9 ms·

John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

155 points by barredo 16y ago

mootymoots 16y ago
Gruber's comments on Microsoft are so dead on...
- glhaynes 16y ago
  It's shocking how irrelevant they are in most of the things that are getting a lot of press these days. It's hard for me to imagine the scenario where Windows ever becomes a big player on mobile. I wonder where they'd be if they'd have been broken up by the US government a decade ago.
  - sketerpot 16y ago
    I remember the early 2000s. I devoutly hoped that Linux would get widely used in some way, even if it never really took off on the desktop. I wanted open source to be fairly common and well-accepted, and not just something that weird people wrote and talked about on Slashdot. And hacker-friendly open-source Linux-based smartphones would be great, but that was just too implausibly awesome to even hope for. I wanted pleasant languages like Python to get serious commercial use. Now, all those things have happened or are happening. Want to get on board with cloud hosting in any way? The standard options involve Linux VM images. Languages like Ruby and Python are mainstream and well-supported. Android is disrupting the smartphone market, and has the kind of widespread commercial backing I never would have thought possible for an open, Linux-based thing. Microsoft is no longer an unstoppable leviathan; they've stopped being scary. Occasionally I'll reflect on all this and chortle happily. I wasn't optimistic enough back in the early 2000s, and that's surprising.
    - mbreese 16y ago
      What is really funny is that we never really hit the year of Linux on the desktop. I mean, this has been speculation for years... Will this be the year that Linux really starts to make in roads in the Desktop market? For the most part, the answer has always been no. Redhat and Novell/Suse have all but left the desktop (commercially, not counting Fedora). Ubuntu has all but taken over the desktop Linux market. Overall, Linux Desktop experience has increased substantially since 2000, but it has never really caught up with Windows (now 7) and the Mac. (I actually think that the Mac has hurt Linux adoption on the Desktop more than Windows. So, I too find it quite humorous that Linux is poised to be a, if not the major player in the next generation of computing - the portable/dedicated devices. But what I find more amusing is that it hasn't been the success of Linux on the desktop that has made this possible, it has been the decline in the importance of the desktop. So, 2010 may finally be the year of Linux, but it still won't be the year of Linux on the desktop. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
      - mambodog 16y ago
        Also, don't forget Chrome OS: Diet Linux on the Desktop (okay well, desktop as positioned vs. Linux for servers)
      - chipsy 16y ago
        It's amusing, but not a very surprising outlook for the tech industry; platform shifts are opportunities for competitors to break in. Linux came a little bit too late to make inroads on the desktop vs. the incumbent DOS/Windows platform of the early 90's - if it, and the GNU tools, had reached the 1991 level of development in the mid-80s when the PC clones first took hold, that story might have been a different one - but in the real world, it still devastated the competition on servers when the Web started its massive post-1994 growth. Now we're hitting the juncture where, again, a new platform category is poised for growth; recall how netbooks started as Linux boxes, and only ended up running Windows after a combination of effort(Win7), strongarming(subsidies and licensing agreements), and initial advantages(the desktop ecosystem, which is largely netbook-compatible) from Microsoft. This time around, those tactics can't work. It might actually work out that the desktop still shifts towards Linux in the end; the "bottom-up" nature of progress in tech means that people are going to want a desktop that does everything their mobile environment does (plus desktop things). Hence, desktops will start running Android or a compatible variant...which would naturally work out to mean you'd be running Linux, even if it isn't today's Linux environments.
TomOfTTB 16y ago
His points on Microsoft are well made. Given the strategic importance of this market it amazes me how badly they've done. Realize they beat Apple to market by around 4 years (depending on how you count the PocketPC/Phone hybrids) and Google by almost 5 . Now they've tossed the whole thing out and started over with a product that won't be out for another 6 months and in terms of features seems to be equivalent to a first generation iPhone (which is relevant because I really don't think Microsoft is going to create a better user experience so they'd have to compete on features) It's really kind of sad.
- frederickcook 16y ago
  In the PC market, Apple competes on quality, Microsoft (with hardware manufacturers) competes on price. This is the world Ballmer imagined for the smartphone market, but when Google knocked the floor out by giving away the OS (or even paying the carrier a cut of the search revenue), there is no place left for Microsoft to position itself. Unless Windows Mobile is a vastly superior product to Android (and how likely is that?), it'll be left out of the smartphone market unless they can give it away and try to make it up in Bing search revenue.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    They could just lose money, up to tens of billions, for a decade while working their way up to a solid 3rd place position. Worked for Xbox.
    - nickelplate 16y ago
      I think it is still too early to say that. Microsoft has yet to recoup the money they invested in the Xbox, and they probably won't anytime soon. And while they are still ahead of Sony in the console race, the PS3 has picked up quite a bit lately. Microsoft could very well finish the race dead last at the end of the current generation, with Sony at the top spot and Nintendo a close second.
    - ekanes 16y ago
      The only problem is they have to actually do the catching up. I'm not sure they can. This market is much more complex, with a faster-moving platform, more hardware innovation, and competition (Apple, Nokia, RIM and Google) that can't be bullied or out-spent.
raptrex 16y ago
Although syncing with a computer may feel retrograde, I'm sure theres a lot of people, including myself, that would rather keep their data due to privacy issues instead of relying on Google or Apple to store it. However, I think most people would prefer cloud syncing since it is so easy for the user.
- mootymoots 16y ago
  Any type of wireless syncing is good for me, whether that's with the cloud, or with a Mac/PC on my wireless network. USB syncing is sooo 20th Century
  - bshep 16y ago
    If you have a jailbroken iphone/itouch and a Mac try this out: http://www.getwifisync.com/ http://www.getwifisync.com/ I installed it a couple of days ago and it works like a charm. I also setup 'Activator' so I can launch the wifisync app by pressing the lock button for about a second and it will automatically sync to my Mac.
  - m_eiman 16y ago
    It'd better be an N Wifi if I'm going to sync 16GB of music to a new device, and even that's going to take quite a while. Of course, USB 2.0 isn't really up to the task either - but at least it's faster by a significant factor.
    - mootymoots 16y ago
      sure, the initial sync, like an initial time machine backup, would take an age to sync wirelessly... I'm thinking post that though, walking into my network and syncing latest updates, even without my prompting
      - m_eiman 16y ago
        Agreed, I can't think of any good reason not to allow sync over wifi (or over 3g for that matter, if I'm on a flatrate plan).
barredo 16y ago
It's funny because John starts with "Google is doing this fine" and "Apple is doing that fine", and "we are all gonna get better smartphones with this kind of rilvalry" and then when you think he is goint to add Microsoft into the rivalry: "Oh, yeah, remember Microsoft? it seems like they don't remember the smartphone market"
ssp 16y ago
Ballmer was not wrong about the iPhone. He said they would get 2-3% of the total phone market, not the smartphone market. He even makes that clear in the part that Gruber quoted: "... 1.3 billion phones ...". That's phones, not smartphones. According to http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-iphone-smartphone-market-share-surges-rim-slips/34181 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-iphone-smartphone-market... in the first quarter of 2010 Apple had 16.1% of smartphones and smartphones were 18.8% of mobile phones. That comes out to almost exactly 3%. Ballmer also wasn't wrong about Windows Mobile. The "60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent" was not a prediction, it was just what he would prefer.
- boundlessdreamz 16y ago
  Windows phones are smartphones. That is the market share that ballmer was talking about.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    But yet he mentioned the number of total phones sold (1.3b) while talking market share so he didn't mean smartphones. Apple has a tiny sliver of the total phone market and that's what he meant. Microsoft has an even smaller sliver, but he said he wants/prefers a large chunk of that total market: > But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get. He was exactly right about Apple's position but there's no obvious way Microsoft will be able gain mass adoption. Google will.
    - rimantas 16y ago
      Apple has a tiny sliver of the total phone market and that's what he meant That was mentioned in the article: Apple has 10x less market share than Nokia and still more revenue.
      - jonknee 16y ago
        More profit, Nokia has significantly more revenue. Apple only sells very high-margin phones while Nokia sells at all levels.
symesc 16y ago
His footnote is interesting: "Although there’s still no decent Android-based equivalent to the iPod Touch." He's right. Based on price, there is no equivalent. On features, the equivalent is a Google Nexus One without a SIM card. Trouble is, that's about to not be available from Google directly. I'm wondering whether we'll be able to buy an N1 without a contract ever again. Disclosure: I bought an N1 directly from Google and loved the experience of not having to talk to a carrier or any staff member at a generic retail outlet.
- jackowayed 16y ago
  But the N1 isn't even a very good substitute. Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music. Not only is the N1 much more expensive, but it also has a much worse music-playing interface. Until someone fixes the Android music player or writes their own (luckily, an app can have all the privileges that the core apps have, so anyone could just write the Awesome Music Player app and put it in the market), the demand for a good Android iTouch competitor won't be there. But I do think that getting an iTouch-like Android device out there is important. There are only so many people who are willing to pay $30/month for Internet on their phone, but pretty much everyone is willing to pay $200-$300 for a nice mp3 player with no recurring cost. And it's important to get as many Android devices out there as possible so that consumers believe that it's a good option (in many people's minds, popular == good) and app developers see more incentive to write good apps.
  - watmough 16y ago
    You wrote: Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music. I'm not sure you're correct. I have a simless old iPhone, equivalent to an iPod Touch, and it runs apps exclusively. It has barely been used for playing music. In fact, the beauty of apps means the hardwares purpose is completely malleable. In my case, it is primarily a mini-Bloomberg reader and alarm clock.
dave1619 16y ago
It appears to me the biggest news from google I/O was the release of flash on android, just a couple weeks after Steve Jobs says it wasn't practical. Google just didn't demo it and give a release date several months away, but they delivered it (with reports of folks getting 2.2 pushed already). Seems like Apple needs to reconsider their position on Flash... already.
- czhiddy 16y ago
  Flash could run at 100% native app speeds with no battery hit and Apple still wouldn't support it. Why? It's not part of their overall plan to give Adobe power over the platform. So no, Apple doesn't need to (and won't) reconsider their position on Flash.
  - dave1619 16y ago
    Why couldn't Apple let flash play in the browser but just not allow flash apps into the Appstore? I think users wouldn't mind that.
    - riobard 16y ago
      Then people would build Flash apps and just run it in browser and bypass App Store all together. If that happens, not only does Apple give the control to Adobe (and have to rely on Adobe to support iPhone Flash plugin, which is absolutely not what Apple wants), it also loses the benefits of charging 30% of the revenue if the apps would have been sold in App Store. It's worst situation for Apple.
      - dave1619 16y ago
        I know Apple doesn't want to support a flash plugin and was burned by Adobe in the past, but with Android supporting flash now Steve Jobs has less excuses to tell users why they can't view flash on websites. Most users won't understand why they're Android friends can access flash sites, but they can't. Apple could work with Adobe to get a flash plugin on the iPhone, they just don't want to. Also, people can make flash apps in the browser and that's fine. It wouldn't hurt AppStore sales, cause native apps would be better.
anr 16y ago
I'm not sure Apple is ahead on backup & restore with the iPhone / iPad. You shouldn't need a desktop (with an OS that runs iTunes) in the first place. I read that the first thing you need to do with iPad is to connect it to iTunes.
- holman 16y ago
  What Gruber was getting at is that Apple has a far better syncing strategy since Android wipes everything between updates and Apple neatly brings all your data with you. That said, the cloud-based syncing that Android will eventually ship looks like the "right" solution. I doubt anyone at Apple considers USB syncing to be the end game, though; I'd be shocked if they didn't have some sort of over-the-air syncing in the pipeline. The question in my mind is will they fix this in 2010 or will they fix this a few years from now. People won't want to stay tethered that much longer. As a sidenote- syncing over USB makes sense for the iPhone, in some respects, but the iPad lends itself to be a standalone computer. Tying that to another centralized hub is a hassle, and that's where an Android-esque cloud sync would be great.
  - adamp_android 16y ago
    Android as a platform doesn't require data wipes to update. A few handset manufacturers have chosen to go this route for certain devices but other devices such as the Nexus One preserve all user data during an update. The cloud-based syncing will certainly improve things for users migrating from one device to another.
  - portman 16y ago
    >>since Android wipes everything between updates My G1 upgraded from 1.0 > 1.1 > 1.5 > 1.6 without wiping. My Droid upgraded from 2.0 > 2.1 (and will > 2.2 soon) without wiping.
    - holman 16y ago
      Ah; I stand corrected... I misread what Gruber wrote. Looks like Android handles updates fine, but there's no way to cross-load data between devices. So buying the latest and greatest hardware leaves you in the cold, at least until Froyo.
perpetuity 16y ago
The techerati's frothing over new Google announcements is goofy. As if GOOG is some saviour from an indescribable hell. The view from here is nice. All the antipathy toward Apple is also overwrought. Apple doesn't force one to buy their product. I got modded down big time here just for saying so.
kenshi 16y ago
It's not just Microsoft who seem to be out of the game so to speak. What's going on with Nokia? It's taking them forever to come up with a device and/or platform that seems like a credible competitor to Android and iPhone OS.
- joezydeco 16y ago
  Nokia switched tracks, abandoning Symbian for the smartphones and putting their chips on Meego embedded Linux and Qt for the UI. There's a huge effort to make Qt into a higher level framework that can be used like Cocoa Touch or the Android UI elements. The Qt Declarative/Quick stuff is being advanced as quickly as they can work, but after working with the latest stuff they have a ways to go. I have a hunch Nokia thinks they'll be able to quickly catch up.
- armandososa 16y ago
  And that makes me somewhat sad. I've been a user of Nokia for 10 years and I allways loved those devices. When I purchased my last phone, 1.5 years ago, I gave them a vote of confidence and got an E71 instead of an iPhone. I regret it every day. Stupid E71.
  - fierarul 16y ago
    Yeah, I've also got an E71 instead and don't like it. I also dislike how Nokia basically left the phone (or the OS) unsupported and they are now targeting the big-screen iPhone-clones. Nice move there. I suppose it's no need to tell you how broken their Ovi "market" app is...
  - sasidharm 16y ago
    Actually i blame nokia for the sad state of mobile user interfaces until the iPhone came along
jsz0 16y ago
Google is upping the ante on the iPhone here, though, by adding cloud-based data backup for Android applications How many apps will actually support this feature? It doesn't sound like it's an OS level feature transparent to third party apps. Am I going to have to keep track of which apps support it and which don't?
andreyf 16y ago
Take the current URL from your PC web browser and push it to your device, over the air. If it’s a web page, it’ll open in the Android web browser; if it’s a Google Maps URL, it’ll open in the Android Maps app. Meaning that now, not only can spyware pop up porn on my parents' home computer, it can also push porn to my kid sister's cell phone? Ditto for apps... I imagine spyware is a thing of the past for most Googlers, but it certainly isn't for the majority of users.
- freetard 16y ago
  Steve Jobs, is that you?
  - curiousfiddler 16y ago
    Ha ha ha! Awesome ;)
- watty 16y ago
  Isn't there going to be security with this feature? I don't think any app/website can send remote commands without having your credentials. If spyware has your kid sister's Google credentials, pop-ups are the last of her worries.
  - andreyf 16y ago
    Do you seriously think most GMail accounts are never used on a computer which has spyware installed? You must be joking...
    - watty 16y ago
      A program that keylogs your machine and grabs your passwords is a virus. You're right they are fairly common but once again a "popup" on your phone from a virus is the least of your worries.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  The push to phone functionality is initiated by the user.
adbge 16y ago
Gruber's thoughts can be summed up as: Google vs Apple, bring it on, but where's Microsoft? While he isn't wrong, it's not exactly much more than some common sense. I also think he _seriously_ underestimates Microsoft.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  It is certainly possible that Microsoft could turn around, but I doubt it: they have a huge cash reserve, yes but that is not going to make them relevant. What would be interesting would be if they got an entire new board + CEO, Steve Ballmer isn't ready to lead and never will be.
- sasidharm 16y ago
  Microsoft will be 3.5 years late to the smartphone party when windows phone 7 series will eventually be released. People would have already made their choice between iPhone and Android.
  - ekiru 16y ago
    Apple will be 5 years late to the _smartphone_ party when the iPhone will eventually be released. People would have already made their choice between Blackberry and Nokia.
- protomyth 16y ago
  The winner of the previous type of computing doesn't seem to transition to the next one very well (ex. Mini Computer -> PC).
writetoalok 16y ago
In other news, Microsoft sues software as a service company Salesforce. http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/18/microsoft-sues-salesforce-claims-infringement-on-nine-patents/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/18/microsoft-sues-salesforce-c...
jacquesm 16y ago
The interesting things here are (1) that microsoft isn't even mentioned as one of the protagonists in the main battle (that's clearly apple vs google, (2) that google has done to microsoft what microsoft did to netscape, give away the product the other party hopes to sell.
nailer 16y ago
> One area where the iPhone has been far ahead of Android is in terms of backing up and restoring data. Buy a new iPhone, or install a major OS update, and when you re-sync with iTunes on your desktop, all your apps and data are re-installed. Gruber doesn't seem to get that Android is cloud based: buy a new Android phone, sign in, and your contacts, apps and bookmarks are available immediately, no finding a PC to tether to. Music and (for some odd reason) text messages are currently excluded though.
- buro9 16y ago
  I think he does, but he acknowledges that data isn't included in the previous cloud based offering. I was blown away when I first got an N1 (my first android) and signed in on startup and immediately had my contacts, email, calendar, etc wired up. No computer required. No special software required. It just works. What Google are doing now is taking that further and making that include data like music, pictures, TXT messages, etc. So now when you replace your android that stuff automatically comes across. What would be lovely is that instead of just sync, whether we could manage the older devices. i.e: Get a new mobile, sync it, declare the old mobile to be wiped and have the old mobile hear that and purge itself. This helps on the security side, as you could remotely wipe a stolen device. But it also helps with re-selling used phones safe in the knowledge that your data is intact and you're not leaving any on the device. I think it's the next obvious gap filler in the cloud-owning-the-data space. We can move and sync, now clean up behind us. Well, that and the fact that if data is persisted across all devices that you eventually will exceed the storage capacity of the device itself. But I'm guessing that network speed will keep pace with this and by the time we're at that crunch point Google will be able to serve that stuff on-demand and just use the phone as a local cache rather than as the persistent storage itself.

155 points by barredo 16y ago

mootymoots 16y ago

Gruber's comments on Microsoft are so dead on...

glhaynes 16y ago
It's shocking how irrelevant they are in most of the things that are getting a lot of press these days. It's hard for me to imagine the scenario where Windows ever becomes a big player on mobile. I wonder where they'd be if they'd have been broken up by the US government a decade ago.
- sketerpot 16y ago
  I remember the early 2000s. I devoutly hoped that Linux would get widely used in some way, even if it never really took off on the desktop. I wanted open source to be fairly common and well-accepted, and not just something that weird people wrote and talked about on Slashdot. And hacker-friendly open-source Linux-based smartphones would be great, but that was just too implausibly awesome to even hope for. I wanted pleasant languages like Python to get serious commercial use. Now, all those things have happened or are happening. Want to get on board with cloud hosting in any way? The standard options involve Linux VM images. Languages like Ruby and Python are mainstream and well-supported. Android is disrupting the smartphone market, and has the kind of widespread commercial backing I never would have thought possible for an open, Linux-based thing. Microsoft is no longer an unstoppable leviathan; they've stopped being scary. Occasionally I'll reflect on all this and chortle happily. I wasn't optimistic enough back in the early 2000s, and that's surprising.
  - mbreese 16y ago
    What is really funny is that we never really hit the year of Linux on the desktop. I mean, this has been speculation for years... Will this be the year that Linux really starts to make in roads in the Desktop market? For the most part, the answer has always been no. Redhat and Novell/Suse have all but left the desktop (commercially, not counting Fedora). Ubuntu has all but taken over the desktop Linux market. Overall, Linux Desktop experience has increased substantially since 2000, but it has never really caught up with Windows (now 7) and the Mac. (I actually think that the Mac has hurt Linux adoption on the Desktop more than Windows. So, I too find it quite humorous that Linux is poised to be a, if not the major player in the next generation of computing - the portable/dedicated devices. But what I find more amusing is that it hasn't been the success of Linux on the desktop that has made this possible, it has been the decline in the importance of the desktop. So, 2010 may finally be the year of Linux, but it still won't be the year of Linux on the desktop. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
    - mambodog 16y ago
      Also, don't forget Chrome OS: Diet Linux on the Desktop (okay well, desktop as positioned vs. Linux for servers)
    - chipsy 16y ago
      It's amusing, but not a very surprising outlook for the tech industry; platform shifts are opportunities for competitors to break in. Linux came a little bit too late to make inroads on the desktop vs. the incumbent DOS/Windows platform of the early 90's - if it, and the GNU tools, had reached the 1991 level of development in the mid-80s when the PC clones first took hold, that story might have been a different one - but in the real world, it still devastated the competition on servers when the Web started its massive post-1994 growth. Now we're hitting the juncture where, again, a new platform category is poised for growth; recall how netbooks started as Linux boxes, and only ended up running Windows after a combination of effort(Win7), strongarming(subsidies and licensing agreements), and initial advantages(the desktop ecosystem, which is largely netbook-compatible) from Microsoft. This time around, those tactics can't work. It might actually work out that the desktop still shifts towards Linux in the end; the "bottom-up" nature of progress in tech means that people are going to want a desktop that does everything their mobile environment does (plus desktop things). Hence, desktops will start running Android or a compatible variant...which would naturally work out to mean you'd be running Linux, even if it isn't today's Linux environments.

TomOfTTB 16y ago

His points on Microsoft are well made. Given the strategic importance of this market it amazes me how badly they've done. Realize they beat Apple to market by around 4 years (depending on how you count the PocketPC/Phone hybrids) and Google by almost 5 . Now they've tossed the whole thing out and started over with a product that won't be out for another 6 months and in terms of features seems to be equivalent to a first generation iPhone (which is relevant because I really don't think Microsoft is going to create a better user experience so they'd have to compete on features) It's really kind of sad.

frederickcook 16y ago
In the PC market, Apple competes on quality, Microsoft (with hardware manufacturers) competes on price. This is the world Ballmer imagined for the smartphone market, but when Google knocked the floor out by giving away the OS (or even paying the carrier a cut of the search revenue), there is no place left for Microsoft to position itself. Unless Windows Mobile is a vastly superior product to Android (and how likely is that?), it'll be left out of the smartphone market unless they can give it away and try to make it up in Bing search revenue.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  They could just lose money, up to tens of billions, for a decade while working their way up to a solid 3rd place position. Worked for Xbox.
  - nickelplate 16y ago
    I think it is still too early to say that. Microsoft has yet to recoup the money they invested in the Xbox, and they probably won't anytime soon. And while they are still ahead of Sony in the console race, the PS3 has picked up quite a bit lately. Microsoft could very well finish the race dead last at the end of the current generation, with Sony at the top spot and Nintendo a close second.
  - ekanes 16y ago
    The only problem is they have to actually do the catching up. I'm not sure they can. This market is much more complex, with a faster-moving platform, more hardware innovation, and competition (Apple, Nokia, RIM and Google) that can't be bullied or out-spent.

raptrex 16y ago

Although syncing with a computer may feel retrograde, I'm sure theres a lot of people, including myself, that would rather keep their data due to privacy issues instead of relying on Google or Apple to store it. However, I think most people would prefer cloud syncing since it is so easy for the user.

mootymoots 16y ago
Any type of wireless syncing is good for me, whether that's with the cloud, or with a Mac/PC on my wireless network. USB syncing is sooo 20th Century
- bshep 16y ago
  If you have a jailbroken iphone/itouch and a Mac try this out: http://www.getwifisync.com/ http://www.getwifisync.com/ I installed it a couple of days ago and it works like a charm. I also setup 'Activator' so I can launch the wifisync app by pressing the lock button for about a second and it will automatically sync to my Mac.
- m_eiman 16y ago
  It'd better be an N Wifi if I'm going to sync 16GB of music to a new device, and even that's going to take quite a while. Of course, USB 2.0 isn't really up to the task either - but at least it's faster by a significant factor.
  - mootymoots 16y ago
    sure, the initial sync, like an initial time machine backup, would take an age to sync wirelessly... I'm thinking post that though, walking into my network and syncing latest updates, even without my prompting
    - m_eiman 16y ago
      Agreed, I can't think of any good reason not to allow sync over wifi (or over 3g for that matter, if I'm on a flatrate plan).

barredo 16y ago

It's funny because John starts with "Google is doing this fine" and "Apple is doing that fine", and "we are all gonna get better smartphones with this kind of rilvalry" and then when you think he is goint to add Microsoft into the rivalry: "Oh, yeah, remember Microsoft? it seems like they don't remember the smartphone market"

ssp 16y ago

Ballmer was not wrong about the iPhone. He said they would get 2-3% of the total phone market, not the smartphone market. He even makes that clear in the part that Gruber quoted: "... 1.3 billion phones ...". That's phones, not smartphones. According to http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-iphone-smartphone-market-share-surges-rim-slips/34181 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-iphone-smartphone-market... in the first quarter of 2010 Apple had 16.1% of smartphones and smartphones were 18.8% of mobile phones. That comes out to almost exactly 3%. Ballmer also wasn't wrong about Windows Mobile. The "60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent" was not a prediction, it was just what he would prefer.

boundlessdreamz 16y ago
Windows phones are smartphones. That is the market share that ballmer was talking about.
- jonknee 16y ago
  But yet he mentioned the number of total phones sold (1.3b) while talking market share so he didn't mean smartphones. Apple has a tiny sliver of the total phone market and that's what he meant. Microsoft has an even smaller sliver, but he said he wants/prefers a large chunk of that total market: > But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get. He was exactly right about Apple's position but there's no obvious way Microsoft will be able gain mass adoption. Google will.
  - rimantas 16y ago
    Apple has a tiny sliver of the total phone market and that's what he meant That was mentioned in the article: Apple has 10x less market share than Nokia and still more revenue.
    - jonknee 16y ago
      More profit, Nokia has significantly more revenue. Apple only sells very high-margin phones while Nokia sells at all levels.

symesc 16y ago

His footnote is interesting: "Although there’s still no decent Android-based equivalent to the iPod Touch." He's right. Based on price, there is no equivalent. On features, the equivalent is a Google Nexus One without a SIM card. Trouble is, that's about to not be available from Google directly. I'm wondering whether we'll be able to buy an N1 without a contract ever again. Disclosure: I bought an N1 directly from Google and loved the experience of not having to talk to a carrier or any staff member at a generic retail outlet.

jackowayed 16y ago
But the N1 isn't even a very good substitute. Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music. Not only is the N1 much more expensive, but it also has a much worse music-playing interface. Until someone fixes the Android music player or writes their own (luckily, an app can have all the privileges that the core apps have, so anyone could just write the Awesome Music Player app and put it in the market), the demand for a good Android iTouch competitor won't be there. But I do think that getting an iTouch-like Android device out there is important. There are only so many people who are willing to pay $30/month for Internet on their phone, but pretty much everyone is willing to pay $200-$300 for a nice mp3 player with no recurring cost. And it's important to get as many Android devices out there as possible so that consumers believe that it's a good option (in many people's minds, popular == good) and app developers see more incentive to write good apps.
- watmough 16y ago
  You wrote: Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music. I'm not sure you're correct. I have a simless old iPhone, equivalent to an iPod Touch, and it runs apps exclusively. It has barely been used for playing music. In fact, the beauty of apps means the hardwares purpose is completely malleable. In my case, it is primarily a mini-Bloomberg reader and alarm clock.

dave1619 16y ago

It appears to me the biggest news from google I/O was the release of flash on android, just a couple weeks after Steve Jobs says it wasn't practical. Google just didn't demo it and give a release date several months away, but they delivered it (with reports of folks getting 2.2 pushed already). Seems like Apple needs to reconsider their position on Flash... already.

czhiddy 16y ago
Flash could run at 100% native app speeds with no battery hit and Apple still wouldn't support it. Why? It's not part of their overall plan to give Adobe power over the platform. So no, Apple doesn't need to (and won't) reconsider their position on Flash.
- dave1619 16y ago
  Why couldn't Apple let flash play in the browser but just not allow flash apps into the Appstore? I think users wouldn't mind that.
  - riobard 16y ago
    Then people would build Flash apps and just run it in browser and bypass App Store all together. If that happens, not only does Apple give the control to Adobe (and have to rely on Adobe to support iPhone Flash plugin, which is absolutely not what Apple wants), it also loses the benefits of charging 30% of the revenue if the apps would have been sold in App Store. It's worst situation for Apple.
    - dave1619 16y ago
      I know Apple doesn't want to support a flash plugin and was burned by Adobe in the past, but with Android supporting flash now Steve Jobs has less excuses to tell users why they can't view flash on websites. Most users won't understand why they're Android friends can access flash sites, but they can't. Apple could work with Adobe to get a flash plugin on the iPhone, they just don't want to. Also, people can make flash apps in the browser and that's fine. It wouldn't hurt AppStore sales, cause native apps would be better.

anr 16y ago

I'm not sure Apple is ahead on backup & restore with the iPhone / iPad. You shouldn't need a desktop (with an OS that runs iTunes) in the first place. I read that the first thing you need to do with iPad is to connect it to iTunes.

holman 16y ago
What Gruber was getting at is that Apple has a far better syncing strategy since Android wipes everything between updates and Apple neatly brings all your data with you. That said, the cloud-based syncing that Android will eventually ship looks like the "right" solution. I doubt anyone at Apple considers USB syncing to be the end game, though; I'd be shocked if they didn't have some sort of over-the-air syncing in the pipeline. The question in my mind is will they fix this in 2010 or will they fix this a few years from now. People won't want to stay tethered that much longer. As a sidenote- syncing over USB makes sense for the iPhone, in some respects, but the iPad lends itself to be a standalone computer. Tying that to another centralized hub is a hassle, and that's where an Android-esque cloud sync would be great.
- adamp_android 16y ago
  Android as a platform doesn't require data wipes to update. A few handset manufacturers have chosen to go this route for certain devices but other devices such as the Nexus One preserve all user data during an update. The cloud-based syncing will certainly improve things for users migrating from one device to another.
- portman 16y ago
  >>since Android wipes everything between updates My G1 upgraded from 1.0 > 1.1 > 1.5 > 1.6 without wiping. My Droid upgraded from 2.0 > 2.1 (and will > 2.2 soon) without wiping.
  - holman 16y ago
    Ah; I stand corrected... I misread what Gruber wrote. Looks like Android handles updates fine, but there's no way to cross-load data between devices. So buying the latest and greatest hardware leaves you in the cold, at least until Froyo.

perpetuity 16y ago

The techerati's frothing over new Google announcements is goofy. As if GOOG is some saviour from an indescribable hell. The view from here is nice. All the antipathy toward Apple is also overwrought. Apple doesn't force one to buy their product. I got modded down big time here just for saying so.

kenshi 16y ago

It's not just Microsoft who seem to be out of the game so to speak. What's going on with Nokia? It's taking them forever to come up with a device and/or platform that seems like a credible competitor to Android and iPhone OS.

joezydeco 16y ago
Nokia switched tracks, abandoning Symbian for the smartphones and putting their chips on Meego embedded Linux and Qt for the UI. There's a huge effort to make Qt into a higher level framework that can be used like Cocoa Touch or the Android UI elements. The Qt Declarative/Quick stuff is being advanced as quickly as they can work, but after working with the latest stuff they have a ways to go. I have a hunch Nokia thinks they'll be able to quickly catch up.
armandososa 16y ago
And that makes me somewhat sad. I've been a user of Nokia for 10 years and I allways loved those devices. When I purchased my last phone, 1.5 years ago, I gave them a vote of confidence and got an E71 instead of an iPhone. I regret it every day. Stupid E71.
- fierarul 16y ago
  Yeah, I've also got an E71 instead and don't like it. I also dislike how Nokia basically left the phone (or the OS) unsupported and they are now targeting the big-screen iPhone-clones. Nice move there. I suppose it's no need to tell you how broken their Ovi "market" app is...
- sasidharm 16y ago
  Actually i blame nokia for the sad state of mobile user interfaces until the iPhone came along

jsz0 16y ago

Google is upping the ante on the iPhone here, though, by adding cloud-based data backup for Android applications How many apps will actually support this feature? It doesn't sound like it's an OS level feature transparent to third party apps. Am I going to have to keep track of which apps support it and which don't?

andreyf 16y ago

Take the current URL from your PC web browser and push it to your device, over the air. If it’s a web page, it’ll open in the Android web browser; if it’s a Google Maps URL, it’ll open in the Android Maps app. Meaning that now, not only can spyware pop up porn on my parents' home computer, it can also push porn to my kid sister's cell phone? Ditto for apps... I imagine spyware is a thing of the past for most Googlers, but it certainly isn't for the majority of users.

freetard 16y ago
Steve Jobs, is that you?
- curiousfiddler 16y ago
  Ha ha ha! Awesome ;)
watty 16y ago
Isn't there going to be security with this feature? I don't think any app/website can send remote commands without having your credentials. If spyware has your kid sister's Google credentials, pop-ups are the last of her worries.
- andreyf 16y ago
  Do you seriously think most GMail accounts are never used on a computer which has spyware installed? You must be joking...
  - watty 16y ago
    A program that keylogs your machine and grabs your passwords is a virus. You're right they are fairly common but once again a "popup" on your phone from a virus is the least of your worries.
stanleydrew 16y ago
The push to phone functionality is initiated by the user.

adbge 16y ago

Gruber's thoughts can be summed up as: Google vs Apple, bring it on, but where's Microsoft? While he isn't wrong, it's not exactly much more than some common sense. I also think he _seriously_ underestimates Microsoft.

tomjen3 16y ago
It is certainly possible that Microsoft could turn around, but I doubt it: they have a huge cash reserve, yes but that is not going to make them relevant. What would be interesting would be if they got an entire new board + CEO, Steve Ballmer isn't ready to lead and never will be.
sasidharm 16y ago
Microsoft will be 3.5 years late to the smartphone party when windows phone 7 series will eventually be released. People would have already made their choice between iPhone and Android.
- ekiru 16y ago
  Apple will be 5 years late to the _smartphone_ party when the iPhone will eventually be released. People would have already made their choice between Blackberry and Nokia.
protomyth 16y ago
The winner of the previous type of computing doesn't seem to transition to the next one very well (ex. Mini Computer -> PC).

writetoalok 16y ago

In other news, Microsoft sues software as a service company Salesforce. http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/18/microsoft-sues-salesforce-claims-infringement-on-nine-patents/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/18/microsoft-sues-salesforce-c...

jacquesm 16y ago

The interesting things here are (1) that microsoft isn't even mentioned as one of the protagonists in the main battle (that's clearly apple vs google, (2) that google has done to microsoft what microsoft did to netscape, give away the product the other party hopes to sell.

nailer 16y ago

> One area where the iPhone has been far ahead of Android is in terms of backing up and restoring data. Buy a new iPhone, or install a major OS update, and when you re-sync with iTunes on your desktop, all your apps and data are re-installed. Gruber doesn't seem to get that Android is cloud based: buy a new Android phone, sign in, and your contacts, apps and bookmarks are available immediately, no finding a PC to tether to. Music and (for some odd reason) text messages are currently excluded though.

buro9 16y ago
I think he does, but he acknowledges that data isn't included in the previous cloud based offering. I was blown away when I first got an N1 (my first android) and signed in on startup and immediately had my contacts, email, calendar, etc wired up. No computer required. No special software required. It just works. What Google are doing now is taking that further and making that include data like music, pictures, TXT messages, etc. So now when you replace your android that stuff automatically comes across. What would be lovely is that instead of just sync, whether we could manage the older devices. i.e: Get a new mobile, sync it, declare the old mobile to be wiped and have the old mobile hear that and purge itself. This helps on the security side, as you could remotely wipe a stolen device. But it also helps with re-selling used phones safe in the knowledge that your data is intact and you're not leaving any on the device. I think it's the next obvious gap filler in the cloud-owning-the-data space. We can move and sync, now clean up behind us. Well, that and the fact that if data is persisted across all devices that you eventually will exceed the storage capacity of the device itself. But I'm guessing that network speed will keep pace with this and by the time we're at that crunch point Google will be able to serve that stuff on-demand and just use the phone as a local cache rather than as the persistent storage itself.