Rant Most Blatantly Pro-Apple Article Ever

Wired.com presents:

Analysis: Yawn, Google Introduces iPhone Clone

I've never seen an article so adamant about ignoring any of the advantages of the Nexus One or Android in general, and so quick to criticize Android phones for not having one-glance "revolutionary innovation."

It complains about the proprietary nature of the Google Phone's currently being limited to T-Mobile (it will be on Verizon and Vodafone in a few months), while the iPhone is limited to AT&T. While this could be justified as being "disappointment in Google's innovation," it goes on later to rave about the iPhone "mak(ing) every other player in the market look like a laggard — again," ignoring that fact exactly.

They seem to be ignoring many of the brilliant applications like Google Goggles or Startracker, which utilize Accelerometers, GPS coordinates, AND Magnetometers in order to allow users to identify places on Earth and in space. While at first glance, new Android phones like the Nexus are similar to Apple or WinMo-based phones, and this is to be expected. I'm not sure what Wired is expecting, and whether they actually spent any time using Android or not.

Their points about iTunes are moot, as only the iPhone can use it, and there are other media players that Android phones can sync to, and their points on the "small app store" are moot too, as it is simply impossible to expect an iPhone-sized community immediately. Lastly, while Android's Linux makeup doesn't involve end-users, to ignore it when speaking of the community would be idiotic, and that's exactly what this article does.

 

Is this man mad? That alone is enough to make me want one of these over an iPhone. And the point about the app store is crap too, how big was Apples at launch? Plus look at all the crap in it now. Still, I do really want airmouse...pcs just a bit too far from my bed

 

I'm in the US, and I've had a Motorola Droid phone with Android 2.0 OS since November. I've played with iPhones, since a lot of my friends at school have them, and I can attest to the fact that the Android 2.0 OS is MUCH better than what's running on the iPhone. not only that, but the Droid phone is faster than the iphone for apps, and has a higher degree of personalization, even though it has fewer available apps. Searching using android 2.0 is great; I use the voice search all the time, and my droid phone does exactly what it says in the commercial: "searches all of digital creation," meaning contacts, emails, messages, files, internet, etc, and the search suggestions are smart... like... Google smart...
Browsing depends on phone hardware, but although the iphone loads webpages faster most of the time than my Droid, scrolling on the iphone is extremely choppy compared to the smoothness of my phone.
Plus, the screen is like 12 parsecs wide on my Droid, and it has a greater DPI than the iphone, allowing the OS to run apps and videos smoothly and in great quality.

The Android OS also syncs beautifully with all of the Google services I use, like calendar, gmail, and youtube. It also easily integrates with facebook, giving you a buttload of contact info from your friends' profiles in like 4.7 seconds.

This is all coming from someone who has always wanted an iphone (but it's not available from my carrier) and has hated past motorola phones. The simple fact is that Android 2.0 is amazing on the Droid phone, and is, in my opinion, much better than the iphone.

 

What a stupid article.

I own an iPhone 3GS, and the Nexus One is honestly an interesting looking contender for my next purchase should Apple not release anything soon. I'm still concerned about the lack of multitouch and an appstore that is supported by bigger game developers, but I don't see how the Nexus One is a clone.

 

Classic case of PJS- if you ask me!

 

wired have always been really pro apple, at least with the iphone.

they even bring the table into it, however a tablet and a phone would be comparable as media players i dont know, youll hardly keep a tablet in your pocket.

they have been raving about the camera on the iphone for ages on wired even since before it got upgraded in megapixels. youd think no other phone has ever had a camera

itunes app store is filled with so much crap aswell, its alot of filler

the iphone's a good phone but the phones have to be taken at their merits

 

And it runs Flash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz4wBHcTHE8

*zelda treasure find sound*

 

Fanboys....every company has them, but sometimes some of them are just a bit more "special" then others.

 

Now that made me sad. Over here there's a computer magazine that always remembers to have an Apple product for comparison, usually it's closer to two times more expensive and still gets the Editors Choice award.

I guess I should appreciate how well Apple has done with their advertising campaigns, but just F that.

 

i worry when I see myself agreeing with the comments on wired, usually its full of complete idiots

 

I think you are misinterpreting the author a bit. He is not saying that the Google Nexus One is worse than the iPhone; he is saying that basically, it is the same. You yourself are pointing that out. But what the author wants is something better; something that offers significantly innovative and improved features over those of the iPhone. Are there any significant advantages? He ain't seeing any; and frankly, neither am I. OK, it runs Flash, which is undeniably good but not a dealmaker. It multitasks, but one can reasonably ask how much of an advantage such a battery-draining feature is on a mobile (as Palm Pre users found out). Even the non-multitasking iPhone will play music and receive texts, phone calls and Pushed e-mails and data while using another app at the same time. What more multitasking do you really need?

The reason that the author points to the Apple Tablet (not the iPhone) as "making other players look like laggards" is because it offers something different again, not more of the same.

Well, yeah, but the Apple iPhone has similar apps (Starmap for instance) and will also have Google Goggles soon. Again, nothing new or different.

Google Android does not as yet have a seamless integration with a music/video distribution platform, and for the not-so-computer-savvy crowd that is rather a big issue.

The iPhone App store opened on 10 July 2008. Google Android Market opened on 22 October 2008. As such, the Apple App store had a head start of 3 months, 12 days. As of last December the Apple App store had about 100000 apps; the Android Market store about 20000. To put them on a comparable level, the Apple App store sported about 65000 apps 3 months earlier.

Moreover, there are three different places where you can buy Android apps: the official Android Market, Handago's app store and Mobihand OnlyAndroid. Although choice is good, it does again point out the issue of lack of integration. With Apple iPhone it is: one application to manage all your music, video, app and firmware updates. Plug in, sync. Click, buy. Easy-peasy.

I think that it is too easy to dismiss Apple's success as due to marketing or fanboy-ish adoption by the sort of people who furnish their stylish inner-city loft appartment with Le Corbusier sofa's and reproductions of Rauschenberg's White Painting. Yes, it is annoyingly proprietary and locked in (then again, so are many other brands). Yes, it is expensive stuff. But you get what you pay for: the build quality and user experience are second to none. Apple really just produces good products.

When another brand produces something that genuinely challenges the iPhone (such as smoothie's Motorola Droid) Wired will happily rave about it too, even saying:

Sound like Apple Fanboy-ism to you? No, just people having high standards. If Apple is not your cup of tea, just buy something else. But me thinks that the geek doth protest too much.

 

Why SHOULD the Nexus One provide some brrrrrand new ground-breaking new features? And moreso, why should it do that just to compete with the iPhone? Not like the iPhone provided much new either, just brought the touch-screen malarkey into mainstream.

To me the number of apps available for any given platform means absolutely nothing, 90% of the stuff will be rubbish anyway, and for any platform the most needed/used programs have already been done decently...

 

It should if it wants its reviews to read other than "Nice, but no better than an iPhone".

To say that an iPhone provided nothing new is tantamount to retrograde amnesia or selective recall at least. It was the first mobile to use a touch-screen in a useful way. It was the first to offer a useful GUI to go with it (seriously; every other touch screen phone GUI has been a blatant rip since. And don't point at the Palmpilot --it got its GUI from the Apple Newton, which, of course, was much maligned and, of course, well ahead of its time). It was the first genuinely convergent device (phone, PDA, e-mail, web, MP3 player, camera and with the second generation, Satnav) that was logical and easy to use.

 

He's proven at least one point here: the stereotype that some Apple users are often colossal fanboys is too true. Sure, all companies have their fanboys. But the Apple sort seem to be all too common, and much too extreme in comparison to others. Sure, Apple does have a strong platform that is QUITE refined, but this is an ignorant view (and you might say what I said about the fanboys is too) on the matter. There are so many ways in which Blackberry OS, Android, and even WinMo are better platforms.

I'm not really going to bother going into more detail than that; someone will always have a counter-argument for everything. It's personal choice!

 

Meh maybe I'm just not the average iPhone user anyway, but I found my P800 touch screen easy enough to use. Sure the device itself wasn't attractively shaped, but it also came available five years before the iPhone. As I said, it sure made it big, but hardly anything revolutionary on purely techical level.

Sure it's a beautifully designed, slim piece of technology and more popular than god, but personally I find the hype disgusting and think it really isn't as revolutionary gadget as people often claim it is.

EDIT: Oh about the touch screen, in the long run the P800 became rather annoying to use, but not more than any of the modern touch screen phones I've tried out. I just like keyboards.

 

And so many ways that they are not. Blackberry is useful for business, but does not handle MP3 or video very well. It is basically geared towards text-based applications. WinMo is in its seventh iteration and still it is cumbersome to use, to the extent that HTC and others design their own shell to run on top. A full desktop GUI just does not translate to a tiny mobile screen. Android is promising, but at the moment no different from the Apple iPhone OS. And there is a reason for that: the Apple iPhone OS works really well.

Fact is: the iPod and iPhone are currently the best-selling MP3 player and smartphone on the market. You may want to stick your fingers in your ears and sing "Fannnn-boyyyysss!!!" very loudly, but it would be ignorant to assume that those millions of consumers out there are just all trend-following sheep who do not reflect on what they want from their device and how it performs.

At least I have a counter-argument. I think I have also proven that even Wired will happily praise another product over an Apple product if it deserves it. I don't really see why Apple's (like Microsoft's) cannot be regarded on its merits. Perhaps some companies just do really well because they really have a generally useful product to offer.

 

Nexxo...I'm agreeing with you on most of your comments to do with the products themselves here. However, I wasn't going into specifics, I was only saying that you could argue, and very much can argue, that the other platforms are better for certain things, and worse for others. The iPhone is a platform for media. You could argue that, for example, the Blackberry OS is a superior business platform. I was thinking more about the writer's attitude in the article.

My point about the fanboys again is not really specific to the product, it's just a statement about attitudes. Many Apple fans are very, very ignorant to even see the strengths of other companies' products. It's similar with ATI/Nvidia, AMD/Intel. The fanboism has died down a hell of a lot over the years, but unfortunately it is ridiculously strong with a few. True, fanboism is just a view; all too often though, it's a view full of ignorance.

And, I agree, it is good you have an argument. My problem isn't with the product. The iPhone OS, and its hardware, is such a strong platform for a good reason, and it has truly earned its success. My problem with the article, however, is that most of it is fanboism; a good example being the iTunes comment. Now, there is no doubt that iTunes is a pretty darn terrible program for PC users (going by the majority here), not because of the way it works, but because it's slow and buggy. The writer seems to speak of it as if it is THE definitive program for media! Sure, for iPhone users, it is. But, if I didn't own an iPod, I wouldn't use it.

I'm really not trying to go into the products themselves here, that is something separate in my opinion, and is unrelated to my point. There are so many things I could say about the iPod, from many years of experience (from 2001, early buyer of the first gen 10Gig model).

 

Every person I know who does reflect on what they want from their phone, have all switched, or are in the process of switching, to Android.

 

I think Nexxo makes very valid points, especially in regards to the multi-tasking argument. In all reality, exactly how much multi-tasking is necessary in a phone. If you want a device that can run a dozen applications at once, get a laptop. It's just a matter of time before phones go through the megapixel race that the DSLRs experienced a few years back, if it isn't happening already. Will we reach the point when we criticize a phone because it only has 1TB of storage?

In my opinion, anyone who buys a "smart phone" - any smart phone - is only doing so to be trendy.

Why don't we just give up the phones and go back to the good old days of planning ahead, and carrying around a quarter for the pay phone in case of emergency? Nah, because then I couldn't listen to my entire 40,000-song music collection on that 30 minute bus ride to school.

For what it's worth, I downloaded a free planet/constellation tracking app for my iPhone a few days ago. Take that, fanboys!

 

The writer is clearly comparing the Nexus One with the iPhone because they both appear to be aimed at the same market (unfavourably comparing a Blackberry to an iPhone would be an invalid comparison since they are aimed at different markets).

That accusation could be levelled at any 'fan'. Thing is: many Apple fans are not computer geeks. They do not like to tinker like we do. They just want stuff to work out of the box, effortlessly and without complications and to not look like an eyesore if possible. Basically, Apple makes hardware for people who don't really like hardware very much, so it is designed to be very accessible hardware (both in terms of use and looks). For a number of reasons Apple does that sort of thing very well.

Those Apple users don't know about technical specs; hence their apparent ignorance. But the important point here is: they don't care about the technical specs. They care about the user experience. For them, transparency of use is more important than all the cool stuff the gadget can be made to do if you tweak and hack the code and press this button that way while holding down that gubbins. We get pretty excited about that sort of stuff and are happy to sacrifice some transparency and user-friendliness for the extra power. But Apple users generally don't.

To draw a comparison: when we buy an eBook reader we buy a Nook, because we can hack it into a free web browser; when Apple users buy an eBook reader they just want to buy a really nice, easy to use eBook reader. Its cool hackable features are irrelevant.

I find it pretty decent in general use. For most non-computer-geeks, it is easy to use. It does everything in one package. The Windows way of doing things would be to buy and download a track via the browser, to index and play it in another app, and to upgrade the firmware of the MP3 player by downloading from another website and installing it with a proprietary app. For non-geeks that gets complicated.

I'll bet that most people you know are tech savvy geeks who are attracted to the open-source nature of Android. Non-geeks can't really tell the difference between Android and the iPhone OS. I considered Android but the hardware at the time was inferior and I felt that it needed to have some bugs ironed out. Android 2.0 is a much more polished product and Motorola Droid actually looks tempting. However I fear that by the time I'm ready to upgrade Apple will have released iPhone 4.0, and it will up the game yet another notch.

That is the point that the Wired reviewer makes: if Google actually wants to outcompete Apple it has to produce something substantially better, not just a clone.