Throwing Out Software That Works

theodp writes "Just as the iPhone rendered circa-2007 smartphones obsolete, points out Marco Arment, the iPad is on the verge of doing the same to circa-2010 netbooks. Should this succeed, cautions Dave Winer, we may be entering an era of deliberate degradation of the user experience and throwing overboard of software that works, for corporate reasons. Already, Winer finds himself having to go to a desktop machine if he wants to view web content that's inaccessible with his iPhone and iPad. 'There was no bottleneck for software in the pre-iPad netbooks,' he writes. 'It matters. What I want is the convenient form factor without the corporate filter. It's way too simplistic to believe that we'll get that, but we had it. That's what I don't like — deliberate devolution.'"

Comments

Re:Too scared to say that the iPad sux, I guess ..

[tomhudson]

Apple's market share of the smartphone DROPPED last quarter - and it will continue to drop. Who's #1? Android.

Re:Yeah nothing works anymore

[Captain Splendid]

Because there's no technical reason in the world to do that.

Right, because Flash is all pink ponies.

Yes, Steve Jobs wants Adobe gone or under his control for a variety of reasons, but if Flash was less bloated, it would've been on the iPhone immediately.

Heh. Even with four cores and 4 gigs of RAM, I still automatically Noscript Flash, for "technical" reasons.

Re:Too scared to say that the iPad sux, I guess ..

[Phat_Tony]

Android's market share isn't close to #1, it's #4 in the US (unless it's passed Windows Mobile, which should be happening right around now), and that's higher than its worldwide share.

I think you are confusing market share with new phone sales. Market share is how much of the market is using a particular manufacturer's product. New sales is how many new customers in a certain, recent period bought a manufacturer's product. Last quarter, Android rocketed ahead of iOS in new sales, but it still doesn't even have half the market share, in the US or worldwide.

In the US, market share is:
RIM 35%
Apple 28%
Microsoft 15%
Android 13%

And while Apple's percentage of new sales did drop last quarter, they still had worldwide sales growth up 61% for the quarter. Market share percentage fell because Android sales grew by 886% in the quarter. The point that Android sales are doing really well is true, but they're no where near #1 in market share yet.