What Google TV needs is a makeover, and a splashy re-launch. It needs to shows us why it’s different now, why it’s better. Google needs to convince users, developers, and manufacturers that the Android they love on cell phones can work on the big screen in their living room as well. Then Google needs to prove it, fast.
David Pierce: “Google TV: Silent But No Forgotten at I/O 2013”
Foot-dragging on Google TV seems like such a wasted opportunity, but I’m afraid it will take Apple’s long-rumored big TV move for Google to make any real effort.
Designing for iOS first is harming mobile app development
Ian G. Clifton, a developer for A.R.O., argues that building for the App Store first means many of Android’s best features are not utilized to their fullest.
Apple, by contrast, holds itself above the fray. It seems to believe that such discussions of meanings and consequences do not matter, because it is in the design business, and so its primary relationship is with the user, not with the society.
Evgeny Morozov: “Form and Fortune”
There are some cool ideas here and it’s always great to see another UI approach. I look forward to trying it on my Galaxy Nexus once they release the images. But it’s hard to see how this is more than just dabbling.
What’s Canonical’s business model? Sure, given the Android Open Source Project and the shared Linux base of Ubuntu and Android you could probably load this on all the Nexus phones secondhand, but how will they get full hardware support for other phones? Work with OEMs? What’s their incentive to use Ubuntu over Android? Or Windows Phone for that matter?
And building demand from consumers is another enormous task. Most people don’t even understand the difference between Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, and Ubuntu isn’t anywhere near the household name of those giants. They could try appealing to carriers directly to get in their stores, but they’d have to violate a lot of open principles along the way (ask Google).
Not to mention the challenge of building up an acceptable baseline of apps. Most people are used to great native mobile apps on phones and to get those, as Apple has shown (and Google has discovered the hard way), you need a clear cut way for developers to make money. That means a big user base, relatively stable hardware and software targets, and a marketplace to distribute.
It’s the chicken or the egg problem that Microsoft has run into with their mobile efforts. Good luck with all that Canonical! Seriously, as a once and future Nexus owner, it’d be great to have a second OS to experiment with. But unfortunately I don’t see how it can ever be more than that.
This whole notion of Steve Jobs launching his ‘thermonuclear war’ on Android is a farce. A sham. A joke. It has been from the start.
Dan Lyons unloads on Apple v. Android, after the “Steve Jobs” multitouch patent get’s invalidated
They want to keep the prices high, they want to force the price to be so high that operators have to subsidize the devices very highly. That’s not only the Cupertino guys but also for the guys up in Seattle. They want higher margins, they want to charge more for software. We simply believe there’s a better way of doing it without extracting that much payment from end users, because there are other ways to drive revenues. Patents were used as a weapon to try to stop that evolution and scare people away from lower-cost alternatives. And I think with the Motorola acquisition we’ve shown we’re able to put skin in the game and push back.
John Lagerling, director of business development for Android, confirms the Motorola acquisition was all about patents. From a really interesting interview in The New York Times’ Bits blog.
So it’s Apple vs. Microsoft on daring, Apple vs. Samsung on smartphone market share and patent conflicts, Apple vs. Google on specifications and price, Apple vs. Amazon on willingness to cut margin, Apple vs. its customers on betrayed expectations, Apple vs. itself on the insurmountable challenge of remaining a true innovator forever. Interesting times.
Smart editorial from Brad Hill on Engadget.
Android’s a Third of the Way There - How Far is iOS?
Head of Android user experience Matias Duarte (not pictured above, that’s Hugo Barra) recently responded to a G+ comment saying that he thought he’d “gotten only about a third of the way to where I want to be with regards to consistency, responsiveness, and polish.”
Jelly Bean is already great and it’s only a third of the way there? I’m excited to see what’s next this fall.
This is not to jump into the age-old flame war, but can you imagine anyone from Apple saying iOS is incomplete in any way? Apple’s vertical integration is normally considered its huge advantage, but with only incremental changes coming with iOS 6, you could make an argument that it’s also becoming a roadblock to innovation (as Dieter Bohn does here).
“When you think about your iPhone…it’s the product that you have with you all the time…we take changing it really seriously,” said Jony Ive in a promotional video for the launch of the iPhone 5. Millions also use Android, but the vast majority use skinned versions, not the vanilla product Google updates twice yearly. Google clearly doesn’t feel restrained on adding new features and continuing to refine the core OS and maybe that’s because they know at the end of the day there’ll always be multiple flavors of Android to suit users’ various needs and styles. iOS doesn’t have that “luxury” of multiple forks, forcing Apple to make choices on accessibility vs. customization and consistency vs. new features for all users.
Image: DailyTech.
This could turn out to be really, really bad for everybody. Creating new hardware and software is already a minefield so filled with mines, you can only cross it by stepping on them and hoping they’re not going to blow. This just made it even worse.
Lukas Mathis (Ignore the Code) on Apple vs. Samsung verdict
Apple won’t be getting the more than $2.5 billion it had asked for, but it will be getting at least $1,049,343,540.
(Source: theverge.com)
Early iPhone prototypes (one made by a former Sony designer, thus the branding) as revealed by Apple v. Samsung court documents – fascinating stuff. Via The Verge.
Things I want from OS X Mountain Lion
I’m not always a fan of OS X or iOS, but there are a number of features from Mountain Lion I’d love to see stolen for one of the OSes I actually use (Windows or Chrome, but really most of these would suit Chrome OS more):
- Gesture-based notification center
- Gesture-based browser tabs
- System-wide “share” command (I think I seriously TRY to do this at least twice a day by right-clicking in the Chrome URL box; coming from Android, it’s just a natural thing to try and I’m betting it won’t be long until it’s in Chrome OS)
- Mirroring from Chrome OS to my Android devices
- All for $20
Somebody has to sit there and filter out all those dicks. You can’t let all those dicks get through. You have to err way on the side of safety. You have to have people sitting there looking at things that may or may not be dicks all day long. Apple refuses to farm stuff out to massive groups of people. They insist on having actual smart, educated, well-trained people doing the job. So that means they have to have some of their actual employees sifting through a pile of dicks.
“Here’s Why It Really Sucks To Be An App Reviewer For Apple”
Yes, please. Great idea. Still, they had to speed it up to approach anything close to typing on a keyboard… (via The Verge)
(Source: youtube.com)
Apple doesn’t let anyone, not even AT&T or Telefonica, stand in the way of its iOS updates. That’s the standard to aspire to, and it’s the standard Microsoft alluded to. Accordingly, it’s the standard the company should be held to: being merely ‘better than Android’ isn’t good enough.
Peter Bright: The Nokia Lumia 900: A good phone at a great price that you probably shouldn’t buy
(Source: Ars Technica)
