iPhone vs. Android: Survival of the Fittest

Forget the price - no matter how cheap Android phones get, there will always be the emo audience for iPhone.

Forget the feature set of the platform - they're roughly identical by now.

It is all a matter of evolutionary pressure now.

Android devices are created, pushed to market, accepted or rejected by it, and die or flourish at extremely fast pace, even when there is a risk of cannibalization of different products from the same manufacturer (does Nexus S kill Galaxy S? absolutely). The competition is fierce, the elimination is ruthless.

Apple devices, on the other hand, are lovingly created by the mind of The Great Chairman, and accepted unambiguously (simply because there is no other choice) by the gang of loyal followers and wannabes living within the reality distortion field.

I don't think that's enough feedback to improve.

The ever brandished threat of fragmentation is not the hand of doom, but the blessing in disguise, along with lack or presence of LED indicators, or physical keyboard, or sensor buttons, or touch buttons, or front camera, or flash, or dedicated camera shutter button, or whatever else comes to your mind. It is you that is the deciding factor in the outcome.

My prediction at this time is that Apple will be forced to retreat into a niche of being just one of dozens smartphone and tablet manufacturers. Unless -

And so the only way for the iPhone to “beat” Android would be for Apple to either open iOS up in the same way that Android is, or to create a huge variety of iPhones spread across the spectrum in terms of features and price. Neither of those things is going to happen. -- MG Siegler

And on the other hand, just like he says, there will be a huge variety of Android phones spread across the spectrum of features, quality and price. Is this good? I'd say it is a double edged sword. Whereas Apple's quality is well known, in Android market you have to take calculated risk - it is, by definition, an early adopter market, any smartphone older than a couple of months is already obsolete. But at least you're voting with your dollars to move the whole population into the direction you want.

Let the fittest survive.

Quote Of The Day: Creativity

That's what you call an evolution: create a mess and then make it extinct.

-- Y.

GIYF is not so F anymore

We old-timers used to think that GIYF stands for "Google is your friend".

Well, this started backfiring lately.

It used to be that a carefully crafted search criteria returned just the right result for the search.

But with advances in personalization this art has already become useless - whereas one person gets a completely relevant result set, the other gets absolute noise. And the more alien (out of pattern) the search is for the person conducting the search, the less useful it becomes.

Handcuff Notes: Analytics Beyond The Box

Just a few days ago i was pondering the problem mentioned further down, and now I read this: Analytics for GMail usage.

Well, it's interesting how the human mind works. It can comfortably work with notion of something there is one of. It takes heroic effort to think of two of the same. And it is almost unthinkable to make a transitjon and think of N.

So what was I thinking, again? Simple: when Analytics will offer the API that will no longer be tied up to web traffic, but literally anything, and how to implement that today, shoehorning the API available into measuring what's needed. Meta-analytics, if you wish.

Okay now. so they have transitioned from 1 to 2, let's see how long will it take them to transition all the way to N. I'm sure it won't take long, and I will be here to report - all in all, it happened before.

UPDATE: coming closer?

Google Reader Evolution

Let's face it: when you're "sharing" an item in Google Reader, you're not simply "sharing" it. You're making a statement that the item you're sharing is either, you think, probably interesting to the people you're sharing it with, or, that you agree with the point made in the item being shared and want to make it known.

In both cases, one pieces that is currently missing is a feedback. It's quite possible that the people you've shared an item with would like to comment on the item, but alas, currently they have no way to do so (other than "re-share with comment", but that's pretty lame).

All right, suppose they provide this ability. It now links the person that shared the item with the person that commented on the item - but further down, would it be reasonable to propagate the comment to all people the item was originally shared to? What about privacy controls? What about comments and privacy controls on items that were re-shared further? When does the propagation stop, and how far back does it reach?

Non-trivial questions to answer, but I'm sure they will be answered this or that way pretty soon. Mark my words.

UPDATE: As of March 11 2009, Google Reader supports comments on shared items. Less than a month - that's stellar response time :)

Another One Bites The Dust, Almost: Contact Search

Items from the wishlist are coming true, one by one. This time, it is the search across all contact fields - already available in GMail, but not yet available on Android.

Android Hardware: Just A Bit Closer

I don't think HTC's been reading my wishlist, but, hardware that is coming to Spain will have raised keys on the face.

Nice to know the hardware is evolving.

Pity they haven't done it in the first version.

Oh, by the way, while we're at that - keep in mind that keyboard backlight on white and brown bodies is barely visible (which makes it even worse in any lighting except very dark), whereas on black body it is sharp and distinct.

UPDATE: Yep, raised keys are here to stay, keyboard or not. I wish G1 had this key configuration.

Android G1 RC33 Aftermath

Let's see how RC33 stacks up against the original wishlist and pre-RC33 state:

• Centralized application update notification: check;
• No IM interruptions on joining/departing WiFi (somehow omitted in the original list): check;
• Bonus: spam control in Android Market. Implementation is very strange, though - the comment marked as spam doesn't disappear, from the list, it is not marked in any way, and there is no ability to unmark a comment that was marked as spam by mistake;
• Bonus: Latitude.

The rest is either not immediately noticeable, or of no interest to me.

Voice recognition still sucks.