Google Android flaws pushing software firms towards iPhone

[AppleInsider]

Although Google is positioning its new Android platform as freeing cellphone software developers, the search engine giant's attempt to favor certain developers, technical issues, and shaky commercial appeal are reportedly driving would-be partners to iPhone.

Google has been accused by at least some developers of making assumptions about the appeal of Android to programming teams, who with the open-source platform can write virtually any app for Android-based devices by getting direct access to code that governs even basic hardware functions.

The issue is largely known to have come to a head in mid-July, when Google unintentionally revealed that it has been favoring the winners of a developers' contest with advance releases of Android's Software Developer Kit, exposing them to newer features and bug fixes ahead of the general community. Those outside the privileged circle, both then and now, have expressed frustration that the company is in effect cherry-picking the teams it wants to succeed on launch day.

Without this equal treatment, Google is not only perceived as driving developers away but of violating the open-source mantra it took on by creating a mobile operating system, shutting out many who could contribute to the development process. Some of these have since switched or expressed a desire to switch to iPhone development in retaliation for the seeming bias on Google's part.

"The idea with open source software is to allow early adopters access to the buggier pieces of code so they can help fix them or let people who want to wait for a solid release the ability to do that," says developer Casey Borders. "The key is choice, and Google has taken away that choice and is developing Android like every other piece of closed software."

Even carriers and hardware manufacturers are believed to be encountering technical problems regardless of their access to code. Cellular provider China Mobile, which hopes to have Android devices in its home country, was recently described as having language translation problems with software, while Google's emphasis on an anticipated T-Mobile USA debut may have crowded out Sprint's attempts to get help for its own launch.

For those without the early access, the most recent software kit for Android was last released in early March, or over five months before press time.

In stark contrast is Apple, which has imposed tighter restrictions on what apps can be developed but has given third-parties frequent, equal access to updated versions of its own iPhone SDK -- in some cases, seeding new releases just days apart and opening up new features at the same time.

And for some developers, the incentive to write iPhone software may simply be material: Apple, even in its relative inexperience with phones, is seen as more of a veteran in the mobile space than Google. The latter has yet to see Android on a shipping product and doesn't have the practical experience of producing devices like the iPod to develop a strong user base and sell more third-party apps.

"At the end of the day, developers want to make money," says analyst Rob Enderle, who himself was recently hired by Dell to ease its return into portable devices. "So they're going to develop on a platform and put resources on a platform that will make them money."

Recognizing this, Google has been showcasing Android builds with an integrated software store, much like Apple's App Store, which would centralize downloads and give developers more publicity than if they offered software by themselves.

Apple's insistence on control at most stages of development has kept many Android developers onboard and in some cases may goad developers to write apps for both Android and iPhone handsets, freeing them to experiment with the new platform while clinging to the one that promises them financial success. Without catering to those most eager to write for Android, however, Google is thought by at least one developer as potentially sabotaging its carefully-managed launch by alienating those outside a special group.

"Developers are the driving force behind Android applications, so without them it would be very hard for Android to have a stance in the market," says developer Mike Nowak.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[digitalclips]

With access to all parts of the phone's hardware I would worry about applications messing up the phone. Apple's tighter control seems wiser.

[Wonderkid]

...I can confirm first hand that Google are doing themselves no favors. I have attended several Android developer meetups and none of us have been shown a prototype to inspire us. As a software designer with 20 years experience and some ideas, this is rediculous. In particular as I can walk into any O2 or Carphone Warehouse store here in rainy England and be inspired by the iPhone - despite it's flaws.

[orthorim]

Meh. It's much simpler than that:
1 - 30m apps sold vs 0 apps sold.
2 - The far and away hottest phone on the planet for the last year and counting vs. no phone at all.

This is not a contest.

To add insult to injury the iPhone APIs and dev platform are truly amazing. You basically get OS X. Android is much more immature and even under the best of circumstances would have pretty stiff competition from the iPhone/OS X.

[JeffDM]

Wasn't Apple also favoring some developers over others? Granted, Apple has no pretension of openness, but I recall some devs getting favorable treatment. I think that's all over now, but that happens, I think because of the beta state of the project.

Originally Posted by Wonderkid

...I can confirm first hand that Google are doing themselves no favors. I have attended several Android developer meetups and none of us have been shown a prototype to inspire us. As a software designer with 20 years experience and some ideas, this is rediculous. In particular as I can walk into any O2 or Carphone Warehouse store here in rainy England and be inspired by the iPhone - despite it's flaws.

Inspired? That looks like a cringeworthy use of the word. What is the result of the inspiration? Did you make a really nice piece of art or product? Or did it just make you happy like a drug might and not propel you into actually doing anything?

[Booga]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Wasn't Apple also favoring some developers over others? Granted, Apple has no pretension of openness, but I recall some devs getting favorable treatment. I think that's all over now, but that happens, I think because of the beta state of the project.



Inspired? That looks like a cringeworthy use of the word. What is the result of the inspiration? Did you make a really nice piece of art or product? Or did it just make you happy like a drug might and not propel you into actually doing anything?

Some developers still get pre-release iPhone OS builds before others. The big difference, I think, is that Apple's launch day is far behind them. So even though Apple did (and does) exactly the same thing as Google is doing, they already have millions of downloads under their belt and developers can keep making progress even without the new builds. (In fact, you can't sell apps built against the beta versions of the iPhone SDK, so most developers aren't installing it on any primary development box.)

In addition, Apple never made any pretenses to being open, transparent, and developer-friendly, so there were no expectations to violate. The fact that the iPhone SDK is a great piece of work (despite my personal dislike of XCode in general) helps them be a lot more developer-friendly than they could have been.

[TenoBell]

Originally Posted by Booga

In addition, Apple never made any pretenses to being open, transparent, and developer-friendly, so there were no expectations to violate. The fact that the iPhone SDK is a great piece of work (despite my personal dislike of XCode in general) helps them be a lot more developer-friendly than they could have been.

Yeah I said this months ago. As Google began to add more restrictions to the Android SDK that there would be some backlash because it was touted as being so open in contrast to Apple being so closed.

It was clear Google wants the outcome to be similar to Apple so they've had to close some of the openness. While Apple began more closed and has slowly opened.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by Booga

Some developers still get pre-release iPhone OS builds before others. The big difference, I think, is that Apple's launch day is far behind them. So even though Apple did (and does) exactly the same thing as Google is doing, they already have millions of downloads under their belt and developers can keep making progress even without the new builds. (In fact, you can't sell apps built against the beta versions of the iPhone SDK, so most developers aren't installing it on any primary development box.)

In addition, Apple never made any pretenses to being open, transparent, and developer-friendly, so there were no expectations to violate. The fact that the iPhone SDK is a great piece of work (despite my personal dislike of XCode in general) helps them be a lot more developer-friendly than they could have been.

There are differenes. In other articles, developers complained that the 50 or so developers who did get a build (months ago, which is one of the problems), were told not to tell anyone else that they had gotten the build. In other words, it was in secret. This as well after everyone knew about Android.

Apple did that with a few developers in the very beginning, BEFORE they admitted to the public at large that they had a product under development. This is normal.

But once they presented the new software, and phone, in a public forum, that stopped, and everyone could get it.

Android is having other problems as well. One is that there is no phone standard. Developers are wary that their software will perform improperly on some models, or not work at all.

The one phone due for T-Mobile has now been delayed twice, and is expected to be months behind schedule. This is due to both hardware and software problems. This is also dismaying developers, who aren't sure anymore when a launch will take place, or even if it will take place.

[jwdawso]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Inspired? That looks like a cringeworthy use of the word. What is the result of the inspiration? Did you make a really nice piece of art or product? Or did it just make you happy like a drug might and not propel you into actually doing anything?

Wonderkid - I'm inspired by JeffDM's comment to welcome you to AppleInsider! I think we knew what you meant (but I'm not sure what JeffDM's point was).

[ArthurAscii]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Inspired? That looks like a cringeworthy use of the word. What is the result of the inspiration? Did you make a really nice piece of art or product? Or did it just make you happy like a drug might and not propel you into actually doing anything?

Not sure what he means either, but I will say that the word "inspired" does not commonly have the New Agey/motivational/self-help connotations in rainy old England that it has recently acquired in the US - it's possibly those connotations that are setting your teeth on edge?

He may just mean he is excited. You know, stoked.

[Wonderkid]

Not sure what you mean here. In 1986, I saw an Amiga and was blown away. Shocked by Commodore's poor marketing of such an amazing machine, I was 'inspired' to design and develop a semi automatic demo for their dealers. (owonder.com/amigamagic) The fluid multitouch interface of the iPhone makes me want to design and develop for it, for example, we're considering a clever painting and art application that takes advantage of multitouch and more. Now, if I had seen an Android phone and been 'blown away' by some aspect of it's default functionality - or even seen flaws that could be fixed with an application, then I would call that 'inspiration'.

Or is that the wrong word?

I guess I'm also inspired by the number of developers for the iPhone. Makes me want to join in.

OK, back to work.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Wasn't Apple also favoring some developers over others? Granted, Apple has no pretension of openness, but I recall some devs getting favorable treatment. I think that's all over now, but that happens, I think because of the beta state of the project.



Inspired? That looks like a cringeworthy use of the word. What is the result of the inspiration? Did you make a really nice piece of art or product? Or did it just make you happy like a drug might and not propel you into actually doing anything?

[auxio]

Originally Posted by digitalclips

With access to all parts of the phone's hardware I would worry about applications messing up the phone. Apple's tighter control seems wiser.

I'm still not convinced about this argument.

I mean, I'd be a heck of a lot angrier if I downloaded an app which messed up my $3000 Mac Pro than my $199 iPhone. Yet it's possible to do just that with no restrictions on desktop/laptop apps. So why the restrictions on mobile apps?

The only argument which sorta makes sense is that a malicious app could try to use the GPS without asking permission and potentially allow someone to secretly track people and/or use the phone without asking and potentially rack up a massive phone bill.

However, a malicious desktop/laptop app could use your internet connection to distribute child pornography, launch DoS attacks, and/or illegally hack into other computers. So the risks are just as great there.

Really, once you start to look at the iPhone as an ultra portable computer with a modem and an internal mobile data chipset, it becomes more clear that the restrictions placed on it are artificial.

I'm not a fanboy of the Android platform by any stretch of the imagination, just trying to cut to the core of the matter here.

[TenoBell]

Originally Posted by auxio

I'm still not convinced about this argument.

I mean, I'd be a heck of a lot angrier if I downloaded an app which messed up my $3000 Mac Pro than my $199 iPhone. Yet it's possible to do just that with no restrictions on desktop/laptop apps. So why the restrictions on mobile apps?

I don't think the main concern is with an app causing damage to the phone. The challenge and concern is being able to run multiple apps without any one app taxing the phones extremely limited resources and using most of its battery power.

[ZagMac]

I see lots of developers on here, and I'm not one of them. I'm simply a consumer who has spent more $$$ with Apple than any other company in past 6 years (thoguh if I bought my gas from a single gas company they'd have that title) I tend to root for Apple to built the best, be the best, win, etc.

And as that consumer I now feel myself rooting for Android to deliver a fantastic option. I don't fear iPhone going away, so favor strong competition to keep propelling wireless devices forward. Been waiting for these last 18 months of breakthroughs since 1992.

I'm curious, though, and thus posting these sentiments, to know if that consumer-view resonates with folks working on one or both platforms? Rubbish? Valid? Do you work on both or focus on one? Do you feel like there is room for both to be wildly successful or is this a race with only one gold medal? Just curious.

(And yes, I know I'm a professed T-Mobile fan over at&t, which may shape viewpoint; but I think I'd feel this way no matter what device/carrier I was customer of)

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by ZagMac

I'm curious, though, and thus posting these sentiments, to know if that consumer-view resonates with folks working on one or both platforms? Rubbish? Valid? Do you work on both or focus on one? Do you feel like there is room for both to be wildly successful or is this a race with only one gold medal? Just curious.

The handsets are prototypes and the OS isn't finished yet. I think the prototype handsets are just "placeholders", not meant to define the aesthetics of the device, because that is up to the device maker. I haven't seen any final designs announced yet either.

I also don't think consumers have been handed these things except under a good amount of secrecy.

[wbrasington]

Originally Posted by ZagMac

I'm curious, though, and thus posting these sentiments, to know if that consumer-view resonates with folks working on one or both platforms?

There is a big difference between Android and the iPhone.
Android is not a phone. (obviously)

So the "user experience" is going to depend a lot on the hardware.
People buy different hardware for different reasons.
Some because "this one has a better camera than that one" and some because "I like the feel of the buttons on this one more than that one".

The people building the software for the Android platform of a given carrier and a given model or set of models, will be aiming at a variety of user experiences across those options.

With the iPhone, it is what it is. (few differences between 1.0 and 2.0)
This means the developer has a much narrower 'user experience' to manage on the iPhone.

This doesn't make it better, but if you are trying to make your wiz-bang software work across some handsets that do and don't have accelerometers, GPS, or the screen size is different, or if the screen were to switch modes like the iPhone.... well the more variable handset configurations you're aiming at the more issues you have to consider because of the hardware. (and I realize some are going to say the first Android implementors will aim at one configuration but that kind of ignores the "open platform", "software is available on lots of handsets" mindset that the original Android launch focused on)

[hypermark]

Android v. iPhone is the proverbial ying/yang of whether the best path to ubiquity is to be open and take a loosely coupled view of platform; or to be proprietary and tightly integrated.

Arguably, in the mobile realm (at this stage at least) it's about raising the bar since there are plenty of crappy to pretty good phone options out there. Hence, if you want to tip the needle, you need to dazzle users, which suggests providing a more managed experience from a UI, usability and workflow perspective, which implies deeper integration across device, software and service layer.

That may change as best practices get fully baked, and the anti-Apple keiretsu mobilizes, but for now, HCD is better than LCD, something I ruminate on in the post:

Pursue the Highest Common Denominator
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2...-the-high.html

Check it out if interested.

Cheers,

Mark

[blogorant]

If Google ever gets its collective act together on Android, look out. I'm no Google fanboy but the possibilities and implications of the Gphone are pretty awesome.

In selling MobileMe, Apple positioned it as "Exchange for the rest of us." I would go so far as to say that Android will likely become "iPhone for the rest of us".

I have purchased and configured 4 3g iPhones (and ps. have had to exchange two of them as defective) so am definitely a fan of the product. Think about the Gphone in the context of the rest of the world though.

The Gphone: Is open to All carriers and All hardware manufacturers and All developers. Will be available on a number of different hardware platforms at various price points. Has an open source SDK. Will likely feature not just one but likely multiple "App Stores" managed by several vendors. Will likely offer Apps outside of an App Store environment. Will be tightly integrated with other familiar Google products and services. Will not be hamstrung by an exclusive agreement with AT&T for another two years. Most importantly... The Gphone WILL BE CHEAP.

The iPhone is a tremendous product.... I'm just not sure though that Apple will fully realize its market penetration goals for iPhone when the competition amounts to the rest of the world and free.

[Rmacuser]

I have been developing an Android application and I am very discouraged by Google's silence and lack of activity and communication. It feels like everything got very quiet... no more blogs... no more SDKs... forum traffic practically dead. Google definitely has lost my interest.

Oddly, even though I wish I had focused on the iPhone earlier, I don't think Apple has that much of a better reputation among developers. And Apple's strategy regarding Java is perplexing. They could effectively kill the weakened Android off completely by opening up the use of Java on the iPhone. All those Android developers could more easily jump to the iPhone now and not feel their previous efforts wasted. The same goes for the Symbian and JME developers using Java... Apple could gather that flock too. Very short-sightedness on Apple's part.

[elroth]

Rob Enderle was recently hired by Dell?

Must be his reward for all the Apple bashing he's done over the years.

[TenoBell]

Originally Posted by blogorant

If Google ever gets its collective act together on Android, look out. I'm no Google fanboy but the possibilities and implications of the Gphone are pretty awesome.

In selling MobileMe, Apple positioned it as "Exchange for the rest of us." I would go so far as to say that Android will likely become "iPhone for the rest of us".
The Gphone: Is open to All carriers and All hardware manufacturers and All developers. Will be available on a number of different hardware platforms at various price points. Has an open source SDK. Will likely feature not just one but likely multiple "App Stores" managed by several vendors. Will likely offer Apps outside of an App Store environment. Will be tightly integrated with other familiar Google products and services. Will not be hamstrung by an exclusive agreement with AT&T for another two years. Most importantly... The Gphone WILL BE CHEAP.

Android promises all of this, but actually delivering it isn't easy. Which is what this story is about. Google is having some stumbles and problems actually delivering on these promises.

The iPhone is a tremendous product.... I'm just not sure though that Apple will fully realize its market penetration goals for iPhone when the competition amounts to the rest of the world and free.

Well what is the more realistic model. Starting small and building a new platform over time. Or attempting to launch a widely ubiquitous platform from the beginning.

[winterspan]

Originally Posted by orthorim

Meh. It's much simpler than that:
1 - 30m apps sold vs 0 apps sold.
2 - The far and away hottest phone on the planet for the last year and counting vs. no phone at all.

This is not a contest. *snip*

That's a poor analogy; the very same argument was used prior to the iPhone launch regarding it's competition with Windows Mobile. I'm not saying Android is going to be an iPhone killer, but we certainly won't know until it is finally available in the market.

Originally Posted by Rmacuser

I have been developing an Android application and I am very discouraged by Google's silence and lack of activity and communication. It feels like everything got very quiet... no more blogs... no more SDKs... forum traffic practically dead. Google definitely has lost my interest.

Oddly, even though I wish I had focused on the iPhone earlier, I don't think Apple has that much of a better reputation among developers. And Apple's strategy regarding Java is perplexing. They could effectively kill the weakened Android off completely by opening up the use of Java on the iPhone. All those Android developers could more easily jump to the iPhone now and not feel their previous efforts wasted. The same goes for the Symbian and JME developers using Java... Apple could gather that flock too. Very short-sightedness on Apple's part.

I agree with you on Android. The relative silence from Google is disturbing -- I would have to assume that they are just under enormous pressure and working around the clock with their partners to get the platform launched. I'm interested to see what they make of it, and hope it provides some good competition with Apple, but with the notorious history of most carriers and manufacturers, I'm not real confident that it will work out very well. I actually hoped Google will limit the influence of both on the software functionality and interface as we all know every carrier is going to attempt to embed their expensive, second-rate "premium media services" into their respective devices. For Americans, think of Verizon's deplorable "Get-It-Now" system of rip-off ringtones, games, and media downloads, but on a whole new level. Also, it is difficult to envision how application compatibility will function with so many different device configurations and profiles.

Regarding the java issue, although I've messed with C in the past, I mostly work with C# and Java so I too wasn't particularly enthused to have to learn the intricacies of Obj-C and Cocoa. I would love to see ANY alternative language on the iPhone with Cocoa bindings, but I doubt it will happen. Being a new Mac follower, I am trying to convince myself to dive in head first for both Mac and iPhone development, but after fiddling around with Obj-C and Cocoa for an hour, I realized it's going to be an uphill battle.

[drdaz]

I'm confused about this story. My gut says it's propaganda... There's a lot of accusation and whatnot in there, but what's with saying Android allows access to hardware? It uses a modified Java VM (this tends not to be conducive to hardware hackery), and the Android team have publicly stated that low-level access to hardware will not be allowed (at first anyway).

Admittedly this is a Linux OS, so my guess would be getting some C / C++ code running on there wouldn't be terribly hard, but there's no talk of officially granting Android devs full control over the hardware.

This story is high on speculation and FUD, and low on references for pretty much all of what's said. Google's OS has an awful lot of potential. Given the infrastructure of internet apps they have at their disposal, having all of those fully and seamlessly integrated into a mobile phone is a convergence wet-dream.

I'm really pleased with my recently purchased iPhone 3G, but Google and the hardware vendors leveraging their OS will bring very welcome competition to what strikes me as a refreshed mobile industry. Interesting times are ahead...

[melgross]

Originally Posted by drdaz

I'm confused about this story. My gut says it's propaganda... There's a lot of accusation and whatnot in there, but what's with saying Android allows access to hardware? It uses a modified Java VM (this tends not to be conducive to hardware hackery), and the Android team have publicly stated that low-level access to hardware will not be allowed (at first anyway).

Admittedly this is a Linux OS, so my guess would be getting some C / C++ code running on there wouldn't be terribly hard, but there's no talk of officially granting Android devs full control over the hardware.

This story is high on speculation and FUD, and low on references for pretty much all of what's said. Google's OS has an awful lot of potential. Given the infrastructure of internet apps they have at their disposal, having all of those fully and seamlessly integrated into a mobile phone is a convergence wet-dream.

I'm really pleased with my recently purchased iPhone 3G, but Google and the hardware vendors leveraging their OS will bring very welcome competition to what strikes me as a refreshed mobile industry. Interesting times are ahead...

Nothing you've said contradicts what is in the article. It's also been written elsewhere.

There is no reason why a Java VM can't access hardware through the OS.

But if the OS didn't allow hardware access, what would differenciate one phone from another?

Why would different manufacturers want to produce phones that had the same feature set as all other manufacturers? That wouldn't work from a marketing standpoint.

Even one manufacturer would have that problem.

[drdaz]

Originally Posted by melgross

Nothing you've said contradicts what is in the article. It's also been written elsewhere.

Fair enough. My contention is that the article says very little of substance; there's very little to contradict. The lack of references is almost funny - "Google is thought by at least one developer as...". The great thing about this statement is that it's probably true; there's the guy cited in the article, and that's sufficient for 'at least one'. Brilliant! :-D

Originally Posted by melgross

There is no reason why a Java VM can't access hardware through the OS.

If the VM couldn't access the hardware then it really wouldn't be able to do anything. What was implied in the article was that the Android devs have dangerously high levels of access to the hardware. I haven't started developing for the iPhone yet (I got my MBP a couple days ago - Mac fan since I was 6, finally a Mac owner. Woohoo! ), but I suspect it's just as easy / hard to bring the iPhone to it's knees through idiotic programming as it is to bring any machine running Java down. The difference, of course, is that Apple controls what's officially released for the iPhone, and thus hopefully filters the idiocy out.

Originally Posted by melgross

But if the OS didn't allow hardware access, what would differenciate one phone from another?

I'm not sure I understand why this matters to the discussion, but the Android model (like Apple's afaik) offers high-level access to the handset's features. I just did a quick sniff around the Android homepage and found this:

http://code.google.com/android/refer...e-summary.html

This may not be what you meant. Other differentiating factors can be the handset's physical design, input devices, and even the appearance of the OS. I've seen the argument here a number of times that the open nature of Android means that phones bearing it will be complicated and clunky. This is very much down to the manufacturer and what they wish to do with the OS - it is undoubtedly possible to hide away most of the 'ugly' functionality in Android as Apple have done with iPhone. Open means choice. It's usually a very good thing.

Originally Posted by melgross

Why would different manufacturers want to produce phones that had the same feature set as all other manufacturers? That wouldn't work from a marketing standpoint.

Why not? There are plenty of handsets out there from different manufacturers that have virtually identical features. It's the marketing department's job to brand the products differently somehow. That wasn't what I was arguing, however. This article is about the Android developers allegedly being unhappy with the direction of the platform. The argument was made that developers are, and I quote tfa:

getting direct access to code that governs even basic hardware functions

I interpret this as implying that the hardware access is unmanaged and a bad thing, and this appears to be the way a number of other posters have understood it. I'm not sure that Android grants the developer any greater access to hardware than iPhone. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

/drdaz

[melgross]

Originally Posted by drdaz

Fair enough. My contention is that the article says very little of substance; there's very little to contradict. The lack of references is almost funny - "Google is thought by at least one developer as...". The great thing about this statement is that it's probably true; there's the guy cited in the article, and that's sufficient for 'at least one'. Brilliant! :-D



If the VM couldn't access the hardware then it really wouldn't be able to do anything. What was implied in the article was that the Android devs have dangerously high levels of access to the hardware. I haven't started developing for the iPhone yet (I got my MBP a couple days ago - Mac fan since I was 6, finally a Mac owner. Woohoo! ), but I suspect it's just as easy / hard to bring the iPhone to it's knees through idiotic programming as it is to bring any machine running Java down. The difference, of course, is that Apple controls what's officially released for the iPhone, and thus hopefully filters the idiocy out.



I'm not sure I understand why this matters to the discussion, but the Android model (like Apple's afaik) offers high-level access to the handset's features. I just did a quick sniff around the Android homepage and found this:

http://code.google.com/android/refer...e-summary.html

This may not be what you meant. Other differentiating factors can be the handset's physical design, input devices, and even the appearance of the OS. I've seen the argument here a number of times that the open nature of Android means that phones bearing it will be complicated and clunky. This is very much down to the manufacturer and what they wish to do with the OS - it is undoubtedly possible to hide away most of the 'ugly' functionality in Android as Apple have done with iPhone. Open means choice. It's usually a very good thing.



Why not? There are plenty of handsets out there from different manufacturers that have virtually identical features. It's the marketing department's job to brand the products differently somehow. That wasn't what I was arguing, however. This article is about the Android developers allegedly being unhappy with the direction of the platform. The argument was made that developers are, and I quote tfa:



I interpret this as implying that the hardware access is unmanaged and a bad thing, and this appears to be the way a number of other posters have understood it. I'm not sure that Android grants the developer any greater access to hardware than iPhone. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

/drdaz

Good points.

It depends on how the phones are looked upon. If they are looked upon as Linux distro's look at them, then all hardware functions are on the table.

If they look at them the way MS allows with Windows, then it;s still pretty broad, but less than with Linux. If it's looked at the way Apple allows with OS X, and even more so with the iPhone, then there is little developers can get at directly.

The first is very much a Wild Wild West kind of thing. No rules.