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What makes you think they'll lose in the mobile space? Isn't there something to be said for the difficulty of developing on a fragmented platform? From yesterd

What makes you think they'll lose in the mobile space? Isn't there something to be said for the difficulty of developing on a fragmented platform? From yesterday: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/23/2313245/Fragmentation-vs-Obsolescence-In-the-Android-Ecosphere http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/23/2313245/Fragmentatio...

etherael 16y ago
The same reason that they lost in the computing space originally, which was the point of the article. I also don't buy that android is fragmented, I've read that story as well as the stories where people were whispering about fragmentation before the first devices were even released. Saying that android is vulnerable to fragmentation because of varying hardware features and screen resolutions of devices which use it is quite similar to positions stating the same about windows imho. Also, Apple are being so relentlessly bad strategically on OS X Touch I think it would take a lot less than a technically superior implementation on technically superior hardware to beat them. But hey, I could be wrong, personally I am a very happy Linux user, this would be good prima facie evidence that I am "out of touch with the market" ;)
- ams6110 16y ago
  No Microsoft achieved dominance in the PC space because it was the "safe" choice. IBM PCs were not cheap back in the day, but neither were Selectrics and in the business world, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Once Windows came along, businesses had the choice of keeping compatibility with their existing PC software and hardware or starting over with Macintosh. Most made the easy choice. And consumers who used PCs at work typically bought the same platform for home so they could install pirate copies of Wordperfect or Lotus 123 or Microsoft Word/Excel from the office. Unlike then, in the mobile space, and now the tablet space, Apple has won the huge market share position. Microsoft, Palm, and others have been working for years on the platforms but never quite got it right for the mass consumer market. Apple did. Will Android beat them? Remains to be seen but I don't see this as history repeating itself at all.
wvenable 16y ago
Android is less fragmented than Windows PC's ever have been and look how that worked out.
- blasdel 16y ago
  The Windows features that succeeded most (loosely coupled applications with root access) don't overlap at all with what Android is trying to do. Android is trying to do tightly-coupled sandboxed applications that invoke and include one another. The Windows features in this area (like COM) all failed pretty miserably.
  - wvenable 16y ago
    Yet that has nothing to do with fragmentation. If Android's applications to fail to invoke and include one another, at worst, that's just the same as the iPhone.
    - blasdel 16y ago
      iPhone apps can only invoke one another via registered URL handlers, which can't be overridden — the one-way loose coupling of a modern hyperlink. Android apps can one effectively link with one another with Intents and transclude one another freely — DLL hell. Fragmentation works into it because app transclusion via Intents is the official API for many system functions, but so many users are stuck on ancient versions of Android, many of which have been fucked with by HTC or the carrier. If Android's apps fail to invoke and include one another, they don't just devolve into the iPhone single-tasking model, they throw exceptions and crash.

etherael 16y ago

The same reason that they lost in the computing space originally, which was the point of the article. I also don't buy that android is fragmented, I've read that story as well as the stories where people were whispering about fragmentation before the first devices were even released. Saying that android is vulnerable to fragmentation because of varying hardware features and screen resolutions of devices which use it is quite similar to positions stating the same about windows imho. Also, Apple are being so relentlessly bad strategically on OS X Touch I think it would take a lot less than a technically superior implementation on technically superior hardware to beat them. But hey, I could be wrong, personally I am a very happy Linux user, this would be good prima facie evidence that I am "out of touch with the market" ;)

ams6110 16y ago
No Microsoft achieved dominance in the PC space because it was the "safe" choice. IBM PCs were not cheap back in the day, but neither were Selectrics and in the business world, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Once Windows came along, businesses had the choice of keeping compatibility with their existing PC software and hardware or starting over with Macintosh. Most made the easy choice. And consumers who used PCs at work typically bought the same platform for home so they could install pirate copies of Wordperfect or Lotus 123 or Microsoft Word/Excel from the office. Unlike then, in the mobile space, and now the tablet space, Apple has won the huge market share position. Microsoft, Palm, and others have been working for years on the platforms but never quite got it right for the mass consumer market. Apple did. Will Android beat them? Remains to be seen but I don't see this as history repeating itself at all.

wvenable 16y ago

Android is less fragmented than Windows PC's ever have been and look how that worked out.

blasdel 16y ago
The Windows features that succeeded most (loosely coupled applications with root access) don't overlap at all with what Android is trying to do. Android is trying to do tightly-coupled sandboxed applications that invoke and include one another. The Windows features in this area (like COM) all failed pretty miserably.
- wvenable 16y ago
  Yet that has nothing to do with fragmentation. If Android's applications to fail to invoke and include one another, at worst, that's just the same as the iPhone.
  - blasdel 16y ago
    iPhone apps can only invoke one another via registered URL handlers, which can't be overridden — the one-way loose coupling of a modern hyperlink. Android apps can one effectively link with one another with Intents and transclude one another freely — DLL hell. Fragmentation works into it because app transclusion via Intents is the official API for many system functions, but so many users are stuck on ancient versions of Android, many of which have been fucked with by HTC or the carrier. If Android's apps fail to invoke and include one another, they don't just devolve into the iPhone single-tasking model, they throw exceptions and crash.