Quotes

When you download any app from Google’s catalog (now, with 65,000 apps, about a third the size of Apple’s), you get an alarming security warning. For example: “This application has access to the following: Your location. Your personal information. Phone calls.” Yikes! What does that mean? Should you never download an app, then? How are you supposed to make that decision?

The screen rotates 90 degrees when you turn the phone — but only counterclockwise, and not in all apps. Frustrating.

Inexplicably, there are two separate e-mail programs to learn: one for Gmail, one for other types. Each works differently. Why?

Skype comes preinstalled on the phone — but it doesn’t work over Wi-Fi. In fact, you have to turn off Wi-Fi completely. Bizarre.

There is no way, in Gmail, to change the type size for e-mail. Evidently nobody who works at Google is over 40.

On an iPhone, the free iTunes software is the loading dock for videos, photos and music from your computer. There is no standard equivalent for Android phones. The free DoubleTwist app does an admirable job, but it’s another app from another company, and nobody tells you about it. You think your mom is going to figure that one out?

Stop with jackass comments. I have has every iphone made.

If something doesn’t need to be there, it’s not there.

Everything Android gets right are things the iPhone got right first and still does better. Every “unique to Android” feature seems, at best, a technological demo.

Best I can explain it, Android is how an iPhone would work if Google designed it.

When you don’t lock down the hardware it’s very hard to make the UI perfect. Which is why Apple’s Macs, with locked down hardware, have always been a better experience than the hugely hardware-flexible Windows operating system.

Yes, Apple has rejected some apps for seemingly arbtrary or selfish reasons and imposed aggressive controls on developers. But the iPhone also paved the way for Android and a new wave of handset development. The people griping about Apple’s “closed system” are generally people who are new to the industry and didn’t realize how bad it was before.

Actually, opening up the design palette to users is more MySpace than Bing.

After about a week of using the iPad, I started deleting apps, because the websites themselves were perfectly adequate. This is the reverse experience of the iPhone. On the iPhone, the browser was used only in emergencies, and apps ruled. On the iPad, at least for now, the opposite is true – the browser is superb, and renders many apps superfluous.

Since you asked…

Similar to Zune, Google’s efforts with Android seemed really promising at the start. They took a different approach, attempting to be open from the start…and then went, what? six months without an update to the “public” source? That was just the first sign of trouble though, and the first indication that Google was not willing to do what it took to stand up to the carriers and stick by their original idea: an open phone OS.
Since then, we’ve seen time and again how Google has essentially just thrown this OS out there and the handset makers and service providers are free to do with it as they please… Want to never update the OS for your users? eh, Google doesn’t care. Want to provide a custom, potentially inferior, UI while still claiming the “Android” brand? bah, who cares about brand purity anyway, right?

Seriously, outside of the hacker community I don’t know of anyone who identifies their “Android” phone as an “Andriod” phone. In other words, Google seems to have done a giant favor to the handset makers by doing their job for them and demanding almost nothing in return, including nothing to improve the situation for Google’s customers. If I buy an HTC phone from Verizon running Android, who’s making sure I get what I want? and not just what happens to be most convenient and profitable for the companies involved?

When Apple went carrier shopping, they went to Verizon first. Verizon was the biggest. Verizon had the best network. But Verizon demanded their typical suite of extortions and lock-downs on the phone. Did Apple cave? Nope! GUTS! They said, “You know what? AT&T might not have the best network, but we see this as a platform. Trust us, the call quality might not be great, but we’re going to give you in a phone something no one has ever thought of giving you in a phone, and that’s going to change everything!”
Oh, and Google is no less schizophrenic of a company at the moment than Microsoft. Worse even! They seem to be frantically trying to find some way of earning money that doesn’t involve advertising, but at the same time they seem too timid to really put all their chips behind anything.

(edit: Oh, and yes…dropping “Computer” wasn’t huge, but I also didn’t mention the drastic change of processor architecture, the complete reinvention of their OS, cutting their product line down to 3 or 4 major SKUs…I could go on.)

These things I can guarantee about whatever Apple makes from this point forward: It will be original.

1. It will be innovative.
2. It will be exclusive.
3. It will be expensive.
4. It’s aesthetics will be impeccable.

The influence of developers, even influential developers like you, will be minimal. The influence of customers and users will be held in even higher contempt.
The influence of fellow business artisans such as Larry Ellison (and even Larry’s nemesis, Bill Gates) will be significant, though secondary at best to Steve’s own muse.