Exactly. Marco Arment: Whenever I’ve overheard conversations about smartphones in real life, by “normal people” (not geeks like us), it has always been clear that the true battle happening in the U.S. phone market wasn’t iPhone versus Android, but iPhone versus Verizon. The decision that people were discussing wasn’t “Do I get an iPhone or an Android whatever?” It was always “Do I get an iPhone or do I stay on Verizon?”
Android UI spreading across Google products
Have you noticed Android’s loading spinner on the iPhone? I’m starting to see it in more Google products. I appreciate Google’s attempt at unifying its UI elements, but they are taking it too far.
At work I try to keep in mind that iPhone and Android users want to see familiar graphics, and this is more important than my product enforcing a universal theme.
Thoughts?
iPhone:phone :: Android:computer
The above analogy was an epiphany I had a couple days ago. I was listening to a co-worker talk about his new Motorola Cliq when I realized the primary difference between the iPhone and Android phones.
Here’s what my co-worker said:
“My phone’s battery kept running out quickly. I looked around online and saw someone in a forum suggest closing applications one at a time and checking the memory state after each close. After closing a few apps I figured out that it was some stupid app I downloaded that ran in the background and alerted me every time I lost GPS connection.”
Think about that for a second. Isn’t that ridiculous? It’s a phone; not a computer. His process reminds me of using Mac OS 9 and trying to figure out which extension was crashing the computer. That kind of control and information availability shouldn’t exist on a phone.
People constantly whine about the iPhone not providing multitasking (besides the built-in iPod). I applaud Apple for continuing to delay that functionality. Allowing multitasking opens up a lot more questions. How do I quit apps? Do I need to quit apps? I remember using my HP iPaq and having to manually quit one app at a time when it slowed to a crawl. That was so annoying. It sounds like Android has similar complexity issues. Apple’s placement of restrictions on the iPhone is actually a feature.
The iPhone has remained a phone: simple.
Android continues to sound (and feel) like a computer: overkill.
Note: If Apple in a few months announces OS 4.0 with multitasking, I’ll feel pretty silly in between moments of excitement.
