CNET reported a few days ago (while I was busy at the World Boardgaming Championships, or I’d have blogged on this sooner) that Android hits top spot in U.S. smartphone market.
There’s a boatload of bad news in the numbers for Apple fans, but no surprises for anyone who has been following my strategic analyses for the last seven months. In the first quarter Android new sales passed Apple’s but ran second behind Blackberry sales; in the second quarter, Android has passed Blackberry and opened up an 11% gap in front of iPhone sales.
Other reports indicate that, at about 160K per day, Android activations now exceed the totals for iPhone 3, iPhone 4, and iPad combined.
Apple’s bid to define and control the smartphone market is going down to defeat. I was going to describe the process as “slow but inexorable”, but that would be incorrect; it’s fast and inexorable. My prediction that Android’s installed base will pass the iPhone’s in the fourth quarter of this year no longer looks wild-eyed to anybody following these market-share wars; in fact, given the trends in new-unit sales a crossover point late in the third quarter is no longer out of the question.
There’s an important point that, so far, all the coverage seems to have missed. You can only see it by juxtaposing the market-share trendlines for both 1Q and 2Q 2010 and noticing what isn’t there – any recovery due to the iPhone 4. This product has not merely failed to recover Apple’s fortunes against Android, it has not even noticeably slowed Apple’s loss of market share to Android.
Forget for now the blunder the trade press has been calling “Antennagate”; I had fun with it at the time, but bruising as it was, it’s only a detail in the larger story. With the iPhone 4, Apple tried to counter the march of the multiple Androids using a single-product strategy, which was doomed to fail no matter how whizbang the single product was. As I predicted would happen months ago, the ubiquity game is clobbering the control game; Apple has wound up outflanked, outgunned, and out-thought.
To truly compare apples to apples, (no pun intended) you’d not compare one phone on one carrier (iPhone) to 19 phones on four carriers, but either one operating system (Android) to another (iOS) or one phone (iPhone) to another (say Droid). When talking iOS numbers, you need to include iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
And in reality, Apple has already redefined the smart phone market. Prior to iPhone, your choices were clunky devices with difficult user interfaces, and don’t even think about finding apps and installing apps. Those were all redefined by the iPhone.
What happens next? Hard to say. The Android phones are still being controlled to a large extent by the carriers, so that virtually all of them come with bloatware that no one wants. And outside the U.S., the market looks much different. Android is almost completely absent in Canada, for instance.
Am I an Apple fanboy? Maybe. But my point isn’t to flog Apple vs. Android. I think most rational people want to see both succeed. Competition is good, and differences lead to more choices.
John Ahrens:
Other reports indicate that, at about 160K per day, Android activations now exceed the totals for iPhone 3, iPhone 4, and iPad combined.
He addressed it. Ipods aren’t phones, and don’t run on carrier networks, so they aren’t being counted. Way to move the goal post though.
My estimation of a bounce after the iPhone 4 was a complete flop, and the fault lies completely in SJ’s crappy handling of the antenna issue.
Hell, even talk radio hosts were saying,”Another iPhone4 caller,” when they lost somebody mid call. That shows that the problem made it into the culture, not just among the nerds and the fan boys.
Saying “Apple has wound up outflanked, outgunned, and out-thought.” is sensationalism.
Apple invented the superphone category, came out with the iPod Touch micro-tablet and then then super-sized it with the iPad tablet. Sure Google has done well following in Apple’s wake with Android phones and is now taking the lead in units sold.
Who has the profitability? Who has the most profitable application market? Who has a bigger market capitalization? That’s what Apple cares about. That’s the strategy.
Looked at another way: in order to effectively compete for platform turf with Apple you have to put together a coalition of major hardware vendors and present a unified face through a standard software stack. This has been historically true of the peecee marketplace as well.
Don’t gloat too hard over Apple’s defeat. They’ll still be around, make fucktons of money, and their fanboys will still act l33t and condescending. That said, I’m glad Android is emerging as the clear winner when it comes to being the default smartphone stack. Could be worse: could be Windows Mobile. *jibblyjibblyjibbly*
I activated my Droid X last week. ….and at the end of the month, the wife will activate hers.
@CL Anderson:
Wrong. Nokia was the first company to successfully market a PDA-style smartphone.
Oh, so now that Android is winning, it’s all about profitability, not market control. Whatever.
@Jeff Read:
Are you really going to make me drag out the posts where I specifically said that, and predicted this would happen based on what “has been historically true of the PC marketplace”?
>Oh, so now that Android is winning, it’s all about profitability, not market control. Whatever.
Yes. I think Apple fanboys must all be in training for the Olympic medal in goalpost-moving.
@Morgan:
I thought that palm or handspring was?
According to Schmidt, it’s 200K Android activations a day now.
>According to Schmidt, it’s 200K Android activations a day now.
That story contains two other interesting tidbits. One is that Android is turning a net profit for Google. The other is his remark that they consider Android to be mainly a driver for search. I think this confirms my analysis of Google’s grand strategy.
# esr Says:
> Yes. I think Apple fanboys must all be in training for the Olympic medal in goalpost-moving.
Perhaps yes, perhaps no. The big concern for me with Apple and the iPhone resides in their control of the software market, not the actual phone market. That is where the control freak tendencies are most dangerous. That is the goalposts I was shooting for. And the fact is that the app market is still dominated by Apple. It isn’t even close. What is really scary is a story I read recently on slashdot of Apple mining their store for patents. Who knows what that might lead to.
The numbers you cite are good news, however, the game is far from over. The Android App Store continues to be a major weakness in the platform, and there are also scary noises of fragmentation. I don’t quite understand Google’s deal here. It is hardly a lot of work to make it really good (the process not the contents), but they seem unwilling, even hesitant to fix it. Not sure what that is all about.
Please tell me you ended up killing the Wesnoth iPhone app…
>Please tell me you ended up killing the Wesnoth iPhone app…
I missed the meeting because of time-zone confusion, but no. Instead, the participants think they’ve found a dodge around the GPL.
How so? Certainly it has nothing to do with the quantity of apps, which has exceeded 100,000 or a lack of interest in the Android Market, which has accumulated over 1 billion downloads. Certainly it’s a market that software developers can’t afford to ignore.
Just before anyone gets too excited, let’s remember that these are Q2 numbers. The iPhone 4 was release on June 24th. So there are exactly 6 days of iPhone 4 sales in the numbers and a lot more of that of depressed iPhone 3G S sales as people chose to wait for the new phone. If you listened to Apple’s earnings conference call, Tim Cook noted that they saw a pretty big drop off in the channel in the lead up to the release of the new phone.
That’s not to say that Android’s rise hasn’t been impressive, but Apple’s Q2 was depressed.
@Doc Merlin:
Nokia’s Communicator line goes back to 1996, while Palm/Handspring’s Treo line only goes back to 2001.
@esr:
At the risk of being a bit gloat-y, may I add “…outflanked, outgunned, and out-thought again.” This seems to be a re-run of the Windows/Mac fights of the 90’s:
Apple releases a paradigm that redefines the industry (GUI, mouse, WYSIWYG, etc.)A major competitor slowly starts to catch up with Apple’s innovative leapWhile never quite completely catching Apple, the competitor improves to the point of being good enough and the significantly lower price point means the competitor wins in the market place (q.v. The Inventor’s Dilemma).
It was Microsoft before, it’s Google now. And the common thread seems to be Uncle Jobs’ two pronged insistence both that he knows better than everyone else as to what his customers should want and that his company is the only one that can be trusted to deliver on said vision.
>If you listened to Apple’s earnings conference call, Tim Cook noted that they saw a pretty big drop off in the channel in the lead up to the release of the new phone.
You make a valid point, but we need to consider both what Apple is saying and what it is not saying. If the iPhone 4 had in fact recovered market share for Apple in early 3Q, Apple would by now have gotten that fact out somehow through either overt PR or rumor channels. No downside for them in doing so, and a lot of upside in their positioning both with consumers and carriers.
I conclude therefore that if iPhone 4 has reversed the decline in Apple unit share, Apple doesn’t know it.
# Morgan Greywolf Says:
>How so?
I suggest you look at the discussion boards for android devs. I’m no expert, but from what I can see the google app store has serious limitations on how you can do to advertise and the breadth of international coverage. Also, frankly, people are just not making much money on the Android applications compared to iPhone. I don’t have the figures at hand, but my impression is that the iPhone app market size is 100 times as large as the Android one by measure of $$. (Feel free to correct me with actual data here.) I have never heard of an Android millionaire, have you?
> Certainly it’s a market that software developers can’t afford to ignore.
So the Android app store is both procedurally significantly handicapped, and culturally oriented away from money generation. Which leads me to conclude that software developers can and do ignore it. The fact is that there are lots of apps that are iPhone only, there are none (or few) that are Android only. Further the quality of Android apps is often significantly worse. Compare the thick clients for Evernote, for example. Sure there is both an Android app and an iPhone app, but the Android app is considerably less functional and more buggy. This seems to be a common pattern.
I hope I am wrong, and perhaps things will change with larger market share, I find the control SJ exerts to be rather scary. However, as I said, the game is far from over.
Plus, lets face it, who wants to write code in Java?
> Plus, lets face it, who wants to write code in Java?
As long as it’s from scratch, I like it. And maintaining Java code does pay the bills!
Yours,
Tom
I don’t have actual comparison numbers, but …
One guy is making $13,000 a month, selling a car locator app at $4 a pop. and he’s ranked between 100th and 200th place in the paid apps category. That means there are at least 100 other developers doing as well or better than he is. I think things are changing rapidly in the Android Market; whereas before there were only a smattering of paid apps, there are a lot more paid apps showing up every day.
Give it some time before you render your final verdict of Android Market. Many changes are afoot.
As far as coding in Java goes, I suggest you try to the Android SDK, as well as the Android Scripting Environment. Go through one of the various Android SDK tutorials available on the Web. You’d be surprised at how easy writing Android code really is. Also, the APIs are well-organized, well-documented and easy to understand. (But then, I think that the GTK2/3 APIs are well-oganized and well-documented, a position that I have been lambasted for by Qt4 partisans.)
>> Apple invented the superphone category
>Wrong. Nokia was the first company to successfully market a PDA-style smartphone.
Yes, Nokia functionally invented the smartphone. Apple still invented the superphone category, which is media-player style smartphone’s, not PDA-style (which are dying in the marketplace). It’s not surprising that the closest non-phone devices to any of the high-end smartphones are Apple’s iPod Touch and iPad, neither of which are PDA’s.
Apple has functionally redefined the market. They do not own it, and have little interest in doing so.
The mistake esr continues to make in commenting on the smartphone market is his misunderstanding of Apple’s goals in the market. They want to dominate the upper end of the market, but have little interest in the low end which is in the process of moving from dumb phones to Android-based phones. Android’s remarkable performance is due to it eating the low-end of the phone market, not due to it taking away the high end from Apple.
> Many changes are afoot.
I have to agree with Morgan. The impressive Android sales numbers mean that Android apps must inevitably end up being more lucrative than iPhone apps unless some kind of stupid, artificial barrier to success appears.
Lack of multi-touch input screens could have been such a barrier, but I believe that patent issue was dodged somehow. Current Android phones have multi-touch, correct?
> Android’s remarkable performance is due to it eating the
> low-end of the phone market, not due to it taking away
> the high end from Apple.
In the world of tech products, the low-end is the high ground. The low-end always ends up eating the high end.
Possibly interesting data point on the Android marketplace vs. the iPhone app store. Purely anecdotal, but Steve Jackson Games, makers of GURPS and Munchkin, just put up a blog post talking about their existing iPhone apps, wanting to have an Android version, and some of the challenges that make this a bit tricky for them at the present time:
http://sjgames.com/ill/a/2010-08-08
Urf. Correction, the above points to their RFP. The blog explanation is from the previous day:
http://sjgames.com/ill/a/2010-08-07
@Adam Maas:
Apple didn’t create a new category. The iPhone is a PDA-style smartphone with a media player, not a media player with a PDA and a phone. Only an RDF-blinded Apple fan would think that. The only thing remarkable about iPhone is the way Apple marketed it.
@techtech:
Yes.
Yep. For those scoffing, look at what happened in color printers as a good example of an attack from the low-end. Sure, high-end printers continue to exist, but the field is now dominated by Epson, HP, and Canon, companies whose products were traditionally thought of as “too low end.”
Another example is the way digital cameras — especially DSLRs — eroded the high-end film camera market to the point that Kodak no longer produces Kodachrome — a film which made it famous among professional photographers.
Of course Android will run on more devices than iOS – they are following the Windows business model, slightly tweaked. Instead of licensing, Android will make money on ads, but otherwise they are basically the same. Copy Apple, and undercut the hell out of them to try to take the wind out of their sails. Personally, I think this is fine as the proliferation of Android combined with the inferior security model will draw most of the Windows malware writers onto that platform rather than iOS, which is good for me. Apple continues to do what they’ve always done at their best. Make profitable products and innovate. Being in the minority is usually a good sign in my experience.
Adam Maas said: The mistake esr continues to make in commenting on the smartphone market is his misunderstanding of Apple’s goals in the market. They want to dominate the upper end of the market, but have little interest in the low end which is in the process of moving from dumb phones to Android-based phones. Android’s remarkable performance is due to it eating the low-end of the phone market, not due to it taking away the high end from Apple.
Ding. We have a winner.
There was never doubt (no matter what esr says about the “fanboys”, I don’t recall any of the pro-iPhone posters here suggesting otherwise) that Android would eventually end up having more percentage of phone sales than the iPhones.
Apple somehow still manages to make more profitshare than anyone else. Almost as if Apple is out to “make money selling stuff” rather than “dominate the market so they can make money off searches”. Both Apple and Google “win” with the current smartphone market.
Apple doesn’t want the zero-margin phones that carriers love, and Google doesn’t care about selling hardware (thus the death of the Nexus One), and both make piles of money, selling to significantly different markets, for the most part.
(It’ll be interesting to see what happens if/when someone makes an Android phone with really top notch UX. Then they’ll be competing on Apple’s turf, completely.)
(Morgan: Yeah, the low end has eaten the high end… well, except when it hasn’t, because Apple’s still making piles of money on “high end”. It’s almost as if people value UX and industrial design.
iPods somehow just aren’t being eaten by the low end. Why might that be? It’s not like it’s an immature market at this point, right? Yet Apple managed to sell 9.4 million of them in Q3. Why isn’t Sansa driving Apple out of business?
Maybe because unlike a printer, iPods and iPhones and Macs have design and UX advantages and aren’t pure commodities.
I’ve bought cheap computers; I’ve built my own. Apple really does do some great industrial design, and I’ve chosen, knowing what I could build a computer for, to buy Macs alongside my Windows and Unix machines.
So have lots of other people. The low end doesn’t eat the high end in a non-commodity market.)
@sigivald
PCs aren’t a non-commodity market and haven’t been for a long time. Even Apple is producing essentially commodity hardware these days. They’re able to sell it to a small, but intensely loyal fan base at a significant profit. Nothing wrong with that formula, but no one expects Mac OS X to become the dominant OS on the desktop anytime soon.
Smartphones are, similarly, just beginning to leave the non-commodity era behind.
Inferior security model? What are you smoking? Each Android application run as it’s own Unix user acount, in what is essentially a chroot jail, totally separated from other applications except by data that an application, and the user, has specifically allowed to be shared.
And, no, iOS applications do not run in a FreeBSD jail. There is no implementation of FreeBSD jails on Darwin, OS X or iOS. Darwin != FreeBSD. Furthermore, that there are no known viruses for Mac OS X is not proof of it having a superior security model. Apple fanboys need to stop spreading this misinformation.
Ars Technica has a related article up today:
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2010/08/can-you-buy-me-now.ars
They make the same PC/Mac 80s/90s comparison. I suspect, as others have mentioned, that Apple will be perfectly happy to retain their current market share in the highly profitable “high end smart phone” market. They will remain the point of comparison and dominate the mind-share for this class of devices even if they don’t own the entire space.
I think Apple is just playing a different game from everyone else. They don’t want the world . . they just want the most profitable half (or quarter, or eighth). Let everyone else squabble over the commodity space while they rake in the dough on their proprietary platform. . . the same way they have been with their 10% market share desktop machines for the last 10 years. Don’t see Apple going broke off that strategy.
Gotta say, though, having used an iPhone for a bit, they sure are slick. Sure, I can’t modify it, but as long as it does everyone I want already, I’m a happy camper.
> Plus, lets face it, who wants to write code in Java?
The JDK 7 that’s supposedly coming out later this year promises to ease much of the pain. When/if Google will support version 7 of the language is a separate question.
On a separate note, I’m currently beta-testing my first Android app, so here are my thoughts so far in no particular order:
1) The documentation is lacking. Sun’s JDK javadocs and MSDN are vastly better.
2) There’s no WYSIWYG UI builder in the SDK (several are under development by third-parties). Not a problem for myself (I like doing UI’s by hand), but may be an issue for others.
3) The barrier to entry for people who want to try out android development is pretty low. The SDK will work on any modern PC (Windows/Linux/OS X).
4) The API is much better than .NET CE.
@esr: My prediction that Android’s installed base will pass the iPhone’s in the fourth quarter of this year no longer looks wild-eyed to anybody following these market-share wars; in fact, given the trends in new-unit sales a crossover point late in the third quarter is no longer out of the question.
Oh boy, and here AT&T is warning that the exclusivity deal is about to end.
You might get Q410, but then one or both of two things will happen:
1) VZW will get the iPhone
2) T-Mobile will get the iPhone
If #2 happens (alone) iOS will merely creep up on Google.
If #2 happens (alone), then Google sold us all out on net neutrality when it did its deal with VZW.
If both #1 and #2 happen, then Google didn’t sell out (completely), and VZW will outsell AT&T on iPhone
In this third instance, Android is toast. Mere training wheels for eventual iPhone users.
@Inkstain:
Hmmm? There is full API class documentation here, plus the Eclipse plugin automates the creation of Android applications, plus a rather nice developer’s guide and several online tutorials. What more do you need?
Sure, there is.
@wet behind the ears:
Oh boy, and here AT&T is warning that the exclusivity deal is about to end.
Maybe. The 10Q information doesn’t confirm or deny anything about the iPhone or AT&T’s exclusivity deal with Apple, nor does it set a timeframe. Interestingly enough, AT&T states “…while the expiration of any of our current exclusivity arrangements could increase churn and reduce postpaid customer additions, we do not expect any such terminations to have a material negative impact on our Wireless segment income, consolidated operating margin or our cash from operations.”
I don’t think Google’s deal with Verizon has anything to do iPhone, though it may have something to do with Android. As to whether Google “sold us all out,” I think many people are ascribing far too much significance to this event.
Furthermore, your mental model appears to be very Apple-centric. Big hint: Apple isn’t the center known of the universe.
Personally, I happen to think that the CDMA iPhone 4 models Pegatron (AsusTek) are supposedly producing in December are aimed at China Telecom and a Verizon iPhone won’t happen until 2012.
“One is that Android is turning a net profit for Google.”
.
Only just. in fact Android is hardly profitable for Google itself, unlike iPhone for Apple. Google needs a whole lotta more than just Android sales and that’s what the stock market is aware off, just look at the stock price of Apple and Google since July last year. Google has huge strategic problems ahead and may turn into a cash cow like Microsoft, Ebay et al.
@Morgan Greywolf
> Hmmm? There is full API class documentation here, plus the Eclipse plugin automates the creation of Android applications, plus a rather nice developer’s guide and several online tutorials. What more do you need?
I didn’t mean to imply it was non-existent. I meant that I consider Sun’s Java API documentation and Microsoft’s MSDN to be much better. I make this judgment based on the number of unpleasant surprises I have received so far when my mental model of how something works based on reading the Android API spec proved incomplete due to important information being missing.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/RemoteViews.html
Where does it mention that you can only add specific views to a RemoteViews instance, and that subclasses of those views are not permitted?
> Sure, there is.
OK, I suppose you got me there. Technically, that thing counts, despite its rudimentary nature.
There’s one fly in the “non-commodity” argument: the Market Place (Apples and Androids) makes a commodity of the apps, and app builders will stop building for Apple at some point because 1) it’s non-trivial to port and 2) there’s insufficient user base to justify the effort.
I don’t know at what ratio that second point kicks in, but it will happen, just as it happened with the Mac. Apples response was then was to make it easier to port windows apps, but I don’t know that this is really an option in the smart phone arena since size does matter there.
At the end of the day, the Market Place scheme of providing apps will ultimately determine the winner, and the Market Place that wins will be the one that attracts the most new developers. Anybody know what the current growth rates are for the Apple and Android Markets?
It says so right here. You shouldn’t complain about the documentation if you haven’t read all of it.
> It says so right here. You shouldn’t complain about the documentation if you haven’t read all of it.
Thank you. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That information belongs in the API spec of RemoteViews.
Morgan:
You’re mistaking the market division between low-end and high-end. It’s not technical. It’s primarily in industrial design. Apple has built themselves a niche over the last 12 years in making the most fashionable hardware out there, with very slick UI’s. Sure the basic building blocks are commodity, but the result isn’t. And their hardware which isn’t fashionable tends to be workstation/production oriented (which is what the Mac Pro line is, they’re not anything approaching standard PC hardware, not with their dual-Xeon configs, they’re essentially mid-range workstations for the Video and Post-production market, replacing SGI’s old market)
They’re not the only ones to do so, Sony’s basic approach to the PC market is identical, but Apple has been the most successful and they’re doing the exact same thing in the phone market. They want to own the high-margin end and they’ve been successful in doing so. The shift to Android in the overall market doesn’t change this and in fact benefits Apple as it removes pricing pressure from the carriers for them. Apple doesn’t want to be the sub-$100 contract smartphone provider but somebody needs to be that and Android fills that at the low end. A few Android devices will be Apple’s competition, much like the Sony and high-end HP laptops which compete with the Macbooks, but Android will own the low end of the market and Apple will own the high-end barring a major disruption to current trends.
Note I’m hardly a RDF-affected Apple Fanboy. I don’t have a dog in this fight being a webOS user (and an HP guy in general for computing devices, which the Palm buyout has merely increased). Frankly I’d love for webOS to make a real dent in the market, as IMHO it’s superior to both Android and iOS for usability, but that won’t happen anytime soon.
You’re also incorrect in saying the iPhone is a PDA-style smartphone. It ain’t. It’s a media player/phone with PDA and basic computing capabilities. The media playing and basic computing capabilities are what the iPhone’s all about, the PDA side of things is just gravy (and a gravy the iPod line had been slowly acquiring before the iPhone debut).
> Inferior security model? What are you smoking? Each Android application run as it’s own Unix user acount, in what is essentially a chroot jail, totally separated from other applications except by data that an application, and the user, has specifically allowed to be shared.
The Android security model is practically inferior in several ways:
1) No walled garden. No purely technical solution to security can exist – it must also be social. The walled garden model isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot more secure than the open model.
2) Android’s methodology of allowing background processes whatever access the user grants makes trojan creation pretty simple. Convince a user to give access to SMS or whatever for a legit purpose and then simply use it illegitimately as well. iOS has a very restrictive API for background tasks and for good reasons.
3) Proliferation of devices and vendors. Some vendors don’t spend adequate time and money on security and will make mistakes in their implementations, opening up opportunities that don’t exist in better products.
>> And, no, iOS applications do not run in a FreeBSD jail. There is no implementation of FreeBSD jails on Darwin, OS X or iOS. Darwin != FreeBSD. Furthermore, that there are no known viruses for Mac OS X is not proof of it having a superior security model. Apple fanboys need to stop spreading this misinformation.
How fast do you have to be to avoid being eaten by a shark? A little faster than the guy next to you. This is the primary reason that Macs are far more secure than Windows machines. It is part of the security model, just not a technical part. Soon, Android will become prolific and is easier to exploit than iOS, which will make it slower in the water. It’s already happening actually.
Sanscardinality:
> The Android security model is practically inferior in several ways:
> 1) No walled garden.
> etc etc
That is some STRONG kool-aid.
Sure. Let’s redefine high- and low-end to match Apple’s business model.
BTW–I have Snow Leopard running under VirtualBox, and I have to say that the Mac OS X UI, while slick, is not without its problems. The biggest one is that Apple hasn’t updated their mouse pointer, nor their mouse pointer algorithms, since the old days of Mac OS classic. The mouse feels very sluggish under OS X, and customizing the pointer acceleration doesn’t seem to improve it very much. I also have always found the “one menubar to rule them all” UI approach to be almost unusable.
That’s what I would call “high-end.” Comparing with a reasonably competent Dell Precision workstation, which is what has replaced SGI’s old line in 3D engineering production environments, the Mac Pro actually compares favorably pricewise with a T5500, although the graphics card options are quite limited — a 1 GB Radeon 5870 HD, while decent, is considered pretty low-end for professional 3D graphics, maybe only comparable with an ATI FirePro 4800. Furthermore, it wouldn’t be officially supported by many high end engineering CAD and simulation packages. Finaly, most high-end engineering packages (AutoCAD is actually very low-end) don’t run on OS X, which makes it problematic for Precision’s target market.
Back on topic now…
Android is also doing well at the high-end of the market. Sprint’s having a hard time keeping Evo 4Gs on the shelf and it’s certainly their hottest-selling phone ever.
I’m with jsk. That’s some serious kool-aid drinking right there. Do you think that Apple’s review staff can possibly filter out every possible virus, malware and spyware? As it stands, they’re far more interested in preventing people from getting “offensive” materials.
It isn’t that simple. Each application runs as a separate Unix user in a chroot jail. Only data that an application makes available as “shared data” is accessible. And that data is only writeable if the application specifies that it is.That means stuff like user account information would be completely inaccessible regardless of what the user specifies. It also means that stuff that should be read-only stays read-only.
That’s about the stupidest security analogy I’ve ever heard. Seriously And it doesn’t even make sense. Windows’ security model has traditionally been poor primarily because, by default, from Windows XP and prior, the user runs as ‘Administrator,’ the Unix equivalent of ‘root.’ Even as Microsoft has added improved security in Vista and Windows 7, the OS is still hampered by kludges Microsoft has had to maintain to ensure backwards binary compatibility with every single Win32 application on the planet. The reason Apple has better security is that Windows security sucks.
Mac OS X uses almost the exact same POSIX security model as Linux, a security model it inherits from running a heavily-modified FreeBSD kernel. I’m not arguing that it isn’t better than Windows, I’m arguing that it isn’t better than Linux, and is definitely worse than Linux with SELinux policies.
Morgan Greywolf Says:
> BTW–I have Snow Leopard running under VirtualBox, and I
> have to say that the Mac OS X UI, while slick, is not without its problems.
I have a good friend who is a Mac user. Being the “computer friend” I am apparently supposed to offer her free technical support. She is an arty type and, consequently, loves the Mac. I on the other hand really, really dislike it. Of course that is probably because I am not real familiar with it, so my comparison isn’t really fair. However, the one menu bar thing drives me nuts, the dock thing at the bottom looks cool, but is a pain in the ass in normal usage (it takes up a third of the freaking screen), and the lack of a right mouse button really drives me nuts. (I know, I can plug in a two button mouse, but that is not the standard Mac model that is supposed to be so awesome.)
There seems to be an RDF generated meme that “The Mac is awesome.” Sorry, virus free it might be, but I am not a fan.
The iPod — love it. The iMac? Not so much.
BTW, statistics show that iPhone users are sluttier than Android users.
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/
(Scroll down to “Sexual Activity By Smart Phone Brand.”)
So opposing Android means you support the spread of STDs, and how can any socially conscious being do such a thing? ;)
As far as I can tell, the dock defaults to the bottom purely because it looks prettier in demos. It works far better on the side, especially now that everybody uses widescreen displays where vertical pixels are a scarce resource.
Brian 2:
> As far as I can tell, the dock defaults to the bottom purely because it looks prettier in demos. It works far better on
> the side, especially now that everybody uses widescreen displays where vertical pixels are a scarce resource.
Agree with this. I enjoy the dock on the left side of my sprawling monitor setup. It still takes up a little too much space, though, and I am not a fan of the hiding behavior.
Also, the mouse cursor movement speed drives me batty, and I have never been able to get it to a happy setting. I enjoy using OSX, but I feel painfully slow in it. The top-menu bar positioning ends up requiring a lot of long mouse moves, and the slow mouse feel only worsens the problem, especially on many-monitor setups. I’m starting to learn the shortcuts, but I think requiring shortcuts for speed in a UI that is built to rely purely on the mouse is a pretty painful flaw.
Still, when I’m just chilling out, it IS a pleasant experience.
Brian 2 Says:
> It works far better on the side,
You mean Steve lets you move stuff around? When did that happen? Man is he going to be mad at you when he hears you are messing with his pretty design.
This is why I got the T-shirt from Think Geek that says “No, I will not fix your computer.” :-P (It was actually a Yule gift, because I’d have never bought it for myself.)
Meh. It’s configurable. I use Cairo Dock on Linux, which is probably a bit too configurable… ;)
Morgan Greywolf Says:
> This is why I got the T-shirt from Think Geek that says “No, I will not fix your computer.â€
I never met you, but I always thought that you were the sort of guy who would wear that t-shirt, but also immediately violate its tenet by helping if someone asked. Anyway, (from my understanding) you are a tech support/network engineer type guy. I am a programmer/programmer manager type person. So I don’t actually know how all that configuration stuff works anyway. (I can write a TCP client/server, I just don’t know where to plug the Ethernet cable in. )
> Meh. It’s configurable. I use Cairo Dock on Linux,
> which is probably a bit too configurable… ;)
Perhaps you T Shirt should say “No I will not fix your computer, I am too busy trying to get my bash .profile juuuust right.”
Jessica Boxer, responding to Morgan Greywolf:
>I never met you, but I always thought that you were the sort of guy who would wear that t-shirt, but also immediately violate its tenet by helping if someone asked.
Heh. Exactly what I thought when I read Morgan’s comment, too.
> I’m with jsk. That’s some serious kool-aid drinking right there. Do you think that Apple’s review staff can possibly filter out every possible virus, malware and spyware? As it stands, they’re far more interested in preventing people from getting “offensive†materials.
Time will tell and is in fact already telling. The walled garden adds a layer of security – an imperfect layer, but it does add. One thing they do check is use of illegal API calls in code. That means they have a known surface to protect – their public APIs. I never claimed they can filter out all virii, etc. but they’ll catch a lot of stuff that would fly on Android, which will make Android more attractive to malware authors.
> It isn’t that simple. Each application runs as a separate Unix user in a chroot jail. Only data that an application makes available as “shared data†is accessible. And that data is only writeable if the application specifies that it is.That means stuff like user account information would be completely inaccessible regardless of what the user specifies. It also means that stuff that should be read-only stays read-only.
Actually, it is that simple. Look up some of the spyware apps for Android. Also, it is an incredibly bad security policy to count on application authors to protect user data in a phone environment. You are just hoping the apps you’ve downloaded are all responsible citizens.
> That’s about the stupidest security analogy I’ve ever heard.
I’ve worked in security and law enforcement/defense on various IT projects and it’s a well-used analogy for both physical and computer security. It shows that no security model is perfect, and that systems/people are more secure when surrounded by less secure systems/people. You use the pattern whether you know it or not every time you lock your door or car.
> Seriously And it doesn’t even make sense. Windows’ security model has traditionally been poor primarily because, by default, from Windows XP and prior, the user runs as ‘Administrator,’ the Unix equivalent of ‘root.’ Even as Microsoft has added improved security in Vista and Windows 7, the OS is still hampered by kludges Microsoft has had to maintain to ensure backwards binary compatibility with every single Win32 application on the planet. The reason Apple has better security is that Windows security sucks.
As with most of everything else you’ve said to me, you are taking a little bit of fact and mixing it in with a lot of BS. Most of the exploits used by botnets run just fine from non-Admin on Windows. I’m a big UNIX/Linux fan, but MS has gotten their act much more together in recent years. Read black hat presentations for the last few years – MS has gotten much better. At the same time, their rates of exploits haven’t fallen much. This is because it is the big, fat prize for malware authors. A lot of Vista/7 malware relies on user fatigue with overly complicated UI to allow access. This is exactly what is now happening with Android. You can smirk at the dummies who grant too many permissions, but there are a lot of them, and they’ll create exactly the same scenario that you now have on Windows – TONS of malware masquerading as applications.
When I use my Mac, I don’t have to worry about malware because I’m just not that targeted (at all) thanks to Windows’ existence. The same will be true for iOS and Android. I’m actually on your side in that I want to see Android do very well, I’d just never want to actually live with all the crap that will go along with it.
> the dock thing at the bottom looks cool, but is a pain in the ass in normal usage (it takes up a third of the freaking screen)
I’ve found it helps to move the dock to the left or right side of the screen.
But I totally agree with you. Apple can do great design. I’ve never been particularly impressed with OS/X, however. It’s awkward, in a way that even Windows isn’t. My wife positively hates it. She can never find anything, is her biggest complaint.
One OS/X quirk I’ve noticed is that programs can stay open even after you close all windows for that program. The only indication is a little dot on the dock. Sometimes, the single-menu-bar on the top is focused on the program with no windows. Very confusing especially for non-technical people. If I hear my wife complain again about where the picture she just saved went I think my head is going to explode. Even Linux has better usability when it comes to home directory organization.
@jsk RE: “strong kool-aid”
Read the actual post maybe? Fact-less ad hominem rebuttals are the sign of weak arguments. Explain how scanning for disallowed API calls doesn’t add a layer of security please.
PS> It’s funny to me that I make rational, specific arguments and get called a fanboy and accused of drinking kool-aid, but those of you supporting Android can’t refute my arguments with any facts. Who’s the fanboy exactly?
Mac OS X is easier and prettier than Windows (imho), but it sure is no Classic Mac OS in terms of usability…
>If I hear my wife complain again about where the picture she just saved went I think my head is going to explode.
>Even Linux has better usability when it comes to home directory organization.
Entirely off topic, but I’m confused has to how ~/Pictures (ubuntu) is any more or less usable than ~/Pictures (OS X)
Or it could be that iPhone users have much better odds of getting some than Android users. :)
Sancardinality:
> Read the actual post maybe? Fact-less ad hominem rebuttals are the sign of weak arguments.
A specialized team of individuals scans apps, with a strict set of rules, submitted to Apple before allowing them into the App store and from there to your device.
A specialized team of individuals scans luggage, with a strict set of rules, submitted to Airport Security before allowing them through the checkpoint and from there to your flight.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the term ‘security theater,’ since you say you have a background in security. I read your actual post. It smelled largely of propaganda, and your final point, that Apple is using low market share as a security strategy, is ridiculous. I didn’t feel your post required any more of a response than I provided.
> Entirely off topic, but I’m confused has to how ~/Pictures (ubuntu) is any more or less usable than ~/Pictures (OS X)
I’ve had very little experience with OS/X, but whenever a file open or save window is presented, I’m lost as to what the home directory structure is. Clicking on the suggested folders on the left often makes things worse.
And I’m supposed to be an expert at these things. My wife frequently saves things into the default directory presented by whatever piece of software she is using and then can never find the files again in Finder. Granted, I think she has computer stress and causes half her problems by getting upset and flailing around, but this is NOT the usability image that Apple is famous for. She has no problem navigating the directory structure in Windows.
> I’m sure you’re familiar with the term ’security theater,’ since you say you have a background in security. I read your actual post. It smelled largely of propaganda, and your final point, that Apple is using low market share as a security strategy, is ridiculous. I didn’t feel your post required any more of a response than I provided.
Another 100% fact-free posting that mis-characterizes my comments as a lame attempt at refutation. You are dodging my actual arguments like a young earth creationist dodges science. My posts are specific and factual. I’m sure in the world view of an ignorant platform fanboy, facts and details aren’t worth responding to as they may upset the wrong information that is held as truth.
1) Apple scans for disallowed API use, among other things. This absolutely improves security as shown by the fact that the only malware on iOS to date has been only in jailbroken devices. You can’t refute that this is helpful, because the obvious truth is that it is as it reduces the exposed surface of the API. While it is theoretically possible to circumvent, it’s a real PITA from a programming perspective. This is especially true for the multitasking APIs…
2) I never said that Apple’s strategy is loss of market share. I’m sure they want 100% market share and wouldn’t mind having a malware issue as a side effect. What I said is that I’m glad you guys are going to be the targets due to the inferior security model so that I won’t be. It’s the same reason I don’t live in a dangerous neighborhood. It is particularly funny that you are so defensive of the failings of your platform rather than pressuring Google to fix them (they won’t – it would break THEIR business model).
I don’t just have a background in security, I work in it all the time and have had my systems stand up just fine when the Chinese nerfed all my peers, etc. Security is always contextual and layered – at least good security is. Android is less secure than iOS because it is missing certain layers. This is shown in the recent Russian malware that makes SMS calls to a pay service. It was so easy to write that it was based on the Hello World code that ships with the SDK. TSA scanning is far less effective than App Store scanning, but even it catches people trying to bring dangerous materials onto planes all the time. It’s better than not screening, but isn’t the whole methodology.
techtech Says:
> [Techtech can’t find his wife’s photos on the Mac] … And I’m supposed to be an expert at these things
Yeah, what the heck is that all about. I thought it was just me, I can never find files on the Mac. I just assumed it was my lack of expertise. But isn’t the whole point of the Mac meme: “computing for the rest of us”, so you don’t need to be an expert, even for advanced tasks like “find where I just saved the pics of my grandkids.”
I find it curious that none of the usual suspects are jumping up and down saying I am a heretic for questioning the Mac’s putatively insanely great GUI. Even Jeff Read merely lamented the good old days.
Perhaps the Emperor has no clothes after all. Or at least no black turtleneck.
>I’ve had very little experience with OS/X, but whenever a file open or save window is presented,
>I’m lost as to what the home directory structure is. Clicking on the suggested folders on the left often makes things worse.
So then it is the column view layout thats confusing? Presuming you’re working in a recent version of OSX, you should have the same quick links on the left as you would in any finder window, allowing you to jump to any one of those folders, and then in the center you should have 2 or 3 columns, each one representing the contents of a folder. Assuming the program in question defaults to the home folder, you should see the contents of your home folder in column 1. Assuming you wanted to save in ~/Documents/MyStuff you would click on Documents in column 1, which would display the contents of documents in column 2, from there you would click on MyStuff whose contents would then be displayed in column 3 (or if there are only two columns, everything is shifted left so column 1 becomes the contents of Documents and column 2 becomes the contents of MyStuff). In theory this allows you to use the horizontal scroll bar to traverse up and down the directory tree quickly. How useful this is in a save dialog box is up for some debate, but it appears you difficulty is with the dialog box, not the actual directory structure, unless there’s something else I’m missing.
>I find it curious that none of the usual suspects are jumping up and down saying
>I am a heretic for questioning the Mac’s putatively insanely great GUI. Even Jeff Read merely lamented the good old days.
Even among diehard mac fans, you will find little love where the Finder and some of it’s “quirks” are concerned, which interestingly is probably a motivator behind iTunes and iPhoto’s self management of your files (and consequently the lack of a “real file system” on iDevices)
> it appears you difficulty is with the dialog box, not the actual directory structure
Because I have no other knowledge of the OS/X directory structure, yes, I’d agree that the dialog box is failing to reveal that structure very well.
>1) Apple scans for disallowed API use, among other things. This absolutely improves security as shown by the fact that the only malware on iOS to date has been only in jailbroken devices. You can’t refute that this is helpful, because the obvious truth is that it is as it reduces the exposed surface of the API. While it is theoretically possible to circumvent, it’s a real PITA from a programming perspective. This is especially true for the multitasking APIs…
While it’s possible that Apple’s stupidly restricted API does indeed provide some security benefit, I would much rather have the improved functionality that comes with jailbreaking or Android. I have an iPod Touch, jailbroken, and about 75% of what I do on it on a regular basis comes from Cydia (the jailbroken app store). There is at least a nonnegligible market segment of people who want their handheld devices to be more like general-purpose computers; Android certainly seems to appeal to those people.
@sanscardinality
> ignorant platform fanboy
[cut]
> you guys
[snip]
> you are so defensive of the failings of your platform
Heh. Alrighty. Fun fact: I never said anything about Android, and I wasn’t trying to defend it. Nor was I trying to deflect your arguments with an ad hominem. Is it an ad hominem when the target is actually the person?
Frankly, I’m not in favor Android itself. I have issues with the platform, particularly in Google’s toe-the-line position on it with the vendors. The vendors are already starting to clamp down harder on their Android devices (see Droid X), and that irks me. It looks to be the current horse to bet on, but I worry it’s full of Greeks.
I _am_ in the Open camp, for libertarian reasons. The mighty Walled Garden you speak so highly of is, to me, tantamount to surrendering liberty. It may increase security some, however effective it actually is (and frankly, I think it’s largely feel-good bullshit, but whatever), but I consider it a net loss for the individual. When someone talks like it’s actually a positive, especially in the smug way you did once your feathers started to get mussed, I see it as a genuine attack and respond appropriately. You make a few good points about the security model, but to be honest I had no interest in addressing them because, IMO, that entire model is inherently flawed. I wasn’t responding to your arguments (they are, or may be, valid); I was responding to your world view.
But, hey, I am mostly a rambling mad man, so feel free to ignore me.
> 2) I never said that Apple’s strategy is loss of market share.
Ya, you’re right. Just after I hit submit, I checked back over your post and saw you meant something slightly different in that last graf. It was too late by then, so oh well.
@jsk
I can understand a philosophical disagreement with the walled garden model. I do think the walled garden is a net positive, and I do feel the counter-argument is based in ignorance, but that is certainly an area that people can disagree as it is opinion. iOS is more secure than Android, and that was my only real point in this. As someone who is inclined towards Libertarianism philosophically, I wish we lived in a world where it worked for the well intended and we didn’t need taxes, laws and walled gardens. Unfortunately, we don’t.
– SC
@Tom Dickson-Hunt
Have you used the APIs? They’re pretty good actually. The multitasking API is actually much cooler than UNIX OS level multitasking in terms of memory and battery use and does most of what a person would want to do. As for Android being more useful or better from your perspective – good! As I’ve said many times, I’m happy that the majority will end up on Android as you will draw all the fire. Have fun with that.
Does an iPhone currently let you embed a widget in the home screen?
Sanscardinality,
If the Aplle Walled Garden was, by contract, limited to enforcing that only approved APIs were called with approved parameters, and the API was being improved under some sort of Open-Source Community Development Process, I might see it as a net positive, given jailbroken phones for experimentation.
Otherwise, no.
Yours,
Tom
Android Goes To War.
Yours,
Tom
@Morgan: High-end and low end in a commodity market for consumer items are functionally defined in terms of margin and how fashionable the device is.
Thus a higher-end product is a high-margin, fashionable item. The low-end product is universally a low-margin item. There’s two ways to make money in this market, sell tons of low-margin items and sell a smaller number of high-margin items. Apple does only the latter, most makers do the former with some of the latter done to boost brand identity and profits.
Non-commodity markets work differently.
Both the Cell Phone and comsumer PC markets are commodity markets. The only way to get a really high-end item is by positioning it as a fashionable item and using that to justify the price jump (and thus the increased margin). Apple is a past master at this, having moved to this business model when Steve Jobs returned and having been extremely successful with it.
They’re doing the same thing with the iPhone. And yes, some Android’s are doing the same ting, but those few models (The Evo, Droid X, Galaxy et al) collectively sell in much smaller numbers than the iPhone, it’s aggregate Android sales which exceed the iPhone and much of those sales are in the plethora of low-end models.
And yes, the Mac Pro is comparable to similar workstations from Dell and others, they’re just sold into a different market, primarily video and post-production work, Dell seems to own theCAD market and other 3D modelling stuff. I’d only made that point to note that the Mac Pro’s shouldn’t be looked at as part of Apple’s high-margin consumer line but rather in a seperate non-commodity market.
@JessicaBoxer: (In case you’re still monitoring this thread)
I’m a programmer as well. I work on various projects here and there. I like working on UIs. I wrote something called Stylus Toolbox but have stopped maintaining it since my last Epson printer broke, and I couldn’t generate enough developer interest. If someone wants to pick up the project, they’re more than welcome to it.
(I have no more interest in stupid Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux debates at the moment.)
>Have you used the APIs? They’re pretty good actually. The multitasking API is actually much cooler than UNIX OS level multitasking in terms of memory and battery use and does most of what a person would want to do. As for Android being more useful or better from your perspective – good! As I’ve said many times, I’m happy that the majority will end up on Android as you will draw all the fire. Have fun with that.
I have not used the APIs, or done any programming for iOS. What I refer to is user functionality. Most of the things that I do on my iTouch come with jailbreaking; the most common are BookReader, a nice HTML ebook reader (probably doesn’t count, as I’m certain its functionality is duplicated by at least one official app, but included for completeness); SBSettings, a quick-and-easy method of changing all kinds of settings from any screen (a popup window); iFile, a full file browser; the terminal app, which is just the OS X terminal on iOS; and OpenSSH, which allows me to connect remotely and transfer files. The last three, in particular, open up several use cases that as far as I can tell are simply not available with a nonjailbroken device; the ones I’ve used are using the iTouch as a flash drive (via wireless and SSH) and using the iTouch to download files from somewhere where there is wireless and transferring to a computer somewhere where there isn’t (very useful during travel). Which reminds me; the Safari extension that allows you to save downloaded files to the file system is also a jailbreak-required.
>> Oh, so now that Android is winning, it’s all about profitability, not market control. Whatever.
> Yes. I think Apple fanboys must all be in training for the Olympic medal in goalpost-moving.
Larry Ellison, best friend of Steve Jobs, just went nuclear.
http://regmedia.co.uk/2010/08/13/oracle_complaint_against_google.pdf
Saying “Apple has wound up outflanked, outgunned, and out-thought.†is sensationalism.
More like wishful thinking, IMNSHO.
There is a whole sub-marketplace in the subject of the mobile phone sector location related to the jailbreak or unlocking of the mobile phones so that they can be employed on any mobile network, and recent Supreme Court choices in the USA handed down have confirmed that the jailbreak marketplace is legal and genuine. That is, conclude-user prospects are fairly inside their legal rights to do what they want to their mobile phone handset to permit the mobile phone to do the job on other network carriers which is commonly recognized as jailbreak or unlocking the network block.
Learn how to Jailbreak your iPhone