What? I think what you've said here is pointless, because it doesn't appear to make any sense, but the larger point-- that while for any given market place any given consumer might use a small fraction of the wares on hand, they're likely to be using a slightly different small fraction-- seems incontestable, and leads inevitably to the conclusion that the larger the inventory, the more likely any given consumer is going find just the right mix of products,
And my point is that to find that 'right mix of products' you need to wade through pages and pages of junk, which is a waste of time, and as they like to say around here, time is money. You should be wasting no more time finding the apps that you need for your phone than you do updating and running a virus scanner on a Windows PC. A more concise selection of quality products means you can find your 'right mix of products' much more easily. It would be rather a double standard to say it's OK to waste time and effort siefting through the Apple app store, when it's patently clear around these parts that it is not OK to waste time updating and running virus software. Both are problems created by the makers of the product, yet somehow one is OK...
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I'm not goin' round in circles.
We are, because your analogy will keep on changing, as will mine to match it, and there'll never be an end to it.
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No, not true at all. Actually, it's something like over 40% of users have over 50 apps. There was a chart published a few days ago that had that, and I'm trying to remember where I saw it. It might have been in the NY Times, but I'm not sure.
Great! I'd like to see this statistic when you've found it.
And my point is that to find that 'right mix of products' you need to wade through pages and pages of junk, which is a waste of time, and as they like to say around here, time is money. You should be wasting no more time finding the apps that you need for your phone than you do updating and running a virus scanner on a Windows PC. A more concise selection of quality products means you can find your 'right mix of products' much more easily. It would be rather a double standard to say it's OK to waste time and effort siefting through the Apple app store, when it's patently clear around these parts that it is not OK to waste time updating and running virus software. Both are problems created by the makers of the product, yet somehow one is OK...
Lots of people claim this, but it's never made a bit of sense.
Do you worry about finding things to buy at Amazon because there's too much stuff? Do you "wade through" entire product categories just to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy?
Or you do what people have been doing for as long as there have been products? Do some research, have a general idea of what you're looking for, and go get it?
If you want to browse, fine, nothing stopping you. But what's stopping you from using the usual channels to figure out which apps might be worth having, and doing a simple search to go to straight to that particular app? You might as well complain that the iTunes store has too much music, and that Apple would serve its customers well by winnowing the selection down to a "concise" offing of "good" music in each category. I mean, how much time can a reasonable person spend listening to 30 second snippets of music, on the off chance you'll run across something you like?
It's just a mystery to me why people who want to down play the number of apps in the App Store as a competitive advantage act like just wandering around looking at apps willy nilly is the only possible way of dealing with it.
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We are, because your analogy will keep on changing, as will mine to match it, and there'll never be an end to it.
Really no analogy needed. Once you get past the silly idea that the App Store is an undifferentiated mass with no external way of identifying what you're interested in, it becomes obvious that more choice is better.
Lots of people claim this, but it's never made a bit of sense.
Do you worry about finding things to buy at Amazon because there's too much stuff? Do you "wade through" entire product categories just to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy?
Or you do what people have been doing for as long as there have been products? Do some research, have a general idea of what you're looking for, and go get it?
If you want to browse, fine, nothing stopping you. But what's stopping you from using the usual channels to figure out which apps might be worth having, and doing a simple search to go to straight to that particular app? You might as well complain that the iTunes store has too much music, and that Apple would serve its customers well by winnowing the selection down to a "concise" offing of "good" music in each category. I mean, how much time can a reasonable person spend listening to 30 second snippets of music, on the off chance you'll run across something you like?
It's just a mystery to me why people who want to down play the number of apps in the App Store as a competitive advantage act like just wandering around looking at apps willy nilly is the only possible way of dealing with it.
Really no analogy needed. Once you get past the silly idea that the App Store is an undifferentiated mass with no external way of identifying what you're interested in, it becomes obvious that more choice is better.
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
Lots of people claim this, but it's never made a bit of sense.
Do you worry about finding things to buy at Amazon because there's too much stuff? Do you "wade through" entire product categories just to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy?
Or you do what people have been doing for as long as there have been products? Do some research, have a general idea of what you're looking for, and go get it?
Good point. Just with music, movies and pretty every other product I buy I use word of mouth (which includes reviews) and general categoric searches to find hidden gems. I can?t say that I?ve ever just popped into the App Store and decided to look for something going one-by-one.
The App Store has about ~150k apps while the iTunes Store has about ~10 Million songs, yet I?ve heard more complaints about the iTunes Store not having a large enough selection even when it was just a few million, yet with a fraction of that it?s too many. That doesn?t make any sense.
Sunday morning math: 10M songs at 30 sec each is 9.5 years of samples. I think
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
Because all choice is not created equal. In the case of the iPhone, Apple endeavored to make a hardware handset that "disappeared" in favor of whatever app is running, and whatever is going on on the screen. In effect, there is an absolute bare minimum necessary to constitute an "iPhone", with the actual user experience being dictated by software. To that end, what you want is a stable context within which a vast array of software choice is available. It's a "figure ground" situation, where you want the ground to be as unmoving as possible, so that your figures (content, software, media, etc.) can be whatever they want. If both figure and ground are moving, you get unexpected interactions and interference.
No one argues that PCs should all come with different UIs, as a matter of choice, or that automobiles should start to "innovate", model to model, on things like where the steering wheel is. That's too much choice, and it leads to anarchy and needless complexity. Every innovation requires a predictable context, or the signal to noise ratio swamps out whatever good you've achieved.
That's what Apple has chosen to do with the iPhone-- make the "container" as simple and stable as humanly possible, then encourage a great flowering of software to constantly remake the device into whatever you need. Good choice intelligently executed with an overarching plan in mind, in other words.
And my point is that to find that 'right mix of products' you need to wade through pages and pages of junk, which is a waste of time, and as they like to say around here, time is money. You should be wasting no more time finding the apps that you need for your phone than you do updating and running a virus scanner on a Windows PC. A more concise selection of quality products means you can find your 'right mix of products' much more easily. It would be rather a double standard to say it's OK to waste time and effort siefting through the Apple app store, when it's patently clear around these parts that it is not OK to waste time updating and running virus software. Both are problems created by the makers of the product, yet somehow one is OK...
You keep saying "junk" without supporting that statement. Since you want others, such as myself, to support ours, please stop saying that until you CAN support it.
There is a greater percentage of Junk elsewhere, you can be sure. Just go read anything about the Android store apps and you will see that for yourself.
Should I give you the names of a bunch of App store apps, and have you try to find the same types in the Android store?
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Great! I'd like to see this statistic when you've found it.
I shouldn't have to as you haven't given any evidence that any of your stats are correct, but the info of the poll is in this month's MacWorld. The magazine, which I now have in front of me. I don't know if it's on their site or not. You can look if you want, but it is here in print.
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
I shouldn't have to as you haven't given any evidence that any of your stats are correct, but the info of the poll is in this month's MacWorld. The magazine, which I now have in front of me. I don't know if it's on their site or not. You can look if you want, but it is here in print.
20% have 1-10.
16% have 11-20
8% have 21-30
6% have 31-40
5% have 41-50
45% have 50+
That's from a poll taken in August.
I haven?t checked in months but the last time i counted I had more iPhone apps than I had Mac apps. it?s certainly worse now as I buy several iPhone apps per apps yet rarely add new Mac apps.
You keep saying "junk" without supporting that statement. Since you want others, such as myself, to support ours, please stop saying that until you CAN support it.
There is a greater percentage of Junk elsewhere, you can be sure. Just go read anything about the Android store apps and you will see that for yourself.
Should I give you the names of a bunch of App store apps, and have you try to find the same types in the Android store?
Actually, we could go ahead and include the totality of any given product in any given category, particularly in the CE industry. How many portable sound systems are available? How many of them are cheap, disposable crap? How many digital photo frames? Programmable remotes? Random gee-gaws and pointless trinkets? Does that mean that the CE marketplace is worthless and impossible to navigate for the average consumer? Does Best Buy need to strip out all the dirt cheap, half assed ear buds and accessories so their shoppers don't become bewildered and disoriented?
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
Because PC products are commodities. The various companies make me too products that are interchangeable. They are locked in by MS's OS, which defines what they can, and can't do. There is not really that much choice. Buy a computer from Hp, Dell or others, and you're essentially buying the same PC. There are very few differences. Mostly the styling of the plastic.
I have nothing against the fragmentation of Android. It's just that it will no longer be Android.
Remember that OS X is based on Free BSD. But does anyone call it Free BSD? No. Why? Because it's so much more, and the BSD is unrecognizable.
When Android phones get to that point, and they will in a couple of years or so, they won't be Android phones anymore. They'll be Android based phones which is a very different thing. Then no one will be talking about Android. It will be forgotten. People will be talking about Motorola, HTC, Verizon (who gives its own names and features to the phones), and whomever else will be basing their own OS on it.
They won't be compatible. Then we'll have Nokia, RIM, Apple, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony/Ericsson (if they're still around), Palm (if they're still around), Microsoft (if they're still around), and a bunch of others
Apple and the rest won't be competing against Android phones, because there won't be any any longer. Hard as it is to believe it, I really don't think that Google's management understood this when they were planning the "big takeover".
I haven’t checked in months but the last time i counted I had more iPhone apps than I had Mac apps. it’s certainly worse now as I buy several iPhone apps per apps yet rarely add new Mac apps.
Even my wife, who has taken up new apps slowly, now has two dozen or so. My daughter has two iPhones. One for here, and one for the UK. Between them, because a fair number of the apps are different, she has almost 80.
At last count, I had 104.
Everyone I know with an iPhone, and that's a LOT of people, has at least a dozen when I last asked them (friends and acquaintances are used to my polling them about various matters).
It would be interesting to take some kind of broad poll on exactly which apps people have installed. My guess is that would be substantial overlap for the first 50% or so, and then increasing divergence for each additional 10%, until you get that last 10% that's comprised of very low adoption rate apps that happen to work for a particular person.
It's that last 10 or 20 percent that make the case for having as many apps as possible to choose from.
Actually, we could go ahead and include the totality of any given product in any given category, particularly in the CE industry. How many portable sound systems are available? How many of them are cheap, disposable crap? How many digital photo frames? Programmable remotes? Random gee-gaws and pointless trinkets? Does that mean that the CE marketplace is worthless and impossible to navigate for the average consumer? Does Best Buy need to strip out all the dirt cheap, half assed ear buds and accessories so their shoppers don't become bewildered and disoriented?
There's no doubt that there are a lot of apps that aren't high quality, though because of the review process, I've seen a lot get better over time, and the reviews reflect that. I'd like to see an average of all the reviews for all apps to know what that average rating is.
But a lot of the apps are very specialized, and so there are people who think that the app is worthless when it's not. I have some apps like that. One of them is Roman. It "translates" Roman numerals to base 10, and visa versa. That's all it does, and I find it useful.
It would be interesting to take some kind of broad poll on exactly which apps people have installed. My guess is that would be substantial overlap for the first 50% or so, and then increasing divergence for each additional 10%, until you get that last 10% that's comprised of very low adoption rate apps that happen to work for a particular person.
It's that last 10 or 20 percent that make the case for having as many apps as possible to choose from.
That's exactly right.
no one would suggest that all we need is 10,000 songs, because that would cover all the types of songs we need. That would be silly. Besides, even some of what we might consider poor songs are bought by people.
The great event of the iPhone/Touch and App Store was to democratize the process. Make it easy enough for everyone who could program to write a program and get in on the device.
Sure that means that there will be poorly written programs, but anyone who says that the average program somewhere else is better, best think again.
One of the biggest complaints about the Android store is that developers are having a hard time monetizing their work. It seems that a much lower percentage of programs "bought" there are paid when compared to the App Store. That will also be a problem for them going forward. free is nice and all, but a lot of these guys need to be paid for it.
That's not the point. The point is that when an app is coded for a high amount of information density, it won't work properly on a much lower resolution screen. Not because it can't work, but because all that information can no longer be shown. Fine detailed text, for example, will be lost below the ability of the screen to resolve it. The program interface will have to be reworked for the different resolutions if they are too different. Apple will have a similar problem if they don't raise the rez on their iPhones and Touches in conjunction with a tablet release.
This means that the developer will need to have three different versions of the entire GUI for the program. Much more work, because the program was written and designed for that one resolution, and depending on the program, may not work well on a screen with a much lower resolution.
Google has no control over what these resolutions will be, or the cpu and gpu power behind them.
Apple has one standard for each entire generation of devices. So, at least, all currently selling devices will be coded for the same way. People owning older devices will understand that theirs will no longer be optimal. Apple will need to raise the rez, but likely only once, as there's no point going past a certain rez for such small screens.
It's why OS X's GUI couldn't work on a phone, and why, among other reasons, Win Mobile is so difficult to use.
But screen rez is only one among a list of differences between phones that Google will have no control over.
Palm is going to have a similar problem, but to a lessor extent. Already, the Pre and Pixi have different rez's. The Pixi can't display everything on the screen at once, or at a high enough rez. If they license the OS, as some have speculated they might, then they could be in the same boat Google is, unless they are stricter about how the hardware will be made.
So the point that Google has simplified the resolutions to be one of 3 major categories and has the OS automatically scale for images and text isn't the point?
As Jeff (the developer quoted) says it's only a few minutes extra work to include image support. Nothing more than a diligent developer would have done in the first place. Also see the screenshot of one of his apps being displayed on all 3 screen sizes. Looks to me that the images scaled right and to the right location and the text isn't affected at all.
As I've said, all the recent Android phones officially announced for release (read: not speculated) have resolutions that fall into one of those 3 sizes.
So the point that Google has simplified the resolutions to be one of 3 major categories and has the OS automatically scale for images and text isn't the point?
As Jeff (the developer quoted) says it's only a few minutes extra work to include image support. Nothing more than a diligent developer would have done in the first place. Also see the screenshot of one of his apps being displayed on all 3 screen sizes. Looks to me that the images scaled right and to the right location and the text isn't affected at all.
As I've said, all the recent Android phones officially announced for release (read: not speculated) have resolutions that fall into one of those 3 sizes.
Simplifying resolution changes are easy when you are dealing with the same size and aspect ratio. Change these up along with resolution and the situation becomes more complex. This is not as simple as Android devs try to make it out to be. Remember, these aren?t windows apps like on a desktop OS and it?s right out of the gate. This won?t be so pretty in a couple years. I suspect we?ll eventually see HW vendors standardizing within their own product line to establish some resemblance to order.
Simplifying resolution changes are easy when you are dealing with the same size and aspect ratio. Change these up along with resolution and the situation becomes more complex. This is not as simple as Android devs try to make it out to be. Remember, these aren?t windows apps like on a desktop OS and it?s right out of the gate. This won?t be so pretty in a couple years. I suspect we?ll eventually see HW vendors standardizing within their own product line to establish some resemblance to order.
Completely understandable. But so far, the Android devs have had to only deal with those 3 resolutions on the "major player" handsets. Yes, going wild and changing the resolution will make things complex, but the industry itself seems to have standardized itself in a way. I believe, like you, that Google will (most likely already has) talk to the manufacturers to those 3 sizes.
Could there be a device with a weird 325x784 resolution? Sure, there's nothing to stop a production of that screen (besides cost). But wouldn't that become a self-addressing issue? Chances are it won't become popular and then get dropped and the devs won't have to worry about accounting for that weird resolution.
Comments
What? I think what you've said here is pointless, because it doesn't appear to make any sense, but the larger point-- that while for any given market place any given consumer might use a small fraction of the wares on hand, they're likely to be using a slightly different small fraction-- seems incontestable, and leads inevitably to the conclusion that the larger the inventory, the more likely any given consumer is going find just the right mix of products,
And my point is that to find that 'right mix of products' you need to wade through pages and pages of junk, which is a waste of time, and as they like to say around here, time is money. You should be wasting no more time finding the apps that you need for your phone than you do updating and running a virus scanner on a Windows PC. A more concise selection of quality products means you can find your 'right mix of products' much more easily. It would be rather a double standard to say it's OK to waste time and effort siefting through the Apple app store, when it's patently clear around these parts that it is not OK to waste time updating and running virus software. Both are problems created by the makers of the product, yet somehow one is OK...
I'm not goin' round in circles.
We are, because your analogy will keep on changing, as will mine to match it, and there'll never be an end to it.
No, not true at all. Actually, it's something like over 40% of users have over 50 apps. There was a chart published a few days ago that had that, and I'm trying to remember where I saw it. It might have been in the NY Times, but I'm not sure.
Great! I'd like to see this statistic when you've found it.
And my point is that to find that 'right mix of products' you need to wade through pages and pages of junk, which is a waste of time, and as they like to say around here, time is money. You should be wasting no more time finding the apps that you need for your phone than you do updating and running a virus scanner on a Windows PC. A more concise selection of quality products means you can find your 'right mix of products' much more easily. It would be rather a double standard to say it's OK to waste time and effort siefting through the Apple app store, when it's patently clear around these parts that it is not OK to waste time updating and running virus software. Both are problems created by the makers of the product, yet somehow one is OK...
Lots of people claim this, but it's never made a bit of sense.
Do you worry about finding things to buy at Amazon because there's too much stuff? Do you "wade through" entire product categories just to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy?
Or you do what people have been doing for as long as there have been products? Do some research, have a general idea of what you're looking for, and go get it?
If you want to browse, fine, nothing stopping you. But what's stopping you from using the usual channels to figure out which apps might be worth having, and doing a simple search to go to straight to that particular app? You might as well complain that the iTunes store has too much music, and that Apple would serve its customers well by winnowing the selection down to a "concise" offing of "good" music in each category. I mean, how much time can a reasonable person spend listening to 30 second snippets of music, on the off chance you'll run across something you like?
It's just a mystery to me why people who want to down play the number of apps in the App Store as a competitive advantage act like just wandering around looking at apps willy nilly is the only possible way of dealing with it.
We are, because your analogy will keep on changing, as will mine to match it, and there'll never be an end to it.
Really no analogy needed. Once you get past the silly idea that the App Store is an undifferentiated mass with no external way of identifying what you're interested in, it becomes obvious that more choice is better.
Lots of people claim this, but it's never made a bit of sense.
Do you worry about finding things to buy at Amazon because there's too much stuff? Do you "wade through" entire product categories just to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy?
Or you do what people have been doing for as long as there have been products? Do some research, have a general idea of what you're looking for, and go get it?
If you want to browse, fine, nothing stopping you. But what's stopping you from using the usual channels to figure out which apps might be worth having, and doing a simple search to go to straight to that particular app? You might as well complain that the iTunes store has too much music, and that Apple would serve its customers well by winnowing the selection down to a "concise" offing of "good" music in each category. I mean, how much time can a reasonable person spend listening to 30 second snippets of music, on the off chance you'll run across something you like?
It's just a mystery to me why people who want to down play the number of apps in the App Store as a competitive advantage act like just wandering around looking at apps willy nilly is the only possible way of dealing with it.
Really no analogy needed. Once you get past the silly idea that the App Store is an undifferentiated mass with no external way of identifying what you're interested in, it becomes obvious that more choice is better.
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
Lots of people claim this, but it's never made a bit of sense.
Do you worry about finding things to buy at Amazon because there's too much stuff? Do you "wade through" entire product categories just to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy?
Or you do what people have been doing for as long as there have been products? Do some research, have a general idea of what you're looking for, and go get it?
Good point. Just with music, movies and pretty every other product I buy I use word of mouth (which includes reviews) and general categoric searches to find hidden gems. I can?t say that I?ve ever just popped into the App Store and decided to look for something going one-by-one.
The App Store has about ~150k apps while the iTunes Store has about ~10 Million songs, yet I?ve heard more complaints about the iTunes Store not having a large enough selection even when it was just a few million, yet with a fraction of that it?s too many. That doesn?t make any sense.
Sunday morning math: 10M songs at 30 sec each is 9.5 years of samples. I think
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
Because all choice is not created equal. In the case of the iPhone, Apple endeavored to make a hardware handset that "disappeared" in favor of whatever app is running, and whatever is going on on the screen. In effect, there is an absolute bare minimum necessary to constitute an "iPhone", with the actual user experience being dictated by software. To that end, what you want is a stable context within which a vast array of software choice is available. It's a "figure ground" situation, where you want the ground to be as unmoving as possible, so that your figures (content, software, media, etc.) can be whatever they want. If both figure and ground are moving, you get unexpected interactions and interference.
No one argues that PCs should all come with different UIs, as a matter of choice, or that automobiles should start to "innovate", model to model, on things like where the steering wheel is. That's too much choice, and it leads to anarchy and needless complexity. Every innovation requires a predictable context, or the signal to noise ratio swamps out whatever good you've achieved.
That's what Apple has chosen to do with the iPhone-- make the "container" as simple and stable as humanly possible, then encourage a great flowering of software to constantly remake the device into whatever you need. Good choice intelligently executed with an overarching plan in mind, in other words.
And my point is that to find that 'right mix of products' you need to wade through pages and pages of junk, which is a waste of time, and as they like to say around here, time is money. You should be wasting no more time finding the apps that you need for your phone than you do updating and running a virus scanner on a Windows PC. A more concise selection of quality products means you can find your 'right mix of products' much more easily. It would be rather a double standard to say it's OK to waste time and effort siefting through the Apple app store, when it's patently clear around these parts that it is not OK to waste time updating and running virus software. Both are problems created by the makers of the product, yet somehow one is OK...
You keep saying "junk" without supporting that statement. Since you want others, such as myself, to support ours, please stop saying that until you CAN support it.
There is a greater percentage of Junk elsewhere, you can be sure. Just go read anything about the Android store apps and you will see that for yourself.
Should I give you the names of a bunch of App store apps, and have you try to find the same types in the Android store?
Great! I'd like to see this statistic when you've found it.
I shouldn't have to as you haven't given any evidence that any of your stats are correct, but the info of the poll is in this month's MacWorld. The magazine, which I now have in front of me. I don't know if it's on their site or not. You can look if you want, but it is here in print.
20% have 1-10.
16% have 11-20
8% have 21-30
6% have 31-40
5% have 41-50
45% have 50+
That's from a poll taken in August.
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
That is a ridiculous argument on so many levels.
I shouldn't have to as you haven't given any evidence that any of your stats are correct, but the info of the poll is in this month's MacWorld. The magazine, which I now have in front of me. I don't know if it's on their site or not. You can look if you want, but it is here in print.
20% have 1-10.
16% have 11-20
8% have 21-30
6% have 31-40
5% have 41-50
45% have 50+
That's from a poll taken in August.
I haven?t checked in months but the last time i counted I had more iPhone apps than I had Mac apps. it?s certainly worse now as I buy several iPhone apps per apps yet rarely add new Mac apps.
You keep saying "junk" without supporting that statement. Since you want others, such as myself, to support ours, please stop saying that until you CAN support it.
There is a greater percentage of Junk elsewhere, you can be sure. Just go read anything about the Android store apps and you will see that for yourself.
Should I give you the names of a bunch of App store apps, and have you try to find the same types in the Android store?
Actually, we could go ahead and include the totality of any given product in any given category, particularly in the CE industry. How many portable sound systems are available? How many of them are cheap, disposable crap? How many digital photo frames? Programmable remotes? Random gee-gaws and pointless trinkets? Does that mean that the CE marketplace is worthless and impossible to navigate for the average consumer? Does Best Buy need to strip out all the dirt cheap, half assed ear buds and accessories so their shoppers don't become bewildered and disoriented?
Yes, it's completely ridiculous, but I'm only highlighting the double standard. If more choice is better, then why is it that we see people so vehemently support Apple's locked down OS, and their slim selection of hardware products? Why is it Dell, Microsoft and Google are constantly bashed for giving us 'more choice'? The great Android fragmentation, and so on and so forth. But wait, I'm confused, because I thought 'more choice is better'? Hmmmm, sounds a little too fishy to me, and just goes to show that as soon as an Apple logo is slapped on it, it's OK.
Because PC products are commodities. The various companies make me too products that are interchangeable. They are locked in by MS's OS, which defines what they can, and can't do. There is not really that much choice. Buy a computer from Hp, Dell or others, and you're essentially buying the same PC. There are very few differences. Mostly the styling of the plastic.
I have nothing against the fragmentation of Android. It's just that it will no longer be Android.
Remember that OS X is based on Free BSD. But does anyone call it Free BSD? No. Why? Because it's so much more, and the BSD is unrecognizable.
When Android phones get to that point, and they will in a couple of years or so, they won't be Android phones anymore. They'll be Android based phones which is a very different thing. Then no one will be talking about Android. It will be forgotten. People will be talking about Motorola, HTC, Verizon (who gives its own names and features to the phones), and whomever else will be basing their own OS on it.
They won't be compatible. Then we'll have Nokia, RIM, Apple, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony/Ericsson (if they're still around), Palm (if they're still around), Microsoft (if they're still around), and a bunch of others
Apple and the rest won't be competing against Android phones, because there won't be any any longer. Hard as it is to believe it, I really don't think that Google's management understood this when they were planning the "big takeover".
I haven’t checked in months but the last time i counted I had more iPhone apps than I had Mac apps. it’s certainly worse now as I buy several iPhone apps per apps yet rarely add new Mac apps.
Even my wife, who has taken up new apps slowly, now has two dozen or so. My daughter has two iPhones. One for here, and one for the UK. Between them, because a fair number of the apps are different, she has almost 80.
At last count, I had 104.
Everyone I know with an iPhone, and that's a LOT of people, has at least a dozen when I last asked them (friends and acquaintances are used to my polling them about various matters).
About a third of the apps are paid versions.
It's that last 10 or 20 percent that make the case for having as many apps as possible to choose from.
Actually, we could go ahead and include the totality of any given product in any given category, particularly in the CE industry. How many portable sound systems are available? How many of them are cheap, disposable crap? How many digital photo frames? Programmable remotes? Random gee-gaws and pointless trinkets? Does that mean that the CE marketplace is worthless and impossible to navigate for the average consumer? Does Best Buy need to strip out all the dirt cheap, half assed ear buds and accessories so their shoppers don't become bewildered and disoriented?
There's no doubt that there are a lot of apps that aren't high quality, though because of the review process, I've seen a lot get better over time, and the reviews reflect that. I'd like to see an average of all the reviews for all apps to know what that average rating is.
But a lot of the apps are very specialized, and so there are people who think that the app is worthless when it's not. I have some apps like that. One of them is Roman. It "translates" Roman numerals to base 10, and visa versa. That's all it does, and I find it useful.
It would be interesting to take some kind of broad poll on exactly which apps people have installed. My guess is that would be substantial overlap for the first 50% or so, and then increasing divergence for each additional 10%, until you get that last 10% that's comprised of very low adoption rate apps that happen to work for a particular person.
It's that last 10 or 20 percent that make the case for having as many apps as possible to choose from.
That's exactly right.
no one would suggest that all we need is 10,000 songs, because that would cover all the types of songs we need. That would be silly. Besides, even some of what we might consider poor songs are bought by people.
The great event of the iPhone/Touch and App Store was to democratize the process. Make it easy enough for everyone who could program to write a program and get in on the device.
Sure that means that there will be poorly written programs, but anyone who says that the average program somewhere else is better, best think again.
One of the biggest complaints about the Android store is that developers are having a hard time monetizing their work. It seems that a much lower percentage of programs "bought" there are paid when compared to the App Store. That will also be a problem for them going forward. free is nice and all, but a lot of these guys need to be paid for it.
That's not the point. The point is that when an app is coded for a high amount of information density, it won't work properly on a much lower resolution screen. Not because it can't work, but because all that information can no longer be shown. Fine detailed text, for example, will be lost below the ability of the screen to resolve it. The program interface will have to be reworked for the different resolutions if they are too different. Apple will have a similar problem if they don't raise the rez on their iPhones and Touches in conjunction with a tablet release.
This means that the developer will need to have three different versions of the entire GUI for the program. Much more work, because the program was written and designed for that one resolution, and depending on the program, may not work well on a screen with a much lower resolution.
Google has no control over what these resolutions will be, or the cpu and gpu power behind them.
Apple has one standard for each entire generation of devices. So, at least, all currently selling devices will be coded for the same way. People owning older devices will understand that theirs will no longer be optimal. Apple will need to raise the rez, but likely only once, as there's no point going past a certain rez for such small screens.
It's why OS X's GUI couldn't work on a phone, and why, among other reasons, Win Mobile is so difficult to use.
But screen rez is only one among a list of differences between phones that Google will have no control over.
Palm is going to have a similar problem, but to a lessor extent. Already, the Pre and Pixi have different rez's. The Pixi can't display everything on the screen at once, or at a high enough rez. If they license the OS, as some have speculated they might, then they could be in the same boat Google is, unless they are stricter about how the hardware will be made.
So the point that Google has simplified the resolutions to be one of 3 major categories and has the OS automatically scale for images and text isn't the point?
http://www.phandroid.com/2009/10/20/...droid-rebuttal
As Jeff (the developer quoted) says it's only a few minutes extra work to include image support. Nothing more than a diligent developer would have done in the first place. Also see the screenshot of one of his apps being displayed on all 3 screen sizes. Looks to me that the images scaled right and to the right location and the text isn't affected at all.
As I've said, all the recent Android phones officially announced for release (read: not speculated) have resolutions that fall into one of those 3 sizes.
So the point that Google has simplified the resolutions to be one of 3 major categories and has the OS automatically scale for images and text isn't the point?
http://www.phandroid.com/2009/10/20/...droid-rebuttal
As Jeff (the developer quoted) says it's only a few minutes extra work to include image support. Nothing more than a diligent developer would have done in the first place. Also see the screenshot of one of his apps being displayed on all 3 screen sizes. Looks to me that the images scaled right and to the right location and the text isn't affected at all.
As I've said, all the recent Android phones officially announced for release (read: not speculated) have resolutions that fall into one of those 3 sizes.
Simplifying resolution changes are easy when you are dealing with the same size and aspect ratio. Change these up along with resolution and the situation becomes more complex. This is not as simple as Android devs try to make it out to be. Remember, these aren?t windows apps like on a desktop OS and it?s right out of the gate. This won?t be so pretty in a couple years. I suspect we?ll eventually see HW vendors standardizing within their own product line to establish some resemblance to order.
Simplifying resolution changes are easy when you are dealing with the same size and aspect ratio. Change these up along with resolution and the situation becomes more complex. This is not as simple as Android devs try to make it out to be. Remember, these aren?t windows apps like on a desktop OS and it?s right out of the gate. This won?t be so pretty in a couple years. I suspect we?ll eventually see HW vendors standardizing within their own product line to establish some resemblance to order.
Completely understandable. But so far, the Android devs have had to only deal with those 3 resolutions on the "major player" handsets. Yes, going wild and changing the resolution will make things complex, but the industry itself seems to have standardized itself in a way. I believe, like you, that Google will (most likely already has) talk to the manufacturers to those 3 sizes.
Could there be a device with a weird 325x784 resolution? Sure, there's nothing to stop a production of that screen (besides cost). But wouldn't that become a self-addressing issue? Chances are it won't become popular and then get dropped and the devs won't have to worry about accounting for that weird resolution.