4 ms·
The point you make about the killer app is very true. Halo on the XBox came to mind. I think Google hoped turn-by-turn navigation would be it initially for Andr
by SoftwareMaven 16y ago
The point you make about the killer app is very true. Halo on the XBox came to mind. I think Google hoped turn-by-turn navigation would be it initially for Android, but I agree that (for the average user) there aren't any killer apps. If you get into domain niches (such as medical), that might be different.
- RickHull 16y agoGoogle Nav is pretty friggin awesome. I had a TomTom for the first year I lived in NYC and the last year I owned a car, and Google Nav was comparable on all fronts, as demoed in rental cars up and down the Eastern Seaboard since then. Notable downsides include battery life and built-in mounting options. Notable upsides include no upfront purchase, free updates, constant updates, better information density (pixels per meatspace volume, roughly), ease of ad-hoc "mounting" (e.g. next to the speedometer, behind the steering wheel), and automatic "straight-to-pocket-on-exit" theft protection. It's free, it works well, and it integrates nicely with other Android apps (notably Google Maps).
- kenjackson 16y agoThe problem with Gruber's argument though is there are no killer apps on the iPhone either. He lists a bunch of iOS apps in his story that I've never heard of. There's no Netscape. There's no Excel, Word. There's no Lotus 1-2-3. Today I've only really seen four killer apps on a phone... email, SMS, mobile web browsers, and GPS. Facebook would be a marginal fifth. Everything else is stuff that frankly most people would barely notice if it was missing.