“I have issues with Android and Google’s approach to it. I think it’s an amazing concept — people holding hands, skipping down sugar-encrusted roads with pink ponies and colorful rainbows — but the execution falls flat in many ways if you’re a hardcore phone user, and Google has constantly missed the mark in almost every area,” The Boy Genius writes, appropriately enough, for The Boy Genius Report.
“Part of my main issue with Android, and this applies slightly less to HTC Sense UI handsets, is that there’s practically no human emotion with Google when it comes to technology. Everything is statistical and analytical. While you could argue that being this way is way superior to ‘feeling’ and ’emotion’ — it might be 95% of the time — you still will almost always lose that charm and that amazing feeling of connecting to something. People would die for their iPhones… [but] Android continues to feel systematic and clinical,” Boy Genius writes.
“Android still feels half-baked even after two years. And you can’t prance around smiling without raising the bar. You can take your non-multi-touch device and shove it — it’s inexcusable,” Boy Genius writes. “There are so many fundamental issues with Android’s OS that still haven’t been addressed and it really makes my head spin. Uniformity is not a word you’ll find in Android’s dictionary… How do I copy text from non-editable field like an email, webpage, or SMS, or even a 3rd party application? Oh, I can’t. Say what you want about the iPhone not having copy and paste for two years — a joke — it’s the single best implementation on the planet for a smartphone and Google’s approach is almost as bad as RIM’s with the Storm-series.”
Boy Genius writes, “Android doesn’t make sense as a whole. It’s fragmented, poorly executed, the Android Market for apps is a mess, and developers still don’t care about it… For a company that’s so smart, and makes so much sense, it’s unbelievable how little sense Android makes in most places. I just can’t see why you’d want to run Android over the iPhone OS?”
“I apologize for comparing this to the iPhone so much, I really didn’t set out to. But I’ve used an iPhone every day of my life since it first came out in addition to every BlackBerry ever available simultaneously, and I actually had an open mind about the Nexus One possibly replacing my iPhone,” Boy Genius writes. “But in the end, I found that the lack of any meaningful applications for Android really made it a no go from the beginning. I’m talking about quality — re-read the word quality — applications, here. The best VNC and RDP applications on Android are a joke. There’s not a single enjoyable Twitter application, and any application that’s on Android that is available on the iPhone pales in comparison. If you can find an application on the Android platform that’s better than the iPhone counterpart, I’ll send you a BGR Ninja hat.”
Boy Genius writes, “Here’s another issue on why for the foreseeable future Android won’t be anything like what Apple or another company can offer: Coders aren’t designers. It’s really as simple as that and anyone in the business will know exactly what I’m talking about. That’s why Apple’s entire developer ecosystem is different, because believe it or not, Apple’s developers are amazing designers that make beautiful things, and they happen to know how to code. That’s entirely different from someone who’s the best coder in the world and trying to create something that looks, works, and feels great. And so, this is my issue with Android and why you won’t see applications of iPhone-quality on Android aside from any SDK and programming hurdles.”
Oh, yes, there’s even more! Read the full article — very highly recommended if only to witness the rarity of unvarnished truth on full display — here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Islandgirl for the heads up.]
Google Anroid… aka: a ‘clusterfsck’.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clusterfuck
*BOOM*
cue the google fanboys….
That last paragraph is fantastic, a great explanation of the difference between Apple and most other companies that most geeks and pundits just don’t get…
Boy Genius writes, “Here’s another issue on why for the foreseeable future Android won’t be anything like what Apple or another company can offer: Coders aren’t designers. It’s really as simple as that and anyone in the business will know exactly what I’m talking about. That’s why Apple’s entire developer ecosystem is different, because believe it or not, Apple’s developers are amazing designers that make beautiful things, and they happen to know how to code. That’s entirely different from someone who’s the best coder in the world and trying to create something that looks, works, and feels great. And so, this is my issue with Android and why you won’t see applications of iPhone-quality on Android aside from any SDK and programming hurdles.”
If you read the comments of the Google fanboys on this BGR posting, those make Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hamas & Hizbollah look like the vienna boys choir
If you take Google’s Picasa as an example of how well Google can design an application or an OS for that matter and compare that to iPhoto or OS X, you quickly realize how badly Google is lacking in the user interface department.
Picasa is great, if you’ve never used iPhoto or a Mac. Like Windows, it’s fine, until you use another OS for a while.
Man, what a bunch of tools commenting over there.
Let me summarize:
-They want wallpaper behind their icons.
-They want “cooler” ring-tones
-They want Multi-tasking, yet most do not know why other than it was fed to them as a talking point
-They like to point out that iPhone didn’t have copy and paste for two years.
-They have serious control issues
-They cannot spell
-They dismiss the fact that Not ALl droid apps run on each phone, yet complain that Apple doesn’t just let anyone put any craptacular apps in the app story.
In short, they are all paranoid, dellusional, tin-foil hat wearing kooks!!
Good Riddance, I don’t want to share any common ground with them. Idiots…
All in
Google designing user applications is like a land developer being allowed to design buildings. Yes, you can have an engineer and a developer design a building and have an architect stamp the drawings. But will anybody be happy with the product?
Apple designers seem to be the only “architects” in the industry. Everyone else is just trying to make money.
By the way, to be called an “architect” one should be required to go thru design school. Not just a programmer with a fancy name.
Kinda funny watching a Blackberry fanatic get reamed by the Google crowd.
The comments are more entertaining than the review! These guys are complete losers.
I’m sure Google has modified the Picasa UI, but didn’t they buy Picasa?
I wonder if it isn’t time for Eric Raymond to update his discussion of Cathedral vs. Bazaar as models of software development. Of course, back then (1997) he didn’t have Apple as exemplar of the Cathedral model.
Not being able to spell reasonably well does not make you a “paranoid, dellusional, tin-foil hat wearing kook”. It just makes you appear to be either illiterate or ESL. Sometimes you can tell which is which, not always.
Need I point out that more than a few denizens of this ‘Blog (or whatever it is) are willing to make similar demands of various products, only to fall silent when Apple does something similar? The world is full of folk spouting the party line – whatever that may be. Don’t be TOO hard on them, it might come back at you.
Google made a great search engine…PERIOD !!!
Everything else is like Honda making furniture. Stay at what your good at.
From now I, I think we should call boy genius, Big boy genius.
He has made us geniuses so proud
David Pogue had a great response in his NYT column… seems Google fanboys are even worse than Apple fanboys from the feedback he got after he posted his Nexus review (great read regardless):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/technology/personaltech/07pogue-email.html
The beauty of Android Market and why we should be thankful to Apple for approval process:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001852.html
The author writes: “I just can’t see why you’d want to run Android over the iPhone OS?”
Everyone I know, who’s gotten a Google copycat phone has said it was because they can’t or won’t use AT&T;.
If and when the iPhone becomes available with other carriers (hopefully soon), then there will be more market share growth for the iPhone in the U.S which will supersede Droid’s adoption. AT&T;at this point has become a hindrance to iPhone adoption.
Except for some hackers, everyone wants an iPhone.
@DLMeyer
Yes, Karma can be a bitch. OM.
I suppose, I may have been a little heavy handed with my comments. I am just so tired of the “chorus of dumb parrots” and the FUD they spread.
iPhone is a game changer, to-date Android is an “Also Ran”. Is iPhone perfect? No, but it is a revolutionary device with more upside than *ANY* consumer electronics I’ve ever owned. I cannot wait to see what they do next.
I couldn’t care less about putting a picture behind the app icons. I would never put an obnoxious ring tone on my phone and annoy everyone around me every time it rings. Multi-tasking is coming and I don’t want it until it is done in a way that ensures my phone doesn’t die from some app running in the background draining the battery while it’s in my pocket all so someone can text me. No really, let’s be real. Their arguments are overwhelmingly underwhelming in their importance. The 8 pages of apps on my phone (and growing) says to me their platform is lame. My multitouch smacks their multitasking right in giblets.
I’ve been using it since the day it shipped, and couldn’t be happier. Is there room for improvement? ALWAYS. Is anyone else close? Not that I see.
I’ve long said that Mac OS X is what Linux wants to be when it grows up. Meaning the desktop os. How many of you would put it on your Mother or GrandMothers computer and feel good about what you just did to the? A Mac on their desk, absolutely, in a heartbeat.
Droid is no different, they are ignoring the lessons learned from WinMobile and the lack of standardization across the phones means customer confusion, developer compatibility and support issues and other than being a linux fan-boys dream has nothing innovative or exciting for the consumer.
Linux belongs in the server closet and in propeller head’s parents basements with it’s masters. Droid can go with em as far as I’m concerned.
The only person at Google that knows how to design is the guy(?) making the different Google logos on their main web page for special days.
And the complaints don’t stop there. Beleaguered Android developers are voicing their annoyance that end users have received the 2.1 version of the operating system before they did, with no SDK having been released as yet. This means devs are unable to test their software against the latest update without buying a Nexus One, and this is already proving an issue with developers receiving complaints that their software is having issues on Android 2.1 – and they’re unable even to test it.
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/4361cc5e2ca44969
I have an android phone. I find AT&T;’ service lacking in comparison to T-Mobile. So I have stuck with T-Mobile. That said, I also have an iPod touch and use it whenever I have wifi. I have the G1. It’s a nice phone. I really like it. However, it is not in the league of the iPhone. iPhone can currently serve both in the enterprise and consumer worlds. Android can’t. Android’s enterprise tools are sorely lacking. So Android is going to have to beef up it’s phone and that means integrating with exchange and being able to use VPN and remote connection via, ssh, vnc, and rdp. It is also going to have to compete with Apple at the consumer level, something even MS is having issues doing these days.
I originally thought that Android and iPhone would repeat the MS/Apple wars of the eighties and nineties. I may have to rethink that as I am not sure where Google is going with their phone strategy. Unless they get better at the execution, they are a threat to everyone but iPhone.
One thing that android has over iPhone is that I can run any app I want on the droid, I can even run my own apps on it without paying for certificates like iPhone/iPod. Of course that only benefits a small section of the consumer market namely developers. These are probably the guys who spoke up about the review.
Yes and you can download apps that steal your banking info from the android app store too I hear.
So tell me again what is so great about running anything? How exactly do you come to the conclusion that this is something “Android has over iPhone” Doesn’t sound like much of a feature to me. As a mater of fact, I do online banking safely and SECURELY on my iPhone. droid don’t…
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001852.html
Of course that only benefits a small section of the consumer market namely developers. These are probably the guys who spoke up about the review.
Have you read the comments? There are 1,243 of them!
I’m pretty sure those aren’t all developers. It’s more like a pack of hyenas snarling and snapping at a hapless antelope.
Such a shame that the HTC Eris doesn’t get any mentions anywhere. It has multitouch. It has full copy-and-paste functionality throughout the entire phone. Simply reading this comment and shrugging off the Eris proves my point. The phone is great for people who are fed up with AT&T;.
Personally I don’t need the other devices to SUCK for me to love my iPhone.
I’ve messed around with an Android and frankly, I don’t hate it. It’s an OK phone. And for some people, a very good phone.
And even still, it doesn’t change my opinion of the iPhone.