It's hard for me to imagine the "killer app" that can't be done on a platform that has a completely open web browser and a locked-down app store. Google Voice seems as close to one as I can think of and note the following things about it:
a) not THAT many people cared. You may think they did if you are a geek/work with geeks, as I am/do, but your perception in that case is way off
b) Apple's restrictions were circumvented via a web app
c) if such an app became important to have to enough people that it caused concern to Apple, they can easily change their policy at any time to allow it.
I mean, there are a couple of things I'd really like to do on my iPhone OS devices (ScummVM on iPad would be awesome... yeah, I know I could theoretically jailbreak) but these are really minor annoyances compared to what I get out of the platform. It's just a pragmatic choice for me, not a holy war. And I can quit anytime. Really -- my cost of switching away from iPhone is the cost of replacing like 5 or 6 $2.99 apps.
Jiggly boobs apps may be popular (within a fairly narrow niche), but hardly anybody is going to switch devices over that. It's something people download on a whim and play with for a couple of minutes then never open again. Welcome to the $0.99 software market. It's not good or bad, it just is.
I guess what I'm saying is just this: all the cries of "software freedom!!" as though it were a revolutionary political struggle ring hollow to me. This isn't Stalinist Russia that people are being saved from if they're convinced into buying an Android device instead of an iPhone OS device. There's literally ZERO chance that Apple is going to completely own the smartphone and tablet computing worlds. The great concern with Windows throughout the nineties was that their lone real competitor was going to go out of business and they'd essentially be all that's left and all devices would only be able to connect to them and, with the advent of the internet, they'd entirely control the publishing platform of the 21st century. None of that applies at all to this circumstance. We've won: the web is open. Now it's down to games and jiggly boobs.
So all the non-browser apps will always have plenty of places to be built. Innovation isn't going to ground to a halt. You're just as free to buy a non-Apple device as you ever were and you'll still be able to get to all of the same web services as you do on an Apple device. All your documents and file formats are still open no matter which route you go. All the options are good. So if this topic matters a lot to you, buy non-Apple. But all this talk about them being "evil" seems ... startlingly lacking in perspective.
> It's hard for me to imagine the "killer app" that can't be done on a platform that has a completely open web browser and a locked-down app store.
If not, you'd be building it.
> I guess what I'm saying is just this: all the cries of "software freedom!!" as though it were a revolutionary political struggle ring hollow to me.
You're not hearing those cries from me. I mean, I do appreciate software freedom, and that why I chose the Android device, but I'm not crying it. I'm merely arguing that in the long run, the free device will win. Not free in the way that Linux is and Windows isn't, but "I can run what I want"-free. And I think that's the essence of Brays argument, too.
I don't think Apple is particularly evil (except for the patent-trolling), I just don't think their walled garden strategy is going to win in the long run, and definitely not in the end-all be-all manner that we see from the most hardcore fans.
So Google Voice isn't the killer app. ScummVM isn't. But by the time you're going to replace your iPhone, and the list is up to 15 such apps, and if there's a high quality Android handset that's even $100 cheaper, you might pick that.
That's how I think Android will win. The boobs-argument is good, too, though :)
There are plenty. Tethering is a good one, right now you're at you're carrier's mercy. Apps like Pandora that let you stream in the background, when my friend found out she could have Pandora in the car she was amazed. Instant messaging.
Homescreen/lockedscreen status apps--it drives me insane that the lock screen on the iPhone is nearly useless. I can at most see the time and read the latest text message. What about the number of emails, the current temperature, word of the day, etc. My dad travels a lot, he'd love an app that simply displayed what city he was in on the home screen.
If tethering (aside from carrier restrictions) or not being able to override your home screen are dealbreakers for you, you should not buy an iPhone. These aren't dealbreakers for most people.
Instant messaging works fine via Push Notifications. Maybe not perfectly the way you want it to, but well enough that I don't have any problem with it and there's no concern of it eating my battery. Everything in life is about trade-offs. You can't have the good without the bad... or at least it takes a LOT of work to achieve that. Understanding that is key to good product design and sometimes it seems to me that Apple's the only one in this industry that does.
Pandora works fine in the car. It doesn't work fine to leave it running and do something else. But when one is driving, it's fine. Yeah, you can't use your map while your music keeps running. Again, not a dealbreaker. Would be nice, I hope they add a well-managed multitasking solution in the future, but it's ridiculously low on my and most actual users' priority list. You wouldn't know that from the reams that have been written about how we absolutely must have multitasking or the device is junk.
Anyway, all of the points you raised are ones on which people can have legitimate gripes with the device. They and other capabilities may be lacking that make the device not fit their needs. Apple ain't gonna add a bunch of stuff to the homescreen because that's not within their aesthetic. I'm fine with that -- prefer it even. There's a value in things being calm and serene. For me it outweighs the value of having the city I'm in written on my homescreen. Both choices are fine and that's my whole point: unless/until Apple becomes a monopoly (which is not even remotely in sight), there's no reason to call them evil over the App Store's restrictions -- just don't buy/develop for their phone if you don't like it. LOTS of people really, really do, so it's nonsensical to call the device junk, either. There are lots of choices for those who don't like it. And it's rare anymore for things to lock you in (like how it used to be in the bad old days) to proprietary formats that you can't possibly move aways from even if you desperately want to. I haven't heard a single person say that they hate their iPhone but just can't move away because of X. If X being missing is a big enough deal, people just switch. YAY! This seems like freedom to me.
I'm trying to imagine why Apple would give a shit about tethering. It's allowed in many (most?) of the venues the iPhone is sold in. If Android had the kind of market penetration the iPhone did, AT&T would be pissing off Google instead of Apple. This isn't a good example of Apple's "sharp toothed lawyers".
Well they won't approve apps that provide tethering so they apparently do give a shit. The point with Android is you can install anything you want, not being in the marketplace is as bad as Google can hit you back and that just means users have to install it themselves.
> It's hard for me to imagine the "killer app" that can't be done on a platform that has a completely open web browser
I don't want to write yet another web app. I want to write actual apps that run right on the device (or at least on a VM on the device). And as a user, I usually only use webapps when no good alternatives are available.
> I guess what I'm saying is just this: all the cries of "software freedom!!" as though it were a revolutionary political struggle ring hollow to me.
There is a struggle going on. Now, whether or not people choose to see it is another matter.
A struggle for what? To run exactly the code you want to run on Apple devices?
Let's keep in mind that that's what's being talked about here. Apple devices. Apple isn't making any proposal anywhere that says that you shouldn't be able to run the code you want to run on whatever device you choose that's not made by them. There are hundreds of them. Go use them, it's fine. Nobody minds. But to look at this one minority marketshare device and say you're being repressed because you can't buy one and run the code you want to on it is bizarre. Just buy something else. To do otherwise is to join in an intensely stupid struggle.
To risk seeming paranoid, I imagine that it would be a lot easier to censor IPhones than to censor Android phones. Apple may be purely motivated by profit at the moment, but there is no reason to assume that a change in leadership or government intervention wouldn't compel them to use their control over their platform to some malicious end. Spying and censorship are two, not unprecedented, possibilities.
Open platforms (particularly open-sourced platforms) are more resistant to this kind of problem.
I am not even sure what it is (does it refer to telephony, or voice recognition), but I am pretty sure I don't care. I want a mobile internet device, not a telephone.
