Google is slowly cracking "open" iOS(virtualpants.com) |
Google is slowly cracking "open" iOS(virtualpants.com) |
Not wanting nor willing to get into the merits of that idea overall, but doesn't it strike anyone other than me as obvious that it's the #1 app for iOS today because it came out yesterday with much fanfare, it's free, and it's something most everyone is aware of and would want to play with?
An unofficial poll here in my office shows that everyone who downloaded it here did so to, in so many words, "play with it and see what it's like", though nobody yet has stated that they intend to replace their browser use with it.
While it's nice that you can get as much of the Google ecosystem on your iOS device as you can, I'm really not sure that the availability of that ecosystem on iOS is any sort of indication of the necessity of opening up iOS to embrace that ecosystem.
In other words, "If you want Android, you know where to find it."
The more revealing take-away from people having iPhone home screens full of Google apps is why they aren't using an Android phone.
This is exactly what will happen in Apple allows Chrome. They should remove it from the app store. It's against their policies and just like flash in mobile safari (firefox on ios is exactly like flash in mobile safari): All the arguments about not being "as native" are just as true, and Apple no longer has a Safari community across its devices to corral around and for developers to target.
Tim Cook is running Apple into the ground by removing Apple's user experience differentiation. He is creating beige boxes. Samsung can do that. Asus can do that. He needs to take a look at what the fuck Apple even is.
Are we thinking of the same Apple? Because the iPad 3 and the retina Macbook Pro don't really conjure up images of beige boxes for me.
I'll tell you a story about my first time with an Android device.
I went to the store to download an app. And it failed.
Over. And over. And over again. The device emitted a cryptic error message which, thankfully, was easily Googled. The troubleshooting steps required diving into the settings application and manipulating some controls to reset a data store in a low-level component in Android's OS.
Contrast that with an iPhone, which just works.
Apple's value, is, and shall remain, their airtight integration and reliable user experience. Putting Chrome on there touches none of that. None of my non-technical friends or family will ever touch it.
It's healthy for Apple to let third parties write whatever apps they want, so long as those apps don't impact system stability or security. Apple's industrial design makes hardware that's very difficult to successfully imitate, their content ecosystem is complete and richly integrated into their products. Their software and hardware are built in tandem.
No one is positioned to handle the whole enchilada as they are. When that changes, that will be the moment to worry. Meanwhile, they're in good shape.
Of course, they can't allow the replacement of the App Store and continue with their current model but a user that already owns an iPhone and replaces the Mail app or web browser doesn't hurt Apple in any way. They'd probably even have more people buy iPhones (and make 30% on the sale of paid replacement apps). I fear it's because of their compulsion to control the experience from A to Z.
(disclaimer: I own an iPhone 4, iPad 2 and MacBook Pro)
I'd wager that some sort of (limited) "intent"-like mechanism is coming in a future iOS down the road, although not 6 and probably not 7.
I click on a link on an e-mail an it opens Safari, when I want to use Opera. I have to kill all the applications living on the down thingy (multi-tasking), although I do know that they may not be using any memory, but they do feel like slowing things down. And of course, I almost lost all my apps, had problems with my iTunes and lot's of other issues when I moved country.
That's not exactly 'just works'.
Of course, YMMV. And that's why we don't use personal examples to say that something is better than the other.
EDIT: OK, not exactly better, but to say something 'just works' or is 'airtight' and things like that. Android works pretty well too.
Apple does not care about your use case. Neither do I, for any example that describes a mass-market consumer electronics product.
The iPod touch wasn't designed to work with Linux. On the other hand, the Android device in question was emphatically designed to download apps, and failed at it with cryptic, non-user friendly results.
> And that's why we don't use personal examples to say that something is better than the other.
As delightful as I have found your condescension, the comparison wasn't made in a vacuum. The story was an object lesson in the challenges Google still faces in making an airtight UX for non-technical users, especially as compared to Apple. Defensibility of such advantage, among others, was the OP's chief concern.
As a careful reading would have revealed to you, I mentioned the error was easily Googled. This meant that it was, in no way, a unique experience. A third party blog had taken the time to walk through the fix, so common was this issue for a common use case of the product.
I'll respond with my thoughts.
Apple is rounding a corner on it's iOS platform, growing from it's chaotic youth phase into a more conservative phase. We can reliably guess that we'll get a new iPad every April and a new iPhone every August. We'll get a new iPhone design every other year, and a hardware update every year. We'll get iOS beta in April and iOS release with in August.
I love that they've slowed down the rate of new feature implementation: watching the explosion of quickly unsupported Android devices all with one defining gimmick makes me very glad not to have picked a phone with a feature that didn't go mainstream.
To me, Apple is already looking 4+ years down the road with iOS. You can bet that major feature additions, while Google will often beat them to implementation, are already on Apple's multi-year plans. Sure, Apple may be a year late on a feature, or a year ahead, but in the grand scheme of my mobile life, one year is nothing (views like this, I believe, will be more common in the post-youth phase).
As we exit the phase, I'm glad to learn that Apple's support of it's devices these past five years has been consistent: devices getting day-one updates for over 3 years! An incredibly impressive free-replacement program turned decent warranty program. And of course, two years per physical design and only one model at a time means that there is both time and incentive for a huge third-party accessory market. (The incredible third-party support of Apple devices can only come from a conservative process -- predictable patterns that minimize potential risk and maximize market size for accessories like cases, docks and speakers).
When I look at the chaos of Android, I'm doubly impressed by not only how effective the iOS infrastructure is, but that Apple implemented a model infrastructure in the face of competition that absolutely and utterly dropped the ball (introducing version 4.1 while version 4.0 is at 7% marketshare is embarrassing... almost as if Google is abandoning anyone pre-4.0 and saying 'not our problem').
My impression? Apple now believes that mobile is no longer an arms race or a race at all -- it's a core business that will be around for decades in some form or another. In an industry where all of it's competitors are struggling and failing to even bridge the software-hardware gap, Apple has rounded that corner and set its eyes on bigger targets.
So when I say I'm excited by Apple, I mean that I'm excited that I no longer have to play the new-tech-game. I'm excited that my iPhone lasted over 3 years and got day-one updates the entire time. I'm excited to own a new iPhone in the fall, trusting that I'll get day-one updates for years, enjoy a mature support process at a brick and mortar store and a solid feature-set that works across hundreds of millions of devices. I don't have to play the custom-firmware-my-carrier-is-shit game. I don't have to wonder if I'll get the update that Google put out today, or last year(!!!). This is exciting to me: they've made a mobile infrastructure all the way from them as coders to me as a consumer (and every step in between) that actually works.
As far as outside of mobile? Apple will be unifying their product lines around cloud services and introducing their attempt to invade the living room. (Their chief competition there, I think, will be Microsoft, and I believe that both Apple and Microsoft will have offerings that REPLACE a cable box / DVR entirely, not complement it).
I don't even think that matters very much, though – I'm just addressing the concern of the crazy fucker above.
That's some hilarious armchair analysis. Got any polls, statistics or.... anything... to back that up?
Or just stereotypical Apple-is-going-to-fail bs that people have parroted for the past two decades straight?
Apple has remained sexy in the face of mainstream, a feat that I'm incredibly impressed by.
Say what you will but many, many people still buy iPhones today because of the allure of it -- and if what you had said was true (that Apple was acting as as a beige undifferentiated manufacturer) than the exact opposite would be true. People wouldn't find Apple's products alluring any more.
Seems to me that the only people who don't find Apple's products alluring today are the same ones who never have -- and Apple gives as many shits about them today as they did a decade ago (none).
Elaborate?
This is intentional -- users understand that free and cheap go along with old, and users don't mistake their old/cheap device for the new hotness.
Now, with Android, the effect you're describing happens 100%: People buy brand-new Android phones that are free/cheap and get disappointed "but I thought it was an Android, I thought it was better than iPhone" or something.
I think Apple's maneuver here is deft, because you won't see a 3GS owner claiming they have the new hotness, but you will see them still coveting the new hotness (which is 100% the point).