Android's "openness" is largely for the carriers; it's helping usher back in, for instance, the era of Verizon encrusted phones designed to drive Verizon services. Google doesn't care, they make their ad hits anyway, and Verizon's customers don't realize what's happening because the vast majority of Android users, at this point, are just regular folk looking to upgrade to this whole "smartphone" deal they've heard tell of and getting the hard sell from Verizon's famously duplicitous sales-drones.
Really, you think the average Android owner, pleased that they can play a few games, access the web and read email, gives a shit about "openness"? Android is currently hanging its hat on the "it goes to 11" adolescent boy mentality (if you doubt it just look at any Android ad, with the sweat, steel and testosterone dripping off the screen), cheap ubiquity, and the current steep ramp-up in smart phone penetration, which means most people buying a smartphone don't have anything to compare it to.
It remains to be seen if that strategy will continue to work; in their frenzy to get some market differentiation handset makers are cranking out laughably over-specced kit "packing" the kinds of numbers that make little boys get all swoony, while doing pretty much nothing for the average surfing and emailing users.
But the market will mature, buyers will become more sophisticated, and odds are Apple will continue to add carriers. We'll see, but if you're given a choice of "works really well although my geek friends keep talking about 'closed' and 'locked down' and 'walled garden', although I really don't know what any of that means" and "I can quote hardware specs RAWR OPEN although some stuff is kind of fucked up and I tried that awesome open video chat and it sort of works sometimes", at more or less the same price, I reckon even more people will choose the iPhone than are choosing it now.
Of course, several models of iPhone vs. several thousand models of Android is always going to be a bit of a lopsided fight. Some people may recall that "other" has maintained respectable numbers in the MP3 player market just by being cranked out in the billions and being cheap. Android could "thrive" in that sense, being the no-name underpinnings of countless free with contract phones, but it's not much of a go-to-market strategy if you're interested in making money, for anyone but Google.
At least 18 million iOS devices in this quarter (not sure of the exact Touch numbers)... count em... and Steve is just getting started.
Do you really believe that Steve is being complacent.
Oh boy...
Except....have a look at the trajectory. Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve. Moreover, Jobs' notes are out of date. The figure he cited for Android activations was from early August not last week....and there isn't even a serious Android tablet contender out yet. It is in the realm of possibilty that Android activations on phones alone could surpass iOS sales in the next few months. That's why he's coming out swinging.
That said...Andy Rubin's comment was still moronic.
SJ has some good points to make, but he also says some things that are not well thought out. I recall Apple pooh poohing Windows in the early days right before M$ ate them for lunch.
Android has some issues, yes, but so does iOS. I'm not sure what SJ/Apple doesn't understand or is afraid of about open source. Andriod is open, iOS is not. It is that simple. There are different mind sets. So what? It is what it is. Android has fragmentation, and that is a separate issue. It sure doesn't seem to be hurting them though.
Don't fool youself Steve, Android is not broken, and it's no toy. You're going to have to stay on top of your game while relaxing the iron grip on iOS a bit, if you don't, Android will do to iOS what Windows did to MacOS. There's no room for complacency here.
I suspect that Steve's comments were well thought out, committed to paper and carefully read.
If you listen to the earnings call, it comes across as a well considered, scripted presentation.
Even the Q & A session. Steve chose to discuss what he planned to say -- rather than answer specific questions.
One of the reasons for this is that CEOs are limited to what they can say, and how they say it in an earnings call.
As far as I'm concerned the CEO of TweetDeck can shove rusty nails up his ass. I paid for their pathetic iPad app and it was the most crashy, buggy pile of crap I ever loaded on my iPad. I eventually switched to Osfoora, then the Twitter client for iPad, and never looked back. I don't think Steve should have never given these clowns the shout out. They don't deserve it.
My opinion... many people are looking at the iOS vs Android thing the wrong way.
How many plain jane run of the mill non smartphones are out in the market today. Obviously they still have the lion's share of the market.
As consumers move over to smartphones they may well be replacing their regular phones with "cheap" Android phones.
Does it mean that Apple won't grow their market. Not at all.
Will there be more Android phones than iOS phones... maybe... but so what. It hasn't affected Apple's growth so far and it won't affect its growth in the future... or maybe some people have forgotten that Apple still makes money on Macs... you know... the computers that only have less than 10% of the market.
... and what the hell would make anyone think that Apple is being complacent or would be complacent in the future.
Even if they only have one version, they still have to test it across multiple devices and software configurations. Some non-developers significantly underestimate the amount of effort it takes to test things, probably because they assume the test results are green across the board. Having lived through the test/revise/test/revise/test/etc cycle numerous times, I appreciate what Steve is talking about here. As a matter of fact, I would venture the opinion that it is actually HARDER to perform that cycle for one version of software that is supposed to work across the multiple configurations. It can be maddening when the "fix" for an issue on one configuration introduces problems on several others.
Now, it's consumers in the drivers seat. Apple dominates with consumer innovation, satisfaction, and loyalty. PERIOD. Apple's biggest problem may be a lack of any real competitors.
If that is true, why isn't Apple the number one phone maker? Why isn't iOS the number one seller currently?
Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve.
Wasn?t Android bought by Google in 2005? Weren?t there prototypes of Android OS on a phone years before the iPhone was even demoed? Why did it take them so long to come to market if they are beating to their own drum? How is a platform open if it?s locked up tight by the vendor or carrier. Isn?t that like a warden telling an inmate they are free to use the open yard or read books in their cell? Sounds like the only freedoms with Android is the vendors and carriers finding new ways to fragment the users and services. Android has surely beat iOS in terms of speed in that area.
Quote:
and there isn't even a serious Android tablet contender out yet.
Why not? They were presented at CES last January before the iPad was even officially demoed. Why aren?t tablet makers serious about Android yet? Are they waiting to see what Apple does so they can copy everything again and come through with more OS versions on more units sold across dozens and dozens of manufactures and hundreds of HW implementations?
Sounds like a winning plan¡ Which vendor using Android OS will win the race to the bottom this time?
Except....have a look at the trajectory. Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve. Moreover, Jobs' notes are out of date. The figure he cited for Android activations was from early August not last week....and there isn't even a serious Android tablet contender out yet. It is in the realm of possibilty that Android activations on phones alone could surpass iOS sales in the next few months. That's why he's coming out swinging.
That said...Andy Rubin's comment was still moronic.
I don't know about you but Angry Birds works just fine on my Vibrant and the 2 million downloads means that it works many handsets. I guess Apple is working with a limited skillset which is why they find it (Android) so difficult.
Your "facts" conveniently overlook the significant fact that the iPhone is only one part of the iOS universe. The iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV (2nd gen) contribute mightily to the ecosystem that is iOS. Many don't seem to get the important fact that voice telephony is just an app. It is not primary, just historical and will fade as technology and business advance.
I don't know about you but Angry Birds works just fine on my Vibrant and the 2 million downloads means that it works many handsets. I guess Apple is working with a limited skillset which is why they find it (Android) so difficult.
Angry Birds was an unqualified success on iPhone. It raked in so much cash and was so popular that they are talking about making a movie out of it and marketing stuffed animals based on it. What I'm trying to say here is that once the makers were so enriched, it became fairly simple to begin the porting to Android. Don't be fooled though: nothing simple is ever easy. I am certain that it was a fairly daunting task to test those configurations (and will be even more so for the tablets that are coming). But if you have enough time, money, and talent to take on a promising task (such as porting your own successful software to a broader baseline) well, you can certainly achieve it.
In a nutshell: your example that Angry Birds works on your Android handset is NOT a valid counter-argument to Steve's claim that it was daunting to achieve.
When Google is stressing that Android is open, this carries the implicit message that this is a good thing for the consumer in the end. And calling that implicit message as disingenuous is certainly somewhat justified. So, in the end Jobs can exactly be understood as what you suggest.
When Jobs said, 'we think this is a bit disingenuous', the 'this' could refer to 'open' or the fact that Google is stressing open as if it were a major advantage. If we think that Jobs is an arrogant jerk, we will naturally be more inclined to think he is referring to the former (open), but if we try to think what a rational mind could have meant with it, we will probably believe the latter (open not being a major advantage).
A general problem naturally is that in such official company statements (into which we can subsume Jobs words) there will always be a mixture of facts, general wisdoms, and conclusion, conjecture and opinion. We can always not agree with opinions, conjecture and certain conclusions but that does not mean they are lying or making things up, just that the listener or reader has to pay attention to differentiate the statements.
You raise some good points. Regardless of intent however, it's clear that the public at large took his comments as a commentary, if not attack, on 'open', so I think other wording indicating that Google's approach to 'open' with Android isn't necessarily effective compared to the iOS model would have been a better way to go.
Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve.
This should be tempered by the facts that (1) the smartphone market was not so large when Apple introduced the iPhone and (2) Apple was barraged by naysayers from nearly all quarters (Verizon, RIM, Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft, etc.) who all said: the original iPhone couldn't be good in its first incarnation from a company that's never even made a cell phone before, that an all-touch interface won't work, that single-tasking is a killer, etc.
Apple completely redefined the smartphone market, while Google just watched and adapted.
No, Jobs said they had to contend when Tweetdeck programmer doesn't said anything about difficulties or that they had to make anything special to make the app work on any terminal
I don't know about you but Angry Birds works just fine on my Vibrant and the 2 million downloads means that it works many handsets. I guess Apple is working with a limited skillset which is why they find it (Android) so difficult.
Or they just feel that not splitting their talent many different ways, but rather concentrating on specific features/devices/software, is the winning strategy. So far it's working for Apple, if their revenue and profits are any indication. Besides, Angry Birds like many other games and applications were developed on and for iOS and then brought other platforms. When programs launch first for Android, become a major success and then are ported to iOS, then maybe things will be a concern.
Comments
Really, you think the average Android owner, pleased that they can play a few games, access the web and read email, gives a shit about "openness"? Android is currently hanging its hat on the "it goes to 11" adolescent boy mentality (if you doubt it just look at any Android ad, with the sweat, steel and testosterone dripping off the screen), cheap ubiquity, and the current steep ramp-up in smart phone penetration, which means most people buying a smartphone don't have anything to compare it to.
It remains to be seen if that strategy will continue to work; in their frenzy to get some market differentiation handset makers are cranking out laughably over-specced kit "packing" the kinds of numbers that make little boys get all swoony, while doing pretty much nothing for the average surfing and emailing users.
But the market will mature, buyers will become more sophisticated, and odds are Apple will continue to add carriers. We'll see, but if you're given a choice of "works really well although my geek friends keep talking about 'closed' and 'locked down' and 'walled garden', although I really don't know what any of that means" and "I can quote hardware specs RAWR OPEN although some stuff is kind of fucked up and I tried that awesome open video chat and it sort of works sometimes", at more or less the same price, I reckon even more people will choose the iPhone than are choosing it now.
Of course, several models of iPhone vs. several thousand models of Android is always going to be a bit of a lopsided fight. Some people may recall that "other" has maintained respectable numbers in the MP3 player market just by being cranked out in the billions and being cheap. Android could "thrive" in that sense, being the no-name underpinnings of countless free with contract phones, but it's not much of a go-to-market strategy if you're interested in making money, for anyone but Google.
Armchair quarterbacks... love em.
At least 18 million iOS devices in this quarter (not sure of the exact Touch numbers)... count em... and Steve is just getting started.
Do you really believe that Steve is being complacent.
Oh boy...
Except....have a look at the trajectory. Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve. Moreover, Jobs' notes are out of date. The figure he cited for Android activations was from early August not last week....and there isn't even a serious Android tablet contender out yet. It is in the realm of possibilty that Android activations on phones alone could surpass iOS sales in the next few months. That's why he's coming out swinging.
That said...Andy Rubin's comment was still moronic.
Who gives a hoot if android ships more devices,
Steve appears to care very, very much.
He has brought it up in huge public venues at least twice now.
I think that many posters here care very much, as well, judging from the number of posts that people make about the subject.
All in all, I think that far from nobody "giving a hoot", lots of people care very, very much.
SJ has some good points to make, but he also says some things that are not well thought out. I recall Apple pooh poohing Windows in the early days right before M$ ate them for lunch.
Android has some issues, yes, but so does iOS. I'm not sure what SJ/Apple doesn't understand or is afraid of about open source. Andriod is open, iOS is not. It is that simple. There are different mind sets. So what? It is what it is. Android has fragmentation, and that is a separate issue. It sure doesn't seem to be hurting them though.
Don't fool youself Steve, Android is not broken, and it's no toy. You're going to have to stay on top of your game while relaxing the iron grip on iOS a bit, if you don't, Android will do to iOS what Windows did to MacOS. There's no room for complacency here.
I suspect that Steve's comments were well thought out, committed to paper and carefully read.
If you listen to the earnings call, it comes across as a well considered, scripted presentation.
Even the Q & A session. Steve chose to discuss what he planned to say -- rather than answer specific questions.
One of the reasons for this is that CEOs are limited to what they can say, and how they say it in an earnings call.
.
Looks like a few ruffled feathers ....
As far as I'm concerned the CEO of TweetDeck can shove rusty nails up his ass. I paid for their pathetic iPad app and it was the most crashy, buggy pile of crap I ever loaded on my iPad. I eventually switched to Osfoora, then the Twitter client for iPad, and never looked back. I don't think Steve should have never given these clowns the shout out. They don't deserve it.
How many plain jane run of the mill non smartphones are out in the market today. Obviously they still have the lion's share of the market.
As consumers move over to smartphones they may well be replacing their regular phones with "cheap" Android phones.
Does it mean that Apple won't grow their market. Not at all.
Will there be more Android phones than iOS phones... maybe... but so what. It hasn't affected Apple's growth so far and it won't affect its growth in the future... or maybe some people have forgotten that Apple still makes money on Macs... you know... the computers that only have less than 10% of the market.
... and what the hell would make anyone think that Apple is being complacent or would be complacent in the future.
My head hurts...
Actually, when you give arrogant people any sort of latitude, they think they can become even more arrogant--as is evidently the case here.
Does that apply to forum posters too?
.
They don't have 100 version, they only have one
Even if they only have one version, they still have to test it across multiple devices and software configurations. Some non-developers significantly underestimate the amount of effort it takes to test things, probably because they assume the test results are green across the board. Having lived through the test/revise/test/revise/test/etc cycle numerous times, I appreciate what Steve is talking about here. As a matter of fact, I would venture the opinion that it is actually HARDER to perform that cycle for one version of software that is supposed to work across the multiple configurations. It can be maddening when the "fix" for an issue on one configuration introduces problems on several others.
Thompson
Now, it's consumers in the drivers seat. Apple dominates with consumer innovation, satisfaction, and loyalty. PERIOD. Apple's biggest problem may be a lack of any real competitors.
If that is true, why isn't Apple the number one phone maker? Why isn't iOS the number one seller currently?
Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve.
Wasn?t Android bought by Google in 2005? Weren?t there prototypes of Android OS on a phone years before the iPhone was even demoed? Why did it take them so long to come to market if they are beating to their own drum? How is a platform open if it?s locked up tight by the vendor or carrier. Isn?t that like a warden telling an inmate they are free to use the open yard or read books in their cell? Sounds like the only freedoms with Android is the vendors and carriers finding new ways to fragment the users and services. Android has surely beat iOS in terms of speed in that area.
and there isn't even a serious Android tablet contender out yet.
Why not? They were presented at CES last January before the iPad was even officially demoed. Why aren?t tablet makers serious about Android yet? Are they waiting to see what Apple does so they can copy everything again and come through with more OS versions on more units sold across dozens and dozens of manufactures and hundreds of HW implementations?
Sounds like a winning plan¡ Which vendor using Android OS will win the race to the bottom this time?
No argument.
But that does not justify the CEO of a public company spouting palpable bullshit.
Other than mispronouncing TweetDeck's name, can you identify any single pertinent thing that Steve said that cannot be backed up?
If you can, you should report it to the SEC as there are laws and regulations against this.
If not, Well....
.
Except....have a look at the trajectory. Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve. Moreover, Jobs' notes are out of date. The figure he cited for Android activations was from early August not last week....and there isn't even a serious Android tablet contender out yet. It is in the realm of possibilty that Android activations on phones alone could surpass iOS sales in the next few months. That's why he's coming out swinging.
That said...Andy Rubin's comment was still moronic.
The facts speak for themselves.
Naw. The definition of "open" is "iOS". From now on, whenever someone says that iOS is not open, they will be wrong, by definition.
That is the power of marketing. iOS is Open. It is the most open thing in the world. It is open in every sense of the word.
iOS is OPEN. don't forget...
If you care to go down that path...
Android is open to the handset developers
iOS is open to the handset developer (Apple).
Android is open to the carriers
iOS is not open to the carriers:
... advantage iOS
... advantage iOS developer
... advantage iOS user
.
The facts speak for themselves.
Your "facts" conveniently overlook the significant fact that the iPhone is only one part of the iOS universe. The iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV (2nd gen) contribute mightily to the ecosystem that is iOS. Many don't seem to get the important fact that voice telephony is just an app. It is not primary, just historical and will fade as technology and business advance.
I don't know about you but Angry Birds works just fine on my Vibrant and the 2 million downloads means that it works many handsets. I guess Apple is working with a limited skillset which is why they find it (Android) so difficult.
Angry Birds was an unqualified success on iPhone. It raked in so much cash and was so popular that they are talking about making a movie out of it and marketing stuffed animals based on it. What I'm trying to say here is that once the makers were so enriched, it became fairly simple to begin the porting to Android. Don't be fooled though: nothing simple is ever easy. I am certain that it was a fairly daunting task to test those configurations (and will be even more so for the tablets that are coming). But if you have enough time, money, and talent to take on a promising task (such as porting your own successful software to a broader baseline) well, you can certainly achieve it.
In a nutshell: your example that Angry Birds works on your Android handset is NOT a valid counter-argument to Steve's claim that it was daunting to achieve.
Thompson
When Google is stressing that Android is open, this carries the implicit message that this is a good thing for the consumer in the end. And calling that implicit message as disingenuous is certainly somewhat justified. So, in the end Jobs can exactly be understood as what you suggest.
When Jobs said, 'we think this is a bit disingenuous', the 'this' could refer to 'open' or the fact that Google is stressing open as if it were a major advantage. If we think that Jobs is an arrogant jerk, we will naturally be more inclined to think he is referring to the former (open), but if we try to think what a rational mind could have meant with it, we will probably believe the latter (open not being a major advantage).
A general problem naturally is that in such official company statements (into which we can subsume Jobs words) there will always be a mixture of facts, general wisdoms, and conclusion, conjecture and opinion. We can always not agree with opinions, conjecture and certain conclusions but that does not mean they are lying or making things up, just that the listener or reader has to pay attention to differentiate the statements.
You raise some good points. Regardless of intent however, it's clear that the public at large took his comments as a commentary, if not attack, on 'open', so I think other wording indicating that Google's approach to 'open' with Android isn't necessarily effective compared to the iOS model would have been a better way to go.
Android achieved in two years what iOS took 3 or more to achieve.
This should be tempered by the facts that (1) the smartphone market was not so large when Apple introduced the iPhone and (2) Apple was barraged by naysayers from nearly all quarters (Verizon, RIM, Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft, etc.) who all said: the original iPhone couldn't be good in its first incarnation from a company that's never even made a cell phone before, that an all-touch interface won't work, that single-tasking is a killer, etc.
Apple completely redefined the smartphone market, while Google just watched and adapted.
No, Jobs said they had to contend when Tweetdeck programmer doesn't said anything about difficulties or that they had to make anything special to make the app work on any terminal
You're sounding a tad desperate.
I don't know about you but Angry Birds works just fine on my Vibrant and the 2 million downloads means that it works many handsets. I guess Apple is working with a limited skillset which is why they find it (Android) so difficult.
Or they just feel that not splitting their talent many different ways, but rather concentrating on specific features/devices/software, is the winning strategy. So far it's working for Apple, if their revenue and profits are any indication. Besides, Angry Birds like many other games and applications were developed on and for iOS and then brought other platforms. When programs launch first for Android, become a major success and then are ported to iOS, then maybe things will be a concern.