Imagine that it’s 1984, and Apple’s Sledgehammer Gal has just faded away. Back then, the Macintosh was Apple Computer’s big promise for the future. It would change everything.
Now flash forward to some incidents that are less memorable in their visual impact, but perhaps more important to today’s computing environment. Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4, and now Motorola and Google announcing the Droid X.
What Apple should have learned is that open systems work; people don’t want someone else putting limits on them, and that they want choice. The reason the Macintosh never got much above 10 percent market share (and subsequently sank below that) is that Apple didn’t offer a choice. You did things Apple’s way, or you didn’t do them at all.
Now, we’re 26 years later and it’s the iPhone that has all of the attention, and once again the lessons of the past haven’t been learned. As was the case with the Macintosh, the iPhone provides a choice between doing things Apple’s way or not doing them at all. You have one source of applications, one choice of carrier. You can’t even write your own software, which you could at least do in the Mac.
When the Verizon-Motorola team introduced the Droid X, it was a story all about choice. With Android devices you can get software anywhere you like. It’s up to you if you want to take a chance on buggy, ill-thought-out software, third-party drivers and whatever else you may want. True, some of these programs may be lousy, but at least you can decide. You don’t have to let Apple or anyone else bless them.
The same thing is true with the choice of carriers. In the US, iPhone users are still locked into AT&T and its overburdened 3G network and famously bad customer service. Android customers can choose service they like.
Android users also get to go online and download Adobe Flash and use it to access that 75 percent of the Web that uses it. You’re not limited by silly decisions at the top of a self-serving corporate entity.
Page: 1 2
European Commission publishes preliminary instructions to Apple on how to open up iOS to rivals,…
San Francisco jury finds Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder of Cash App founder Bob…
US Supreme Court says it will hear appeal of TikTok and parent ByteDance against ban…
Japanese start-up Space One destroys Kairos rocket for second time shortly after launch, as country…
World's biggest EV battery maker CATL aims to build 1,000 battery-swap stations next year, rising…
Facebook has 'severely restricted' news content from Palestinian outlets since October 2023 amidst bias concerns,…
View Comments
The reviews are in comparing these devices head to head and the lines are very long. So sit on your sledgehammer. This bait link is plain stupid! Apple will sell more iPhones in one hour today than Google and Verizon will sell in years! The iPhone 4 that is available now bests the new Droid X that is not available yet in most every aspect.
So, what is this article about, operators or Apple v/s Google, or just about the author writing something to just keep his job.
True, Android updates arrive multiple times an year, but those are more akin to service packs and even then not all manufacturers and operators officially support these updates. So, please do good to humanity of technology knowledge seekers and correct this lame observation.
Saying things like "behind the technology curve" and only managing to list something like Droid makes no sense at all, and that too with no technical comparison. Is droid "THE LATEST", really?
I wasted time reading this article and now wasting time commenting. Freedom to write is welcome but "Stray like this author needs to be chained"