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Dvorak Says gPhone is Doomed
drewmoney writes "Speaking with his usual frustrated crankiness John Dvorak rants his way through an article explaining why the gPhone will never work. 'First of all, it wants to put Google search on a phone. It wants to do this because it is obvious to the folks at Google that people need to do Web searches from their phone, so they can, uh, get directions to the restaurant? Of course, they can simply use the phone itself to call the restaurant and ask! I've actually used various phones with Web capability. They never work right. They take forever to navigate. It's hard to read the screens ... I also hope that people note the fact that the public has not been flocking to smartphones of any sort.' "
Google has possessed this 'aura' of innovation for a long time - one of the reasons its stock price is so high. I don't see this move as innovation at all: it's more capitulation.
Stop trying to rehash the old and make something new.
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His first arguement is that the gPhone is like Itanium, with wide industry support. Well, that depends on a few things:
1) will it arrive years late?
2) will it perform as promised or be lackluster?
3) will it shoot google's existing product lineup in the foot?
I don't think these three will occur.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Internet navigation works perfectly fine on my Nokia N73ME, is easy and readability is good. I use it all the time for directions, because spoken instructions aren't the same as having a damn map on your screen. Before my Mobile Opera Trial run out, it was even easier.
The iphone's screen isn't hard to read. just because Google wants to make a phone doesn't mean it has to be the same crap we have right now. In fact, I'd say Google has the innovation potential to make a really great phone the likes we haven't seen yet.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Has Dvorak ever predicted that *anything* would be a success?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Ever since I got my Samsung i607 (Blackjack), I've used Google search through the internet maybe 2-3 times per day minimum. With 3G, or even EDGE, it's reasonably fast... and very helpful in a lot of various circumstances.
If Google can streamline the internet experience, as well as create a Linux-based platform where I could sync my PIM functions with Google services and Thunderbird/Evolution via the internet, with little difficulty, I'd jump on it in a second, and so would thousands of other people. Tens of thousands more would follow because they'd want the latest gadget.
So John says nobody is flocking to smart-phones, ergo Google is d00med to failure. Gosh. Maybe it's because the other smartphones didn't have something Google's will. I seem to recall many phones which played music and did a variety of other tasks not going anywhere until Apple launched the iPhone.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
smack this guy in the head with a heavy blunt object and get it over with already. There is a good reason that people don't flock to smart phones in their droves. The north american cellular market is so manipulated that it really can't be called a market. When you can get a GSM smartphone that you can transfer from one carrier to the next as you see fit, it will be worth spending 300+ dollars on a PDA. So long as you can get a 0$ phone for the same contract (more or less) there is no perceived value in getting a smart phone. What a putz.
If the gPhone fails, it will be for the same reason that any phone fails, CARRIERS in North America SUCK. I personally use the SideKick, and for several years now have yet to see anyone say that it is a waste, and not cool. Many of my friends have smart phones and use the PDA functions regularly. When carriers start marketing them to the average joe (see the new sidekick) it will begin to be more common than it already is. There will always be people that buy cheap, utilitarian devices only. See the throw away cameras in the grocery store still? Why? That is how people spend money.
Yes, there is a reason for search other than getting directions... I can disply a MAP also. I have used it to look up exotic drink mixes when a bartender did not know the recipe (no comments on that one) as well as many other uses that don't even touch on the value of a qwerty keyboard when replying to an SMS or email.
Sorry to Dvorak fans, but this guy is a putz.
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...well, do *you* have the number? I don't. Oh man, I wish we could google it and then call them! [1]
oh, right.
Thanks Dvorak, you missed the point.
[1] If you haven't tried 1-800-GOOG-411 ; it's pretty awesome for getting said phone numbers, and automatically connecting you if you like. Tied in to a phone with Google Maps and GPS/e911? Beauty and ease. My only concern is how Google will monetize the cell phone space; even sponsored text ads would be seriously annoying being read to you by a machine voice, slowly, on Goog411, and would take up even more valuable screenestate on a phone.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
We can do better flamebaits and trolls than John. And we have a better handle on tech issues. I am sure even the most flamebait/troll modded asinine juvenile here has better grasp of tech issues than John. Given the pagerank of /. the flames here have wider readership than his articles. So why bother reading what he is blabbering about?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
From the blurb: "Speaking with his usual frustrated crankiness John Dvorak rants..."
Is "frustrated crankiness" the new corporate-speak for "stupid jackass ways"?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's kinda like the old philosophical 'tree falling in a forest' question...
If Dvorak posts in a news group, does anyone really care?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Text messaging costs the average user $.10 per message, and generates $50 billion in revenue for the phone companies. This is for a service that takes virtually no network or system resources to support, and should be free.
If Google can create an open platform and include great services like GMail, the SMS scam will die. Google stands to become very successful, just from this.
. . . and by "finest" I mean "stupidity as usual".
Duh. What did he think Google would put on it? Microsoft's search engine?
Ok smartass, what's the phone number of the restaurant? Oh, you mean you have to search for it? Or better yet, just get directions yourself.
Says you. My browser (Blazer on Treo) seems to work adequately. So does the browser on my friend's Symbian phone. If you believe some iPhone user's, Safari is the second coming.
What smartphones have you actually used, mister I write about technology so I should probably try out a wide variety before writing about it.
Which is why of course we rarely see people with Blackberries, Treo's or any of a dozen other smartphones. The iPhone alone has made such a quick entrance into popular culture that I've already seen it on two TV shows (Mythbusters and The Colbert Report).
Nathan's blog
His rant is completely out of date and reflects usability issues with previous generation smartphones. I Google for addresses of restaurants and other stores on my iPhone several times a week. And if I'm in an unfamiliar neighborhood, pull up directions with Google Maps. I very rarely was able to do all of that on my old Treo, since web browsing was such an atrociously clunky experience, but Apple got that part right.
Fortunately for Google, Apple got a lot of other shit terribly wrong with the iPhone (lack of openness, lack of SDK, getting deeply in bed with carrier and offering no premium price unlocked phone, spending all of engineering's resources fighting unlockers rather than developing the features and applications people actually want for their phones). This is the only reason Google has such a big opportunity here.
I don't bother to read Dvorak anymore, since I always feel dumber aftewards, so I have no idea how good are his predictions or if they are so bad they are guaranteed to be wrong (anti-prediction, in a sense).
but his gripe about not able to read web content on phones is really just a problem of people not generating format for phone use. He should spend a few weeks or months in Japan and use their system.
I suggest "goob".
It rhymes, sounds insulting and it can stand for "Grumpy, Obsolete Old Bastard".
Apple solves the lack of any official SDK in January and the earliest we can expect to see gPhone devices is the end of next year. You think Apple might also have a few other updates by that point? They've even said that lower power 3G chipsets will be around late next year (perhaps that's what Google is waiting for as well?). In the meantime if you are really interested, you can develop homebrew apps for the iPhone today if you like.
Remember that carrier portability simply does not matter to that many people in the US, and abroad Apple will offer it (at least in France). If people were more used to it here it might matter, but all that happens is it delays some people switching for a year or two as contracts expire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am surprised, frankly, that anyone still reads Dvorak's drunken ramblings. He is like the Jerry Springer of the computer world.
Bearded Dragon
He gets paid to make ridiculous, outrageous and often times completely asinine claims based on speculation for the purpose of attracting viewers so ads can be sold. He does his job well. Also people are really good at remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, if he ever actually gets one right that's all you're going to hear about him, not the hundreds of things he's been wrong on.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
See this within the totality of what Google's trying to do. Right now, the American cell market is locked down by the providers, such that most phones are tied to a contract. Americans can't just buy a new phone and swap their SIM cards particularly easily. And even then, it wouldn't get much since all the providers suck anyway.
This situation hampers Google. It's hard for them to develop for the mobile environment on another company's system because the stuff's locked down. So if they're going to do it, they pretty much have to do it themselves. Add in the spectre of broadband companies demanding ransom not to throttle Google's traffic (absent net neutrality legislation), and Google is at the mercy of other companies who are between them and their users.
So first, Google liberates the phone, and makes it an open platform, not locked down. Then Google buys a whole lot of 700MHz spectrum and builds a network that they can use, possibly for the phone but also new efforts. Probably wireless data, possibly a means of distributing other content as well. Also consider the portable data centers Google has been designing.
One could begin to see how Google might be on the verge of doing something very big. Google already has the content and useful applications for exploring the content. Now they need to be able to find better ways of getting that content to their users. Developing a phone, wireless capability, and backbone capacity would allow them to completely cut out the middleman.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
Himself.
As long as someone is still reading/listening, he's doing it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Don't click the link to Dvorak's log--that is unless you WANT to make him more money for mouthing off. He gets paid to write flamebait to increase traffic the site.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I have an AT&T Tilt, and I agree with you, except:
While Android won't give you cool new features you can't already get in Windows Mobile, you will get those features with far more polish in the Google version.
See, for example, Gmail vs. pre-Gmail-Hotmail. No real new major "features", just an unbelievable amount of user interface polish.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
People need to stop buying vendor-locked phones. My last phone was a Motorola E815, subsidized by Verizon, and I'll never buy a phone like that again. Need a ringtone? Gotta buy it. Engineering spec shows full bluetooth capability, but it's vendor locked to limit your choices to their pay services. I upgraded to a Treo 700wx *instead* of an Iphone, and I'm never going back to a vendor locked solution. Smartphones can be done right, you just need to break out of the rat maze they want you to stay in.
- billn
Dvorak, apart from being a moron, has clearly never even seen an iPhone (or, I assume, and of serveral other decent smart phones, but I have a iPhone, so it's what I know), let alone use one:
...
>I've actually used various phones with Web capability. They never work right.
The iPhone works perfectly.
>They take forever to navigate.
Navigation is incredibly intuitive. It's almost even fun.
>It's hard to read the screens.
The screen is large, high resolution, high contrast, and incredibly crisp and readable.
>If there are a lot of images, the page may never load.
The page always loads.
>No matter what browser you use, there are issues.
Safari on the iPhone works as well as Safari on a Mac.
>In short, the experience sucks.
The experience is awesome. I use my iPhone for the web more then I use it for a phone. Hell, I almost use it for the web more than I use my laptop.
So right off, he's completely misunderstood the potential for smartphones, and obviously never used a good one. And Google is not staffed by moron's I'm fairly sure they can get this right, or at least not completely screw it up.
In addition to completely misundestanding what's available and possible with an smartphone, he's obviously completely people, and what they want:
%gt; o what is Google trying to do with a phone? First of all, it wants to put Google search on a phone. It wants to do this because it is obvious to the folks at Google that people need to do Web searches from their phone, so they can, uh, get directions to the restaurant? Of course, they can simply use the phone itself to call the restaurant and ask!
Seriosuly? You want people to call 411 to get the restaurant's number, call teh restaurant, ask for direction from someone who doesn't really understand where you are, copy them down, hope they're right, and then call again when they get lost of the way? I use my iPhone for web-based directions all the time. In fact, it was one of the major selling points. II just click on map, seach for where I want to go, and hit directions. I instantly have directions in an easy to read list and accompanying map. If I miss a turn on the way, I can look at the map to figure out where I am. And I never have to have an awkward conversation with someone I don't know who doesn't know where I am or the best way to get to the restaurant from my house.
Dvorak in a complete moron.
>There are no Google fanboys. There are no Google addicts
Seriosuly?
>... Google is actually not a charismatic company
Seriously??
Blargh! My head is going to explode with how stupid this column is! Has Dvorak ever even been online? Or ever talked to a person? Or ever used any kind of technology ever? Ackkkk! The Mind boggles! He's made me overuse exclamation points he's so dumb!
Stupid like a fox!
Totally agree with the "crappy little screen" comment. I have a Nokia phone that supposedly has web access, but the damn thing, while letting me put all kinds of pretty colours and ring tones on it, won't let me adjust the damn font size. I'm 51, and my eyesight is getting progressively worse, but Nokia seems to think that 8 point fonts - and white outline fonts on a cream background, for crissake - are going to be perfectly legible to me. Hint: they are not, and it's a pain in the ass to have to haul out my reading glasses every time I want to make a phone call. Surfing the web with it is just not on; too slow, too hard to read, too infuriating an experience.
What was once true, is no longer so
I think the real problem Google faces is that they aren't planning to make an actual device but merely define a platform for other device makers. The problem you run into is that you end up having to cripple yourself to make it work for the least powerful, smallest device and thus make it suck ass on a more powerful bigger device. Windows Mobile 6 proves this in spades.
The advantage Apple has with the iPhone is that they control the entire platform. They've got custom built hardware running a custom operating system with their custom software. It is all built from the ground up to work as an integrated phone, and thus it works pretty damn well. It also does a lot to mitigate some of the major form factor issues that make most smart phones a pain to use. But mostly it's good because it's all meant to work together.
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