>From the article: "Without a chance for programmers to strike it rich on Android, the platform simply won't see the depth and breadth of applications that continue to drive iPhone and iPod touch sales."
I'm not entirely convinced this is the case. I wrote my silly metal detector application knowing full well that it wasn't going to make money. The core element of creativity, as research has shown, is that it's usually inhibited by promise of monetary gain. iPhone's popularity of their application sales isn't due to "the ease of iTunes." Saying something like that ignores the overwhelming, mass- media, multi-faceted marketing campaign for the iPhone. It ignores the first-mover effect. It ignores the vast market gap between the two platforms, the mind-boggling inferiority of java in comparison to the well-solidified superiority of a low level language, and it reduces a complex set of contributing factors down to basically just one incorrect one: "people are lazy." First, some good things Google's done for android: * Gave us root. It's not a mistake, and it's not unintentional. Nobody at Google makes as silly of a as passing through keystrokes to a root console (yeah, root) while at the same time "accidentally" running a telnet daemon as root, too. Every bit of the code was picked over with a fine tooth comb from what I can tell, but somehow two glaring, no-skill-needed-at-all security holes were left open? Please. In any case, thanks, because I would not have bought the phone nor developed on the platform had I not been able to execute native code or tether, because I sure as hell was not going to be paying $179 bucks for a phone I can't play with, and thankfully they knew that too. * Provided decent development tools and lots of example code. Yay. * Opened the platform. This will, in the long run, create a situation where android should rival, and if things are done right overtake, the iPhone--unless android drops the ball which it could do. It very much has a limited window of opportunity here; but someone truly needs to light the fire under their ass or iPhone will become the Windows of the mobile world, while android will be the Linux-- ever trying to catch up. Blackberry realized the urgency, Google should too. Now, while I could probably list off a number of things I think could be done to improve the popularity of the Market (and the Market's market). A small set: * Give everyone the ability to execute native code en masse. You have linux; let people use it. You'd be surprised what will come out as a result. This should have been the number one priority far before dalvik, and it needs to be spelled out very slowly to your carriers. My guess is that all of this must have been in the making since before iPHone was released-- back when midlets were the only things that roamed the mda world. The mistake was in not adapting once iPhone came on the scene. Everyone-- *everyone*--- *FREAKING EVERYONE* knows that truly talented developers prefer c[++] wayyy over java; newbie developers love java because that's what retarded schools teach CS majors-- a crap language for people who can't figure out the "difficult" tasks of memory management and avoiding buffer overflows. Nobody wants to port c to java, because it's a *downgrade*. By the way, in case it wasn't emphasized enough: VMs seem to *always* be inherently inferior to native code in the eyes of good coders. That's why they got and developed for iPhones. It's all the greatness of bsd, plus none of the hassle of a mobile phone vm. No other platform comes close-- except android. I don't mean this as an insult to any developer, and if this were real life I'd be saying all of this while making jokes throughout: I'm sure this stuff came from above, but c'mon... step up next time. Sorry, I have to be blunt, but either it's all due to mass blunder or groupthink, and I prefer to think it's the latter. * Find a way to market the differences; find (or create) some things that everyone will go, "whoh" to. An example: currently, the fact that you restrict the Maps licensing to explicitly not be used for realtime navigation is one of the biggest mistakes you could possibly be making on a mobile platform like android when you have such a strong advantage on the playing field. If you don't realize that and nothing's even planned to be done about it, then, well, I'm speechless. Absolutely freaking speechless. * Be more visible and develop a greater community-- both of users and developers. The one thing google has always sucked at is communities. Am I actually posting to a mailing list, by the way? How 90s. I'm guessing that's why they had to *buy* youtube-- they had no idea why google video wasn't doing too well. That's why their Wikipedia rip-off is also flailing its arms desperately. Why? It had no framework in place to build a community. Wasn't there some community... somewhere... that google tried to start? Meh, I'll go ask my friend on facebook. OpenSocial? Hmm... well, given the trend, I'm not all that hopeful. It seems a lot like someone who can't play an instrument trying to orchestrate a symphony, but I digress... It boggles the mind how google, a giant on the internet, can repeatedly fail to understand the importance of community planning in fostering growth in people-oriented ventures. So back to Android. Where's the Wiki like every open source project has? Where are the forums? The feature requests? Yeah, there are dumb users, sure, but they're part of life. I see practically zero Google employees actively enthusiastic about / supporting the platform / encouraging new ideas through forums/lists/whatever. Even worse, when someone pops up a new idea, the knee-jerk response of the more jaded members of the community seems to be to shoot the idea down--refuting, rather than encouraging it. Recently, I had posted an idea about encouraging a influx of open source developers onto the platform to jumpstart popularity in the core developer demographic by granting free licenses to verified open source developers (e.g., through sourceforge projects). No response from google, but someone was more than happy to tell me why that's a waste of Google's time and money(?) That's fine if my idea's crap, but on an allegedly open source platform, I'm not entirely convinced that it is. No response from Google? Really? Was it in the FAQ somewhere? Oh wait, no user-editable FAQs... there's that community thing again.... You've gotta give a response. Otherwise, people start formulating their own thoughts, because their imaginations run wild. When you're #2; the only way you'll get to #1 is by, at the very least, "smiling and nodding." I worry. I'm glad more manufacturers are starting to embrace android, but I only have to wonder what Apple will do to take advantage of its lead and decimate android, relegating it to a small minority market. Hopefully it won't come to that. The iPhone was groundbreaking and revolutionary, and to it mobile developers should all be thankful. If it weren't for the iPhone, we actually might not even have distribution of android today. Carriers are pains in the asses when it comes to their power over device manufacturers, and the iPhone was the one case where the manufacturer stood a chance to have power over the carrier, so it exercised that power to allow themselves to do things their way. They got this due, in part, to stating the obvious to the carrier-- that they'd be bringing home the bacon exclusively to them for the foreseeable future. It's that "our way" style that Google needs in order to charm carriers into taking those risks, making it very clear to them that the carriers will be increasingly left in the dust due to innovation should they continue to plug their ears and scream "no" to manufacturers/os developers. ... but seeing as it seems none of them read this, or respond... well, I'm not holding my breath. -Kurt On Apr 22, 11:15 am, BikingBill <[email protected]> wrote: > Huffington Post covers the issues with the Android Market. Also, some > breaking news on the RIM App World. > > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-volk/mountain-view-we-have-a-p_... > > Want to know why there are over 30,000 applications on the iPhone? Ask > Ethan Nicholas. Mr. Nicholas programmed a little game called iShoot in > his spare time. iShoot shot to number one on Jan 11th, with the $2.99 > game reportedly earning Ethan over $800,000. Mr. Nicholas has quit his > day job at Sun (good timing!) to devote himself to iPhone > programming. ...... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
