Android!

[Quinton]

I'd say the single largest factor for Android App Market is device volume.  That, more than anything else, drives developers.  They code for what there's the most of.  iPhone had a 15 month lead in building volume and Android is not overtaking it overnight, though the graph is moving up and to the right, as it should...

[Yegolev]

I agree, which is why I didn't really complain about it.  Currently I don't have a lot of things installed anyway; next up is determining the best grocery-list app and grabbing that, but first I have Other Shit to do.

[Trippy]

I'd say the single largest factor for Android App Market is device volume.  That, more than anything else, drives developers.  They code for what there's the most of.  iPhone had a 15 month lead in building volume and Android is not overtaking it overnight, though the graph is moving up and to the right, as it should...

Paul Graham's counter-point:

http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html

It's actually about how Apple is screwing things up but he talks about how developers like to develop things for their own personal use which means, if he's correct, Google has to convince developers to use Android on their personal phones before you'll see the kind of developer interest that the iPhone has on Android.

[Quinton]

I'd certainly agree that volume isn't the *only* factor, just one of the largest.   Indie and hobbiest developers often do things for other reasons than "what is the best path to revenue", so, yeah, volume isn't always the biggest motivator for them.

For some developers, I think Android has a lot of appeal due to not being a tightly controlled walled garden.  Some folks do like the hardware (there are like 15 different devices shipping at the moment, iirc -- not all of 'em are ugly ^^). 

Certain classes of apps work much better on Android -- for example, listening to music with Pandora while surfing the web or using IM or whatever, which is something iPhone's no background apps policy prevents you from being able to do at the moment.

tl;dr it's complicated

[Ingmar]

I've got one of these to play around with, and there's a showstopper of a problem with the Exchange support - with SSL enabled, I can't open attachments. And of course, without SSL enabled, I can't connect to Exchange. 

It looks like we won't be supporting these for our users until that gets fixed.

[Quinton]

I've got one of these to play around with, and there's a showstopper of a problem with the Exchange support - with SSL enabled, I can't open attachments. And of course, without SSL enabled, I can't connect to Exchange. 

It looks like we won't be supporting these for our users until that gets fixed.

I bugged the email app guys about this, and am told that there is a fix for this that will be in the first software update for Droid, but until then, there is a workaround -- which is unchecking "Trust all SSL Certificates" in the email app's accounts screen (long press on account, select account settings, select incoming settings.  If unchecking that is not an acceptable workaround (I have no clue what this all means, exactly -- I don't use exchange), you're stuck until the first update.

[Ingmar]

I've got one of these to play around with, and there's a showstopper of a problem with the Exchange support - with SSL enabled, I can't open attachments. And of course, without SSL enabled, I can't connect to Exchange. 

It looks like we won't be supporting these for our users until that gets fixed.

I bugged the email app guys about this, and am told that there is a fix for this that will be in the first software update for Droid, but until then, there is a workaround -- which is unchecking "Trust all SSL Certificates" in the email app's accounts screen (long press on account, select account settings, select incoming settings.  If unchecking that is not an acceptable workaround (I have no clue what this all means, exactly -- I don't use exchange), you're stuck until the first update.

Yeah, unfortunately I can't use that workaround due to how our setup is done. Good to know a fix is coming, though.

[NiX]

I want to get the HTC Hero, but I'm getting pretty hooked on my work Blackberry.

[schild]

You won't want a blackberry the moment you look at the rate structure. RIM is stuck in 19fucking99.

[Trippy]

Hence the reason why it's his work phone.

[schild]

Hence the reason why it's his work phone.

Your post and his post don't correlate. He wants a personal phone. He's getting hooked on the Blackberry. He wanted an Android. That implies he's thinking about getting a blackberry as a personal phone.

[Venkman]

I'd certainly agree that volume isn't the *only* factor, just one of the largest.   Indie and hobbiest developers often do things for other reasons than "what is the best path to revenue", so, yeah, volume isn't always the biggest motivator for them.

For some developers, I think Android has a lot of appeal due to not being a tightly controlled walled garden.  Some folks do like the hardware (there are like 15 different devices shipping at the moment, iirc -- not all of 'em are ugly ^^). 

Certain classes of apps work much better on Android -- for example, listening to music with Pandora while surfing the web or using IM or whatever, which is something iPhone's no background apps policy prevents you from being able to do at the moment.

tl;dr it's complicated

And that's sort of the problem isn't it? Android is going to be flavored by the device and the carrier, rather than the one-size-fits-all iPhone app environment (for the most part, there is considerable processor difference between generations). How does this do anything but bring us back to the early 2000s when the business seemed to be more about porting than development based on users having to buy the same app again each time they went to a new device?

I honestly am struggling to see how the Android system really improves upon the average end user experience in any meaningful way. Yea, the TechCrunch crowd loves it for making the same kind of techie-appropriate noise as Linux does. But really, it's not like Apple's walled garden nor bipolar veting process prevents options to the user. And from a business/industry side, I can definitely understand the appeal of working with Google (because they cannot at prsent work with Apple at all, nor would want to cede all their control to them anyway).

But really, how does this help the consumer? I ask seriously.

[Quinton]

I guess if you don't think a level playing field without walled garden distribution models has value for consumers, it doesn't help them.

I guess if you think "you can have any phone you want as long as it's iphone" is acceptable, there's not much point to competition in that space.

Most apps are crap -- on any platform.  But when you're stuck with central control, be it the carriers or apple or whoever, innovative stuff gets stifled. Google Voice is pretty cool -- be a pity if nobody could use it anywhere because all mobile devices followed a completely locked down app model.  It'd be unfortunate if any app that threatened the central authority's other business interests was disallowed.  It'd be unfortunate if even getting updates to existing apps published to fix bugs was a complex and tedious process that could end up having your entire app rejected (retroactively!) for violating some arbitrarily enforced random rule.

Wait, that's what publishing for the iphone is like today.

Luckily, the mobile space is enormous, so there's room for completely locked down appliances and wide open platforms and everything in between.  I don't think we're likely to see a single winner here the way we saw Microsoft dominate the desktop for so many years -- it's not the 1980s any more -- OEMs, carriers, consumers, and developers are all more aware of the pitfalls of allowing any one entity that much control.

I have a hard time seeing choice and openness being a bad thing.  If they are, they'll fail, so no worries.

[schild]

But really, how does this help the consumer? I ask seriously.

I don't think you'd be asking that if the Android platform had the elegance of the iPhone platform combined with everything Android does for the market in terms of being open.

Really, it just needs a giant heavy coat of spit and shine and non-anemic hardware and a few better programmers & designers making stuff for it. The question is, when does that happen?

[Venkman]

Which is exactly my point. Openness is great if a) it's in the right places; and, b) it's leveraged the right way. Purely as an end user, I haven't seen either yet.

I appreciate Quinton's argument. I don't know anyone else here who is more an expert on the mobile industry. And it's not like I support fascist end user experiences as a policy. I'm just skeptical that an open OS is going to solve that problem. Because who it's open for seems to be the same group that created the conditions ripe for Apple in the first place*.

What's being held back by Apple's bipolar app review process? Long tail emulators? Cool edgy tech the average person probably doesn't know exists? What's going on in Flash that developers haven't already learned to do with the iPhone SDK?

Again, I'm asking seriously because I'm not even a novice on this stuff. I'm just an end user whose messed with every PDA since the Casio/Sharp (pre-Newton) days. And I'm myopically US-focused, with only a tangential awareness that the way things work in the EU and Asia are very different. I feel like the bigger problems with the iPhone are due to the exclusivity with one carrier per market than anything else.

Maybe this openness is something that's going to affect more mature mobile markets? What will it actually permit developers to do that'll matter to the average end user in, say, EU and Asis?

*Apple. Ripe. I slay me.

[Quinton]

Things you can't get on the iphone app store include:

Nothing with an interpreter or an embedded programming language.  All kinds of interesting things are done with embedded languages -- think adventure/video game construction sets, programmable scientific calculators, flash, etc.  All disallowed, because hey it might create a way to distribute programmable content not under the iron fist of the approval process.  Flash is crap technology but people *like* flash content, watch flash cartoons on the web, etc.  There's huge demand for it from users, but they're denied it not for any technical reason or lack of effort on Adobe's part.

Things that replicate (compete with) existing functionality.  This has been used to reject mail clients, pod cast players, browsers, etc.  Google Latitude is not there for this reason, reportedly (to similar to the built-in maps app).  Customization (something many end users feel strongly about) is stifled on iphone.

Various "offensive" things.  Wouldn't want a dictionary that might have swear words in it, or an ebook reader that can download freely available ebooks that might contain offensive content.  Like many things, this rule is applied seemingly randomly.

Google Voice.  Disallowed for murky reasons not yet clear.


I'm just puzzled by the people who are insistent that somehow Apple's approval process is a good thing.  There's a ton of terrible apps for iphone out there that got approved and there are a lot of great apps that are rejected.  This is not something that anyone would tolerate on their windows or mac pc -- why do they accept it on their phone?  Especially when their phone increasingly has the general purpose computing capabilities of a PC and similar cost to a PC -- yeah, US consumers buy phones subsidized, but while the carrier lets you use your phone on another network when your contract's up, apple will never let you run arbitrary third party apps on it...

Why is lack of choice a good thing for the end user?

[schild]

Things that replicate (compete with) existing functionality.  This has been used to reject mail clients, pod cast players, browsers, etc.  Google Latitude is not there for this reason, reportedly (to similar to the built-in maps app).  Customization (something many end users feel strongly about) is stifled on iphone.

Apple users don't buy an Apple phone so a third party can provide core functionality. Nor does the mass market.
Google fans don't buy a google phone so a third party can provide core functionality. Nor does the mass market.

At launch that may have been a good point but it has become decreasingly reasonable as it's largely without merit. I understand the nerd "coolness" of it, but beyond that it's largely silly.

I'm just puzzled by the people who are insistent that somehow Apple's approval process is a good thing.  There's a ton of terrible apps for iphone out there that got approved and there are a lot of great apps that are rejected.  This is not something that anyone would tolerate on their windows or mac pc -- why do they accept it on their phone?  Especially when their phone increasingly has the general purpose computing capabilities of a PC and similar cost to a PC -- yeah, US consumers buy phones subsidized, but while the carrier lets you use your phone on another network when your contract's up, apple will never let you run arbitrary third party apps on it...

Why is lack of choice a good thing for the end user?

I don't see anyone arguing lack of choice being a good thing for the end user. I do see people arguing that Android is lagging behind due to quality. With approval comes quality control. Half the stuff on the Android market - whatwith the bugs and general crapness of it would've never been on the app store. Unfortunately, more than half the stuff is absolute trash.

When you open the doors, you open the doors to EVERYONE.

Minimum quality standards are a good thing. Perhaps the best of things.

[Salamok]

Really, it just needs a giant heavy coat of spit and shine and non-anemic hardware and a few better programmers & designers making stuff for it. The question is, when does that happen?

I think the droid is a big step in making this happen.  It seems to be the perfect sandbox phone for attracting the type of person you want developing apps.

edit: More to the point is the droid isn't the phone to convert the masses, it is the phone to convert the people who will develop the phone that will convert the masses.

[Quinton]

Apple users don't buy an Apple phone so a third party can provide core functionality. Nor does the mass market.
Google fans don't buy a google phone so a third party can provide core functionality. Nor does the mass market.

At launch that may have been a good point but it has become decreasingly reasonable as it's largely without merit. I understand the nerd "coolness" of it, but beyond that it's largely silly.

You're saying *one* email program is good enough for everyone?  Really?  One of any program Apple chooses to ship is good enough for everyone, because why would you ship another maps app or browser or calculator or whatever?  That's sort of throwing away 30-ish years of personal computing.  Sort of throwing away the entire point of having a computer instead of a phone and a calculator and an addressbook and whatever.

Better ways of doing things are invented.  Different ways of doing things that appeal to different usage styles are created.  Stifling this is silly.  Why prevent people from running the apps they'd like to run and customizing their device the way they'd like to?

Why is lack of choice a good thing for the end user?

I don't see anyone arguing lack of choice being a good thing for the end user. I do see people arguing that Android is lagging behind due to quality. With approval comes quality control. Half the stuff on the Android market - whatwith the bugs and general crapness of it would've never been on the app store. Unfortunately, more than half the stuff is absolute trash.

When you open the doors, you open the doors to EVERYONE.

Minimum quality standards are a good thing. Perhaps the best of things.

More than half the stuff on the app store is total crap.  *Most* software anywhere is total crap.  100000 apps?  There's no way even 10% of those are genuinely *good* apps.  Meanwhile, quite a few good apps are disallowed for arbitrary reasons.

One thing you *can* do is provide multiple vectors for app installation -- do all apps need front billing in the fancy app store?  Not really.   Put all the hoops you want in front of that, but, just like 30 years of computing, don't stop people from installing the programs they want to install.  I have no objection to Apple having whatever absurd standards they want for their App Store.  I object to them inflicting yet another closed, walled garden, platform on the world for no good reason. 

I think, in the long run, it's going to change, because just like crappy DRM for music, consumers hate it and the winds will shift.  If that were the *only* result of 5 years of working on Android (death to stupid walled garden distribution models or even just a strong foothold for alternatives), I'd consider that a total win.  There's a huge space between Steve's "you can have any phone as long as its iphone" and all the crappy featurephones and winmo devices out there, though.  Lucky for us!

"Minimum quality standards" are one thing.  "Arbitrarily enforced rules that stifle competition and innovation" are quite another thing. 

[schild]

You're saying *one* email program is good enough for everyone?

Uhm, yes. It's a phone. I think in the age of the iPhone and ensuing war we've forgotten it's still a fucking PHONE.

"Minimum quality standards" are one thing.  "Arbitrarily enforced rules that stifle competition and innovation" are quite another thing.

Don't be so melodramatic. Apple may be overeager with their blocking of programs (though, I'm on the side of the fence that says they aren't - what with, you know, it being a phone). Google on the other hand has no quality control and surfing for quality is an exercise in futility.

Sure, there's a happy middle ground, but no one is trying to reach it, so arguing on the extremes is a fallacy.

[Quinton]

To be clear, just so there's no confusion:

- I believe closed / walled garden platforms are lousy for consumers due to lack of choice and stifling of innovation.
- I believe closed / walled garden platforms are lousy for developers, as there's no guarantee you can even ship your app -- you do all your work up front and hey, maybe the rules change, or maybe a similar app ships first and there's no need for your app.  Too bad!
- I believe manufacturers, carriers, etc have every right to ship closed, locked down devices.  I just think that in the long run they'll lose out to the alternatives, or evolve to become more open.
- I believe at the end of the day, most closed platforms are all about securing a revenue stream and not in any way about making things better for the end-user, no matter what story the platform creator wants to sell you.
- I think it is unfortunate that our current set of laws (see DMCA, etc) prevent the end user from doing whatever they like with the hardware they purchased.  While I would not support legislation to require Apple to open up the app store (their store, their device, their choice), I would happily support abolishment of legislation that allows them to take legal action against modification to the hardware or software by the enduser (hey, *I* bought it, it's *my* phone, piss off!)
- Industrial design remains the primary driver for phone sales for people walking in a store.  In the US at least, cost is also a huge factor (though US consumers have some weird ideas about the value of paying more up front vs lock-in for two years, etc).
- iphone rocked the industry by making the software matter and (to a lesser extend) making apps a consumer feature
- I firmly believe that just as there has been some heavy backlash against music DRM, we'll be seeing the same against restrictions on app deployment.

[Quinton]

You're saying *one* email program is good enough for everyone?

Uhm, yes. It's a phone. I think in the age of the iPhone and ensuing war we've forgotten it's still a fucking PHONE.

"Minimum quality standards" are one thing.  "Arbitrarily enforced rules that stifle competition and innovation" are quite another thing.

Don't be so melodramatic. Apple may be overeager with their blocking of programs (though, I'm on the side of the fence that says they aren't - what with, you know, it being a phone).

They actively reject applications that are competitive with their own offerings.  End of story.

Google on the other hand has no quality control and surfing for quality is an exercise in futility.

Sure, there's a happy middle ground, but no one is trying to reach it, so arguing on the extremes is a fallacy.

Actually, we are trying to reach it.  Market improvements are in the works.  Too little, too late?  Dunno, people still are buying phones.  I'm just happy to be opening doors instead of closing them. 

[schild]

iphone rocked the industry by making the software matter and (to a lesser extend) making apps a consumer feature

Nah, it rocked the industry at release because it looks fantastic, looks like a status symbol, and makes everything on it look pretty.

This is where every other company - ESPECIALLY HTC - has absolutely fucking failed. Including the droid. That dpad needs to GTFO.

Everything else came afterwards. Ease of use was more important than actual quality of apps and software at release. NOW people keep it for the apps, but it is 100% not the reason they bought it (except maybe the Maps app).

They actively reject applications that are competitive with their own offerings.  End of story.

So what? They're in the business of making money, and for them, business is good.

Actually, we are trying to reach it.  Market improvements are in the works.  Too little, too late?  Dunno, people still are buying phones.  I'm just happy to be opening doors instead of closing them.

Needs more drastic, less dicking around. I feel like, for all the speed and effort that's been put into Android improving, priorities may be in the wrong spots. Also, having a totally split market (phones with different specs, other devices, etc), may have totally been the wrong way to go. This is, of course, total hindsight. But it's reading epic fail to me in the long run. Android may become the standard for phone OS' simply because companies can rejigger it for their own contract-agreed-to bloatware, but it will not be because of open source developers making awesome apps for it. An entire shift of direction would be necessary to make people think the phones were for that.

In short, Android is chasing after the WinMo and Blackberry markets (or what's left of them), rather than the iPhone. That battle may have already been totally lost. Of course, it was 9/10ths lost in the arena of industrial design.

[Quinton]

I have not been arguing that apps sell phones.  See above where I have several times said just the opposite.  I just think that closed platforms are a net loss for the end user and I feel quite strongly about that.  That doesn't have anything to do with selling phones, which as you point out, primarily move based on industrial design (a point I've also made before).

Anyway, we're going in circles.  Be content in your certain knowledge that I'm misguided and wrong ^^

[schild]

I don't think you're misguided or wrong at all. I think your heart is in the right place, but the harsh reality is that people are too stupid and/or vapid to appreciate and enjoy what's available to them in addition to having no want to increase the quality of said environment. In other words, Android is chasing a mythical animal of a market that doesn't yet exist or never will exist. I think that market can be created, but not with the design mentality the current crop of phone manufacturers are going in with.

[Venkman]

Better ways of doing things are invented.  Different ways of doing things that appeal to different usage styles are created.  Stifling this is silly.  Why prevent people from running the apps they'd like to run and customizing their device the way they'd like to?

Because the mass market consumer thinks they are getting the best. Would they even know the difference between "best" and "good enough"?

Schild has continued the same argument I was making, so I'll sum up with this:

It's not about "choice" as an academic pursuit. It's about meaningful choice that matters to that particular market. And I think the challenge here is that we're talking about two completely different markets.

I feel like you're saying that as much as they've forced a rethink on a decade of closed systems, they could do more. And I'm right there with you. Complacency is laziness, and it's not like the mass market is prone to pushing the envelope by themselves.

Meanwhile, the market I'm talking about is the one that's had to suffer through hasty decisions that lock them into multi-year commitments based on the promise of using devices designed too poorly or inconsistently to actually let them get much use from aside from the "talk, text, pix" commercials for Pocket Wireless. These conditions made the iPhone possible at all.

But make no mistake, the iPhone is not a one-size-fits-all device. This userbase is not looking for the kind of things you fault Apple for blocking in your list of examples. It is instead for the person that probably:

• Doesn't even know Google Voice exists and wouldn't care anyway because the one phone number they need is in their hand all the time anyway.
• Maybe thinks Latitude is a model of laptop
• Doesn't miss a lack of Flash support because it's not like that's caused a meaningful lack of content (the test device and SDK are really cheap). And really, what in the Flash world of crap hasn't already been moved over?
• Certainly doesn't need a programming language. They don't need one in their daily life at all.
  
• Probably gets aggravated when they hit the third page of apps
• Probably didn't notice when Apple dropped the use of DRM mostly.
• Probably couldn't care less about 2600 and C64 emulation because if they did, they'd play it on the far superior computer anyway. Or WiiWare.
  
  

The iPhone could be improved, there's no doubt there. And I'd like a serious contender to come along and make them work harder. But what needs improving for the mass market is very different from what the tech crowd would like when that mass market wouldn't even understand what they're missing even if you told them they were.

[MahrinSkel]

You're saying *one* email program is good enough for everyone?

Uhm, yes. It's a phone. I think in the age of the iPhone and ensuing war we've forgotten it's still a fucking PHONE.

Uhm, no.  It's a computer that can run a phone application.  We've gotten so used to our most portable computing device being a crippleware piece of shit we've forgotten it is still a fucking COMPUTER.

--Dave

[Quinton]

Uhm, yes. It's a phone. I think in the age of the iPhone and ensuing war we've forgotten it's still a fucking PHONE.

Uhm, no.  It's a computer that can run a phone application.  We've gotten so used to our most portable computing device being a crippleware piece of shit we've forgotten it is still a fucking COMPUTER.

It's easy for people to forget that not long ago a 500MHz-1GHz CPU, 800x480+ display, 256-512MB ram, and 8-32GB of storage (looking at what's shipping in this space at the end of the year, beginning of next) was a helluva desktop machine.  These things are running full OSes (Linux, OSX, etc), not some cheesy RTOS with UI crammed into the available spaces around the baseband stack.  They're quite capable of running a number of simultaneous apps, doing relatively complex computation, have OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware acceleration, hw or dsp assisted encode/decode of 720p HD video, etc.

In the next year or so, the specs and capabilities of the high end smart phones and mid-end netbooks are going to blur, with the biggest difference being form factor.

This is a long way from an ARM7 with a couple MB of ram and a qcif display on a basic feature phone. 

To my mind, treating these things as locked down appliances is unfortunate.  Yeah, they should be good phones, but there's no reason they can't also be good general purpose computers.  Once this idea stars sinking in to the broader market, people are going to start wondering why these devices have to be crippled and restricted and then they're going to realize that the answer certainly isn't "technical limitations." 

These devices also use multicore SoCs with dedicated (and secured) processors for the radio subsystem, which makes the "omg what if they take down the carrier networks" excuse for limiting the platforms just so much bullshit -- the same exact radio modules are in wan modules for laptops with no magic restrictions on what software you can run.  Why is software distribution and installation limited?  Because they can get away with it.  Will it last?  I don't think so.

[schild]

You're saying *one* email program is good enough for everyone?

Uhm, yes. It's a phone. I think in the age of the iPhone and ensuing war we've forgotten it's still a fucking PHONE.

Uhm, no.  It's a computer that can run a phone application.  We've gotten so used to our most portable computing device being a crippleware piece of shit we've forgotten it is still a fucking COMPUTER.
--Dave

Forest for the trees Dave. It's not a computer until it can do the phone part perfectly. This includes texting and the phone book itself. We're not even there yet. Let's not even pretend those things are ready to be a useful computer. That's fart in the wind shit. It's very much NOT a computer. It just uses some of the same ideas in the internal architecture.

Quinton, I'm not going to quote your post, but I'll reiterate what I just said to Dave. "Good" phones isn't "good" enough. They need to be perfect phones before we start imagining them as something better.

We're simply not there yet.

[Salamok]

Forest for the trees Dave. It's not a computer until it can do the phone part perfectly. This includes texting and the phone book itself.

I think you have frothed yourself over the edge.  My desktop can't do phone calls worth shit and I'm pretty sure it is a computer.  I don't think the ability to perfectly make a phone call is a sane criteria to classify something as a computer no matter what the form factor.

[Quinton]

Um, some of the same ideas?  Identical more like.  They are little computers.  They're as powerful as mid-to-late-90s desktop PCs, which is not too shabby.  They happen to have a cellular network interface instead of ethernet or a modem.  They have a touchscreen instead of a keyboard (well some have keyboards too!).  

I'm confused as to why they have to be perfect phones before you can use them for anything else?  I certainly agree that there are a lot of smartphones out there where the phone functionality is pretty dismal, but that's not inherent in the hardware architecture (though poor industrial design can make it difficult to do a good phone experience).  

Telephony is only one of many apps.  I don't see why you wouldn't want anyone to develop any other apps until one specific app is perfect -- should nobody have written any other software for PCs until word processors were perfect?  *Are* word processors perfect?

I'd agree that if you're building a smartphone, you'd do well to deliver a really great core phone/contacts/messaging experience and possibly make that higher priority than other random bells and whistles, but there's no need to prevent third parties from exploring other applications to do that.

EDIT: I think my point over the last page or so is probably:
If your desktop computer were limited to running only a specific set of applications chosen by the manufacturer or the store that sold the computer, most people would view that as a horrible limitation, quite possibly a deal breaker.  Given that modern smartphones are quite powerful general purpose computers, I believe such limitations place on them are equally obnoxious.  I think as people become aware of just how powerful these devices are, they will become more annoyed by artificial limitations imposed by OEMs, carriers, etc.

Amusingly, the huge success of iphone and ipod touch and the apple app store will contribute to this realization that these devices are being crippled compared to PCs.  Hell, can you imagine the outrage if Apple didn't let you install any software on your macbook except for software bought through the itunes store?  People aren't dumb.  They're gonna figure it out.

[schild]

I think you have frothed yourself over the edge.  My desktop can't do phone calls worth shit and I'm pretty sure it is a computer.  I don't think the ability to perfectly make a phone call is a sane criteria to classify something as a computer no matter what the form factor.

Uhhhh. What?

I didn't say something had to be a computer to make phone calls. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I said I wanted my phone to be a perfect phone (in GUI, form factor, tech handling, etc) for all those phone-necessary things before being treated as a device that can do all that other shit I can do more efficiently on a computer, or god forbid, a microPC. We've become so obsessed with making phones do all sorts of shit that I have to tap and swipe and pull shit around just to get to "mother" in my phone book. This strikes me as counter-productive in terms of product design. Now, granted, we're obsessed with touchscreens as a culture right now, but we're still chomping at the bit to make a phone more than a phone and thus worrying about it being a computer.

I can only assume you read that sentence and hit quote before reading the rest.

Edit:

Telephony is only one of many apps.  I don't see why you wouldn't want anyone to develop any other apps until one specific app is perfect -- should nobody have written any other software for PCs until word processors were perfect?  *Are* word processors perfect?

I'd agree that if you're building a smartphone, you'd do well to deliver a really great core phone/contacts/messaging experience and possibly make that higher priority than other random bells and whistles, but there's no need to prevent third parties from exploring other applications to do that.

If we're building a smart phone, why does not a single phone on the market have a GOOD email app?
If we're building a smart phone, why does every single one except for the one aimed at 14 year olds have a shitty SMS frontend?
If we're building a smart phone, why does every single one have finicky address books?
If we're building a smart phone, why does every single one have totally abyssal voice command shit?

This is pretty simple shit that every single phone should have let alone a smart phone. So I ask, if the manufacturers can't get it right, why should we expect a third party to?

[Quinton]

If manufacturers can't get it right, I think there's a *lot* of opportunity for third parties to do so.  I'd sure as hell prefer that third parties be able to at least try rather than wait for hardware manufacturers to figure it out on their own.

How many of the key applications that you use on your PC or Mac were written by Microsoft or Apple?

What would PCs be like if only the OS vendors could approve applications for distribution?

Do you think this would be better than PCs as we know them today?  If so, what color is the sky in your world?

...

That said, I am in total agreement about how terrible many core apps are for these devices.  Hell, the android gmail app is a stinking pile imnsho.  I wish we came anywhere near the usability of the 2002 hiptop email app.  Luckily, unlike hiptop, anyone could write a replacement mail app -- will anyone?  will it be better?  who knows, but it sure beats the alternative which is "tough, we already gave you an email app, be happy with it"

[schild]

Nobody wants a third party to write the app. They all want Google to. Just like people with an iPhone would prefer Apple make their email app better or any other app for that matter.

I think it's great third parties can do so.

But that still doesn't excuse the current quality of applications on phones from first parties. In fact, I'd go as far to say that's a total cop out.

How many of the key applications that you use on your PC or Mac were written by Microsoft or Apple?

This is a total straw man. But more to the point, not counting games - the VAST majority of them. I know your point, but I feel like I should ask what it is just to save us both time and energy.

Right now, my task bar consists of:
Firefox, IE64, Thunderbird, Outlook, Filezilla, FRAPS, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop, and Ventrilo.

I'm in Excel and Photoshop more than the rest, including the browsers. Adobe is, at this point, first party.

So, I've got to ask, if Google is having so much trouble making a good mail app and the iPhone is totally closed architecture, why has Google not contacted the Mozilla Foundation and tried to get them to write the Android mail app with their help? Let's be honest, there's really only two mail applications on PCs worth a damn and one of them is terribad. If Outlook wasn't such a stinking pile of corporate aimed trash, I'm not sure Mozilla ever would've bothered with Thunderbird. Now, if you're saying Google put together a shitty mail app so someone else would come along and make a better one, I'm not even sure how to respond.

[Salamok]

No I read the entire thing, maybe one of us is tired but I think if you were to reread it the dialog you have going on in your head may not match what is on the page.  It is quite obvious (at least to me) the droid is more than a phone, pretty sure you can still use it for a whole shitload of useful stuff even if you drop your cell phone plan entirely (voice/data the whole shebang) and just utilize the wifi/mp3 player aspects.

At the very least until flexible/roll up displays (maybe retinal displays not sure I am ready to risk that type of burn in) hit the phone world I don't think it is possible to get what you seem to be wanting.  With the current hardware you just can't have a decent phone form factor that can display a web page reasonably well.  At least with blue tooth headsets and speaker phone you aren't limited to using it like a traditional phone.  From the 2nd hand info I have gleaned the droid sounds like a great phone as far as voice quality goes and that certainly is the foundation the phone you desire needs.

edit: I'm a pretty die hard outlook user (mainly due to the 12+ gig of email I have stored up over the last decade) but I am pretty sure there are a fuckton of people that prefer gmail to just about any desktop mail app available.  It makes complete sense to me why Google might want to focus on gmail integration first and exchange/outlook integration 2nd.