Breakdown: Android G1, iPhone share little in common - Page 2

Mmm... not satisfied that you have driven readers away from "Roughly Drafted" by insulting them, are you trying to accomplish the same at AI?

Wow! That's truly rocket science.

Shame on Apple not offering Blackberry, Moto phones and other competition at the APPLE STORES.

Duh.

Not true. that's the "menu" button which is button number five.

There is a camera button on one side that could be number 6 but then you'd have to include the volume rocker and the on off switch for the iPhone as well. The buttons could be parsed a dozen ways, and the iPhone is always going to come out as having fewer buttons, that's not the point.

What I was saying is that it should be done fairly, and not the way Dan did it here. It's especially dumb because no matter how you slice it the iPhone *does* have fewer buttons, so there is no reason to misrepresent in this way.

Please either read the note in the article or simply look at the picture. There are six buttons on the G1 face used for navigation purposes. The iPhone has one.

You called me deceitful for reporting the truth. You owe me an apology. What is "unfair" about presenting that the G1 uses a button centric interface more familiar to WiMo users and unlike the iPhone? It's clearly targeted at the WiMo crowd. You read into what was written your own biased ideas that the article was going to be unfair, and came away with complaints to back up what you assumed to be the case. Writing up a personal attack about how the article is deceiving and misrepresenting reality is out of line, particularly since your "fact" was in error.

And if you arent at the top of itunes charts you do what every band, author, artist and small business guy does. You hustle. You send your app to reviewers to try and get a review. You invest in yourself (if you believe you have a hit) and buy some banner ad space on sites like appleinsider. You make a free lite version and give that away. If none of that works - then maybe your version of Sudoko or Pong or ToDo List isnt really the hit you thought it was.

(Im finishing up a game for iPhone, so I have big hopes and dreams wrt iPhone development - but hey maybe it wont work out - Ill see)

-Codemattic

There are many problems with the iPhone I wish Apple would fix or improve. My realistic hopes for the GPhones is that it keeps Apple honest and makes Apple improve the iPhone OS in response.

It would love it if Android is a great OS and provides us with more options. But Google has a real bad track record with this. Their search and ad products are the best. But how many times have they gotten huge press for some product which was going to leapfrog the leading technology? Remember Knol was going to displace Wikipedia? Google Base was going to displace Craigslist and Ebay? Google Checkout was going to displace PayPal. Open Social was going to open up social networking. Does anyone use those Google products today? Are they being updated anymore? Google has a history of making news with products which are billed as being disruptive and then they get bored and go back to making money the one way theyve figured out so far - ads.

You know what, not a whole lot of people actually give out their cellular data usage. This argument about data usage has come up before but no one really posts hard data on their actual usage. As far as I can tell, I'm using about 25MB of data a month.


Quite true, and I don't see the problem there. In Apple's retail front, I don't understand why anyone would expect Apple employees to bring up someone else's competing product.


None of those really work as general purpose inputs for apps. I don't think a non-Apple app can trap those inputs and put it to some other use. That's like saying your computer's power button is a means to interact with an app. In a way it does, but only in an oblique way at best.


To be honest, that doesn't inspire confidence in their role as gatekeepers. I'll try to explain why. First, I don't blame them for the rule. But given their rules, how did NetShare even get posted in the first place? It's not as if the description was vague about its purpose that I recall. If something that blazingly obvious gets by them, how are we to know they are properly testing and analyzing the apps? Do they even run the app?

Apple could solve that problem by tagging certain applications as "Apple-Approved", but still listing any and all other apps. So, in the quality-control case, I do have a problem with making decisions for me instead of just giving me their opinion.

But that isn't the real issue.

The real issue is that any app that threatens Apple or its contractual partners' business model is censored. This is of course consistent with Apple's business self-interest, but it virtually guarantees that any apps with truly disruptive technology won't ever be seen on the iPhone, unless they're written by Apple. So, iPhone developers are second-class citizens.

The various methods that Apple uses to control the iPhone are many and varied. The jailbreakers are of course keeping pace--but they shouldn't have to. If you want to hack your phone (and possibly frack it up in the process), Apple should be hands-off, just so long as you take the blame when you wander outside Apple's garden.

Android and the G1 will never be as polished or have consistent applications as the iPhone, but it will have a tethering app within a few days (no matter what the T-Mobile CTO might think--and if no one else does it, I'll write one). It will have a VoIP SIP app in a short while. And yes, it will likely have some apps that core dump the phone and send your contacts to Russian spammers.

And--here's the kicker--how is the preceding different from Macs in general? We seem to be getting along just fine without Apple dictating which apps we can run, or which ISPs we can use.

Imagine if all you could run on your Mac were apps Apple had approved of!

Funny you should mention that. What if Apple were to open an "App Store" for Mac applications? What if smaller developers suddenly had access to millions of customers and access to a modern shopping cart/credit card payment system?

What if developers knew that their software could be delivered securely, protected, and would not be ripped off and "shared"?

What if users had "one stop shopping" for affordable Mac applications?

What if?

Obviously he is although I avoided Roughly Drafted for it's stinky content not the attitude.

So, RSS unsubscribed. Really can't be bothered with AppleInsider these days. That's a pity as it's historically been the best of the rumour sites, but these misguided fanboy opinion pieces are just too much.

They're just so at odds with what other commentators are writing about the state of Apple today eg. http://db.tidbits.com/article/9784 or http://www.macworld.com/article/1357..._policies.html

Good luck and I'll see you lot on other sites perhaps.

480*320 3.2" screen... "ppi unspecified"? I think someone failed maths.

iPhone ppi:

480 pixels * 320 pixels -> pitagoras -> sqrt((480*480)+(320*320)) ->576.88 pixels on the diagonal

3.5 inch diagonal -> 164.82 pixels per inch -> 163 pixels per inch are indicated by Apple so that means that the screen is just a bit bigger than 3.5 inches (3.539 inches)

gPhone ppi:

Same resolution -> 576.88 pixels on the diagonal

3.2 inch diagonal -> 180.27 pixels per inch

We used Pitagoras and we devided the result by the screen size. Even a 7 year old can do Pitagoras and a division.

PLEASE, don't tell me that the ppi is unspecified when you have the resolution and the screen size in hand:

ppi = pixels per inch.

You have the pixels, you have the inches, you have a FAIL in maths if you don't know how to resolve that third grade elementary school problem.

I could have sworn that ppi measurements are done on a horizontal or vertical axis, not diagonal.

Wow... that's a real fail. Not because it's untrue, but because of ignoring the fact that the result of the calculations would be exactly the same.
Has everybody here forgoted their elementary school maths?
The only thing that would have to take into consideration is that the ratio isn't 16:9 or 4:3, it's 6:4
But then again that's basic maths again too... 480/320=1.5 -> 6/4=1.5
I hope I don't have to explain the rest of the process for everybody to understand...

Sorry, you are right on that.

But how about you? "forgoted"? Did you fail elementary English? If you're going to be that harsh, you better have everything correct yourself or you set yourself up for a big fall.

That's called a typo (forgoted|forgotten) and has nothing to do with knowing more or less English, it has to do with writing fast and carelessly (something I shouldn't do, my apologies). Anyway, even Firefox catches forgoted as a typo and everybody makes typo mistakes every once in a while, even in their mother language. I've never gone to elementary school in any English speaking country and yet I write and express myself in English better than probably 50% of native English speaking people on the Internet.
Anyway, maths is a universal thing, English isn't (even if a lot of people think that everybody knows or should know English). I'd like to see you express yourself in any other language, just for some laughs (this last part is trolling, but I really felt like it was worth saying :-D )

And people forget math, too, especially formulas they haven't used in decades. The issue here is with the way you led your statement: "Wow... that's a real fail.", when a simple clarification of the equation would have sufficed without the scathing judgment.

Basic maths should never be "forgoted" ;-P

I no remember these basic geometry formulas offer the top of my head. I know them once, now I don't, but I know where to look if I did them. If you know all the formulas you've learned through grade school, more power to you, but most people don't, which is evidenced by the show "Are you smarter than a 5th grader".

•

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Ass...TRY_BP2003.pdf

I never thought that a²+b²=c² could ever be forgotten :-/ I guess that I have a priviledged mind? I sincerelly doubt it.

You stated "basic maths" which implies a great deal more than just Pythagoras' theorem.

First of all, I agree with most comments that the article is not able to prove that Android, and specifically G1, is not a competitor to iPhone. For god's sake, how can differences in hardware like G1 not having an headphone jack be one of the reason why they are aimed at different markets.

Secondly, I am amazed at the writer's ignorance of facts, and many times assumption of unverified facts.

"HTC hasn't published the maximum size of the SD card the G1 can accommodate" - it says microSDHC, which has same capacities as SDHC and upto 16GB cards are available (from sandisk), and more theoretically possible (and we will definitely see them soon)

"Android is aiming to target the cheaper non-multitouch touch screen market" - wow, now there is now a market division based on multi-touch! Also, engadget says, with some conviction, that this is more due to intellectual property problems than anything else.

He concludes "but the real motivator in a Capitalist society is revenue, something that Google hasn't lined up yet in its store", in effect assuming that paid apps wont exist, atleast for a long time, which is obviously not true.

The way he clearly assumes that AppStore is better is also not obvious - http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/25/e...g-developer-s/ - clearly shows there are problems on the other side as well. Plus, apple problems have been proven, and Android problems are just possibilities at the moment. Completely open models can survive, wikipedia and sourceforge are great examples.

Why not? iPhone is part music player, one of the fundamental features of the product. Plug in a headphone and go. It's the simplest and most common audio accessory with the most basic and most common audio connector, and you don't see a problem with having to buy an adapter? Or at least you don't seem to. As such, I don't see it as necessarily the same market if it's not really trying hard enough to make itself very useful to people that want to listen to audio.

If Apple did the same thing, I don't think we'd hear the end of the complaining for quite a while.

Or one could look at what Google itself says. "When asked about Android multi-touch, Andy Rubin says software doesnt really need to do much to support it developers just need to write the right drivers to make it happen (Android demonstration during keynote was single-touch)."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/28...rom-google-io/

So Engadget was speculating. Apple has patented some UI elements, but Apple clearly does not have a patent on multitouch. If you bothered to look around at Google's actual comments, you'd see there is nothing controversial about the idea that the Android API left out multitouch support because it was targeting cheaper devices.


Motivating profits are not going to start tumbling in on day one if there is zero installed base, and the G1's customers are all freetards looking for a hobbyist platform as opposed to the 5 -10 million iPhone users ready to throw money at iTunes for anything that moves.


Having people whine about the App Store is pretty immaterial when its bringing in 40-50 million per month. Don't judge a blog by its cower. If you really want to compare facts with bs, you might compare my track record at getting things right with the sources you want to believe, and how often they get things right in the hindsight of six months later.

Perhaps you are too quick to assume that 3.2" is a precise measurement of the screen and that the reported resolution is in fact the raw resolution rather than the usable resolution. Rather than jumping to conclusions based on "third grade math," we presented that a rated ppi was not specified.

With all do respect DED, its not what you say as much as how you say it. Often you articles are laced with hyperbolic fanboism. Most of the time its not necessary. Example: " By then, the iPhone market will have grown by additional leaps and bounds. ". Couldn't that have been just as effectively said "By then, the iPhone market will likely have grown" ?

My comment was addressing complaints about facts stated in the article, contrasted with populist opinion pieces. You can additionally complain about how every fact is presented, but do you really want to read botoxed prose that bends over backward to be inoffensive and in so doing reads like cardboard?

Also, take note that the comments on articles are themselves "laced with hyperbolic fanboism," particularly those that reference hyperbolic fanboism using hyperbolic fanboism.

Sure but don't you want you articles to be more thoughtful than the comments?

Rubin passed the buck. Google has the resources to write the multi-touch driver, but then again they'd have to do much more than just a driver. The X11 mouse driver is being completely overhauled for Xorg 7.5 or 7.6 and that's at least 12 months out.

I agree that Android has gotten off to a slow and not exactly overwhelming start. But this is such a scalding, one-sided article that it really does nothing but inform the reader of the author's bias.

Who said Android was getting off to a slow start, (besides DED and he's to be taken with grain of salt)?

Ars is reporting brisk pre-sales of the G1 phone here.

I think its a good thing. A little competition would be good for Apple.

So recognizing that Android sales are starting from zero and proceeding forward with a critically panned model is "biased," but uncritically reporting that T-Mobile PR is talking about "brisk" sales without defining what that even means, and publishing the story as "a bright future" for Android is a significant journalistic accomplishment?

Your decision to "believe" pandering PR over hard numbers indicates the bias problem isn't in AI reports, but within your own judgement.

In find the Ars article NO MORE and opinion piece than your own.

Time will tell.

Edit for prediction.

I think at the end of next year that the iPhone will be the #1 selling smartphone and Android smartphone(s) will be #2. RIM will fall to #3.

What do you think?

Except that this article isn't a sales prediction, it's a comparison of the G1 and the iPhone and where both are in terms of product and platform viability today. The piece you referenced says the G1 is selling well based on PR, not numbers. That's the same BS that others reported about the Kindle. You are choosing to side with what you have an emotional attachment for. The AI article is not stating any emotional attachment for one side, but rather pointing out facts that underline that the G1 and the iPhone are not targeting the same market. There's not even a controversy outside of the one in your mind, based on your willingly PR-manipulated feelings. I'm not even sure why you are on the attack.

Not true. I happily own a 3g iPhone. Not that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate what Google are attempting to do with Android.


I disagree. Just because the iPhone and Android don't match up perfectly feature for feature doesn't mean they don't go after the same customer. The smartphone market is big enough for both but iPhone and Android are competitors. I don't think there is market segmentation within the smartphone market like you seem to imply.