Your comment reads like something from a year or two ago. The "there's an iPad market, not a tablet market" part of it really gives it away. The Kindle and Nexus markets have been selling very well, and the iPad is reduced to only half of the market now.
Your main point, too, sounds like something from before tablets have really started gaining momentum. I actually have seen directly many people, including many of the older generation, where tablets have really completely supplanted PC's in their lives. My mom who used to use her computer for nothing except light web and email hasn't touched her computer in a year now that she's gotten a tablet.
Nevermind that Samsung also sued Apple. Nevermind that the iPhone was banned for two years in Korea.
What is Samsung supposed to be, Gandhi? If Apple sues Samsung, and Samsung counter sues back in self-defense, is that really "resorting to lawsuits" in your mind?
Asking as someone who has never so much as looked into the dev/modding tools released for various games, are there games whose publicly-distributed quest scripting tools do allow for things like unit testing?
I hope this isn't the real debut of the Pureview technology on Windows Phone.
With that tiny lens assembly, it seems inevitable if it is the real deal that large compromises will have been made to the image quality.
For those who don't know, the Nokia Pureview technology, currently found only on a single Symbian phone, is a breakthrough in imaging quality on smartphones/compact cameras. It is hands-down the best image quality on any smartphone, it is arguably the very best compact camera in the world, and in some circumstances has even been demonstrated to outperform mirrorless cameras like micro 4/3.
Apple is suing over the Nexus line. Not only is the Nexus S part of this suit, but they got an injunction for a while against the Galaxy Nexus for their patent on searching more than one database with a single search.
Furthermore, this suit just affirmed their software patents on pinch to zoom, tap to zoom, and bouncing on scrolling past the end of a list. Finding these software patents valid and that Samsung violated them was a huge part of this case.
I'm an ordinary home user who wants to backup my really important data in case of catastrophe. Besides lots of little stuff, by far my biggest data in this category is my pictures, and when all totaled up, it comes out to about 75GB.
I've been mulling investing in a service like Crashplan, which according to their pricing would cost me $5 a month if I was month to month, or about $3 a month if I committed to 4 years (!).
Amazon Glacier could offer me backups for one cent a GB per month. So for my scenario, that'd come out to 75 cents a month.
Is it just me or is this an insanely good deal for my consumer scenario?
Your argument is a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Of course none of those predated Apple, they are all defined in terms of what Apple did.
You could accurately describe the MacBook Air as a reaction to the ultra-portable movement created by the Asus EeePC. Asus wasn't the first to do it, but they were the first to make it mainstream.
Similarly, it's true, nobody made notebooks with greater than 2K resolution before the current MacBook. That said, the 15" 1080p space wasn't pioneered by Apple, which lagged behind there for years. So you could easily make full HD the litmus test.
Finally, popularity is very difficult to define, and I have a feeling you're defining it by however much Apple has made it popular. There were plenty of consumer laptops shipping with SSDs before Apple.
Without a doubt, MacBooks are impressive pieces of hardware.
However, they are also susceptible to the problem of differing internal hardware, just like all other pre-packaged computers. People make a big fuss about the differing LCD panels that are packaged inside a MacBook, and people often feel one is much better than the rest.
>Except that's not what is being acknowledged. They're not paying more for the same thing.
That's not what the person you're replying to said at all, he didn't say they're the same thing. People buy brands like Gucci and Prada for exactly the sort of reasons you list, that essentially, they feel like they're something better in return.
So first Facebook's algorithm hides my posts from my friends for reasons known only to Facebook.
Now Facebook is testing the option so I can pay so that my posts they hid will actually show to my friends.
In a way, I really hope Facebook goes through with this, maybe it'll be the straw that finally breaks the camels back and we can get a new social network that actually cares about its users.
Weren't we reading just two weeks ago about how the FBI utterly failed in cracking an Android phone's gesture lock, and had to go demanding Google to help them?
I find it bizarre that iOS has a version of XBMC when it can only be run on jailbroken devices.
Meanwhile, Android devices, which actually compromise the majority of the market these days, could run XBMC out of the box with no modifications, and there seems to be zero interest in creating a version for Android. It would even be allowed on the official Android market.
Still, considering the heritage of the project, maybe this all makes sense....
They already made the N9, which runs Meego. They did everything in their power to kill it, including only selling it in a few markets, not listing it on their website, publicly announcing that they were abandoning the platform no matter how well it sold.
According to the figures in the article it is still outselling the their Lumia WP7 line 3:1.
They don't seem to be dropping Microsoft like a hot rock.
I don't know they're wrong, since I don't know what conclusions the authors have drawn from their experience, whether they're as over-broad and appear to be driven by some sort of agenda like the commentators here I've been replying to.
However, I am suggesting that it is wrong to draw the conclusion that Android is unsustainable based on the fact that this particular developer made a good income on the Apple store, and was unable to do the same on the Android store. The experience of other developers who adapted a different approach indicates it is that there is plenty of money to be made on the Android store if the correct approach is taken.
Also, I am unclear what attitude I have embodied ("because most users seem to have attitudes like yours") that would cause the authors to have a failure to receive a return on investment. Also, there is nothing "pragmatic" about reasoning such as "So why should they bother trying to insert ads etc? Maybe they don't want ads in their app?" Those may be principled objections or the like, but a pragmatic line of reasoning would be something like: the current approach of applying the exact same sales strategies that worked on iOS have failed to receive traction here, perhaps I should consider alternative approaches that may offer a better return on investment. Maybe the authors already did that and rejected it as offering an insufficient return on investment, but that certainly doesn't seem to be the possibility you are hinting towards.
Got a lot of flack from people for the quality of the article and arguments over the nuances of the words of the article that are completely throwing the discussion off-track.
Rovio has had 20 million paid downloads for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and 20 million ad-supported downloads on Android. Ville Heijari, Rovio's spokesperson (the "bird whisperer") says both generate similar revenues.
One of the top-selling apps ever on the iPhone generates similar revenues on Android. Here, the wording is vaguer so maybe the iPhone is making slightly more, maybe Android is making slightly more, but with regards to my conclusions these tiny ticky-tack details doesn't matter.
I maintain my original conclusion, which is that while Battleheart's developer could not make their business model work on Android, some people are making tons of money by switching to different business models in a changed environment. In light of this, I state again, it's not Android that's unsustainable, it's their business model on Android that appears to be unsustainable.
Not the same. Different markets. And this is 25 years later.
Not necessarily disagreeing with your substantive points, but that is a mildly hilarious way to disagree with the argument that we should pay attention to history because it repeats itself...
My conclusion that Angry Birds makes more money on iOS than Android is directly from the article's title (hint the paid ones referred to in the title are clarified in the body to refer to "selling the game like on the iPhone").
What you call "speculation" that predicts they will make $1m in ad revenue per month is directly from the CEO of Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds. I quote: "The Android version of the game has been downloaded 5 million times and Rovio is on track to generate $1 million in revenue per month by the end of the year, according Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka."
The article says, "Angry Birds Makes More Money from the Free Android Version than from Paid Ones".
It continues, "But one of the most popular apps of all time, Angry Birds, is actually seeing quite a lot of success from its ad-supported version versus the paid app...On Android devices though, the game's maker, Rovio, went with an ad-supported model rather than selling the game like on the iPhone."
The only "paid ones" or "paid app" referenced in the article is the iOS version, so that makes the statement into free Android version makes more money than iOS version.
Sounds like T-Mobile doesn't do so well around where you live, but it's great where I live. Mobile service quality rankings is pretty heavily dependent on location.
I get voice coverage everywhere I've gone, 5-10mbps down, and I think around 3 up. Fast enough for my mobile uses.
I'm also happy enough with their 5GB 4G unlimited 2G cap I get in return for my $30 a month.
It's rarely about preferring Android phones. And even where it is, it's mostly an uneducated preference. When Android owners are asked whether they will buy another Android in future, most say no. Amongst iPhone owners, most say they will buy another iPhone.
This is just not true.
"83 percent of current iPhone users intend to buy an iPhone again this holiday season; 81 percent of Android OS users said the same."
T-Mobile is the single company doing this unilaterally.
They're the only American major carrier to offer cheaper plans if you bring your own phone.
Their most impressive cheaper plan for those of us that don't do a lot of talking on our smartphones anymore is an impressive attempt to bring European-style bring-your-own-smartphone plans to America. $30 a month, no additional taxes or fees, no contract for 5GB of HSPA+ 4G, unlimited 2G, unlimited text, and 100 minutes. That's not many minutes, but you can go pretty heavily over on minutes and still have it be a great deal. It doesn't take a long time on $30/month for your smartphone to start saving over a traditional American carrier smartphone plan.
I think you meant "as well as generate a huge workload on the few volunteers dedicated to the project". If you want to help OLPC, be dedicated, and join a local developer group. Then you will also get your hands on a device.
If they started distributing devices to everyone, they'd loose their focus, and the viewpoint of the project would become skewed. Don't forget, the OLPC project is about education, not technology!
From Charles Kane, OLPC president's own mouth: "the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible."
Somehow, they seem to run the one consumer electronics project that doesn't benefit from additional customers. It is probably not a coincidence that this is the one consumer electronics project run by a non-profit.
I used to be a huge OLPC project fan, now I think they're a bit of a joke. The democratization of computers is not going to come from a top-down project like OLPC. They had their chance, and due to the lack of market pressures because of their educational non-profit status, that ship sailed a long time ago.
The democratization of computers is going to come from real companies that are creating real products that are shipping into real peoples' hands right now. The cost of a Chinese-made Android tablet is frequently significantly lower than $100. And they don't have to deal with the baggage of living in some sort of bizarro world where more sales is a liability.
The only benefit that OLPC provided over commercial projects to sell low-cost computers was the open-source nature of Sugar OS specifically designed to teach children about how computers worked and how they could be programmed, thus teaching fishing instead of giving fish. Then they jettisoned that, and clarified their mission is just to be fishmongers that sell special fish for kids, and it escapes me how they could do a better job with this than their for-profit competition.
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Your comment reads like something from a year or two ago. The "there's an iPad market, not a tablet market" part of it really gives it away. The Kindle and Nexus markets have been selling very well, and the iPad is reduced to only half of the market now.
Your main point, too, sounds like something from before tablets have really started gaining momentum. I actually have seen directly many people, including many of the older generation, where tablets have really completely supplanted PC's in their lives. My mom who used to use her computer for nothing except light web and email hasn't touched her computer in a year now that she's gotten a tablet.
Nevermind that Samsung also sued Apple. Nevermind that the iPhone was banned for two years in Korea.
What is Samsung supposed to be, Gandhi? If Apple sues Samsung, and Samsung counter sues back in self-defense, is that really "resorting to lawsuits" in your mind?
iPad 3 which has a much better DPI than the Fire
iPad 3rd Gen has a resolution of 2048×1536 on a 9.7" screen, giving it a DPI of 264.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9" has a resolution of 1920x1200 on a 8.9" screen, giving it a DPI of 254.
For all intents and purposes, the Kindle Fire HD has the same DPI as the latest iPad.
That's really interesting.
Asking as someone who has never so much as looked into the dev/modding tools released for various games, are there games whose publicly-distributed quest scripting tools do allow for things like unit testing?
I hope this isn't the real debut of the Pureview technology on Windows Phone.
With that tiny lens assembly, it seems inevitable if it is the real deal that large compromises will have been made to the image quality.
For those who don't know, the Nokia Pureview technology, currently found only on a single Symbian phone, is a breakthrough in imaging quality on smartphones/compact cameras. It is hands-down the best image quality on any smartphone, it is arguably the very best compact camera in the world, and in some circumstances has even been demonstrated to outperform mirrorless cameras like micro 4/3.
That's all pretty much no true.
Apple is suing over the Nexus line. Not only is the Nexus S part of this suit, but they got an injunction for a while against the Galaxy Nexus for their patent on searching more than one database with a single search.
Furthermore, this suit just affirmed their software patents on pinch to zoom, tap to zoom, and bouncing on scrolling past the end of a list. Finding these software patents valid and that Samsung violated them was a huge part of this case.
I'm an ordinary home user who wants to backup my really important data in case of catastrophe. Besides lots of little stuff, by far my biggest data in this category is my pictures, and when all totaled up, it comes out to about 75GB.
I've been mulling investing in a service like Crashplan, which according to their pricing would cost me $5 a month if I was month to month, or about $3 a month if I committed to 4 years (!).
Amazon Glacier could offer me backups for one cent a GB per month. So for my scenario, that'd come out to 75 cents a month.
Is it just me or is this an insanely good deal for my consumer scenario?
Your argument is a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Of course none of those predated Apple, they are all defined in terms of what Apple did.
You could accurately describe the MacBook Air as a reaction to the ultra-portable movement created by the Asus EeePC. Asus wasn't the first to do it, but they were the first to make it mainstream.
Similarly, it's true, nobody made notebooks with greater than 2K resolution before the current MacBook. That said, the 15" 1080p space wasn't pioneered by Apple, which lagged behind there for years. So you could easily make full HD the litmus test.
Finally, popularity is very difficult to define, and I have a feeling you're defining it by however much Apple has made it popular. There were plenty of consumer laptops shipping with SSDs before Apple.
Without a doubt, MacBooks are impressive pieces of hardware.
However, they are also susceptible to the problem of differing internal hardware, just like all other pre-packaged computers. People make a big fuss about the differing LCD panels that are packaged inside a MacBook, and people often feel one is much better than the rest.
>Except that's not what is being acknowledged. They're not paying more for the same thing.
That's not what the person you're replying to said at all, he didn't say they're the same thing. People buy brands like Gucci and Prada for exactly the sort of reasons you list, that essentially, they feel like they're something better in return.
So first Facebook's algorithm hides my posts from my friends for reasons known only to Facebook.
Now Facebook is testing the option so I can pay so that my posts they hid will actually show to my friends.
In a way, I really hope Facebook goes through with this, maybe it'll be the straw that finally breaks the camels back and we can get a new social network that actually cares about its users.
Weren't we reading just two weeks ago about how the FBI utterly failed in cracking an Android phone's gesture lock, and had to go demanding Google to help them?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/14/2222229/fbi-tries-to-force-google-to-unlock-users-android-phone
I find it bizarre that iOS has a version of XBMC when it can only be run on jailbroken devices.
Meanwhile, Android devices, which actually compromise the majority of the market these days, could run XBMC out of the box with no modifications, and there seems to be zero interest in creating a version for Android. It would even be allowed on the official Android market.
Still, considering the heritage of the project, maybe this all makes sense....
They already made the N9, which runs Meego. They did everything in their power to kill it, including only selling it in a few markets, not listing it on their website, publicly announcing that they were abandoning the platform no matter how well it sold.
According to the figures in the article it is still outselling the their Lumia WP7 line 3:1.
They don't seem to be dropping Microsoft like a hot rock.
I don't know they're wrong, since I don't know what conclusions the authors have drawn from their experience, whether they're as over-broad and appear to be driven by some sort of agenda like the commentators here I've been replying to.
However, I am suggesting that it is wrong to draw the conclusion that Android is unsustainable based on the fact that this particular developer made a good income on the Apple store, and was unable to do the same on the Android store. The experience of other developers who adapted a different approach indicates it is that there is plenty of money to be made on the Android store if the correct approach is taken.
Also, I am unclear what attitude I have embodied ("because most users seem to have attitudes like yours") that would cause the authors to have a failure to receive a return on investment. Also, there is nothing "pragmatic" about reasoning such as "So why should they bother trying to insert ads etc? Maybe they don't want ads in their app?" Those may be principled objections or the like, but a pragmatic line of reasoning would be something like: the current approach of applying the exact same sales strategies that worked on iOS have failed to receive traction here, perhaps I should consider alternative approaches that may offer a better return on investment. Maybe the authors already did that and rejected it as offering an insufficient return on investment, but that certainly doesn't seem to be the possibility you are hinting towards.
Got a lot of flack from people for the quality of the article and arguments over the nuances of the words of the article that are completely throwing the discussion off-track.
Here is a much more recent, much more professional article on the subject of Angry Birds revenue:
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how-rovio-made-angry-birds-a-winner?page=all
Let's discuss this one instead:
Rovio has had 20 million paid downloads for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and 20 million ad-supported downloads on Android. Ville Heijari, Rovio's spokesperson (the "bird whisperer") says both generate similar revenues.
One of the top-selling apps ever on the iPhone generates similar revenues on Android. Here, the wording is vaguer so maybe the iPhone is making slightly more, maybe Android is making slightly more, but with regards to my conclusions these tiny ticky-tack details doesn't matter.
I maintain my original conclusion, which is that while Battleheart's developer could not make their business model work on Android, some people are making tons of money by switching to different business models in a changed environment. In light of this, I state again, it's not Android that's unsustainable, it's their business model on Android that appears to be unsustainable.
paying attention to history has it's advantages
Not the same. Different markets. And this is 25 years later.
Not necessarily disagreeing with your substantive points, but that is a mildly hilarious way to disagree with the argument that we should pay attention to history because it repeats itself...
What are you talking about?
My conclusion that Angry Birds makes more money on iOS than Android is directly from the article's title (hint the paid ones referred to in the title are clarified in the body to refer to "selling the game like on the iPhone").
What you call "speculation" that predicts they will make $1m in ad revenue per month is directly from the CEO of Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds. I quote: "The Android version of the game has been downloaded 5 million times and Rovio is on track to generate $1 million in revenue per month by the end of the year, according Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka."
The article says, "Angry Birds Makes More Money from the Free Android Version than from Paid Ones".
It continues, "But one of the most popular apps of all time, Angry Birds, is actually seeing quite a lot of success from its ad-supported version versus the paid app...On Android devices though, the game's maker, Rovio, went with an ad-supported model rather than selling the game like on the iPhone."
The only "paid ones" or "paid app" referenced in the article is the iOS version, so that makes the statement into free Android version makes more money than iOS version.
Which is why they're making good money on the Apple market, right?
Of course, other developers have had the opposite experience. For example, Angry Birds makes more money from Android than iOS:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Angry-Birds-Makes-More-Money-from-the-Free-Android-Version-than-from-Paid-Ones-170596.shtml
While their business model may work fine on Apple market, sometimes it takes changes to make money in a different environment.
It's not Android that's unsustainable, it's their business model on Android that appears to be unsustainable.
Sounds like T-Mobile doesn't do so well around where you live, but it's great where I live. Mobile service quality rankings is pretty heavily dependent on location.
I get voice coverage everywhere I've gone, 5-10mbps down, and I think around 3 up. Fast enough for my mobile uses.
I'm also happy enough with their 5GB 4G unlimited 2G cap I get in return for my $30 a month.
It's rarely about preferring Android phones. And even where it is, it's mostly an uneducated preference. When Android owners are asked whether they will buy another Android in future, most say no. Amongst iPhone owners, most say they will buy another iPhone.
This is just not true.
"83 percent of current iPhone users intend to buy an iPhone again this holiday season; 81 percent of Android OS users said the same."
Source:
http://allthingsd.com/20111212/youth-is-wasted-on-the-young-and-so-are-consumer-electronics/
If you assume 5% interest on $400 for 2 years, that's going to be only $441 after 2 years.
That's still a decent savings.
T-Mobile is the single company doing this unilaterally.
They're the only American major carrier to offer cheaper plans if you bring your own phone.
Their most impressive cheaper plan for those of us that don't do a lot of talking on our smartphones anymore is an impressive attempt to bring European-style bring-your-own-smartphone plans to America. $30 a month, no additional taxes or fees, no contract for 5GB of HSPA+ 4G, unlimited 2G, unlimited text, and 100 minutes. That's not many minutes, but you can go pretty heavily over on minutes and still have it be a great deal. It doesn't take a long time on $30/month for your smartphone to start saving over a traditional American carrier smartphone plan.
I think you meant "as well as generate a huge workload on the few volunteers dedicated to the project". If you want to help OLPC, be dedicated, and join a local developer group. Then you will also get your hands on a device.
If they started distributing devices to everyone, they'd loose their focus, and the viewpoint of the project would become skewed. Don't forget, the OLPC project is about education, not technology!
From Charles Kane, OLPC president's own mouth: "the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible."
Somehow, they seem to run the one consumer electronics project that doesn't benefit from additional customers. It is probably not a coincidence that this is the one consumer electronics project run by a non-profit.
I used to be a huge OLPC project fan, now I think they're a bit of a joke. The democratization of computers is not going to come from a top-down project like OLPC. They had their chance, and due to the lack of market pressures because of their educational non-profit status, that ship sailed a long time ago.
The democratization of computers is going to come from real companies that are creating real products that are shipping into real peoples' hands right now. The cost of a Chinese-made Android tablet is frequently significantly lower than $100. And they don't have to deal with the baggage of living in some sort of bizarro world where more sales is a liability.
The only benefit that OLPC provided over commercial projects to sell low-cost computers was the open-source nature of Sugar OS specifically designed to teach children about how computers worked and how they could be programmed, thus teaching fishing instead of giving fish. Then they jettisoned that, and clarified their mission is just to be fishmongers that sell special fish for kids, and it escapes me how they could do a better job with this than their for-profit competition.