largest carrier at the time, and they laughed at them. They were not willing to change the way they operated, for some new upstart. Things like visual voicemail would not work with Verizon. You need to understand that carriers are the top dogs, they have great influence over phone manufacturers. Maybe you forget the bad old days, when Verizon would disable bluetooth and computer syncing on your phone, for their own reasons. Those days are mostly gone now, THANKS TO APPLE! Apple had little clout at the time, and only ATT was willing to working with them. For now, they are still stuck with each other. While Verizon/Spring may have better coverage in certain areas, they are complete dicks.
- nicholasreed 16y ago
  While Verizon/Spring may have better coverage in certain areas, they are complete dicks. As a Sprint rep, I resent that. You may have had a bad experience with somebody on the phone, but to generalize all Sprint (or Verizon for that matter) employees as dicks is not appropriate.
  - megablast 16y ago
    Sorry, not talking about the employees. I am talking about the control carriers used to exert on hardware manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia, etc... Whereas you could get the same device in Europe or the US, but the US version would be crippled because the carriers only wanted you to get ringtones from their store, wanted you to pay extra for bluetooth, and wanted an ad on the start page. Which means you couldn't use Motorola software to backup your device, somtimes you couldn't run Java apps, and so many other problems.
    - jarek 16y ago
      ... all of which stopped a fair while ago. IIANM you can root your Verizon Android phone if you want to.
      - 16y ago
brk 16y ago
You think his opinion has less merit because he got it for free? That is just laughable. Yes, I do think that. Giving away high-valued items for free to influential people at love-fests (nothing against the Google I/O event, but it's as much a marketing event as a tech-event) is a method used by all kinds of "luxury goods" manufacturers as a marketing/promotion scheme. What's is Feld's credibility here? He's done some other things, so when he comes off a few days of events essentially designed to promote and highlight the device he just got for free I should follow his lead? Because he's made some VC investments? Sorry, but I think this post does more to destroy his credibility than build it. Maybe if he posted this after a full month of Android-only usage, or maybe if he also spent some characters describing what ISN'T so super duper great on the Android platform his post would have seemed far less fanboi and far more credible.
easp 16y ago
"You think his opinion has less merit because he got it for free? That is just laughable. Brad Feld has more credibility and money than you or I will probably have in our entire lifetime. Completely irrelevant." Clearly there is a lot you don't know about human psychology. Try reading "Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. Gifts, even trivial and unwanted gifts, make people feel obligation to the gift-giver. Face it, whatever Android's merits, Google is leaving nothing to chance by buying a lot of good will with shipping containers worth of expensive gifts. As for your rant about the AT&T relationship's cost to users: If Apple hadn't done that deal, what would the mobile device ecosystem look like today and how would that be for users? Before the iPhone, the carriers were so firmly in control, it was obscene. You think Apple's app store terms are draconian? Try getting in to one of the old mobile application stores. You think Google would have any leverage in the mobile space without the iPhone? Look, AT&T sucks (not that my prior experience with Verizon was great), I'm reminded about that every day when 1/4 of my commute is plagued with slow-ass Internet even though I have a nice strong signal, but your cynicism is giving you selective blindness. I'm reminded of all the "wintel" hate among Linux advocates a decade or so ago. There was a lot to hate, but without the economics of the Microsoft/Intel world, its pretty damn hard to imagine the cheap & powerful computing hardware that made an open source OS anything but a curiosity for academics and a small number of hobbyists.

tzs 16y ago

Apple has stuck with AT&T because they signed a long term contract to give AT&T exclusivity. They had to do that in order to get the phone out. They had approached the other carriers, and no one else was interested in carrying the phone unless the carrier got to control the design of the software. If Apple had not been willing to give exclusivity, its likely AT&T too would have passed on the iPhone. Without iPhone, there would not be Android. Even if Google had still developed it, they would have had the same problem Apple had--phone companies not willing to let Google be in charge of the software. It's only because Verizon and Sprint and the rest desperately needed something to compete with iPhone that they were willing to allow Android.

shareme 16y ago
without iphone there would be no androidd? August 2005 is when apple bought the android OS form android Inc..way before iphone OS was even coded.
- easp 16y ago
  I think you mean Google bought android. And really, you have no idea when the iPhoneOS was even coded, but given that it is based on OSX coding started well before 2005. But I think the real question is what Android would have been without the iPhone, because even after the iPhone shipped, Android was looking rather a lot like a conventional smartphone OS.

halostatue 16y ago

You may not know where to begin with your comments about the Apple and AT&T relationship, but that would mostly be because you Don't Get It. It's not just about control and money; these matter, but less than you think. By choosing AT&T, Apple chose GSM, which gave the iPhone compatibility with most of the world. They looked at CDMA and realized that it was a dead-end technology; they looked at the expense of having to maintain two different radio chipsets; they looked at a lot of things and made the decision that, at least up until now, they didn't want to deal with it. Apple has relationships with three GSM carriers in Canada (Rogers/Fido, Bell, and Telus) and many more elsewhere in the world. If T-Mobile had used the more common GSM frequencies, Apple might not have gone with an exclusive deal with AT&T. Maybe. On the other hand, my immediate reaction on seeing the story title was "who is Brad Feld and why should I care that he's switching?" Seriously. Looking at his CrunchBase profile, I can see that he does VC stuff now and built a fairly large consulting company, but I am still not sure that I should care about his opinions about consumer electronics. So I do think that his opinion has less merit because he got this particular device for free. (Money isn't credibility. To me, he's just some random guy with a platform. A blogger with no relevance to anything that I do.) IMO, a consumer who has loyalty to a particular device or technology is a fool. If someone really comes up with something that I can unequivocally say is better than my iPhone, I will switch. So far, Android is "close but no cigar".

megablast 16y ago
You are completely wrong. The expense of maintaining two different radios is nothing compared to the extra millions of devices they would have sold. This is so wrong that it is embarrassing that people use this as a point. How much do you think it costs to buy a standard part, and hire a dozen engineers to get it all working??
- brk 16y ago
  How much do you think it costs to buy a standard part, and hire a dozen engineers to get it all working?? My experience with embedded hardware type startups would lead me to think you would pretty much double your FCC registration process/expenses, add about 50% overhead to your QA budget to basically test everything twice, add about 20% to your hardware layout budget (unless the two chips are highly pin and form-factor compatible), and a few other incidentals. On top of the other extra basic engineering code to "get it all working". Then of course you also have to WANT to have the unit on the carrier that you added the CDMA chipset for in the first place. The harder part to gamble on in a situation like this is: how many people will switch carriers to get a truly hot device? If you get it right (as Apple has appeared to), a large majority of people will pick the phone over the carrier. I'm sure they would have sold more iPhones to date than the current number if they had a CDMA version, but I'm not convinced it would have been a truly significant number overall. Anyway, that's my rough experience with hardware design. What's your perspective on the added costs?

megablast 16y ago

I don't think it is that simple. Apple wanted a lot more control than carries were willing to allow. They approached Verizon, since they were the largest carrier at the time, and they laughed at them. They were not willing to change the way they operated, for some new upstart. Things like visual voicemail would not work with Verizon. You need to understand that carriers are the top dogs, they have great influence over phone manufacturers. Maybe you forget the bad old days, when Verizon would disable bluetooth and computer syncing on your phone, for their own reasons. Those days are mostly gone now, THANKS TO APPLE! Apple had little clout at the time, and only ATT was willing to working with them. For now, they are still stuck with each other. While Verizon/Spring may have better coverage in certain areas, they are complete dicks.

nicholasreed 16y ago
While Verizon/Spring may have better coverage in certain areas, they are complete dicks. As a Sprint rep, I resent that. You may have had a bad experience with somebody on the phone, but to generalize all Sprint (or Verizon for that matter) employees as dicks is not appropriate.
- megablast 16y ago
  Sorry, not talking about the employees. I am talking about the control carriers used to exert on hardware manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia, etc... Whereas you could get the same device in Europe or the US, but the US version would be crippled because the carriers only wanted you to get ringtones from their store, wanted you to pay extra for bluetooth, and wanted an ad on the start page. Which means you couldn't use Motorola software to backup your device, somtimes you couldn't run Java apps, and so many other problems.
  - jarek 16y ago
    ... all of which stopped a fair while ago. IIANM you can root your Verizon Android phone if you want to.
    - 16y ago

brk 16y ago

You think his opinion has less merit because he got it for free? That is just laughable. Yes, I do think that. Giving away high-valued items for free to influential people at love-fests (nothing against the Google I/O event, but it's as much a marketing event as a tech-event) is a method used by all kinds of "luxury goods" manufacturers as a marketing/promotion scheme. What's is Feld's credibility here? He's done some other things, so when he comes off a few days of events essentially designed to promote and highlight the device he just got for free I should follow his lead? Because he's made some VC investments? Sorry, but I think this post does more to destroy his credibility than build it. Maybe if he posted this after a full month of Android-only usage, or maybe if he also spent some characters describing what ISN'T so super duper great on the Android platform his post would have seemed far less fanboi and far more credible.

easp 16y ago

"You think his opinion has less merit because he got it for free? That is just laughable. Brad Feld has more credibility and money than you or I will probably have in our entire lifetime. Completely irrelevant." Clearly there is a lot you don't know about human psychology. Try reading "Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. Gifts, even trivial and unwanted gifts, make people feel obligation to the gift-giver. Face it, whatever Android's merits, Google is leaving nothing to chance by buying a lot of good will with shipping containers worth of expensive gifts. As for your rant about the AT&T relationship's cost to users: If Apple hadn't done that deal, what would the mobile device ecosystem look like today and how would that be for users? Before the iPhone, the carriers were so firmly in control, it was obscene. You think Apple's app store terms are draconian? Try getting in to one of the old mobile application stores. You think Google would have any leverage in the mobile space without the iPhone? Look, AT&T sucks (not that my prior experience with Verizon was great), I'm reminded about that every day when 1/4 of my commute is plagued with slow-ass Internet even though I have a nice strong signal, but your cynicism is giving you selective blindness. I'm reminded of all the "wintel" hate among Linux advocates a decade or so ago. There was a lot to hate, but without the economics of the Microsoft/Intel world, its pretty damn hard to imagine the cheap & powerful computing hardware that made an open source OS anything but a curiosity for academics and a small number of hobbyists.