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Review of HTC Desire As Alternative To iPhone
Andrew Smith writes "My search for an alternative to the iPhone has been long and frustrating. On paper, the HTC Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone's reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use? There is much good and much bad. (This review is primarily for UK readers as HTC's new handset, the Incredible, will not be available [in the UK].)"
Yeah, the article didn't dispute that either. The reason people want alternatives (inferior as they may be) is Apple's tyrannical control over the platform.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Beautiful screen, Exchange integration works perfectly (even with the exotic configuration I have at work) and the widgets available are really cool.
Battery life is acceptable. Better than my last smartphone (N91).
There are some fantastic apps: Layar in particular is not only technically cool, it actually has a practical use.
Downsides:
1. Not all alls in App Market are available, including goodies like Google Earth. Though I hear that this'll be solved soon enough.
2. Keyboard is terrible when you need to write in multiple languages (in my case dutch & english). For English alone it's fantastic.
3. SMS, twitter dms, emails aren't integrated into one app. I'd love to see a single 'messaging center' for all apps (even if its just via a notification API or something). No idea if the iPhone / Palm can do this btw.
"The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture."
Followed by..
"But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that...."
Don't you think, that the reason iPhones are close to perfect, is because of the super-tight approval process.... Not only in the App Store, but also in the build and design of it. Where other manufactures make something just good enough to sell, Apple go one step further.... The touch screen has to work perfectly, it has to feel solid, and the Apps that are available for it, better not let the whole experience down....
That's a rather subjective observation. My Android phone broke the other day, leaving me with my work phone (iPhone) as only phone for a week.
I wouldn't swap my Android for an iPhone if you paid me big bucks to do it. And that was true as of my first (1.5) Android phone. Slow as it was, I still instantly preferred it over the iPhone.
Luckily, both exist and people can pick the one they prefer.
...however, take a peek at the N900. The screen is way better than a 3GS, Skype & IM integrate seamlessly, and there is no sleazy attempts to keep you from doing anything with your phone. Meamo 5 may be only, say, 75% done, but it's better than only being able to use 50% of the phone!
!Equality through palindromes semordnilap hguorht ytilauqE!
That they have excellent hardware but their long term software support is as miserable as the rest of the industry.
Usually you get the phone, and as soon as you are out of the store, they dont see you as a customer anymore.
If you are lucky you get one quick bugfix update, and then you wait for ages and if you are lucky you get another software update.
The classical example this time is the HTC Hero, the top phone from them until January.
The Android 1.6 update was promised, than they said, they were going for straight 2.0 in january, then february March etc...
Now they have released the HTC Legend which is almost the same as the Hero except for the sensor instead of the trackball
and the aluminium casing, it has Android 2.1, well the result was to protect their Legend sales the Hero update again was postponed
to June. However in May Android 2.2 will be released.
All I can say is avoid this phone like the plaque go for the Nexus 1 which will get the software updates in time for the forseeable future unless you are willing to hack your phone open and use the community as software update center.
Actually the Hero will be my last non google branded phone. HTC has pulled the same stunt back then on the touch, and I should have been warned, now they are pulling the same stunt again with the Hero.
As for me I will run the Hero until the end of the year and then will go straight for what Google has to offer (hopefully a non HTC Nexus2)
"Why don't you go by Michael?" - "Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!"
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Because the iPhone set the standard for modern smartphones.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
is in my opinion the Nokia 100, 1987, a 1G Candybar, what a phone, low power, good screen, nice feel, reliable, tough, easy... Maybe you are referring to the modern portable mobile computers that help us bring spamto ourselves in new and exciting ways?
Waiting for the other shoe to...
I'm running HTC Legend with Android 2.1. No mods, nothing. Much better than the IPhone. Ligher, smaller, cozier, everythingier :)
Review of HTC Desire as alternative to Apple iPhone
My search for an alternative to Apple’s iPhone has been long and frustrating.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve walked out of a highstreet phone shop, disappointed by devices that promised so much but turned out to be flimsy toys with sluggish software and unresponsive touchscreens.
Anyone who has similarly quested an escape from Apple’s grasp will know my pain!
The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture.
But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that, for example, blocked Pulitzer Prize-winning work by satirist Mark Fiore, and kept customers waiting an astonishing 20 days for the popular Opera web browser to be allowed on to the device.
(Fiore’s work was eventually approved after much public outcry, while Opera rocketed to the top of the iPhone app chart with more than one million downloads in 48 hours.)
The latest, and most enticing alternative to the iPhone comes in the form of the Desire by Taiwanese mobile phone specialist HTC.
With HTC’s announcement on Friday that its next handset, the Incredible, will not be launched in the UK — and presumably not on the Continent either — it is likely that the Desire will remain as the iPhone’s main European rival for some considerable time.
Hyped as the world’s first superphone, the Desire is fast, beautiful, and its touchscreen is every bit as tactile and responsive as that on Apple’s handset.
At the heart of the Desire is Google’s Android operating system so it is near-infinitely customisable.
It is also out-of-stock across much of the UK after delivery flights were grounded by the volcanic ash cloud.
On paper, the Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone’s reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use?
Red faces
The failings of the Desire hit you within minutes of first using it.
Its screen is bright and colourful indoors, but almost unusable in sunlight. This severely hampers all aspects of the phone, from sending texts to web browsing, to taking photos.
The touchscreen intermittently remains active during phone calls and it’s too easy to press the on-screen buttons with your ear. I’ve accidentally hung up on people dozens of times.
Sound quality during calls is noticeably worse than the iPhone. Both the earpiece and the speaker produce a feeble, tinny sound with a background hiss.
Used indoors, the Desire’s vivid screen is great for most apps, but when viewing photos or web sites you realise that the screen is severely over-saturated. People’s faces become beetroot red.
Open Android
Web browsing is a joy. Pages render quickly and accurately.
When you zoom in on a web page using the familiar un-pinch gesture, the Desire neatly re-formats text to your screen width for easy reading.
Built-in Google chat is a surprise boon, offering a free and instantaneous alternative to text messaging between friends.
The phone is advertised as a hub-in-your-pocket for social networking, yet support for Facebook and Twitter is incomplete and unreliable, at times missing entire blocks of messages.
Thanks to the open nature of the Android operating system, there is a myriad of alternative apps to replace the standard ones.
Antiquated list-style text messaging is easily upgraded to a free iPhone-style app with familiar speech bubble conversations.
There are superb free apps for Twitter, note taking, reading news feeds, and almost anything else you may want to do with a phone. Facebook apps are thin on the ground and quite poor, although a full-featured official Facebook client is persistently rumoured to
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
The phone has very good specs. It's fast, the screen is fantastic, and its dimensions are perfect for carrying in you pants' pockets. The only thing I'm disappointed in is the camera, in particular making movies (framerate).
The thing is, Android is what makes it incredible. You get so used to just about everything working perfectly, and to the fact that almost anything is possible, that when something isn't possible, it bugs you a lot!
Have to wait and see how HTC handles software updates...
I have HTC Legend. I was thinking about switching to Desire, but from what the guy is saying, Desire seems to be much worse phone than the Legend. I don't have problem with screen brightness, flash is working flawlesly and my battery runs up to two days (I can squeeze maybe three if I stay of the TowerDefence games). I'll be sticking with the Legend since it seems to me that it is much much better phone than the IPhone.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but your post does not support your point at all. You claim that the iPhone (in your opinion) is worse than Android, and yet give no reasons why you feel that way. Do you dislike it because you like to be 'counter-culture?' What features don't you like? Is it the color?
In fact, the only reason you presented in your post (that it was slow) supported the idea that the iPhone is faster. If an uninformed person read your post, and had to buy a phone based on your post alone, they would choose the iPhone.
Qxe4
Ha, ha, ha, yeah, I here that all the time. People walking down the street, complaining about Apple's control. What a fucking joke, wake up and join the real world. A small technical elite might make such pronouncements, the majority do not care about this stuff.
I use a Google Nexus, almost equivalent to the Desire, and I can recognize the battery drain. However, after a few weeks, the phone easily holds a day - probably because "moderate; use" is really "let's see what this device can do; use".
Also, some apps are written badly and consume a lot of power when in the background. If you are experimenting a lot with your phone, chances are big that you have installed one of these. There are two solutions:
1) Uninstall the bad apps.
2) Use a tool, like task killer, which can kill the bad apps when the screen turns off.
Additionally, if you are always online, and have enabled wifi, it will consume power. Quick solution: put a wifi on/off widget on your front screen, and keep wifi off under normal use.
Battery life is appalling. With moderate use I have to charge the Desire twice each day.
That's about what I get with my iphone using bluetooth and frequent mp3 playback. Annoying, I'd agree. But I think it'd be far less so in a device where I can just swap the battery out.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Well yes, that's the point. He was replying to a post making a subjective claim and he's making a counter point that it's subjective by using his own experience.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I mean, I know I'm not supposed to, but come on...
/. you're not even trying anymore.
oh my god... it's full of stars!
The problem is, no one's actually demonstrated why the iPhone is better either.
Does it have better screen resolution? no. Does it have a better camera? no. Does it have better processor/ram/storagE? no. Is it more open so that you can do more with it? no. Is it smaller, lighter, sturdier? no. Does it have better battery life? no. Is it more practical in allowing you to carry multiple batteries? no.
But of course, you look at the other things- does it look nicer physically, does the software feel nicer, and some people will say yes, others will say no.
So here's the fundamental problem in this discussion- the only areas where the iPhone can be said to be better than most other high end handsets that compete with it are entirely subjective. That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it doesn't mean the GP is wrong either- both of you like the other phone, you don't have to justify it and neither does he. It's simple fact that the iPhone doesn't win on things like those points listed above, and how exactly can he justify the other things? if Android works better for him, then it just does- just as most iPhone fans will tell you that the iPhone just works for them, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone. I for example can't stand any of these new touch screen phones for texting on any platform, be it an Android handset without physical keypad, or the iPhone, when the majority of use I get out of my phone is texting, they're both a massive step backwards. In fact, even full keyboards on phones are a hindrance to me because they're too small to type properly- I can text far faster with Nokia's predictive text on a standard numeric pad than any other phone, because that's just what I've been used to for over a decade.
We all use our phones in different ways, and we all get a different experience as a result. Some of us think differently, not everyone appreciates the UI features that others love. When the iPhone can only stand up to the other handsets based on subjective things there's really little that can be said in terms of proving your point, because you really can't prove something that's so subjective. The GP merely seemed to be making a counter point to this effect in response to the initial post because after all, just because one person says the iPhone is better, it doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Well hello there, welcome to Slashdot: The home of the small group that is the technical elite.
His point was that "The iphone still rules the "total experience dept"" is a subjective observation, and his argument for that was good enough to support it.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It's true - my sticking to Android is more out of principle than because the actual experience is better...
In my experience (limited to the Milestone...), Android is:
-Less stable
-Glitchier
-Slower
-UI lags
These things don't really bother me, and not having to own anything made by Apple (as well as having a resolution far higher than the iPhone's measly 480x320) is a pretty good reason to stick to Android... however, I can definitely see why prettty much everyone else prefers the iPhone.
Well, *someone* (read: many people) buys the Android over the iPhone, and as it was said, it's not because of "total experience".
Maybe it's because of Latitude, or Voice or any other of the apps the Apple denied? Being against Apple's control is not a philosophical position, it's has real consequences for its users.
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I know this is going to come as a shock to you so brace yourself. Not everyone wants/likes the iPhone.
So comments like yours and from the article are really only from YOUR opinions. Now brace yourself for another shock, people have different opinions!
For example, some people like to walk rather then take the bus. Now sure walking is slower and less convenient, but yet people still do it. That doesn't mean however that it is better or worse then taking the bus or a car.
Sometimes you don't need to demand someone justify every minute detail in the hopes of advocating someone to switch to your favourite thing. If the guy prefers the android phones then just let him be and accept that not everyone likes the same things you do.
Smartphones are still too thick and heavy. The next generation of phones should be thinner than 1cm and lighter than 100 grams.
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I was considering getting an HTC Diamond (yeah I know, I'm a late adopter). But the real trick in China is to get a phone that supports 3G, GPS, and Wi-fi all in the same package. I'm similarly not an Apple worshipper, so no iPhone for me. Any hardware that fits the bill? All the mainland phones seem to be crippled and only have GPRS and Wifi instead of 3G.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
As others have pointed out, you misunderstood my post. I made no attempt at supporting my point, precisely because it's subjective.
I simply pointed out that "the iPhone still rules the 'total experience dept'" is a subjective opinion a lot of people would disagree with. Me included.
If you're really dying to know, I can share some of my thoughts, sure. But with the plethora of Android reviews online, I wouldn't say anything that's not already been said. There's enough information out there for people to make their own informed choice.
"...the majority do not care about this stuff"
And the majority is always right, right? I do not give one whit how many people think corporate censorship is OK, it quite simply is not. I can prove this on an etch-a-sketch...
Rupert Murdoch might be the only guy in the world who loves Apple for a "good" reason, which should tell you something.
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
Simple, for power users at least these that travel abroad (and most do at least for a couple of weeks per year), the first thing is how easy it's to change SIMs.
In most (at least European) countries you can get something at least vaguely acceptable (especially for data access) as a prepaid SIM. Data roaming on the other hand is practically never acceptable for usage on smartphone.
For this let's compare the iPhone with the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1.
First difference, the T-Mobile G1 is available as HTC Dream without lock. OTOH, most people in both cases will probably have gotten the simlocked version.
1.) unlocking experience on the iPhone: 2 days wasted trying to get a jail break going. 3rd day included a visit to a seedy 3rd party phone shop that advertised jailbreaking iPhones. Always in danger of undoing it all via iTunes that persistently tries to offer an upgrade for the phone.
2.) checked that the G1 is really simlocked, bought a 20 unlock code online, used it with my SIM of choice the same afternoon in the office.
Actually, both events happened some months ago, but I cannot remember the details of item 2 (as if the G1 was really locked), while item 1 makes me shudder. (Actually it's as bad that the iPhone got a non-smartphone assigned to cover wheneever the iPhone decides to go dead). OTOH, the G1 unlock did happen when the phone was very recent on the market, while the iPhone 3G jailbreak happened when the 3GS has been longer on the market than the G1 mentioned. And I'm still unclear how jailbreakable the 3GS are.
Next important item on a frequent travelers (that's what I admit is not exactly critical to the majority, but it's an important item about who controls the device that I own) is sharing Internet access. Obviously, a smartphone cannot manage to fill completely an UMTS uplink, so there is no drawback in sharing it's connectivity.
1.) the iPhone started to work as a tether after some months, basically after a couple of upgrades and the jailbreak. It offers USB Windows-only (perhaps Mac too?) tethering and standard PAN Bluetooth networking.
2.) the G1 offers TCP forwarding tethering via USB and after rooting, it offers a standard NAT-ing Linux kernel based router via Bluetooth or WLAN. The USB based tethering I was capable to use easily enough on day 1 to establish a full VPN (albeit TCP based) connection from my laptop. In practice the standard PAN Bluetooth networking is nicest for me personally, but everyone has probably his own favorite.
So I do not think that the iPhone rules the "total experience dept", as it's a total fail on two important items (one of general interest, even if they do not know, but they will when they go on their next holiday), so it's not even in the running for a phone here. (Ah, I learned yesterday why my wife got the iPhone 3G last year, "it was the cheapest colorful toy for our daughter that we could get back then easily and quickly", and "yeah that Motorola Droid looks cool")
Got an e-mail from my host (Pair) saying that my blog had been disabled due to a script problem. But it's just a Wordpress blog. I've re-enabled it and hopefully it'll stay up now. Sorry for those getting 403 earlier, or database failure now :-(
I switched last week. Had pretty much all types of smartphones over the years, and have been running an iPhone 3G for past 18 months. I switched partially because I was getting uneasy about Apple's lock down, partially as my 3G was glacially slow, and partially because I was bored.
What swung it was Engadget riffing about integration with external services like Twitter/Facebook/etc - goes completely against Apple's principles, whereas Android actively works to do this. In the future, I want more of this, not less, and I don't think I'm going to get it from Apple.
Prior to this I'd change my phone every 6 months, so Apple has done well.
I'm not going back. I may be envious when the new iPhone comes out, but the Desire is great. I couldn't go back to a lower screen resolution, I love the OLED display and it's *fast*. You can customise everything, and the phone just keeps on giving with features - case in point: last night I wanted to copy the new Iron Man 2 soundtrack over to listen to in the car. Didn't have my sync cable to hand, so I when to the Android Market, installed ES File Explorer (took about 10 seconds to search and install - it's crazy fast) and used it to browse to the share on my LAN that had the MP3s on. Copied them to the handset - again, crazy fast - and job done.
Downsides? No dock connector. Handset doesn't have that "hewn from a block of glass" feel to it. Android Market smaller. iPhone more intuitive (although you could also say "more Fisher-Price"!) although Android more powerful. No Apple lockdown means differing app GUI styles sometimes. Headphone volume was low until I replaced the T-Mobile ROM with the vanilla HTC one (thanks XDA-Developers!)
Overall, it's a *great* handset. Very pleased.
Sometimes you don't need to demand someone justify every minute detail in the hopes of advocating someone to switch to your favourite thing.
You do if you're in a cult. Just sayin'.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So comments like yours and from the article are really only from YOUR opinions. Now brace yourself for another shock, people have different opinions!
Here's another opinion. As someone who _had_ an iPhone and went back to a $50 Nokia I'll tell you the iPhone is junk. It's shiny, polished junk.
* The battery life was woeful when you're actually using it as intended. I was lucky to get a day out of the thing and I used it as an ereader for about an hour during my daily commute and a phone casually.
* It's not compatible (enough) with earlier iPod connectors/interfaces so my iPod capable car stereo won't work with it. A lot of other iPod capable stuff either failed or whinged at me. The phone quite often whinged too. Here's news Apple - if you use a "standard" connector on the thing then support it; don't change the damn internals and then tell the phone to whinge the thing on the other end is too old.
* It's locked down - you can only buy applications that Apple approve. If you jail break it you lose warranty, and on 3GS models the ability to reboot the fucking thing.
* There is no pr0n (well there is, but Jobs is in denial that Safari can be used to access pr0n).
* It crashed and froze up more often than not.
* I couldn't save anything in it that Apple doesn't want me to. That includes the videos/photos of my son that came attached to a series of MMS. They were forever trapped in the phone and I had to ask the sender to email me instead.
* I can't send files via email/MMS that Apple doesn't want me to. I can't send that hillarious video that I just received to anyone else because it _might_ fuck over some record company somewhere.
* I was stuck using iTunes to sync the address book and calendar. What kind of shit is that? Some people actually don't want to use iTunes. Apple won't expose those things in a standard way so I can't just use SyncML or something similar.
* The app store is full up with absolute garbage, low quality apps. There's an app for everything where "app" is defined as half-arsed P.O.S and "everything" is defined as {lim x->0 (1/x)}. Finding good quality software was difficult. A lot of the apps blatantly lie about their capability and you don't find out until you've paid for them.
* Apple is reportedly known to stiff app developers.
* Glass screen is uber-fragile; I know of several people who have managed to break them even when being mostly careful. It's such a common occurrence that a lot of insurance policies won't cover it anymore.
* Bluetooth is a joke. Can't even transfer files with it. Apple's answer... use email or MMS. What if I'm sitting right next to the person and want to save some data charges? Nope. Use email or MMS.
* Apple seem to pander to the big telcos about ripping out features. For example it wouldn't let me download large (>5M) files over my data plan, even though I paid for a certain amount of data and wanted to use it as _I_ saw fit, not Apple. What if I need a 15M file right now this very instant and I'm nowhere near a WiFi connection? Nope, I'm S.O.L just because Apple says so.
* No VoIP... what's with that? It's my phone, and if I want to use VoIP over my carrier's IP network then so be it. Don't tell me I can't. To top it all off, my carrier was a Skype partner and I could use Skype quite happily on their network (they encouraged it). Nope. Can't do that on an iPhone because Apple said so, even though my particular carrier is ok with it.
* Did I mention the battery life sucks?
* Apple doesn't seem interested in fixing any of the shortcomings that practically no other phone has, because they are all shortcomings that force you to reach out into data and call charges land even when you really don't need to.
The three things I don't like about my $50 Nokia are the lack of a QWERTY keyboard (a standard addition to many smart phones now), small screen size (again, fixed on modern more expensive phones) and the fact it's slow and limited in memory (also fixed by every other smart phone). Other than that, one of the cheapest non-smart models of phone kicks the shit out of an iPhone any day as far as I'm concerned.
I drink to make other people interesting!
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I've never met an Apple product owner who didn't try to recruit me.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I am finding that the biggest issue with the N900 is that it is being bought by people who think they are technically knowledgeable and are then finding that, basically, anything non-Windows is difficult. I went for it because it can ssl into my servers, and because the multitasking lets me run certain background applications that would never be accepted by Apple (they are our remote management tools.) So for me, as a developer, the N900 is a tool for which the iPhone could never be a substitute.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
To be honest, as a Desire user, I think this review is overly harsh.
While I do agree with the screen complaints (the OLED screen is all but unviewable in direct sunlight) and the battery life isn't great (although I find it'll last the day with moderately heavy use (and thats before dicking around with sync settings and other various battery-improving tweaks)), the other complaints I diagree with - for example I much prefer the chat system on the Desire to the bubble-style conversations of the iPhone although obviously other people will prefer things the other way (and they can install Handcent or one of the myriad other progams that will bring that functionality.
He complains that on the iPhone there is a button to bring up the menu for any given app - this is true, but there is no guarentee it is in the same place or clearely labelled on each program - with the Desire you always go to the same place allowing for a more consistent experience. Personally I find that the phone has just the right number of buttons, even if it is a few more than the holy iPhone (home, menu, back, search and then power and volume keys
The standard keyboard is a bit tricky to use in portrait mode due to key size (especially for me - I'm 6'5 and fairly stocky) however what it does offer is *choice* - quite apart from the landscape mode keyboard (which I believe iPhone now allows globally?) there are two other portrait keyboards you can use instead - compact QWERTY (each key has two letters as with some blackberries) and then a Phone keypad. One feature that impressed me is that if you have accidentally added misspellings to the dictionary (which I have done more than once) you can delete words individually rather than just resetting the user dictionary (which is certainly what you used to have to do with the iPhone, but I must admit my info could be out of date here.
I do not see any of the complaintes about the sound quality of the phone - the earpiece is typical smartphone (which is to say good enough but easily beaten by the old dedicated phone handsets) and the speaker is pretty loud. Of course you'd never want to listen to music with it, but its good enough for spoken word stuff (audiobooks and stand-up comedy in my case).
I don't agree with his complaints about the trackpad either, although to be fair I've not tried to use it with wet fingers so I can't comment on that, however I have seen no unusual behaviour with it either (and to be honest I don't use the track pad much anyway, It's served more use as a camera shutter button than it as as a navigation device - while its nice to have the choice I find the touchscreen is just much easier.
To be fair there are some things that do annoy me with the phone, but its all minor things - for example in the media player I would like that in the media player it was possible to navigate back up the tree, but thats not always an option (for example if you pick a track from 'first principles' (ie fire up app, select artist then album then track) you can do it, but if you just tap on the media player widget it takes you to the currently selected track but if you want to change you have to navigate from those first principles again (with the exception of pickig a different track from the same album.) but its a pretty minor complaint, and the other things that annoy me are all little things as well.
One thing that is an issue currently is that a lot of pay-for apps are as yet unupdated for Android 2.1 and are just not there in the app store, which is really irritating to be in a position to download say a 'free' (whether ad-supported or somehow limited) version, want to buy the complete version and its just not there. Lack of Google Earth is particularly annoying.
It's amusing that you are classing the discussions in this thread as coming from "babies" when yours is the first immature post I have come across. Everyone else has been discussing the pros and cons of the Desire vs the iPhone with relative lack of immaturity. And yes, there are clearly downsides to the iPhone, much like there are downsides to the HTC Desire, both of which have counterpoint upsides.
The trick is to find the phone where you have more "upsides" (on a person by person basis) than downsides. For some that will be iPhone, for others that will be the HTC Desire, or some other smartphone.
Anyway, I think it's time for you to do your homework, the adults are talking now.
There are thousands of alternatives. For example some1 wants to make phone calls, then pretty much every phone is good enough, including iPhone with could be considered viable option if not for its cheaper alternatives in voice calls. If he wants advanced contact management, then there is just a few competing in this field. If he wants good web browser, e-mail and instant messenger client then there will be a few as well. Some or all of those might cover iPhone, so people might go for it. But they certainly have alternatives. I for one decided to go with Android G1, as it had hardware QWERTY with was a big plus for me, but iPhone and WebOS were viable alternatives (and vice versa).
If someone wants all what iPhone has, ie he wants iPhone, not its features - then whats the point of looking for alternative? If its just the features, then I would say there is plenty of alternatives for individuals.
Pointless search is pointless.
That's a rather subjective observation. My Android phone broke the other day, leaving me with my work phone (iPhone) as only phone for a week.
I wouldn't swap my Android for an iPhone if you paid me big bucks to do it.
Luckily for me, I don't have to pay you the big bucks. All I have to do is break your Android.
His point was this is a technical site.
He only paraphrased parent on the "elite" part.
Regardless of how it's worded, we on /., cares about wether a system is vendor locked or not.
Most of the regulars anyway.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
We should meet for coffee if you're in the UK any time soon. I feel the Apple community is misrepresented by its more extreme members.
Also, is it really recruitment if you have to buy something? ;)
You claim that the iPhone (in your opinion) is worse than Android, and yet give no reasons why you feel that way.
Off the top of my head (I have both):
You may not care, but many people do. And these aren't just obscure geek-issues.
I think you nailed it. I'm looking to use my phone as a media player (video, music, ebooks) and a stopgap 'netbook', and file sharing / network access on the iPhone is too locked down. Plus no SD card really sucks.
I'm looking at the HD2 right now, hopefully the Dell Streak will come out before I'm freed from my 2y contract (in July).
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I see you're unaware of scientology :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
Have you tried Swype or one of the other similar "finger sliding" keyboards like SlideIT, ShapeWriter?
Until I got my Nexus One I had the same opinion as you wrt texting and touch-screen keyboards. It was one of the major reasons I had resisted buying a phone with only a software keyboard. I eventually bit the bullet after speaking to plenty of people who said they got used to the on-screen keyboard quickly enough. It still felt like a big step backwards for me though and I never really felt comfortable with any of the 3-4 different touch keyboards I'd tried until I found Swype (note that's a HUGE plus in favour of Android - you can replace virtually any part of the system 3rd party software, keyboard included).
For those of you who aren't aware of these types of keyboards, they work as follows: Rather than pressing each key one at a time like a normal keyboard, you just slide your finger across all the letters in the word you want to write. Once you've slid out the word, you lift your finger then start sliding the next word. The software figures out what word you intended and inserts that plus a space automatically. It's uncannily accurate, it only takes a few minutes to get the hang of, and it doesn't take a lot of practice until you're "typing" words at 40WPM with just one thumb.
Almost everyone I've shown it to has been blown away by it, including plenty of distinctly envious looking iPhone owners.
As a Desire owner who's also played with the iPhone a fair bit, I think I'm pretty well-placed to judge this. It's fairly simple: the Desire is the better phone in almost every respect.
Additionally, I think the author of the article may have a faulty handset. Many of the problems he mentions having with the Desire are not an issue at all on my device. The supposedly oversaturated screen looks beautiful (put it side-by-side with an iPhone and see the difference), I've never had the touch screen remain active during a call, and the "tinny speaker" sounds great to me, giving far greater call quality than I've experienced on a iPhone. He's right that the screen can be difficult to see in bright sunlight, but I solved this problem by living the U.K.
iPhone pros
50/50
Desire pros
Some of the above will be added in the new iPhone OS, indeed I'm sure the hardware will catch up with (possibly overtake) most of the above too. So if you're a real Apple junkie it might be worth your while waiting for the summer. But if you're after the best smartphone available right now, I don't think there's really any competition.
Well, by that definition I wouldn't class you as a Linux zealot - a zealot wouldn't go near windows, and would berate his friends for using Windows. Maybe you'd install it for them, but you'd try to make them feel like they were making the biggest mistake since Yoko's friend introduced her to John.
You're clearly much more moderate than that, like the majority of Apple users I know (personal majority, perhaps not indicative of the wider audience - I just don;t know many extreme Apple zealots).
I also do Windows installs for friends, and show them Firefox if they haven't seen it before, and offer options for new computer purchases. Obviously I am going to mention Apple, but as an option, not the only game in town. Of the several people who have come to me for advice, some have gone on to purchase Apple, some have stayed on Windows but have gone for specific hardware rather than just buying the very cheapest laptop, and some have bought Apple hardware solely to run Windows on it because they liked the form factor of the Alumnium iMac but required the use of Sage and some other specific windows-only software for custom electronics that the guy supplies to industry.
I lay out the benefits and downsides of each platform, and while I haven't been able to suggest Linux to anyone yet, I have been looking at it on my old 15" PowerBook.
I am embarrassed by people at the fringes who see the world in black and white terms, that there is no alternative except WinTel/Apple/Linux/BeOS (ok, not many of those around). Most Apple users are not in that camp, but they do make the most noise.
1.) unlocking experience on the iPhone: 2 days wasted trying to get a jail break going. 3rd day included a visit to a seedy 3rd party phone shop that advertised jailbreaking iPhones. Always in danger of undoing it all via iTunes that persistently tries to offer an upgrade for the phone.
Being given an unlocked phone (or an easy way to unlock it) is something you should check when you buy the phone. For example, O2 will unlock it.
Granted, the iPhone makes this more complicated.
That's an enormous non-sequitur.
They are clearly comparable - two groups who advocate (and in fact, vehemently argue) that their platform and way is the only way to go, and all other things should be killed with fire/destroyed/marginalised and the users of said alternates should be ridiculed/mocked/yelled/patronised etc.
It's bad from both groups, but the important point to note is that neither group entirely defines the entire "side" of that divide - to claim that Apple's fanboys are worse, and that I'm not seeing it is denying your own "side" (and I have to pseudo quote that, since it's really an artificial distinction) has extremists.
Whether there are more or worse evangelists on one side does not negate the comparison that they do exist on both sides and do not accurately reflect the views and opinions of everyone concerned.
To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Static page should work:
http://www.meejahor.com/2010/04/23/review-of-htc-desire-as-alternative-to-apple-iphone/
Sorry again for all 403, 404 and database errors :-(
This link is still working.
http://www.meejahor.com/2010/04/23/review-of-htc-desire-as-alternative-to-apple-iphone/
I'm really fussy about phones and here in the UK getting one at a reasonable price usually implies a 2 year contract so I was really careful before switching. Thankfully my old iPhone 3G is worth quite a bit on ebay!
Apple are going to actively prevent sideloading of content, and generally go their own path. This will probably make them a truckload of money, but in the end they're not going to be supportive of any use of the phone that doesn't make them money: e.g. why doesn't the file system of the iPhone appear as a USB drive when it's connected? It's not for technical reasons...
The HD2 has great hardware but won't run Windows Phone 7 series. There's an android version on the way though (Evo?). Have handled the HD2 and it's a really great bit of engineering - and the size is much better as a large phone / small tablet. Makes more sense than buying an iPhone AND an iPad...
Just as an aside - the Desire isn't quite a rebadged Nexus One.
Hardware differences: no dock connector or car clip charge points. No noise-cancelling mic (although it works just fine without).
Software: HTC Sense GUI (which is really very, very good indeed), no voice search (easily added), and no root access just yet - the latter will probably be done by Paul @ MoDaCo this week. Although to be honest, it's open enough that I don't need root just yet.
Here's another opinion. As someone who _had_ an iPhone and went back to a $50 Nokia I'll tell you the iPhone is junk.
I think you meant to say:
As someone who _had_ a smartphone and went back to a $50 Nokia I'll tell you that I don't actually want or need a smartphone.
...because if you strip out the usual Apple-hater memes many of your criticisms apply to many smartphones (Battery life, lots of dross in the App store, features knobbled to appease carriers, bugs & crashing, halfbaked Bluetooth). NB: I use a HTC Hero, not an iPhone and, yeah, it shares many of your issues (plus some all of its own, like a halfbaked WiFi implementation with no proxy support and unreliable and slow reconnection) and a basic $50 cellphone would be more practical if you just wanted calls and SMS/MMS.
Apple's answer... use email or MMS. What if I'm sitting right next to the person and want to save some data charges? Nope. Use email or MMS.
One helpful hint: a smartphone without an unmetered data plan is as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. If you don't want to pay for unmetered data don't bother with a smartphone (of any flavour).
Oh and thank you for not forwarding silly videos and pictures to all and sundry over the already overloaded cellphone networks. Social networking sites are there for a reason.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Immaturity is calling your perceived opponents "babies" and calling products you don't like by deliberately derogatory terms.
The term "counterpoint upside" refers to the downsides I mentioned for each device.
Downside: made of stone, heavy
Counterpoint: won't rust, sturdy
Counterpoint here is broadly a synonym, and in the phrase "counterpoint upside" it is an adjective.
The original article was written by a guy in the UK comparing the iPhone to the Desire, since his point was that (when the Incredicle is released, as he notes) it will not be available in the UK. Thus, in a comparison article, the Desire is as good as it's going to get until more release information is forthcoming - ie, that it's a fair comparison, and not a comparison of the iPhone with an "older model that will soon be upgraded").
The point of the article was a side by side of the Desire vs the iPhone, with a note to UK users that the soon-to-be-released Incredible is not coming to the UK, so is not an alternative choice that needs to be considered at this time. There's no confusion at all here.
I simply pointed out that "the iPhone still rules the 'total experience dept'" is a subjective opinion a lot of people would disagree with. Me included.
Case in point, my gf has the iPhone and finds it really easy to use. She uses the same handful of apps regularly and never has to switch between them extensively in a short time or find anything that's not one of her core apps in a hurry. She likes the UI and the experience. For me, it's absolutely horrible, having several pages of apps all jumbled together with no clear way to sort them (okay, I think they can be re-ordered but I didn't see any way to group or categorise them, etc), going between them in a session is a hideous experience, even just finding them is a chore, which is a shame because there are things about the phone I like, and it would be nice if we had the same phone so we could share peripherals, but for me this is definitely not a good example of a "total experience dept" product.
Reading some reviews of the HTC Desire (With HTC's Sense UI), it seems much more to my tastes, even going so far as allowing you to create different work and leisure profiles and grouping the Apps you use for each accodingly.
So do "normal" people! Cases in point I've been asked about THIS WEEK:
"Huh? My PC died. Why can't I copy the music off it to another?"
"Huh? Why doesn't it work with my new car's head unit? I got the top of the line VW one with phone integration?" - no decent bluetooth control, and no remote SIM support, and no chance of a fix
As a rule, Scientologists steer clear of Apple users - they saw Independence Day and are worried that when the spaceship finally comes to take them all off to Xenu or L Ron Hubbard's colon or whereever it is going that Jeff Goldblum will upload a virus using his trusty Apple Powerbook and cause it to crash.
Slide-It was a revelation. I thought it'd be a buggy good-in-principle kind of thing, but it's amazing. The standard OSK isn't as responsive as the iPhones (I think it might just be that it's slightly smaller - I find I hit the wrong key more often) but with slide-it you just wipe your finger around and it magically works.
Oh, and remember you've got voice input into all text fields with a bit of effort, and the speech recognition is pretty darn good, too.
http://www.harrykey.com/blogs/the-htc-hd2-review-demon-phone/ ... reviewer has clearly never felt the wonder that is the hollow within a beautiful woman..
Oh, and as an aside, I'm not sure if the iPhone is indicative of Apple's user experience in general, but I was having some issues with a file in WMP that I couldn't remove so I thought I'd try iTunes to manage my music, since everyone tells me how great it is. Unfortunately it wouldn't let me access any of the "great" features without providing my credit card details. Even though I had no intention of buying anything, I just wanted it to manage my existing music, they still wanted my card details before I could do things like grab track titles and album art. In the end I went back and found a solution for the WMP issue. Having to fight with a Microsoft application because it's preferable to Apple's alternative is not what I'd describe as a good user experience.
UI familiarity is key, and breeds loyalty as well. Look at my dad, he's still using Quark 4.1 and Acrobat 5 simply because he doesn't want to learn a new ui.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
why is tethering such a big issue for you people? even entry level phones from a decade ago were able to share their network with computers. first it was only over usb but when bluetooth became popular, it could use that too. in fact i don't think thee is a SINGLE nokia, sony, samsung, lg phone without tethering capability.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
*Small* group, Mr 7 digits?
Well, in most markets there is no option (beyond perhaps some shaddy 3rd party shops that include a jailbreak into the deal from the start) to get an unlocked iPhone.
Or they hit you with an unlock fee in the area of £200, on top of the (not exactly cheap) contract that you have still to pay for.
Compare that to the £300 or so that I paid for my G1 in Germany, without contract. A phone that I could practically immediatly (I had to return to the office to get the online unlock code) use in whatever way I want.
OTOH, with the iPhone you get for free a peon relationship with Mr. Jobs, who will allow you to do whatever he feels okay with on the phone that you just bought. That starts from the point to helping the bottomline of the networks (data roaming, locked phones by default, atypical SIM formats [which is an issue if you just want to grab a prepaid SIM somewhere, wouldn't you say?]) on my cost, to using a secret definition of what it is acceptable to use the phone for in the first place. (and if we believe, most often that includes the standards of the American bible belt. Well, porn is only acceptable if it comes from a reputable company, right? Wonder how that mashes with the "family-friendly" image of the iPhone?)
Blame the carriers as well.
I used to work as a software developer for a mobile phone manufacturer and was told by various people that phone software updates are more controlled by the carriers than by what the manufacturers or consumers want. Sometimes its a case of "the carriers wont fund the costs of porting to , therefore we wont do it". Sometimes its a case of "we have an update to for but we cant release it as our carrier partners havent signed of on it yet" or "its up to the carriers when this release happens"
Apple seems to be the only company to date who has told the carriers to go jump and taken over control of updates directly. Microsoft has hinted that they are going to do so for Windows Phone 7 also.
Personally, I think RIM should follow Apple and MS and tell carriers that firmware updates will go through RIM for future devices and not the carriers (and none of the big 4 US carriers could afford to not carry Blackberry devices due to its massive popularity so they would have to accept RIMs terms)
The newly released Xperia X10 from Sony Ericsson does pretty good.
I previously had used the HTC Dream - Android phone and was extremely disappointed.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
While I'm sure you're right for a large group of people, I'd have to say that even more people buy Android phones because their family isn't on AT&T or for whatever reason they don't want to use AT&T, and thus can't get an iPhone so they go for something similar.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I also have USB and cable tethering available. Don't whinge about the iphone when it's AT&T being arseholes.
That is actually a feature. Windows Phone 7 lacks everything that made Windows Mobile bearable or even good.
I intend to use WM6.5 as long as possible.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Sadly us moderates don't get the attention. It seems like extremists are always the focus, regardless of whether you're talking about Apple fanboys, Linux zealots, or terrorists. No one hears the Apple user who isn't an annoying douche bag, or the Linux user who isn't sporting a neckbeard, or the Muslim who isn't calling the West the Great Satan. I guess we're too boring?
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
The difference is that only the Apple fans actually exist. Linux zealots? There are still a bunch of those who would never use anything but free software, but the evangelising fanboys? I saw many of them back in 1999, when Windows was a monopoly and crashed all the time. Now that Windows works well and no longer creates a host of problems for users of other systems, they seem to be a lot quieter, perhaps non-existant. Or perhaps the zealots just left Slashdot, since the whole DIY/geek spirit disappeared when the Apple fans took over and demanded that nothing that the hypothetical grandma couldn't do was valid use of a computer.
Mac fans, OTOH, are a LOUD group on Slashdot, and to a great degree, they're liars and fraudulent advertisers. They've always been ("Windows 95 = Mac System 5" or whatever, "PPC twice as fast as Pentium on the same MHz" and so on). Examples are too numerous to mention.
On paper, the HTC Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone's reign as king of phones.
If I had a nickel every time I heard that I would be able to retire. Who cares about beating the iPhone? It may be a big seller, but it still sells far fewer units than the rest of the smartphone market. The ONLY thing that the iPhone has done was to be the first phone to offer a fully integrated, easy to use smartphone experience that the average consumer could appreciate. It's been done dozens of times since then, and much better in many cases, but because Apple was the first one to truly simplify and bring smartphones to the masses they still get all the press. It's much like MP3 players, the iPod was by far the best but people just bought them. Or at least that's what they led us to believe.
Personally, I'm surprised that people overpay for such a restrictive bauble of a phone.
(Wow, the Apple fanboy and marketing moderation squad is out in full force again. Therefore, I'm just going to repost this. The parent asked what problems some people see with the iPhone and I answered what problems I see. I'm sorry if that causes you discomfort.)
You claim that the iPhone (in your opinion) is worse than Android, and yet give no reasons why you feel that way.
Off the top of my head (I have both):
You may not care, but many people do. And these aren't just obscure geek-issues.
I'd argue that what the iPhone did was make smartphones appealing to users who wouldn't traditionally buy a smartphone. Even at the time it was released there were other phones which outstripped the iPhone in terms of features (in fact I'd argue that the original iPhone was not a smartphone at all), but the iPhone did open up a lot of the features of smartphones to regular users. It was a good entry level smartphone, and continues to be a good entry level smartphone, but it hardly pushes the envelope in any way (style-wise it looks great of course, but that's barely changed since it was first released).
You'll find no other phone measures up... because it's not an iPhone. What kind of phone do you NEED?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"You've got to be kidding me. From someone that has owned an HTC phone, I can tell you that the iPhone wins hands down"
So having previously owned an unidentified shoddy HTC phone qualifies you to pick a winner, "hands down" no less?
Impressive.
Perhaps they are a vocal bunch (there's no doubting that), but hyperbole to criticise them is not going to help. System 5? My goodness. I think Noah used that. System 7 might be a little close, but even then you're not looking at anything really good until OS 8 and OS 9.
Early PPC *was* better than Intel at the time, but more because x86 was burdened with legacy issues and general lack of performance - a fault that Intel quickly addressed to eliminate the gap. I'm not sure the gap was ever twice the power for the same speed, and it didn't exist for very long at any rate.
Consider also that while there are a fair few Apple fans here on slashdot that are an *enormous* number of anti-Apple zealots (in the absence of a better term) whose entire platform appears to be anything that Apple is not (ie, they are defined by their hate of Apple more than their like of an alternative). There's a lot of crossover with the anti-Google crowd, so perhaps it is more a "big business is coming to get me" mentality.
Either way, there are just as vocal opponents as fans here - you only have to look at the comments on a typical Apple article.
I also don't recall anyone (serious) demanding that anything a hypothetical grandma couldn't use as a valid use of a computer. Just because that part of the computing market exists and is being addressed by Apple doesn't negate the other areas - OS X has a strong base of people who do everything from the command line, and do pretty much anything "non-grandma-like" on OS X if you so choose, while your grandma video chats to her grandkids in the next room on the same OS. You're implying disparity where none exists - creating easier to use interfaces and apps isn't a snub to people who want to do it the old fashioned way, nor is it "dumbing down".
Is the goal of the Ubuntu community to marginalise "power Linux users" or to encourage more people who wouldn't otherwise be a target audience for Linux to have a go with it? They're not synonymous.
I'm also not sure you can claim that OSS evangelism doesn't exist - just reading over the comments on many articles here would provide examples, just like it does for Apple fanboys.
Are you really putting forward the argument that everyone wants an iphone, but not everyone can get one, so enter android? Seriously? I've watched this iphone saga play out on /. and it's been agonizing. A group of otherwise intelligent and discerning users tossed all decorum out the window and salivated at the iphone. Frankly, I don't get it. I've had a smart phone since before anyone called them that. My old ass busted Treo 650 does everything modern "smart phones" do, and it did it 5+ years ago. Granted, you had to be pretty good at hacking up the phone to make it do half of it, and the other half only worked as a technology demo, rather than a productive tool. However, I'm not sure when, but somewhere along the line, it went from being a really productive tool, to a flashy bauble.
At some point, we as consumers need to step back from the glossy black surfaces, and sleek lines, and realize that the tools we buy should be stylish, but they should be functional first. I won't be using an iphone, ever. Because I ONLY use platforms that are extensible by the user. Because I want function. What is it you are shopping for?
I do have an HTC Magic, so although I prefer the classic numeric pads for texting it hasn't stopped me moving to Android- I just find that my text messages ended up being a whole lot shorter nowadays as I simply cannot be arsed to fuck around with the standard keyboard, and when I tried the iPhone it felt just the same.
As someone else mentioned in response to you, I find Google Voice helpful, but I don't like shouting out text messages in public. I haven't tried the solutions you mention although I do recall hearing briefly about them before so I think I'll have a look, sounds like it might be what I'm looking for as in general I do love Android, it's just as I say I miss my old keypad.
Of course there is an enormous opposition to Apple these days -- and it's been increasing a lot after the over-the-top iPad hype. I'm certainly in that group myself, and I want to contribute to making Apple unfashionable again. They deserve it.
As for OS X being popular among terminal.app users: Apple's laptops are very decent, but OS X is a shit unix.
Exactly why I'm running a cheap touchscreen Nokia powered by Symbian. It is a great communications tool and personal organizer, and the plan it runs on is inexpensive. It won't win any beauty contests nor will this particular phone offer stellar performance as a portable entertainment device.
Differing needs fuel demand for different devices. Its why Blackberry will be around for the foreseeable future, why KIN will probably take a lot of the market feature phones held, and that simple candybar and flip phones still exist.
http://www.aaronrogier.net
The other thing that cult members do - deny that they're a cult. Just sayin'.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't know why this has been modded troll because it's a valid point.
The reason why I wrote the review in the way that I did is because I've been using an iPhone for around 18 months and for the last year I've been looking for an alternative. So I wanted to write a review for people in the same situation -- people who are happy with the iPhone but not happy with Apple, so looking for an alternative phone.
This wasn't a review of the Desire. It was specifically a review of the Desire as an alternative to the iPhone.
Precisely.
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
Then it seems that the real source of those issues isn't the one that gets the blame. Instead the blame goes on computers or tech in general, and some friendly geek/tech support is asked to deal with it.
Does she look better? Then that is the better model! ;)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This is true, but I don't think that's true if Apple cult members - I think they're actually pretty proud to call themselves a cult.
The rest of us, not so much.
I jumped on the palm pre plus from verizon a few weeks ago, mainly for the free mifi included with it. I didn't do a lot of homework before getting the phone, but it's turned out to be awesome. After I got mine, 4 other friends and co-workers signed up for one as well. Now one of those friends is thinking about jumping to the incredible since we are still in our 30 day window. He's trying to persuade me to, so I've been doing a lot of reading about android vs. iphone vs. webos. Even when I go to android-centric forums, the reviews are consistent: webos is by far the superior UI. Where it falls behind the others is in the build quality (can't beat glass and aluminum), and the smaller number of apps. Both valid points; you will never achieve the network effect on webos that you'll see on the iphone and android. However, it's the most open phone available right now (except perhaps the Nokia N900, which I don't have any experience with, and is expensive as hell), and I don't really care if it gets the market share the other two have, any more than I've cared for the past ten years about desktop linux' paltry market share. It's a superior OS, there's a really active free software community, and I can write my own stuff down to the metal if I care to learn to do so (thinking about writing a dice roller app for the board game Descent). Just some thoughts while I cram down a little breakfast and coffee. To each their own, but I'm sold on webos, despite some flaws in the pre itself.
At the time of writing, HTC Incredible was still only rumoured/just released. However, for all intents and purposes, the Desire and Incredible are the same, bar the soft buttons, 8GB on board memory and 8MP camera.
The reason people want alternatives (inferior as they may be) is Apple's tyrannical control over the platform.
Out of principle or because they feel adversely affected by it? Personally, I can find no limitations that hamper the experience for me - OK, I cannot write an Objective-C app to run on it without going through the usual process, which is a non-issue for stuff I will only be using myself (not that I can think of anything to do with it that isn't covered yet by plenty of apps to the point where I'd feel like wasting my time), but nowdays it's easy to disguise web apps as iphone apps (iWebKit etc.) so what exactly is the problem? Not being able to download random stuff from the web, which is the #1 cause for malware/virus/adware infection and thus loss of time/work/money on PCs? We should be glad that we don't have 10 million zombie iphones in yet another botnet ready to knock out your company's website... ...
Now, out of principle, that would be more understandable, but then why even bother with Android's dependency on Google? Get a Linux phone that allows you to hack the kernel
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
So here's the fundamental problem in this discussion- the only areas where the iPhone can be said to be better than most other high end handsets that compete with it are entirely subjective.
So I take some exception here. No, I'm not an Apple fanatic. I don't own an iPhone or plan to own one. It's really targeted at a more mainstream audience. That said, user interface design is not a "subjective" criteria. usability testing across large groups can and does create persistent and reproducible results. It's a science, if one often ignored because while it quantifiable in numbers, no one publishes numbers on it because most of the industry performs limited testing with predictable results and there are no industry standard benchmarks for publishing usability results and if here were they would be easily skewed by less than impartial testers.
The upshot being, usability is real. The numbers are real. It works, when it is actually used. You can test it. It's just expansive and takes skills and quantities of cash not available to Tom's Hardware or all but the largest magazines and Web sites that do reviews.
The original post didn't try to come across as subjective. The title of it was "the reality is".
That's why I responded. Had he said "in my opinion", that would've been fine. But by starting out with "reality is", he made it objective. I pointed out that's not so.
I'm sure they're technically capable, but my understanding is that tethering is intentionally disabled on certain phones bought on a contract.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I still find the Palm Pre and WebOS as better phone platform all around than the iPhone. Sure, we only have 2 or 3 iFart apps instead of 50, but most of the important apps are covered in the catalog. No one beats Palm as far as importing/organizing contacts, e-mail, multitasking, and GUI go and their web browser is up to snuff with mobile Safari...and those are the real things that matter to me. It's smaller than the iPhone (which is good because I'm a pocket carrier) and has an unbreakable screen, so I won't have to pay some teenage kid on Craigslist $100 to fix my screen like most of the iPhoners I know. The physical keyboard is icing on the cake. That's my "total experience"...being able to do everything I need to do as efficiently as possible. I think what you meant to say was "The iPhone was the first cell phone that clicked with me and when I go to other platforms I miss having that first 'wow' moment like I did the first time I used a modern smartphone OS."
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Incredible multitouch is better than the N1:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/26/confirmed-droid-incredibles-multitouch-support-is-better-than/
A lot of people don't need smart phones for the high productivity functionality. A lot of people just want to play games on a big pretty screen, and make sure they can check their facebook on the subway. I'm not one of those people, but just because the bauble isn't for you, doesn't mean it doesn't have a place or purpose.
is that Samsung has had the i8910 out for almost a year, and no one is talking about this really great phone.
I've got one, and the qualities are endless: ;P :D ;)
1) seamless video playback of up to 1280x720
2) video capture of 720p quality
3) excellent GPS
4) strikingly beautiful amoled screen
5) incredibly powerful graphics processor
6) symbian OS
7) Wireless support
8) front facing video camera
9) stereo speakers as well as normal headset input
10) DLNA server and controller
11) you can use it as a phone
12) being able to use skype through wireless with the phone instead of calling the person.. really nice
13) great community which is trying to improve it even further.
14) multi-task
15) copy paste function from beginning
- I'm probably forgetting some other bonuses.
The flaws so far are:
1) doesn't have multi-touch
2) you need to do some googling and software browsing on various websites to find and set up tools you'd like to use.
With this phone, I've got everything I could ever need in hand. It's my first one-cellphone-does-all item, and I'm liking it very much.
And when we are at, it seems incapable to control call forwarding as any 10 bucks GSM phone does. (I did not find any menu items to control "unconditional", "unreachable", "busy" and so on call forwardings. Should it be capable of this, same text, different point: the UI is not that intuitive, I guess)
But yes, if I would have the choice for me personally, I'd probably select any somewhat current Symbian phone over the iPhone. And that says much, because I've been using Symbian smartphones for years (starting with the first Geo based Communicator, which admittingly is pre-Symbian.), so I know the problems they have.
Use value half order:
iPhone Symbian Android Maemo
"Good looks" half order:
Symbian Android iPhone Maemo
UI half order:
Symbian iPhone Android (no ordering for Maemo, haven't used it long enough personally to sort it)
I'm pretty sure that there are many XBox 360, PS3 or Wii owners here. You buy the device knowing that it is locked down, can only play vendor authorised software and has a limited vendor determined feature set.
People accept that, so why is a phone any different?
An adjustment of mindset is required. In the 80s when the first consoles from Sega and Nintendo appeared a friend of mine was on about selling his C64 to get one, I said he was mad as you couldn't do anything but play games on it and the games were all on cartridges.
Yet many years down the line we are perfectly prepared to buy a very powerful piece of hardware that is almost fully locked down. The hardware spec of the device would be useful as a basic computer. Look at the PS3, it could be used for Linux, although Sony has reeled that feature back in.
Microsoft will lock down their new phone platform like Apple has. It's just the way things are heading. I'm glad that a phone I get on contract is not allowed to be ruined by the network operator, in the past they have added their own applications, removed features from the firmware etc.
People complain when an app they had paid for and downloaded is disabled by Apple after the fact. This is the problem with Apple, they don't allow people to even USE apps that are not provided on the iTunes store. Picture what would happen if Apple were to do an update that disabled the use of MP3 music files just because you could make your own instead of downloading them from their store. Would people complain?
I think the big issue is the whole 'functionality before hype' argument. Electronic toys are all fine and dandy, but so much about the iPhone is based on hype, rather than on how good it is. This is why they can't give the iPhone away in Japan, because without the hype, the iPhone isn't really all that great compared to the competition.
Principle.
As a long-ago Apple fan, let me give you this bad analogy:
Let's say you're in love with this beautiful, intelligent, creative woman (slashdotters, use your imagination). She's just want you need, what you want and you adore her. No other woman is nearly as perfect.
Now let's say one day she says to you, "From now on, I'm going to charge you for sex. When you want to hold my hand, you've got to pay. When you want to talk to me, you've got to pay."
Now for a while, you might go along because you love her so much, but as some point, you're going to start feeling like a trick. You may finally decide that some woman who's not quite as perfect is a better match for you, because she doesn't make you feel like a trick.
Apple makes me feel like a trick. To be locked-in to AT&T makes me feel like a trick. To be locked in to the app-store makes me feel like a trick. To be told by Apple that certain apps are "off-limits" makes me feel like a trick.
iPhone/iPad users are still paying. That's their choice and I can understand it. I'm happy with the woman who might not be perfection itself but with whom I feel like a boyfriend, not a trick. Plus, she's up for an occasional dirty sanchez. That's my Android.
I hope this clarifies things.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The reason people want alternatives (inferior as they may be) is Apple's tyrannical control over the platform.
That's like saying a Ford F-150 full-size pickup is inferior to a Mercedes S-class luxury sedan.
It all depends on what you use your car for.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
This is one of the reasons I am looking to get a Palm Pre Plus once AT&T releases their version of it. True multi-tasking, more open, has the Touchstone for charging, a better UI than the iPhone, etc. Yes, Palm is having some financial problems, but if the phone is good, it will be worth buying. The style of the Pre and Pre Plus are also more attractive overall, and there is a real keyboard. Things are even looking up for things like a Bluetooth keyboard(not available yet, but things are happening that will allow one).
> People accept that, so why is a phone any different?
Music, Movies and Books have never been a "proprietary console" experience.
Consoles have always been proprietary because CODE tends to require higher compatability barriers than DATA.
Of course Apple is happily encouraging the confusion that Microsoft helped to start.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Car analogy: an old Honda can basically do everything a Ferrari can do. They essentially have all the same features. But one does it with style and feels good to use. Also, regarding your Treo. MP3 players were around for years before iPods, and we all know how that played out. Just accept it, form matters. Function isn't the only issue.
I dunno.
For me, things like "total experience" include being able to easily get things off of and onto the phone.
It also includes a browser that handles basic HTML elements better than Lynx.
"Total experience" seems to be merely a means of belittling lots of particular complaints about how various parts of a platform are indeed crap.
Apple fanboys are like Wii users that are unwilling to admit that they've made considerable tradeoffs.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I own an HTC Dream. Google Android. Very similar to the phone mentioned in the article, except it's got a pull-out QWERTY keyboard instead of using an on-screen keyboard.
In order of frequency, it gets used as the following:
Phone
e-mail reader
calendar
facebook reader
instant messaging client (msn and google chat)
games platform (solitaire keeps me from getting completely bored on the bus, along with reversi and frozen bubble)
wikipedia client
ssh client (yes, there's an app for that)
GPS navigator (google maps + GPS)
mobile starmap with GPS awareness
web browser
It's entirely possible that it can be both a functional tool and a bauble at the same time. It's not unreasonable to want your phone to be both. And it *is* possible to turn the iPhone into such a functional tool, it's just that you need to jailbreak the iPhone... if you don't, then some of the things I do with my Android phone won't be possible.
As for why I bought the Android over the iPhone? Well, it's not because I like the Android more... it's not as responsive as the iPhone, and needs to be rebooted from time to time. It's not because there's no SSH client on the iPhone... you can jailbreak the iPhone and install one. it's not because I had no choice in the matter... the carrier I'm with sells several versions of the iPhone. It's because I don't want to use an on-screen keyboard, and wanted a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard. If they made an iPhone with a fold-out full QWERTY keyboard, then I wouldn't need to think twice about replacing my HTC phone. As it is, they don't so I won't.
> Yeah, funny that. Not everyone requires their phone to be extensible in order to be "functional".
No. Apple users are just used to "doing without" and then making excuses for themselves.
It applies equally well to proper Macs. It's just a lot easer for a "geek" to modify a Mac so it's more flexible.
The problem with the Apple fanboy idea of "usability" is that you also have to cripple the device in the process.
You need to hide all of the scary details (even the filesystem) lest the frighten the end users you want to keep
ignorant and dependent.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You do realize that your argument that the Treo 'did' all of this, and then following up with this kind of makes your first statement a bit irrelevant?
"Granted, you had to be pretty good at hacking up the phone to make it do half of it, and the other half only worked as a technology demo, rather than a productive tool."
We've all had good phones over the years. Regular people don't want to 'hack' their phones to be able to do 'stuff'. Even I found the iPhone usable and one of the first that I actually USE the apps on it. I've bought or downloaded apps for various phones through the years and without exception, I would use them once, maybe twice, and then never again.
The iPhone changed all of that. The fact that Android uses many of the same features and functions is a testament to the design.
(except perhaps the Nokia N900, which I don't have any experience with, and is expensive as hell)
I have an N900. Short review: It's a FUCKING AWESOME mobile computer and an average-ish phone/PDA. There is a very nice helpful community built around the OS as well, some have called it a major selling point. It runs Linux so porting apps is easy, but if you don't care to port just run apps in a chrooted Debian install - that's how I run full desktop Firefox, OpenOffice and GIMP. In terms of features and capabilities, calling the N900 an iPhone-killer is like calling a speeding freight train a fly-killer. Understatement of the century.
Expensive as hell? The price is comparable to competing unlocked phones (I got mine for $530US). Not to say it isn't a lot of money.
Downsides: There are a few build quality issues, read up on the USB connector breakage issue. Also the "user experience" isn't ultra-polished, so if you care deeply about how smooth your desktop animations are and absolutely won't tolerate a sort of kludgy dialing GUI, it might not be the best choice.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Only a geek could have trouble seeing why an iPhone is considered superior to other smartphone platforms.
Geeks care about feature counts. A device with 100 features is considered superior to a device with say 75 features (lets ignore the issue where you could count each available app as a feature because then Apple would win hands down, we wouldn't have anything to argue about and well where's the fun in that?)
For non-geeks, just being able to use the device in the first place is a huge feature. This is where Apple wins. They make the user interface not only so easy but enjoyable to use that people stick with the device long enough to learn how to do other things on it. Back when Smartphones were new I knew some real estate agents and other professionals who had Treo's, Blackberries and Windows Mobile phones because they thought it would make them look more professional but they were never actually able to figure out how to use the devices beyond the phone and contact functions. Everything else on the devices was just too difficult for them to use, including installing 3rd party apps. Then here comes Apple with the first iPhone and its like the first Smartphone for normal people. To non-geeks the other devices really don't count as smartphones because they're so hard to use.
Android is actually pretty easy to use compared to Palm OS, Blackberry OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile. The problem for Android is the iPhone OS is still easier to use. That being said I fully expect Android to eclipse Apple in marketshare because its free for OEM's to slap on a phone and thus you can literally throw a free or low cost Android phone at people whereas Apple will probably never have an iPhone below $150 or $100 if they ever get down to that price point. Windows Phone 7 is also surprisingly promising but we need actual shipping product before any real verdicts can be said about that.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Could you elaborate? My Samsumg Omnia is running WinMo 6.1, and while there are some things I really like about the phone, the OS feels cobbled together and most of the buttons are too small. I have heard good things about 6.5 (eg bigger buttons) and though I will probably get an Android phone I would be interested to hear why you think WinMo 7 is a backwards step.
While I have an iPhone and can sympathise with many of your points, some are not accurate - you don;t have to use iTunes to sync your calendars and contacts and music and so on, there are other programs that can do it: The Missing Sync for example, on both Mac and Windows. The sync API in OS X does enable you to leave out iTunes if you wish.
Battery life is not great compared to a non-smartphone, I agree, but it did get much better after a few charge cycles. I don't think this is limited to the iPhone though - pretty much all of the large LCD touchscreen phones have this sort of issue.
The iPhone is not unique in "strongly discouraging" very large data transfers over 3G, even if you have an unlimited plan, but I admit it could be annoying if you really needed that file right then (like buying a movie on the store, or an album etc). This is a network issue - "unlimited" data, except when you actually want to use it like wifi...
Bluetooth needs fixing. I should definitely be able to file transfer with it.
In terms of compatibility with old connectors... it's a sticky one. I see it as a very similar situation to USB. You have no guarantee that connecting a new USB device (say a printer or scanner or something specific rather than a mass storage device) is going to work without needing drivers. The iPhone (and later generation iPods) have new control software that makes them especially pernickety with things like car audio - something I have run up against while researching a new HU for my car recently. The option is either to upgrade the software on the old device (the head unit expecting an old ipod) or maintain backwards compatibility if possible, or make the dock connector different.
The first one seems logical, the second one is possible, the third one would draw criticism that they were just changing the connector to force people to buy even more expensive adapters/proprietary cables. They standardised on the dock connector and have maintained it so that the bulk of third party accessories do continue to work. How outraged would be be if the iPhone 4G changed the dock connector so that none of the current third party chargers, leads, mic adaptors, cradles, docks etc no longer fitted?
As far as maintaining backwards compatibility in software, I am not sure why this is not the case - only that something big has changed and it's just not possible without an update on the now-incompatible machine. Some car radios can't charge iPod 5th gen/iPhone/iPod Touch and above, for example and you would think this is just a simple +5V across the pins in the USB connector, but I assume the issue arises from software control of the charging system.
The phone I had before my iPhone (SE K-750i) was "better" than the iPhone in some respects - battery life, external memory slot, bluetooth file transfer, and if you move the criteria like that you can define "better" any way you like. My 750i had a woeful browser, for example.
As it is, my iPhone contract is up in June and I am looking to see if I should continue it - there's no possible chance I'll be going back to the K-750i though. My current choices are Android (either on a new phone, or wait to see how the Droid-on-iPhone project pans out) or continue with the current 3G I have right now.
Google Voice was denied by Apple, from what I remember. However, I don't recall the reason–don't know if a reason was ever given. That is Apple's fault.
Google Maps with Navigation, that is Google's fault. They are the ones that have denied iPhone users that opportunity.
On a slightly different, but very related issue, it is funny how the people here often rail against Apple's managed platform, but not against Google's very aggressive collection of user data, for their own uses with Android. Very interesting and very funny to me.
Which is why I bought the Droid. I wanted functionality, and the ability to customize. It doesn't mean I don't have a couple games on there, and I don't facebook. But I think Apple does understand that there is a market for people who want just bauble. There is a market for business people who just want pretty, and email and calendaring, and the iPhone fits that too. If you want the highly technical phone, the iPhone probably isn't for you.
that had a Treo 600, Treo 650, Treo 680, then Centro, let me say: No.
They did not do "everything modern smart phones" do, and for you to suggest that is just disingenuous. My iPhone required initial configuration to enter account information for calendaring, email, facebook, twitter, bank accounts, and a few other things, and after that, it stays immediately and permanently synced, without intervention. No need to plug it into a PC and synchronize. Palms did not do that.
My iPhone gives me access to my Dropbox account and lets me open most kinds of files and even edit MS Office files sitting in my Dropbox account. That means that I have continuous, on-the-go editing access to current project files from wherever I am, and whatever work I do on my iPhone is automatically available on any Mac or PC I happen to sit down at anywhere in the world. Palms did not do that.
My iPhone lets me download and install tens of thousands of applications immediately, without browsing the web, without having to connect to a PC, and with tons of rating information and screenshots about each of them to help me make up my mind. Further, when I select one, I just tap it and it's mine, no need to enter payment information, registration serial numbers, whatever. Palms did not do that.
My iPhone lets me browse the total web without needing "mobile versions" of even very complex pages. As a university instructor I can log into campus systems and do grading, rosters, posting to e-courses, etc. Palms did not do that.
My iPhone lets me use just about every social networking site on the go, from wherever I am. Palms did not do that.
My iPhone lets me use WiFi hotspots wherever I am without any fuss. Palms did not do that.
My iPhone gives me street-by-street positioning and navigation anywhere I go. It furthermore maps out where stores, businesses, gasoline, ATMs, and any number of other things are in relation to me, providing me "augmented reality" compass-based views to locate them. Palms sure as hell did not do that.
Now Android can do most if not all of these things (even if it does these more awkwardly and imperfectly and often requiring more user intervention to set them up), but Palms sure as hell couldn't, at least not before the Pre.
But by then I was already gone go iPhone.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
hahahahaha, so much fail
Oh, wow, Apple has to be the most honest woman out there. The others usually disguise this via other means.
What are you smoking? Judging by the mod of 4 and 'insightful', it must be a group water pipe, filled with some really good shit.
http://erictric.com/2010/04/23/iphone-market-share-in-japan-surpasses-72/
The iPhone has 72% of the smart phone market share in Japan. However, even I take that with a grain of salt, because the definition of a 'smart phone' is even more confused than it is here. However, the iPhone has 4.9% of the total market, and growing.
However you cut it, seems to me that they are doing quite well in what may be the toughest mobile market in the world. A place that has destroyed attempts by others do the same thing.
People accept that, so why is a phone any different?
Phones are semi-critical part of peoples everyday lives. I'll agree that nobody would die without a cell phone, but voice and data communications have become almost necessary for many people to communicate with friends, family, and coworkers. I think people are more willing to accept restrictions on purely entertainment devices (especially since the usefulness of the device is contingent on its ability run new software in the future). We don't accept that on phones because we feel that we need to control how we use them and what we can use them for.
Plus, the American public has had a long history with monopolistic telecommunications companies telling consumers what services they need. Remember, ma bell used to own the entire infrastructure; you leased a telephone that they serviced inside your home. Granted, Apple doesn't own the pipes. But I think I can understand why I wouldn't want the phone manufacturer dictating what services I can use on my phone.
My non-jailbroken iPhone does bluetooth tethering.
Also, that long back up bug is annoying - When it gets stuck like that you can "prod" it by clicking the x in the iTunes display window and you'll see the bar suddenly fill up very quickly. I have no idea what causes it, but that always seems to fix it, and when it's stuck like that, the x doesn't cancel the sync as you would expect - it continues as normal.
(and trust me, it's not just the pro-Apple mods out in force - there has been some judicious flamebait modding of reasoned discussion on both sides of this today).
I hope this clarifies things.
Since all girlfriends cost you money one way or another, the question is in which case you have to feel like being tricked. ;-) Let's say there are offers for free sex that we would both gladly turn down, no matter how honest they might be.
Personally, I would feel tricked by Google into a supposedly "open" world where most code was written by other people than those charging me for the phone and where the currency I actually pay in is worth more to me than money: it's my personal data. If Android phones contained no proprietary code and I could download/modify anything and put it on my phone without sending any data to Google, then it'd be truly open.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
This article and your comment are total bullshit! Just the Motorola Droid is far superior to any iPhone you can buy right now, you don't have to wait for the next Android to get something that totally humilliates any iPhone.
It's unfortunate but Slashdot is infected with either Apple fanboys that cannot see beyond their noses or Apple employees gaining their salary spreading wide bullshit news... sad.
Dear
is smoking crack. I am a multi-published developer and tech guy who's been in the industry since the days he was using a Sun 3/50 all-in-one 68k machine with SunOS loaded from DC600 tapes. I'm not tech-incompatible.
I spent days and hours frothing at the mouth because "in theory" the Palm "should" be able to do X, Y, and Z or because the Palm was "so close" do doing what I needed... and yet with all the hours and evenings spent trying to "just make it do this one little thing" that would make my life easier, the Palms always fell short. I always fell back into "well, what are you going to do, those are the trade-offs of mobile devices" thinking.
That has never happened to me with iPhone. I have spent damned near zero time configuring, syncing, hacking, installing, manipulating, and maintaining. It has just worked from day one and I have never found anything that I wanted it to do that it didn't do with a minimum of fuss and an almost stunning lack of impediment.
And anyone who says that Palm or Windows Mobile is more extensible than iPhone is smoking crack. Maybe you can put a bigger MicroSD card in a Palm, but there's damn near no point in filling it up with anything but music. And beyond that, there's no real extensibility there. You have half a dozen "usable" shareware apps to choose from (most of them $50-150 to register) and a whole world of utter, utter app crap in the Palm and Windows Mobile spaces.
iPhone on the other hand has excellent apps that universally cost less than $10, most less than $4, and that don't require registration, configuration, or tethered installation... not to mention that not one of them has yet caused me to go into spontaneous reboots, data loss, and other things requiring a factory reset and restore from backup, a regular occurrence with Palm that was a strong disincentive to actually install apps and try to make use of that "extensibility."
Basically anyone still arguing that there is nothing new with supersmartphones like iPhone or Android and that all of this could have been done before, and that people are just responding to "hype" or "shine" or whatever... Well, such people have far too much time on their hands to dick around with gadgets, and far too few real needs for those gadgets to actually work, or they'd know that previous gadgets in fact didn't, by and large.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Though you have to admit, a smooth responsive UI does effect productivity on a device. You are mentally going through functions more smoothly with less stress. It does matter. The problem of course with the iPhone is the lock down. The Android has had a slow time getting traction and one big reason is the that the UI is more clunky than the iPhone UI.
Yes being geeky and such you want to see all the file system and guts of the machine but at the end of the day it's better to be able to hide all that and have a sleek setup to just do the things you need to be done without fuss. Without having to get hackey to do them. So, the iPhone can become much better if it is opened up just a bit more but we know that won't happen.
In my opinion Google never seems to get the idea of smooth UI. That's why Android is clunky. They are all engineers so of course they design things how they think things should work. Function over form, as opposed to a balance between the two. I still prefer to use MS Office products over Google's offerings just because of UI. The functions Google provides are great but they aren't that great.
I think I'm done with this rant. I meant to just post a sentence!
Balderdash!
The problem with computing devices is they tend to create barriers that disallow for either the Benz S-Class or the F-150.
Although ultimately that effect is driven by ignorant consumers that have never been in either.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
* The battery life was woeful when you're actually using it as intended. I was lucky to get a day out of the thing and I used it as an ereader for about an hour during my daily commute and a phone casually.
That's true but then the same goes for many smart-phones out there (including HTC).
* It's not compatible (enough) with earlier iPod connectors/interfaces so my iPod capable car stereo won't work with it. A lot of other iPod capable stuff either failed or whinged at me. The phone quite often whinged too. Here's news Apple - if you use a "standard" connector on the thing then support it; don't change the damn internals and then tell the phone to whinge the thing on the other end is too old.
Get a firmware update for your car stereo. Failing that get a better quality stereo.
* It's locked down - you can only buy applications that Apple approve. If you jail break it you lose warranty, and on 3GS models the ability to reboot the fucking thing.
Tough luck. If you don't like what it says in the EULA don't use the product and for god's sake top whining.
* There is no pr0n (well there is, but Jobs is in denial that Safari can be used to access pr0n).
So? You can get your porn can't you?
* It crashed and froze up more often than not.
Had an iPhone's and iPod touch devices for years, same for many of my friends. That is not a common occurrence in my experience.
* I couldn't save anything in it that Apple doesn't want me to. That includes the videos/photos of my son that came attached to a series of MMS. They were forever trapped in the phone and I had to ask the sender to email me instead.
That pisses me off too.
* I can't send files via email/MMS that Apple doesn't want me to. I can't send that hillarious video that I just received to anyone else because it _might_ fuck over some record company somewhere.
Eh? Apple is censoring your email?
* I was stuck using iTunes to sync the address book and calendar. What kind of shit is that? Some people actually don't want to use iTunes. Apple won't expose those things in a standard way so I can't just use SyncML or something similar.
www.me.com
* The app store is full up with absolute garbage, low quality apps. There's an app for everything where "app" is defined as half-arsed P.O.S and "everything" is defined as {lim x->0 (1/x)}. Finding good quality software was difficult. A lot of the apps blatantly lie about their capability and you don't find out until you've paid for them.
That's true enough, the iTunes App-store interface sucks ass.
* Apple is reportedly known to stiff app developers.
That's true.
* Glass screen is uber-fragile; I know of several people who have managed to break them even when being mostly careful. It's such a common occurrence that a lot of insurance policies won't cover it anymore.
So get a leather or rubber cover, mine survived a trip down a flight of concrete stairs without breaking the glass.
* Bluetooth is a joke. Can't even transfer files with it. Apple's answer... use email or MMS. What if I'm sitting right next to the person and want to save some data charges? Nope. Use email or MMS.
Bluetooth has always been a joke. I don't think I've ever had a phone where that crap functioned completely the way it was supposed to.
* Apple seem to pander to the big telcos about ripping out features. For example it wouldn't let me download large (>5M) files over my data plan, even though I paid for a certain amount of data and wanted to use it as _I_ saw fit, not Apple. What if I need a 15M file right now this very instant and I'm now
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
His argument was crap. His argument didn't prove or demonstrate anything except for the idea that he's bought into mindless hype and the crowd mindset.
This is in stark contrast to something like "safari can't handle a simple page with 3 frames" properly.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I just recently got a Nexus One at about the same time my girlfriend got an iPhone. I don't know about the Desire, but I know that Google got fed up with other companies not implementing Android well, so they made their own phone as they envisioned it, and that's the Nexus One (it's the only phone they make, www.google.com/phone). It's very similar in design to the iPhone, but has a ton of stuff that I would prefer any day over the iPhone. Intimate integration with all google services, voice recognition, and an open app market make it much better in my opinion. Most other interactions are very similar to the iPhone, but to me it seems more polished.
If you want to see true Android, get a Nexus One. At least most people on Slashdot will find the feature set much more desirable than the iPhone, and it's overall price is actually slightly cheaper than the iPhone.
What swung it was Engadget riffing about integration with external services like Twitter/Facebook/etc - goes completely against Apple's principles, whereas Android actively works to do this.
I've been reading up on the Desire for the past couple of days, and funnily enough this is what really swung me against the phone. I don't want lots of social network integration. I don't want lots of integration with Google's cloud services. I deliberately avoid putting lots of data in the cloud and relying on third party services normally, so why would I want my phone to do this?
I want a phone that, first and foremost, makes calls well (good quality mic/speakers, simple controls for things like muting and conferencing people in). It also needs to handle messages well (good keyboard, good management of past messages, easy and ad-free integration with my e-mail systems) and manage contacts well (good address book, speed dialling).
There are plenty of other PDA features I wound find useful on a mobile device, but I want them to be generic and open. I'd like a calendar/alarms, but it's not worth much if it only syncs with MS formats and Google Calendar. Apps to do things like time zone conversion would be useful in my case, and a web browser is a useful addition and completely generic, but I don't need the bloat of lots of preconfigured apps on day one that tie in with specific services I will never use. (I appreciate that others would find this useful, and the right phones for me and for them will be different.)
Unfortunately, almost anything running Android seems (unsurprisingly, given Google's involvement) to be heavily biased towards lots of on-line working that I don't want. The iPhone is a non-starter because of Apple's closed system and their apparent willingness to append their own marketing to messages (hardly a professional image for a work phone!). So I'm back to looking at the established PDA brands again.
That's too bad, because the screen on the Desire looks really impressive, at least for those who don't want to use it in bright sunlight. It seems like small format mobile devices are finally pushing the envelope for high resolution full colour display technology in a way that only things like high-end medical imaging have done in the past. When they make a 24" widescreen version of that AMOLED screen, sign me up. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Give me a break. There is absolutely no reason why a console vendor couldn't publicly release the SDK and allow a programmer to turn the console into a development device in the same way the iPhone SDK does for the iPhone. The consoles are definitely more locked down than the iPhone and unnecessarily so. The bottom line is that the console vendors have been exerting even more tight control than Apple does with the iPhone and virtually nobody complains.
Are you really putting forward the argument that everyone wants an iphone, but not everyone can get one, so enter android? Seriously?
Well, for me it was just the opposite. When the nexus one was released early on I eagerly clicked the "buy" button on the Google site. "The Nexus is not available in South Africa" so I bought an iphone.
...and you had to walk 15 miles uphill in the snow--both ways--to purchase it. We know.
I imagined it was as well for two years after the release of the iPhone, based on my previous experience with smartphones. Then, when my unlocked retail Centro developed dead keys for the second time, I finally went to the local AT&T store and tried an iPhone. I took it home on a Saturday and figured I'd probably return it by Monday.
Instead, by Monday I'd bought $40 worth of apps (dozens of them for an amount that would have netted me a single app in Palm space), and was beyond hooked. The iPhone unexpectedly revolutionized my life. My personal file access system went from a complex mix of scripts, USB flash storage/readers, and tethered syncs to completely cloud-based. For the first time ever, electronic calendaring for my personal tasks and to-do lists actually justified the time required to maintain and synchronize these (i.e. no time at all). Everything changed.
I had been trying to use PDAs since the original Newton. I'd owned Palms, Clios, Stylistics, every manner of Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices, phones, and smartphones, subnotebooks, and any other portable device imaginable, always looking for The One that would finally bring the promise of mobile, cloud-based computing to fruition.
I unexpectedly found it in iPhone. And now you couldn't even pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Sorry, but it's not about hype. It's about functionality, pure and simple. The others promised it for two decades. The iPhone actually delivered it, and did so in fact with a minimum of hype, to my eyes. They could have spent a lot more time touting a lot of things it does. Instead, they let glowing reviews and wild word of mouth carry it to the top.
And I recommend the iPhone to anyone that asks, because it's just THAT GOOD.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Well, because, as I already mentioned, it disallows everything I loved about my previous Windows Mobile phones (And in past 6 years I owned HTC Wallaby, Himalaya, Blue Angel, Universal, Advantage and Blackstone).
What I dislike, no, actually hate about Windows Phone 7:
- No memory cards
- No file system access
- No copy and paste
- No multitasking
I want a smart phone, not a dumb and expensive brick with a touchscreen. If I wanted such a thing I could have bought an iPhone years ago. Come on, even my Franklin Ebookman from 10 years ago and with its puny 24 mhz cpu was able do all that.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You don't have to jailbreak to get any of the functionality you listed. There are several ssh apps in the app store as well as apps for everything you listed.
Because game consoles are single-purpose devices (I know you can do more with them than just play games, but they are sold as a game console, and the other things are perks). Heck, the class of device even has a name which suggests this. They also do a pretty decent job of covering the traditional use cases with very few gaps. Additionally for consumers, this lock-down actually provides a pretty compelling function - namely making it much harder for a wide range of traditional multi-player cheats to be effective. But even with all of this in place, there is still a homebrew culture surrounding each of these platforms.
Traditional cell phones are single purpose devices too, about which people rarely complain about lock-down etc.
But when you get into smartphone territory, now you're starting to create a general purpose device. Sure, it's a phone, but that becomes only one (often minor) aspect of its function (for example, I probably spend 10-20x as much time using my smartphone for non-phone purposes as I do using it as a phone, and I'd guess something similar is true for the majority of smartphone owners). The expectation changes such that the only limits you expect from a platform like this are what the market can find a niche for and what the hardware is physically capable of.
I couldn't agree more. It's time for phone manufacturers to stop thinking they own the hardware I paid for.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Plus, it's easy to develop for (with Qt) and has IR, FM transmitter, and all sorts of neat toys.
Its fatal flaw is that it is Nokia's bastard child, unloved and unsupported. Ask your local n900 owner about Nokia's maps. Have a tissue ready; he will cry unashamedly. The head of Symbian development at Nokia must be GREAT in the sack, because every single good thing for Nokia's phones (Ovi Maps 3, better Exchange support, etc.) comes to the Symbian phones.
I love my phone. I can VNC into work, I can tether to my laptop, I get good battery life and can write any app I want (though not as easily as with Android, I admit.) But I'm seriously considering ditching it for the Next Big Thing in Android. The hardware is a gold mine, but the maps are terrible.
Let's not forget what we are talking about here. Real censorship is a moral issue.
We are only talking about preferences of a consumer product that is, in the grand scheme of your life, pretty unimportant. This debate isn't a whole lot different than Coke vs. Pepsi. If you like the apps that Apple has in the app store, and you don't need some of things that Android does that the iPhone doesn't, then the iPhone is probably a better choice, simply because you will be happier with it. If you really care about the closed nature of the app store or need some features of Android that aren't available on the iPhone, then Android is a better choice. Let's not make a false analogy between companies selling us consumer products for our consumption and real oppression, however.
> Now that Windows works well and no longer creates a host of problems for users of other
> systems, they seem to be a lot quieter, perhaps non-existant.
You must be joking.
If you haven't seen Linux Zealots eviscerating WinDOS these days you must not be paying attention.
I just yesterday suggested a Mac for a n00b WinDOS user that was having problems. Depite all
of the continual broken promises, Microsoft can't seem to get things right even 20 years later.
Of course you fixate on the whole "crashing" problem while conveniently ignoring the "malware"
problem.
That's still reason enough for people to flee platforms if they aren't terribly attached to Brand X.
I also suggested Macs for n00bs in "the bad old days". Although I am not sure how much longer I can do that in good conscience really. I wonder how much longer St. Steve will allow the Mac to exist as an open platform where "geeks" can install Firefox or VLC.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
To be fair, iPods also came with a streamlined content delivery system that just didn't exist for the other players. iPods had/have additional functionality beyond that of other MP3 players. Its just unfortunate that this functionality also served to locked people in with expensive iTunes libraries.
And to be fair again, your car analogy works if you assume that Ferrari is able to dictate what brand of motor oil you can use, which highways you can use, and what you put in the trunk. My Honda (actually a T-Mobile G1) looks like a POS sitting next to an iPhone, but was a cheaper initial purchase, is cheaper month to month, gets me anywhere I need to go (literally, Google maps w/ navigation is awesome), and I can put whatever mods I want on it.
Its a choice that consumers make. If you want the fully managed experience then you go with the iPhone. There is nothing inherently wrong with that choice, just know that you pay for that experience through increased costs and limited ability to personalize. I'll admit, sometimes I am jealous of the ease of use of the iPhone. However if you want to keep control over what your phone does and you have the know how to make it happen, maybe something more open is better. Personally I like my old Honda.
Sounds dreadful! Thanks for the warning.
I'd add to dunkelfake's reply:
- no apps. Winmob7 is incompatible with anything that came before. Yes, that means all winmob 6.x apps won't run
- closed shop. Apps can only be installed from the Apple-like appstore.
- v1.0. We all know how good MS's 1.x versions are.
With Palm seemingly soon to be out of the running, only Android and MeeGo remain as reasonnably open platforms for geeks, and Meego is still a pipedream.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
* Glass screen is uber-fragile; I know of several people who have managed to break them even when being mostly careful. It's such a common occurrence that a lot of insurance policies won't cover it anymore.
This is the only point I disagree with. We paid $50 for a refurb original iPhone (no plan/contract) for our son over a year ago so he could have a media player for our road trips. He's almost 4 now and he has put that thing through hell and back. It's been dropped, thrown, had various food/drink spilled and splattered all over it and that thing keeps on trucking. I am not a fan of the iPhone, but I can definitely vouch for it's toughness. I cannot imagine what your friends are doing to break the screen when my 3 year old hasn't managed to do that yet. My BB can't take as much abuse as my kid's iPhone.
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
Your Holiness shouldn't sell himself short. That was actually a very good analogy.
I have to agree. I got one almost two weeks ago. I had the choice of getting an iPhone 3GS for a similar price and I went with the Android instead. In terms of integration it just blows the iPhone away. Apple say "want to do X, there's an app for that" but on my Legend it's more like "there's an app, a widget displaying updates automatically and seamless integration between online platforms". Even things like HTC's Friendstream do for Social Networking what Pidgin/Empathy do for IM. I choose my words carefully here so please do not think I'm spreading hyperbole, but I think this is the best smartphone I've owned and it's all down to the integration.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
be using Android. But anyone that suggests that there is no difference between the current generation of capacitive touchscreen "supersmartphones" and previous generations of mobile phones and tethered/sync smartphones... they have simply never spent any time using iPhone/Android, and come off as clueless and uninformed.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Yeah, the article didn't dispute that either. The reason techie geeks want alternatives (inferior as they may be) is Apple's tyrannical control over the platform.
There, fixed that for ya
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
* The battery life is poor as you state, made worse by the non removable battery which means i have to walk around with a charger and an external (bulky) battery pack... One day of life is enough for most people tho, they just plug it in when they go to bed.
* Fully agreed about the compatibility with ipod connectors, i had to replace my in-car charger which worked with the first gen iphone because it no longer charges the 3GS.
* you only lose the ability to reboot on later 3GS models, i have an earlier 3GS and it can reboot just fine.
* can't say my 3GS has crashed at all that i can recollect, it is also jailbroken which in theory will make it more likely to crash.
* you can sync the address book and calendar over the network using activesync (proprietary microsoft protocol but open implementations such as z-push do exist) or caldav/ldap (standard protocols) - this option was only introduced with the 3.x software i think. this is far more open than a blackberry which requires their proprietary server to sync with - i have no experience of other phone types.
* the app store is full of garbage, there is plenty of garbage software available for virtually every platform that lets you install additional software.
* i haven't broken the screen on my phone, and i've dropped it plenty of times and don't exactly treat it with care... it seems tougher than the plastic screens on most other phones i've used.
* i have voip apps on my iphone, and they work fine over both 3g and wifi...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I hate microsoft. in fact the ONLY item in my home that is microsoft is the Xbox360 and that is only because after trying the other options I had that was the ONLY one that had the games I wanted and the price point that was sane. I used to love playstation. I was die hard on PS1 and PS2, then sony became far bigger duche-bags than microsoft (I know, impressive!) and they pissed in my cheerios directly. So now, I have NO sony products, and no I dont buy any music or movies that is sony label. And I warn people away from them.
This is why. and yes I know that Microsoft will try to catch up to Sony's duchebaggery but right now the Xbox360 is the best user experience platform. And I dont see that changeing soon, Nintendo is half assing it... Ohh boy, ds reloaded as dsi and DS-huge... nothing really different at all. the Wii-HD will be no different compared to the Wii.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you got your iphone from o2 in the uk, then unlocking is a simple matter of going to http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/unlockmyiphone.html and entering your details...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
You're right that usability is real, but any usability study can't ever produce a UI that's more usable for everyone. You cannot for example create a UI that provides big high visibility interface elements to make it easier for say elderly people with poorer eyesight to use, whilst satisfying younger power users with great eyesightwho wants as much information on screen at once as possible and hence prefers smaller UI elements.
Further, you can certainly do a usability study of say a program like Microsoft Office and improve the UI to offer better usability (and hopefully productivity) for office users in general and it should be fairly effective because all users are trying to fulfil a subset of goals.
In contrast though with an operating system, users may use it for any number of things because it's such a multi-purpose device it's hard to optimise it to suit everyone, as such you'll find skews towards certain types of user.
Good UI design is indeed all too often overlooked, but there's a similar danger in that usability studies are hard to get right- companies will do usability studies aiming at everyone, and fail to brilliantly please no one. Ensuring you produce general usability and productivity improvements for some people without it being at the expense of others who haven't been tested is near impossible. Generally you have to decide who you're targetting. I suspect this is largely where the Android/iPhone clash comes from, Apple have designed for the lowest common denominator- a UI that absolutely everyone can use, whilst Google have designed Android with a slightly higher level of competence in using electronic devices in mind. To the high end users the iPhone is as awkward as Android is to the low end users, and I suspect in the middle the difference is so small that most users could care either way, but some simply prefer the look/layout of one or the other out of personal taste.
I absolutely do agree with your sentiment about UI design, but I disagree that that conflicts with my original point. To put it another way, I do not believe there's such thing as the one true UI that simply works better for everyone. You may well be able to produce a UI that's better for a certain subset of users for example, but it's usability is still going to be subjective amongst individuals in the set of all users.
Hey Gramps!
If the iPhone allowed you to manually change IRQ addresses, would that make you happy?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
and apple would point the finger at VW as the cause of the problem.
People complain when an app they had paid for and downloaded is disabled by Apple after the fact.
Cite one instance where Apple went and forcibly removed or disabled an app from a user's iPhone. Hint: there are none.
This
Then go for Nokia N900, it's that clever, inteligent and in fact very beautiful geek girl in a block :) She's aint cheep, but comes without strings attached - open and honest as good geek can be.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
CE PDA just two nights ago. It's an NEC MobilePro 900 that I used to use because the Palm's couldn't hack it for mobile editing. The thing has a USB port, but it won't see flash drives. It has a micro-USB port for syncing, but after installing ActiveSync in my Windows XP VM, it wouldn't connect. So I dug out an old Cisco PCMCIA 802.11b card and slid it into the slot. But it wouldn't connect with my 802.11g network. :-(
I beat on it for hours before finally remembering that I could take the CF card out of my camera, slide it into a PCMCIA CF reader on the MobilePro, copy the files to CF, then put the CF card in a card reader on my Linux PC via USB, to copy off the files. Yay.
Once on my Linux box, I just dropped the .doc files in my Dropbox folder and they were then immediately accessible and editable on my iPhone, and any changes I save on my iPhone are immediately accessible and available on my Linux desktop in my Dropbox folder.
My Palm Centro with an aftermarket (for $35) file manager shared many of the same difficulties in getting files on and off... For all the bitching and moaning about iPhone capabilities (or lack thereof), it's a damned sight easier to work with the iPhone, including doing things like "getting files on."
The fact is, they don't have to be on. With iPhone, I just edit them in the cloud, and they're automatically copied down to, backed up on, and automatically synchronized with the same files across all of my regular computers (a Mac at work, a Linux machine at home, several PCs in the departmental offices, and of course my iPhone).
Sorry, but the belittling of complaints that you see is often because the complaints appear to be based in total irrational ignorance of iPhone's capabilities, and not in reality.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Only idiots use the word 'WinDOS' these days. I wouldn't take advice from an idiot.
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
For my two cents i can never understand why normal people do not want to be able to carry a spare battery. This will always be the deal braker for me with an iPhone. Why do I have to send the whole unit back to apple for this? My Sony Walkman I had in the 1980's let me change the batteries when the old ones ran out, why can Apple not master it now?
I have no objection to it being a proprietary battery that costs a fortune either. They can even sell me an additional charger that allows me to plug and charge batteries directly without the phone. I will probably even then leave my spare battery on the charger for weeks until I know I am going to need it, thereby giving a lifetime of a few months before memory effect kicks in and I have to buy a new spare battery. I swear they will get a small fortune out of me.
Just please, please let me have the option so I can go away for a few days and not give a crap about there being a plug socket of the correct format for a hundred miles. I also like travelling light so am not keen on always carrying a charger and universal plug socket adapter.
Especially when even with these things I have to leave my phone stationary and plugged in while it charges. If I am out and about I am terrible for forgetting to do this before I crash out, especially if alcohol is involved (or a women, but that hardly ever happens).
I dont read
That's indeed a good analogy. That's exactly how I feel about blueray disks, forcing me to watch through loads of ads. Once upon a time you used to be able to put in a disk and go straight to the menu. The bad taste in my mouth means that I'll only whore myself for really good movies, the rest of the time I'll simply not buy anything. Whereas in the past I used to enjoy buying and collecting media, nowadays I feel dirty when I do so.
I've been developing for Blackberry and Android for the last two years, and Java for the last 15. I've had access to nearly every Android and Blackberry phone available in the U.S., and often take them home for testing. I also own an iPod Touch.
Here's why iPhone is a better experience than Android: Single-tasking. The UI is responsive and smooth. That's because the currently-running app has most of the CPU and GPU available to it.
Not so with Android. Until Nexus One (and Droid, to an extent), pretty much all Android phones have been a rough experience.
Press a UI control, and you expect your $500 smartphone to respond right away, correct? With Android phones, sometimes you wait seconds for a response! Worst case, the infamous "Kill or Wait" dialog appears, where you're given the opportunity to kill the foreground app!! The one you're waiting on to respond to your last click.
That's not just lame, it's stupid. At the very least, Android should nice up the foreground app, so it can be responsive to the user, right?
As an Android developer, I *HATE* that my app is at the mercy of whatever shitty-assed code is running in a background process, hogging up the CPU with its poor efficiency.
Also, the Android and Blackberry platforms encourage the use of default UI components, which are quite basic in appearance and behavior. And with Android, the API has been a moving target, with whole classes deprecated, events and handlers moved around ... very annoying. And don't let's not get into Blackberry, where nothing new has happened since I've been developing for it ... e.g. the latest BB phones have accelerated graphics hardware, but where's the OpenGL ES Java bindings?? Nowhere to be found (until very recently.)
In the meantime, I very much enjoy games and apps on the iPod Touch, and make my calls from a Nexus One. Here's hoping the hardware catches up to Android's prodigious CPU needs sometime soon.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
The interface on the Android is VERY similar to the iPhone. The only thing the Android base experience is missing is a bit of polish on the interface widgets, and if you get an HTC phone they've replaced those as well. There's certainly no difference in the way they "hide" the filesystem, or any other major paradigm differences from the iPhone. The difference is, if you're a geek and WANT to mess with those, you're able to.
There are also several 3rd party launcher replacements available on the app store that let you swap out the home screen if you want a different experience. Try doing THAT on an iPhone. Or replacing the dialer, or the photo picker. Apple is fine if you want to do things exactly the way they've accounted for. Thing is, that's not necessary to get a consistent out-of-the-box experience. The same is true of any Android phone right when you open it, but there you aren't prevented from replacing things if you want to.
Finally, you said the Android has a slow time getting traction. Everything I've seen indicates that they're picking up market share (and developer activity in their app space) faster than the iPhone. Yeah, they're a bit new to the party, and the first couple versions of the OS were more like a beta than a full release. The recent pace and quality is starting to pay off, though.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I researched long and hard before I bought my iPhone a couple months ago. I had been using some form of Palm device for about 15 years; the last two of which were a model of Treo. The bottom line is that I needed NON-EXCHANGE-TYPE access to calendars on mail servers. Specifically, I have a Zimbra FOSS mail server for my family, and a Zimbra NE server at work (which handles 2 companies). I didn't want either server to be "canonical," so I refuse to use ActiveSync and let it "take over" all of the PIM functions of the phone. For calendars, I use CalDAV, and the iPhone has KILLER CalDAV support. (I use a Funambol server at home to sync contacts, and the Zindus plugin to make them work with Thunderbird, though SyncEvolution works almost as well with Evoltion.)
Neither the new WebOS-based Palm phones, nor any of the Android phones I can find, have any support for CalDAV. At all. How this situation exists, I have no idea, but I don't care. The iPhone has been great. However, I am one of those people who has used Linux on the desktop for about 11 years now, and I'm watching and waiting for an Android phone that will integrate with my collaboration servers as well as an iPhone. When this happens, I'll give the iPhone to my wife. Heck, I'd pay an early-termination fee to switch providers if the Sprint Evo could do it!
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Umm...I think Apple may argue otherwise
I have an HTC Magic and am a developer myself, although have yet to actually develop for Android, I have played around with it in the emulator. I've not experienced any issues with speed on my HTC Magic, and the only time I've had the wait/force close dialog come up is with Google sky maps when you first load it up and it's trying to pin down your location.
Out of interest though, how does the iPhone deal with that situation? what happens if you have an app that fails to respond because it's waiting for a remote server or similar? It's not like that's something that can be vetted by the app store sentries because it's not something that will necessarily happen in testing. Does the iPhone handle waiting/deadlocked apps in a more graceful manner somehow?
At some point, we as consumers need to step back from the glossy black surfaces, and sleek lines, and realize that the tools we buy should be stylish, but they should be functional first.
Not likely. Certain car manufacturers have been selling us pretty looking cars that broke down left right and centre for years and people have still bought them. Cars also cost far more than iPhones.
As strange as it may seem many people care more about looks and being trendy than they do about boring things like functionality, especially when it comes to things we are seen frequently in public with.
I dont read
You're right, that is a bad analogy. Apple and AT&T have been upfront the entire time about the costs. When I got an iPhone, I knew exactly what I was getting.
Android phones can install swype keyboard...
Faster than crackberry physical keyboard if you can spell LOL
After getting used to it, its become a must have feature on touch keyboards IMO. Hunt and peck on touchscreen kb (capacitive or not) seems so primitive and slow now....
Only drawback is that its tricky to use when you're drunk :) but theres nothing stopping you from using it like a normal KB.
I'm curious to know why you think "people" means "all people". Why should I care what the majority think?
This is why they can't give the iPhone away in Japan, because without the hype, the iPhone isn't really all that great compared to the competition.
Really? Are you sure about that?
Yes, Android is starting to become the mobile OS I'd hoped it was. It's just not quite there yet. I just looking at the different offerings and Apple just has the package that works right out the box, does it smoothly and doesn't seem to have huge problems. Other than the problems they stir up intentionally of course. For a device that gives the average non geeky user that kind of mobile power without inundating them with technicalities I still see it as a great device.
If I could have an iPhone with Android on it and it be really slick nice and have no problems at all I could be happy. Just need a larger app library to choose from. I do like the Apple hardware over the pile of HTC phones out there.
Balderdash!
Sounds dreadful! Thanks for the warning.
bear in mind no-one's seen a shipping Win7 handset yet. I don't think the HD2 is a good buy as it'll be obsolete in terms of OS as soon as it's out. No doubt XDA-Devs will port later versions to it but it'd seem sensible to not buy an end-of-OS-life handset now.
I had a whole long comment written out and then my vaio touchpad went spaccy and closed chrome...
I was trying to say how awesome the N900 is, but that's rather knocked the wind out of my sails.
Go buy one, they're great.
Maybe I've installed more apps w/background process than most Android users... the iPhone just doesn't allow background processes the way Android does. Android allows you to declare a background process, and it can spawn threads and basically keep running til the battery runs dry. The foreground, UI-attached process isn't allowed to hog the CPU - that's when you get the wait/kill dialog.
There's a kind of background update feature available on iPhone, but it doesn't run constantly the way some Android apps do. I'm not sure but think it's a kind of push notification, queuing updates until your mail or news or stock quote app is running again.
I suggest installing a task manager app on your HTC (search the Market for "task manager".) A decent one will list all apps with declared background processes... then you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
* The app store is full up with absolute garbage, low quality apps. There's an app for everything where "app" is defined as half-arsed P.O.S and "everything" is defined as {lim x->0 (1/x)}. Finding good quality software was difficult. A lot of the apps blatantly lie about their capability and you don't find out until you've paid for them.
* Apple is reportedly known to stiff app developers.
In the limit, is x approaching zero from the left or right? It makes a difference.
You can hack the kernel on an android phone (need a developer one, or a rooted one).
And you can buy them without the google experience (geek phone), and it works, but personally, I have an android because of the google experience, so that is less appealing.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
With Google you find out after the fact that she was filming your sexual activities and selling them on the web as porn. And she didn't pay you or offer you a cut of the proceeds.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Give me a break. There is absolutely no reason why a console vendor couldn't publicly release the SDK and allow a programmer to turn the console into a development device in the same way the iPhone SDK does for the iPhone.
No technical reason. Most of the reasons have to do with money, security, and DRM. Not that there's particularly anything wrong with that, as long as it's expected.
That said, if you think the consoles are hopelessly locked down, check Microsoft's XNA Creator's Club. You get access to developer tools, a marketplace to sell games, and release is handled by peer review (both to rate quality and content). Tada, Indie Development, with only mild oversight by MS to prevent any significant abuses (illegal content) from slipping through.
Of course, if you also think nobody complains about the console method of gaming, then you must have missed the ongoing console v. PC debate. The iPhone v. open platform (like Android) debate is a carbon copy of console-PC.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Maybe it's because other phone OSs have had multi-tasking for years, while iPhone is just catching up.
The killer-app of multi-tasking? I use an Android App called Locale, which is infinitely useful even though it's expensive as hell at $10. It uses the phone location and state to modify phone settings. It turns on my ringer and Wi-Fi when I reach my home, and puts it on vibrate when I leave. It changes my Google Talk status to 'Asleep' when I plug the phone into the wall for the night. It puts my phone on silent Sunday mornings while at church.
To the iPhone users, maybe you'll finally be able to enjoy something similar. Better late than never, right?
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Your analogy is as incomprehensible as your sig...
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
On the side of computational evolution Macs sit somewhere in between those kids learning computers and your standard Windows pc.
We dont see many Mac web servers (or any other type of server for that fact) or Mac only branded business software. Other then basic operations such as word processing and the occasional graphics app. Apples capability to facilitate serious business systems has always been next nonexistent.
I get annoyed from the fact that I'd love to be able to create iPhone apps that work in tandem with the systems I develop for my business, having proper business worthy apps that can be easily used in the palm of your hand is a great means to sell. So Android will be the tool of the future for this and will be the iPhone killer from the perspective that i can make a custom ERP solutions for a business then plug certain features into a smart phone that can accessed from a hotel room while an executive is on a business trip.
Apple wont go there because naturally they are not good enough too. Opening a dev environment or say games with multiple device support carry a lot of work associated with it, as a result of not going down that road they lose the means to make money distinctly from other software vendors (hence Microsoft continued success regardless of what Apple does)
You'd think Jobs would switch on and see the possible money making opportunities there, but my question is "why doesn't he?". I think a lot of it comes down to the lack of substance to his products and what he does to compensate is prevent this can of worms from ever being raised rather than solve the short comings in their products and really understand the concept of innovation.
Lets face it the guy went and took bsd, changed a few bits around added a really simple interface with one god damn mouse button. Imagine if Mac ever released a 2 clicker mouse, the amounts of confusion and hysteria that would cause for the poor bastards would be huge.
You can hack the kernel on an android phone (need a developer one, or a rooted one).
Same as on the iPhone ...
And you can buy them without the google experience (geek phone), and it works, but personally, I have an android because of the google experience, so that is less appealing.
Interesting, which part of the "Google Experience" appeals to you so much specifically on Android? I'd have thought that you could use most of Google's web apps with all current smartphones...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
The primary reason why HD2 won't get the Windows Phone 7 update is that it has got a microSD slot and more than three buttons.
But even if WM6.5 is obsolete it isn't dead yet - there is too much software for WM. And also HD2 will run Android one day anyway.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Are you seriously calling people who criticize the iPhone a crowd mindset? This against the vast array of apple fanbois who refuse to accept any criticism at all about their platform?
You want real criticism?
The inability to replace the default apps with apps that fit your needs better then apple's default apps. Have bad eyesight? You can't replace the keyboard with another one. Loath itunes and want a good music player? Can't, banned. Want to have an app run in the background to monitor something? Nope. (No, OS 4.0 doesn't solve that. It's not multitasking, it's a series of daemons running that you can hand off specific tasks to, not the ability to run you application in the background).
That any apple defender can accuse people who criticize the iPhone of groupthink needs to serious hold up a mirror. The apple faithful are referred to as a cult for a reason.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
I know *why* it won't run it - and as I said there will almost certainly be unofficial ROMs from XDA-Devs that enable it - but locking yourself into a contract on the basis of what might happen seems a bit silly.
The HD2 isn't going to run Android as such - an HTC phone that looks very, very similar will be released with Android. Not quite the same thing, and you'll be back to running unofficial ROMs if you want to try it out. It might be fine, it might not - again, not necessarily something you want to tie yourself into long term.
Buying a handset with an OS that "isn't dead yet" isn't really all that encouraging sounding!
I've had loads of WinMo / HTC handsets with various custom ROMs and the devil is in the detail with these things...
I agree... when the iPhone was named "invention of the year" it was agonizing to me too. The iPhone did little to inovate the mobile phone world. Other pdas had touch screens YEARS before the iPhone launched. Other PDAs had access to file systems, built in flashes, could send an MMS, built in exchange functionality, and could multitask processes. The iPhone did none of this at the time. People that believe they need to find an "iPhone killer" have obviously never had a real phone/pda combination. The iPhone is nothing more than an entry level PDA... NOTHING. Apple took a device that is simple to use (cause it lacks metric tons of features) and combined it with brilliant marketing to produce the firestorm of desire over this shiny black object that exists today. To me, the iPhone is nothing more than what AOL was years ago. AOL became the defacto ISP because it was EASY & SIMPLE. It integrated email, messaging and bla bla all into one application. It kept people stupid, AOL kept people from learning the values of the REAL internet. The iPhone is the same thing. "iPhone killers" have existed YEARS before the iPhone was even thought of. People need to take the iPhone marketing nipple out of their mouth and open their eyes. Even what it comes to the iPad... "iPad killers" have already existed for years... like the HTC Shift. Open your eyes.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
See now I would (and have) argued that because of the mission critical nature of cell phones for many people's lifestyle, Apple's lock down makes a lot more sense on phones. I own, and like, an iPhone. It's a nice device that is primarily a reliable phone with good battery life, secondarily a reliable Internet device capable of looking at most websites and handling my mail, and tertiarily a multifunction minicomputer capable of doing a bunch of other stuff I sometimes need or want. On a phone I am willing to sacrifice on the tertiary function and accept a level of lock down that I would not accept on other types of devices, because it is PRIMARILY a phone. I need it to be able to make and receive calls reliably. If Apple can convince me that by playing in their walled garden I can get the vast majority of the tertiary functions I want, while being very unlikely to lose the primary function... I can play that game. And let's face it, the walls on the garden aren't exactly 1000 feet high. If I really want to run arbitrary code on the thing, a developer license isn't a HUGE expense.
By contrast, the same level of lock down on the iPad seems unacceptable to me. In my mind the iPad is a "computer" and I'd like to be able to use it as one. It is primarily a multifunction minicomputer and Internet device. I want to be able to run whatever I want to run on such a device, and unlike the phone, I can't see a good reason to restrict it. This is not to say I'm gonna run out and shout on the streets that Apple is evil for locking down the iPad. It doesn't appeal to me, but it obviously appeals to someone. I'm willing to accept a level of lock down on my phone that is unacceptable to you. Someone else is willing to accept a level of lock down on a tablet that they wouldn't on their laptop. Some people don't care at all as long as whatever it is let's them get their e-mail and surf Facebook.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Are you kidding? Do you really have a nexus one?
Try googling Nexus One Touchscreen Issues.
Or nexus one Bluetooth.
Sounds like the Desire is a HUGE upgrade over the nexus one. I'm going to be putting my N1 on ebay shortly, and try to unload it while there are enough suckers out there that would be willing to try it.
I've been using my N1 on ATT for nearly a month, and despite my love for google services, which i use daily, the phone is a complete Fail compared to the iPhone and it's the last time i'll buy a google or HTC phone.
How is the case _in_ the point? It appears your case is in your examples.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
Actually the iPhone is great compared to the available competition in most markets. If I lived in Japan, and had access to the phones they have over there, I no doubt wouldn't have an iPhone. But for innumerable reasons relating to market, availability of networks, willingness to spend money for particular functions, etc Japanese style portable communications devices (you can hardly even call them phones anymore) aren't available in most of the rest of the world. An iPhone 3GS is feature comparable to the vast majority of its competition in the US (and Europe as far as I know), but nicer to use than most of it. The bleeding edge Android stuff is better, I'll admit, hopefully the new iPhone will fill the gap soon. If not I'll get an Android phone.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
By making the battery non-removable, Apple can make it larger and hold more of a charge. The thinking is that most people will be able to charge the thing pretty readily at some point during their day, and they'll be ready to move on to a new phone by the time the old battery wears out. That sucks for people like you, who don't have ready access to a plug all the time. But that's the tradeoff Apple's made. So unfortunately, your choice is to suck it up and live with the problem, or buy some other phone.
One thing I will point out: if you really, really want the iPhone, but can't deal with the lack of a second battery... they make external batteries for the thing. You can get models that connect to the dock port via a lead, or models that consist of an iPhone case with an external battery built in. Either way, kinda clunky and not for me, but better than nothing.
That's pretty funny. I have a WinMo phone and my wife has the HD2. I've seen some of those issues the review talks about. The thing about Windows Mobile phones is that they are basically tiny PCs, and that's the best and worst thing about Windows Mobile.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Out of curiosity, which functions you currently use require a jailbreak? There's been a App Store version of SSH since like the third week the store opened. There's probably two dozen of them now. I was getting nervous for a bit when the store first opened, but it seems that the delay was on the developer side, as they tried to figure out the best way to do a terminal on such a non-standard layout. TouchTerm seems to have figured it our pretty well. That's what I use.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I'm not sure why people say this.
I recently purchased my first android phone. People say that it is 'open'. But, people say a lot of things.
My phone isn't open. It's very much locked down. If I want to delete an application like 'Sprint Nascar Cup' - I can't. It won't let me.
If I call up Sprint customer support and ask them how to delete it, they tell me it's impossible. I know, because I asked. It can't be done.
'Rooting' the phone is possible; but it violates your warranty, it forfeits your right to customer service, and comes with some risk of bricking your phone. If you are willing to take that risk; how is that any different from what is available with the iPhone?
Oh, spare me. That sentence would be just as true if you substituted "Windows" for "Mac". It would almost be true if you substituted "Linux" (the difference being that it's essentially impossible for a non-geek to modify Linux to do something different than what, say, Ubuntu wanted them to do). Mac makes it hard for newbies to customize by design (which in your book apparently == "crippling the device"). Windows makes it hard for newbies to customize/cripples the device by making it confusing. Linux does some of each, with proportions varying by distro.
I use all three OS's, and I'm just as annoyed by OS fanboys as anyone. But you know what's just as annoying? OS trolls.
It's possible that *you* really did pay for your phone. Most people, don't.
They sign two-year agreements and get several hundred dollars off + rebates. It's possible that phone prices are inflated to support this crap; but most everyone I know doesn't pay anywhere near the advertised full-price for their phone.
Ferrari is much harder to handle, but it allows you to drive way faster. So, is Honda in your analogy an iPhone, and Ferrari - Android?
... and I agree that a lot of the specs on the iPhone were, well, lame. The 650 did do more than than the iPhone did on release. But dude, the iPhone was released a while ago now, ok? Some particulars:
Yep, you're right. iPhone 3.0 addressed this - while the IM application doesn't literally run in the background, it does get "push notification"... which is more-or-less equivalent for IM. Works fine.
Yeah, and I didn't buy an iPhone until they fixed that. Which they did. A couple years ago.
Some of the criticisms are (IMHO) legitimate - the IMAP idle thing, Apple's ultra-rigid control of the App Store. But a lot of the stuff you're talking about is pretty outdated at this point.
Yeah, let's forget about tinkering and be happy with what the corporation declares is good for us. No need to learn what a kernel does, how to hack drivers, recompile the windowing system. Then in 30 years guess where the skilled engineers capable of building the next iPhone will be? It's like cutting off the branch we sit on.
You join the real world all you want but I'm sticking to my unencumbered hardware.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
My girlfriend has a Magic too and she does have problems for what it's worth, but I always assumed it's just because she's got a load of crap installed. The buttons on her phone are flatter against the rest of the handset too though, so I've also wondered if there was simply and earlier batch of Magics that just weren't running as they should. We're both running Android 1.6, supposedly we get 2.1 sometime this year, so I'm not sure if that'll change things at all.
How much of the battery do they really drain though? Most modern smartphones seem to max out at about 3 days battery life through normal usage, even the iPhone, so are they even that big a deal, or do you think the battery life could reasonably be extended by a worthwhile amount if there weren't so many background apps?
I was considering writing some apps myself and some ideas certainly followed the always on mindset, but battery life was a concern and as I haven't done any development on the handset itself yet I've not really had the opportunity to play around with that sort of thing.
I don't think he means 'everyone'. But, he does bring up a good point.
I 'knew a guy' back in high school who worked for Sprint. The short version of the story is that I have a Sprint plan that absolutely beats the pants off of any plan I can get anywhere else and as long as I keep renewing my contract, I'll keep my unbeatable price with Sprint.
When I went to look at smartphones - I was unwilling to change carriers. I couldn't justify paying $20-$40 dollars more, each month, for the same services I already get. I was also unwilling to purchase a phone out-of-pocket.
So, I was left with the phones that Sprint offers. I wanted the plan I had, and I wanted the $200 dollars off when I extend my contract.
Given that selection of phones, I went with the only Android phone they were offering - the HTC Hero. But, for me, there wasn't ever a question of 'Do I want an iPhone or an HTC Hero'. It was 'Here are 10 phones I can get - which one of these are the best....'
Some of the things you mention really are obscure geek issues (non geeks object to using iTunes? Complain about the lack of multitasking? Really?)... but a lot of this stuff is a genuine pain in the ass. One you didn't mention: the absolutely worthless lock and home screens. The lock screen has nothing but the time and date, and the home screen has nothing but an array of application icons and the time. No useful information or functions are allowed to appear in either place. Why? Because Steve said so. Don't like it? Tough shit.
For the time being I'm going to continue with the iPhone, but if things don't improve in the fairly near future, I may be in the market for an Android phone.
Imagine if Mac ever released a 2 clicker mouse, the amounts of confusion and hysteria that would cause for the poor bastards would be huge.
OS X has had support for right click since the beginning, and MacOS has had support for it even before then. In addition to Apple's current mice supporting right click, and the trackpad having right click support built in as well.
I get annoyed from the fact that I'd love to be able to create iPhone apps that work in tandem with the systems I develop for my business, having proper business worthy apps that can be easily used in the palm of your hand is a great means to sell.
What's stopping you from doing this? There are several ERP and CRM apps on the iPhone already. As long as you actually read the dev agreement, and know what's good and bad, you should be able to make an app that falls within the guidelines.
**** It's not compatible (enough) with earlier iPod connectors/interfaces so my iPod capable car stereo won't work with it. A lot of other iPod capable stuff either failed or whinged at me. The phone quite often whinged too. Here's news Apple - if you use a "standard" connector on the thing then support it; don't change the damn internals and then tell the phone to whinge the thing on the other end is too old.****
That's what pisses me off. It uses the *standard* dock connector, yet won't work with many devices designed for ipods. If it uses 12v you're screwed because apple ditched Firewire. Ok, so it won't sync via Firewire, but at least, let it *charge* using 12v. That means older car adapters, clock radios, and many other devices won't work properly with the phone. Yet somehow the phone manages to give an error message about the device not designed for the iphone. So people who switched from an ipod to the iphone have to change their previous stuff.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Maybe its because the features in the iPhone actually work, as opposed to being some kind of tech demo. It may be missing things you think are important, but the things it does have and does, it does them extremely well.
iTunes Music Store didn't come out til a few years after the iPod came out and was already popular.
And, again, /. posters fail to see why the iPhone is successful.
It brought no new raw functionality, but it made it easy for people to use the functionality that was on there. It made surfing the web on a phone easy and fun, enough to overwhelm AT&T's networks in some areas. It's really easy to buy apps (if not nearly as easy to find ones worth buying). The amount of functionality that's easily usable (and, hence, usable by non-geeks) dwarfs that of previous phones.
In other words, for at least 90% of the market, the iPhone is much more functional than anything that came before it, and a whole lot that's coming after it. That's why it's doing so well.
Heck, I'm a geek, and I've had phones where I had to read the manual for anything other than the basic functionality. And then, if I wanted to do it again three months later, I had to read the manual again, because the interface was about as intuitive as vim's (the big difference here being that vim is well worth an unpleasant learning curve).
There are solutions to some of the problems. If you want to control what's on your iPhone, all you need is an Intel Mac and less money per year than I used to spend on compilers for my hobbies. If you want a spare battery, you can get one - sure, it'll be external rather than internal, but it's not like changing an internal battery is cost-free.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yes, and she has a bubbly personality too
Would you like a slice of toast?
You can do that on a hacked iPhone too. Why is it more acceptable to do these things on a hacked Android phone than a hacked iPhone?
The way my contact icons, contacts (chat, e-mail, and phonebook) all sync seamlessly is something I imagine would be slightly less seamless on another platform (but can't say for sure).
I like being able to search all mail I ever sent/received, while it's all on the remote servers.
I can star a contact on my phone, it's stared in my e-mail, in my google voice.
I can star a contact in my e-mail and it's the same.
Maybe the apps for the iPhone and Black Berri integrate that tightly, I don't know, as I haven't owned one.
Maps are similarly integrated too, but it is less relevant.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Got mine last week. Have not used an iPhone yet but know it from friends. The biggest advantage I can see on side of the iPhone is the sheer number and quality of accessories on the market especially cases and the like. The selection for the Desire is very limited yet. Screen is fine. Apps are fine for what I need. Sound quality is fine. Don't have the problem with the ear setting off something while talking on the phone. Battery drain is proportional to what you do e.g. heavy use of internet will make you recharge daily but having it lying around as a dumb phone will give you 3 to 4 days I guess. That is similar to the HTC Tytn I lost last year. I did not find any (sensible) use for the widgets yet. I find it far more comfortable to right go into the app than to use a limited widget which will open the app anyway if touched a little to long. Waste of screenspace mostly. I blame the quality of those widgets. The concept itself has potential. I was first going for a Legend cause of the look and feel of the Unibody but since had the Desire in my hands I do net regret anything. Looks very elegant and feels solid. A softbutton for Menu and Back would be nice because the physical ones are way harder to press than the slight touch of the screen which can be an issue when using the device one handed. The included 4 GB SD-Card is too small though. I leaves you only 1.6 GB left upon first start. That's plenty for apps but not for music or pictures or as a mobile data store. The 32 Gigs of the largest iPhone are something else here. To come to an end: The Desire is a great smartphone. Buy it if you don't want an iPhone! You won't regret.
my wife has the pre. web os is great, but the apps ares but thin on the ground, and with palm finances bring how they are
> People walking down the street, complaining about Apple's control. What a fucking joke, wake up and join the real world. A small technical elite might make such pronouncements, the majority do not care about this stuff.
And in the 80's one would hear
They will always buy a mainframe because that's what solves the problem. It's there. it's the dominant player in the market. it's established. Who is dumb enough to buy a personal computer or even an apple computer? just because you can do basic? hummmpf... get real! everyone will pay the ibm premium tax.
the nexus one has one, is what I meant. its used for the car dock, and desktop charging. I would like line out too.
My non-jailbroken iPhone does bluetooth tethering.
Well, and mine doesn't. Other phones on the same carrier do, with monthly rates that are less than the iPhone rates. And that's the point: Apple turns the feature on and off haphazardly in order to cause you to incur hidden and unexpected costs.
And while you might say that carriers "force" Apple to do this, Apple also has turned off the opposite direction: you can't tether an iPod or iPad to another phone. There's no technical reason, they're just betting on the ignorance of users.
the x doesn't cancel the sync as you would expect - it continues as normal.
I think it's doing a backup (and in an inefficient way). So if you cancel it, the transfer of data to the iPhone may have finished, but you may not have a complete backup. Of course, it's hard to tell what is going on, which is a problem in itself.
and trust me, it's not just the pro-Apple mods out in force - there has been some judicious flamebait modding
I don't see what's "judicious" about modding a factual and generally accurate response to a question as "flamebait" just because people don't like the facts.
Mind you, I'm not even saying that the iPhone is bad; it's a decent phone. But people should be aware that it has many limitations and it is expensive.
you are comparing Content providers with Transport providers.
Video games, TV, Radio. they are content providers
ISP, Telephone, Mail. They are Transport Providers.
bottom line is:
Would you buy a locked down computer sold by you ISP?
> Correction. It's that way for hardware that is NOT sold as a 'PC' and has always been so.
And you draw the line for "sold as 'PC'" where?
My phone is getting closer and closer to being my PC. In fact, only in the US you have to buy services that are plain data as separate CRAP:
e.g. in Brazil i would pay Data, and use data for maps, chat, video, audio, web.
in the US.
$10 for *MOBILE* web.
$15 for GPS maps provided by the operator
$17 for videos
$15 for music.
oh, and now that we have smart phones and we can WORK AROUND those prices, they are going great lengths to block your data connection unless you pay the premium $30 'now we promisse, it's real data' plan extra.
In fact, I did. I'm happy to buy a phone full price and dodge a contract.
This is subsidized. The user still pays for the phone, they just pay for it over the life of their contract (and often beyond if they don't renew their contract by getting a new phone right at the end).
Nothing in life is free - someone always pays for everything, and if you're buying from a commercial entity, then it's you who's paying for it no matter what it says in the advertisement.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
I might just be rehearsing what your post says, but yes...In essence....Me too....
I had an IPod Touch for 2 years. Nothing but music went on it at the cost of hours and hours of painfully trying to deal with ITunes. In 2 years, no way to put a homegrown app on the damn thing, even after f***ing with it (sorry, jailbreaking..).
Got a brand new HTC hero last month, added my own Android application the next day, developed at no cost but my own time, while copying/pasting my music folders directly on the device.
What really did it for me and when I started puking on my IPod Touch is when the self-appointed righteous knight of good morale told the world last week that HE decides what goes on an IPod/IPhone and what does not. A closed device AND a closed dickhead telling me how I should use it, no way.
That last sentence is the crux: it's things like that that get modded flamebait. I have been having a similar discussion with someone else here on the pros and cons of Droid vs iPhone and despite holding loosely opposing views we are both getting flamebait and troll mods.
I think the bugged backup may in fact give you the partial backup, but you can then manually sync it and get a full backup done. It doesn't always stick like that, but it is very annoying.
So if android is so open why does the Desire not have 'root' access ? Again 'jailbreaking' is required. I got a Desire last week since I needed new phone contract.... guess where it is going ... straight on ebay. It's good but it's not open and its not an iphone killer
They could master it, they just choose not to. The HTC Desire packs a lot more functionality into about the same volume and weight as a 3GS yet manages to include a replaceable battery. Apple deliberately makes it difficult for users to change the battery (including odious terms & cost of their replacement service) to put people off doing it at all. Apple would prefer users toss their otherwise functional old device away and buy another one.
There was that time when they removed 1984 ebook from folks who had bought it.
I drank what? -- Socrates
From a usage standpoint, I can actually sort of understand it. I've had many electronic devices (tv remote controls are a good example of this) where you just get crud in the battery contacts and you end up having to slide the batteries around a bit to make it work again.
You just end up with all sorts of mechanical issues when you have removable batteries. Not to mention case design... the little plastic piece that holds the battery in breaks off easily or over time (less than the lifespan of the device or batteries) wears out and doesn't really click into place anymore.
If you have the option of sealing the whole case up (even better, doing away with all external connectors), you can pretty well eliminate all those issues.
So while people like to complain that Apple's doing this to screw users over the battery, I don't think it's the case. I think it really is a matter of usability and keeping the overall user experience pleasant.
And as others mentioned, they do have external battery packs for the device.
I found that the iPhone had indefensible flaws, periodic lag and slow app loading which would mar the otherwise slick nature of the interface. Running one app at a time was indefensibly stupid considering the hardware capability, and especially when the G1/Magic were capable of this with a slightly slower cpu and much less RAM. Consider doing something as trivial as having a chat program, twitter and facebook app logged in whilst checking a web link quickly. A pocket computer that can't multitask? Deal breaker for me.
... Hmm so after all this Android lag is merely because Linux has always gotten a bit funny without swap?
So I 'upgraded' to a HTC magic just after they came out which incidentally costed about half what my iPhone 2G for about 90% of the spec. Stock Android wasn't that good at the time, but I like how aftermarket ROMs make the phone feel with improved speed and features like multitouch, screen accuracy and vastly improved camera image quality.
Oh and it's Linux, root access allows the ARM core is overclocked 384mhz -> 528mhz and I enabled a swap partition on a fast SDHC card
Multi-tasking is so indespensible to me now that I cannot go back to a iPhone. An Open platform is a killer feature, and not for any ethicial reasons. Aftermarket software modification is the principal benefit, ultimately a Android phone can now do more (such as easy tethering - your Android phone is a instant usb ethernet gateway), there are things in the Android market that now are not available in the iPhone app store. I might not even bother with a new handset as Android 2.1 will be backported to existing handsets soon.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
My missus recently changed mobile phones and went for the iPhone; she likes it and gave me her iPod Touch.
The Touch is a neat little music player with some nice Internet apps, but I was pleased I got to mess about with it first because when I changed mobile phones, I went for the HTC Hero - and I'm happy with it.
Here's why HTC and Android wins for me:
1. iTunes - I have a large music CD collection that I've MP3ed onto a network drive, far bigger than the Touch's 16GB capacity. Therefore, whenever I sync to the Touch, I want to copy just the music I select and I *don't* want iTunes touching the original MP3s, though I don't care what it does to the files copied to it. However, iTunes seems to like messing around with the original MP3s and, despite being a long term Windows & Linux person, iTunes "scares" me because I never really know if it's going to delete the original music collection. Compare that to the HTC where I can just mount it as a disk and copy the files to it manually, or use MediaMonkey in Windows.
2. Linux - you have to use iTunes to do anything useful with a Touch or an iPhone, and iTunes doesn't run natively on Linux.
3. OS agnosticism - one reason I changed phones in the first place was to escape being locked into a single OS since I use Windows and Linux equally. Having owned a Windows Mobile phone previously, I had to use ActivSync and Outlook to sync anything to the phone - going to the iPhone would have been just as restrictive. With Android, the syncing to Google apps and mail is transparent, it doesn't care about Windows or Linux, it just does it.
Maybe the iPhone does have a slightly neater interface but I don't think Android is far behind and I'm waiting to see the imminent new Android release. But I am more than happy to sacrifice eye candy for a more open platform and I therefore don't regret not going for iPhone.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The fact that you cite "your standard windows PC" as exemplary of some sort of desirable end-state in terms of 'computational evolution' is frightening, Mr. Ballmer.
Your business advice shows a startling lack of any familiarity with the realities of the market. That you would claim that the company that has consistently had some of the highest profit margins in the computer industry "doesn't see where the possible money making opportunities" are is mind boggling. Perhaps you don't approve of their strategy and would use a different one, but to state that it's a dead end, or that it's failing, simply makes you look like a doofus.
I actually prefer the size of the Hero to the iPhone. The Apple hardware is just a little too big, so it feels slightly clumsy to me. And I have relatively large hands, so this is not from a "little person" perspective.
Unfortunately the Nexus One is just on the other side of the "clumsy" line as well, but I'm hoping the EVO will stay small enough to feel right.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Just a note: double tapping on a playing video zooms it to fill the screen for me. Did you try that?
Please name on one hand large businesses which dispurse mac over pc in the workplace? now name 50 businesses that do the opposite wit pc?
Please name on one hand a bunch of hosting/cloud companies that sell mac servers over pc? Now name 50 businesses that do the opposite with pc?
It doesn't matter it's possible, its whats viable. Macs cant and never will compete as being "big person" computers, they are still just shiny one click calculators with big screens.
Making money from selling mp3 players and phones hardly places them as "highest selling profit margins in the computer industry" what now Yamaha is also now a car manufacturer because they put motors in their products too?
It's clear that you have no interest in facts, and would rather rant and lie. That's not how a "big person" behaves, you should really try to grow up.
hmm yea, thats true. I haven't spent too much time with the other android phones. The iPhone is just a hair too big but I think its just the thickness. My iPod Touch feels like the perfect size.
Balderdash!
Well, this is clearly a very atypical approach for a carrier.
And to cite the url you've provided:
Thanks for visiting the O2 Online Shop
Unfortunately, we are unable to sell to countries outside the UK.
Wow, as a fellow N1 owner I have no issues with the touch screen or the bluetooth. Perhaps I'm still in the honeymoon phase with the phone (only 1 month old), but I really can't correlate with anything you said. The only thing that's an obvious disadvantage to the iPhone is the lack of "polish" in certain areas - but the additional functions more than make up for that.
I went with the Iphone to manage my networks. It became immediately necessary to hack the phone in order to get the applications / tools that I needed. After a day of config and cracking, I ended up with a phone that can bluetooth to an external Freedom folding keyboard (for real typing). I purchased the N900 running Maemo (linux debian based, I think). I've gotten most things working like I want on that, but have not been able to migrate completely yet, mostly due to a lack of time. I like the freedom the N900 provides as far as not being required to hack the phone. I'm still trying to get NX Client to run on it bug free. The only problem I have with the N900 is that it does not support 3G with ATT since it does have have the frequency capability.
Nexus one has the same screen as the Desire. The sound will be better on the Nexus One as it has a noise cancelling mic the desire does not have. Also the Nexus One has a physical trackpad not an optical sensor. But I highly doubt HTC, Google or Apple would suggest you use your phone in any rain.
The onscreen keyboard is also easily fixed, since there are lots of alternatives available. I use SlideIT.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
That was Amazon: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
This
I've read the same kind of review for almost any Android smartphone over the past year. They all start by how the iPhone is so awesome and "close to perfect" (really ?? oO ) and how [insert reviewed Android phone] is so cool and it's better because it's open but for whatever classified reason over some parts of the GUI it's not as easy as the iPhone herego not goo. All of this is narrow-minded crap and once was enough thanks. I mean who would give credit to someone saying the iPhone is "close to perfect" ?
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's clear that you have no interest in facts, and would rather rant and lie. That's not how a "big person" behaves, you should really try to grow up.
Where did I lie? Macs are not viable for business computing or servers/networking? If it was, then it would be, simple, its not which is sad for Mac lovers all around the world but Macs are just simply "toys" in the IT industry not machines that can handle real grunt work. As a Mac user your just going to have to bare that your favorite product is suited the domestic market and nothing else.
As for growing up, try not using words "doofus" or accusing me of lying when I'm simply sharing an opinion. I not once attacked you like you've attacked me, and its grounds for calling you names but I'll refrain from, even though I think I've earned the right too at this point.
Your business advice shows a startling lack of any familiarity with the realities of the market.
*SNIFF SNIFF* No your shit does stink here as well, Ever seen the episode of South Park where everyone sniffs their own ass and fills the air full of Smug.
Prius drivers and Mac users
Unless you jailbreak it
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
I like South Park, heck I am an owner of a Jail broken iPhone with South Park winterboard theme. IMHO they are good devices but all i'm saying is they are not the most sophisticated devices out there, they are limited in their use in some areas. I dont fan boy over Jobs or Gates, both are weasels in my view. More over I have a hate for Google as well.
I prefer not to take sides on either of them, but the fact remains, Apples are for metros or 2 years olds and PC's are for geeks and business people.
Has much changed in the last 10 - 15 years? no except Apple now sells phones.
There is no revolution here, Jobs is full of his own sense of self importance, Google trys to do the right thing but one day that wonderful illusion is going to turn on everyone and Microsoft is still one dimensional and dirty when it comes to it operations.
The only thing we have too look forward in the computing world is that the EU will take Apple and Google to the cleaners. As it did with MS when they got too big. Once that happens to the "smaller" players the consensus will be a) unlocked Apple phones b) Google adwords practices will be stifled.
Sheesh, Mr iGadget, whats to say one day that a particular car manufacturer doesn't buy out a big brand petrol station change all the nozzles on their fuel bowers and only supply petrol to only to their particular brand of car.
Face it, google and apple simply are not big or bad enough to cause enough market insurgence to wake industry watch dogs, Microsoft IS, HAS and WAS. Woof!
My search for an alternative to Apple’s iPhone has been long and frustrating.
Why? What's wrong with the Motorola Milestone/Droid in that respect?
On paper, the Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone’s reign as king of phones.
Really? Is the Desire that old, or is the reviewer just misinformed?
Its screen is bright and colourful indoors, but almost unusable in sunlight.
Isn't there an autobrightness option somewhere? My Milestone is perfectly usable in sunlight. Except when autobrightness mysteriously managed to turn itself off.
Really, the biggest issue with my Milestone is that various features seem to be turning themselves on or off by themselves.
The touchscreen intermittently remains active during phone calls and it’s too easy to press the on-screen buttons with your ear. I’ve accidentally hung up on people dozens of times.
I don't think that's happened to me, but my Milestone has on occasion called someone all by itself. It only did that when I just had it, so maybe I learned not to do whatever it was that caused that.
Sound quality during calls is noticeably worse than the iPhone.
On the Milestone, sound quality is excellent, and people on the other side of the phone call tell me it's a lot better than the iPhone on their end.
when viewing photos or web sites you realise that the screen is severely over-saturated. People’s faces become beetroot red.
That's bad. On the Milestone, the screen looks pretty much perfect all the time, except when autobrightness managed to turn itself off again.
The on-screen keyboard is more fiddly and auto-correction is often silly.
This is unfortunately also true for the Milestone. Although I've turned autocorrection off, it still keeps turning "wel" into "we'll". I don't know what mind-bogglingly stupid idiot thought that could possibly be a good idea.
Battery life is appalling. With moderate use I have to charge the Desire twice each day. The phone loses around a fifth of its charge just sitting on the bedside table overnight.
I have on occasion had a half-full battery be dead the next morning, probably because my Milestone occasionally fails to turn itself off properly (it will keep the lockscreen on indefinitely, and it loves going to the lockscreen when you try to turn it off -- by far its most silly and unnecessary bugs). Most of the time, however, battery life is excellent. I should recharge every day, but when I forget, I can usually use it for the next day with little trouble.
My impression from the review is that the HTC Desire is a decent enough attempt, but still flawed in comparison to the Milestone.
Since all girlfriends cost you money one way or another,
Girlfriends don't cost money, doing fun stuff together costs money. Mortgages costs money. Kids cost money. Girlfriends should, on average, have about just as much income as you do. And she gets that income from you, then she's not your girlfriend. There's another word for that.
Yes, you're right. All the years people have spent working on UNIX and its derivatives have been playing with toys, not doing real IT grunt work.
You DO realize that Mac OS is a POSIX compliant UNIX operating system with a pretty graphical interface, right? And that they run the same hardware components that you will find in Dell, HP, IBM, and just about any other PC manufacturer's case, right?
The reason Macs are not as prevalent in the enterprise/business space is pretty simple: 1) Apple offers less flexibility in hardware & pricing, so unless you absolutely must have the capabilities of the systems Apple sells, you can get a cheaper "good enough" system elsewhere; 2) For years prior to Steve Jobs' return, Microsoft was cementing its lead in the business world.
Stating that they are "toys" that can't handle the grunt work displays a shocking ignorance of the capabilities of the operating system and the hardware. Your assertion that "if macs were better they'd already own the business space" displays a shocking ignorance of the "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" principle.
Like it or not, you're not "sharing an opinion," you're trolling. You willfully ignore the facts before you, and then include these gems:
1) "Imagine if Mac ever released a 2 clicker mouse, the amounts of confusion and hysteria that would cause for the poor bastards would be huge."
2) Your commentary on South Park, the smugness of Mac users, and that you apparently feel Prius drivers also share this trait;
3) "Apples are for metros or 2 year olds."
Ignoring any facts while making incendiary comments most certainly makes you an ignorant troll. But fail harder some more, twit.
If you just want functionality, the iPhone is exactly what you should get. If Apple is good at anything, it is as designing something that's good at what it has to do.
The only problem with them is that they're paranoid about bad press, because the brand is the most important thing they have. Nearly all of their lockdown is based on this fear.
Sure, even my ten year old PocketPc could do a lot of the same things. But they were a pain to use. The iPhone makes using things and adding functionality easy.
What makes it so powerful is that it doesn't think in traditional OS terms. So if I use my phone as a metronome, it becomes one, it's not a metronome application in the traditional sense.
It's also why it only needs one button: to switch between functions.
Only once you understand that the iPhone is not to be seen as a device running an OS with certain applications, but as multiple devices with the ability to switch between them. It's of course somewhat limited to the 2D screen and size, but it's a fundamentally different concept and the reason why people like it.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
That seems harsh. I had an HTC Touch Pro for awhile and I thought it was really slick. It had one of the nicest screens I've ever seen on a phone, and they had a neat 3D interface for accessing photos, contacts, etc that sits on top of the Windows Mobile desktop.
I liked the phone, the interface. But it turned out that my company didn't have an unlimited data plan after all, so the bill for those two months ended up being several hundred dollars.. (whoops!)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Again, your missing the point. It's great that Mac is POSIX compliant, and its based on UNIX and all these wonderful things.
I'm even sure if you were to match Windows 7 against OSX and you'll tick more positive boxes for OSX but the fact remains, better doesnt always sell.
In the words from the movie of "Pirates of silicon valley" goes something like this
Jobs: Mine's Better, Bill! Mine's Better!
Gates: Steve, It doesn't matter!
VHS vs Beta, MS vs Mac, Guitar Hero vs Rock Band, Google vs Bing.
The matter is, VHS wasn't a better format then Beta but Beta never made it too the video stores; Microsoft beat Jobs to the race and had his product out first; half the world has no idea what "Rock Band" is; and people "Google" things they don't "Search" for them any more.
Macs will always be 2nd to PC regardless how good they get, now they just sell phones.
First, you claim the Mac is nothing but a toy, and unsuitable for IT "grunt work". So I point out that it is a POSIX-compliant UNIX operating system, running on commodity Intel hardware, which means that it is perfectly capable & suitable for just about any IT "grunt work" you'd care to name that is not tied to the
Then you claim that that doesn't matter, because Macs have a low market share, and so they'll never sell. So I point out that Apple has some of the highest profit margins in the industry, and that their sales and their share of units sold & market share have been steadily increasing since the release of Mac OS X.
Then you claim that doesn't matter, and Apple users are all smug prius drivers who are metrosexual and enjoy playing with childrens' toys.
I agree that better doesn't always sell - but in this case, the Mac is better, and it is selling - so everybody wins except you, and Microsoft. I'd also like to note that I got a chuckle from your citation of Windows 7 as the "worse" side of that equation.
I don't know where you get your data, but if it's full of fanciful ideas and wishful thinking like this, then sir, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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Girlfriends don't cost money, doing fun stuff together costs money. Mortgages costs money. Kids cost money.
It's not that simple. It costs more money to do what you would want to do, or live in a flat you'd like to live in, make the holiday you'd get yourself, for 2 people instead of 1.
Girlfriends should, on average, have about just as much income as you do.
So what am I gonna do if she doesn't? Dump her for someone who does? Funny idea, that.
And she gets that income from you, then she's not your girlfriend. There's another word for that.
Ex-wife?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
First, you claim the Mac is nothing but a toy, and unsuitable for IT "grunt work". So I point out that it is a POSIX-compliant UNIX operating system, running on commodity Intel hardware, which means that it is perfectly capable & suitable for just about any IT "grunt work" you'd care to name that is not tied to the .NET platform.
So your saying that Mac's "measured" success has only been because they've begun to implement PC like hardware and software? I certainly agree with you on that one.
Then you claim that doesn't matter, and Apple users are all smug prius drivers who are metrosexual and enjoy playing with childrens' toys.
Ahh I see you've met them too. They still get bamboozled when exposed to a right mouse button.
I don't know where you get your data, but if it's full of fanciful ideas and wishful thinking like this, then sir, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I dont have a newsletter but I am an avid reader of the following website. Click Here to subscribe
It's not that simple. It costs more money to do what you would want to do, or live in a flat you'd like to live in, make the holiday you'd get yourself, for 2 people instead of 1.
But you also have two people to pay for it, so that stuff averages out. It's mostly the kids that cost extra money.
So what am I gonna do if she doesn't? Dump her for someone who does? Funny idea, that.
That's up to you of course. I'm just pointing out that the general notion that girlfriends cost money is false. They only cost money if you want them to. It's the kids that come out of them that really cost you.
Let's not forget what we are talking about here. Real censorship is a moral issue.
This debate isn't a whole lot different than Coke vs. Pepsi.
Yes it is. It is about censorship, which is a moral issue.
This consumer product, unlike Pepsi, comes with chains. There are certain things you cannot do with it, not because you would not want to or because of any sound technical reasons, but because it does not fit with Apple's plans.
And remember that Apple is selling a media platform. I have no reason to care what brand of cola you prefer, but I would hate to live in a democracy where Apple (and those they sell that service to) controls what news, satire and music people have access to.
Just because it is marketed as a service sold to the highest bidder, does not mean it is not oppression!
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
Those 3rd party Itunes sync programs are great, right up until apple changes something and breaks functionality.
Good-bye
I stopped reading at "get a better quality stereo". You are an apple fanboy. We shouldnt have to upgrade our factory installed car stereo because Steve-o made minor changes to the port handshaking. The fact that you even put that out as an option shows you are very biased.
Good-bye
Love my Palm Pre Plus. It just works, fantastically. If i need variety i can always pick up an Ipod Touch and get internet on it via MOBILE HOTSPOT. Try doing that on your iPhone. :)
Good-bye
Like change what? The third party apps use the published, documented sync APIs - if they are going to change something, it is documented and may require an update.
If they change something internal that iTunes is based on, then they also need to update the software. These changes do not affect the function of the documented sync APIs that the third party apps are based on. They may break hacks like Palm's spoofing USB vendor ID etc, but the proper apps like Missing Sync work just fine.
They work just fine until Apple decides they dont want that anymore. Apple has proven again and again that if they consider you even a minor threat, they will go out of their way to break you. Ipod dock connector being broken across the generations is a good example of Apple's willingness to break shit on purpose.
Good-bye
Broken across generations? What do you mean?
I have 3 iPods, an iPhone and a standalone dock. Other than the iPhone not really fitting neatly into the dock (it is too slim and I don't have an adapter), they all interconnect just fine, even with each other's dock connector leads.
The dock connector's electrical pinout has not changed since it was released, and apart from the first gen iPod that has an actual 6 pin firewire port, it is compatible with all iPods and iPhones (possibly not shuffle). It is wired for USB and Firewire at the connector end (different pins for FW data, power and USB data/power), with the appropriate standard plug on the other end. Later iPods and iPhone don't have a FW chip, but this is hardware, not the dock connector - the connector has not changed.
So, other than the removal of the FW chipset from iPods to save costs, how is the dock connector "broken across generations"? (other than the first iPod having a firewire port, it has been standard since then onwards). What has broken?
The sync APIs are publicly documented in OS X - if they remove them then there's no syncing at all.
You're making inferences that Apple will remove a core set of frameworks from OS X with nothing more than "I believe they are evil and will do it". It would be good to see some proof or some precedent that they removed major functionality without replacing it with a better system or provided a very good reason. "breaking sync for third party apps" is not a good reason.
For example, they removed AppleTalk about 10 years after the last AppleTalk printer was sold. Better protocols exist. Tough luck for those who are still using an AppleTalk printer, but seriously, it went out with the Ark - people complained when we switched from gas lighting to electric.
Thank you. As a UI designer, I wish this was more openly discussed...
The extremes define the center....