Operating Systems > macOS

iphone, meet your windows

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Kintaro:
What is this phone thing I keep hearing about? A netbook that doesn't sleep when shut in my backpack, a bluetooth headset, and a 3G modem does the job and I get Skype's call prices. :D

hm_murdock:
I've got an iPhone 3GS and my girlfriend has a Droid Eris with Android 2.1.

The difference in the app stores is honestly night and day. Apple's App Store is full of richly-designed and functional software. Unfortunately you also end up paying $3.99 for a halfass paint program that can't even save. Sure it's "elegantly designed" but so fucking what?

Most stuff on the Apple App store is well-done yeah, but so much of it is corporate stuff. Lots of $5 games that still nickle and dime you for extra levels, "free trials," and the like.

Don't get me started on jailbreaking. I tried it. The software available is of notably inferior quality.

Updating is semi-manual. I kinda like that because it means that you won't end up with an update getting pushed out to you that removes features from an app. Believe me, a lot of app developers are in love with intentional regression bugs. At least in updating you can look through each app and read the changelog. Appler requires the changelog be posted so users can see it. if you don't want it, don't update. If you want all of them, you can select "Update All."

Android Market on the other hand sorely lacks anything of value that I can see. The user experience for the apps is a hodgepodge of decent through to downright awful. Most of the software is free, but it's patently useless, sometimes not even functioning properly.

Updating is even worse. It'll inform you of updates via a tiny icon in the status bar at the top which you have to grab and pull down like a drawer. Then you have to update each app individually, waiting for each one to finish before going to the next.

I guess in the end the analogy continues.

iPhones, like Macintosh have some high quality software that you won't get away without paying $50 for. Want a simple word processor? $49. Want some graphics software? $89. Want whatever? Well, odds are it won't be freeware. You do get what you pay for though. The money you pay gets you a higher quality app than the scores of freeware available for Windows.

The truth is that in 2010, Windows is actually pretty good from a speed/stability standpoint. Windows software I think will always be garbage though. Developers just don't seem like they could care less about UI design, testing, QA, or even quality coding. It really seems like a great deal of the software on the Android Market is this way. Google doesn't do any checking, so someone could just put a half-finished app up there that segfaults every time you tap the button to make it do something and it would stay there.

Disgraceful really :p

piratePenguin:
I couldn't buy an iphone for the same reasons I couldn't buy a mac, and more. I can't even run my own software on an iphone and I certainly can't send it to friends without going through the app store and paying appropriate fees. Insane that a phone I buy, I can't even program. ** It's not that I have a particular interest in this, but I'm sure you see where I'm coming from - this isn't the spirit Apple had in the 80s, this is insane. (this attitude can be defended on security grounds (still not necessarily the reason apple are doing this imo), but it could also be called a security cop out)

The other reasons I won't buy an iphone are like-minded, but also I expect in 6 months time when I could splash out on a good phone, that the android competition will be beginning (or finishing) to level the iphone on power, price, and market share - which will of course bring with it two things: increased security concerns (success/failure on this front I've always believed is determined as much by the attitudes of respective software developers than their market share), and increased android market activity - which you would expect to lead to better quality apps, especially those paid ones.

Your observations about the quality of the app stores are indeed what I hear (and believe). The analogy is pretty comprehensive imo, and it's pretty realistic to suggest Apple will keep quality apps and android "Windows" apps are more kludgey - but it has been proved that this isn't important to the majority of people even in computers nevermind phones (where people walk into stores everyday and walk out 5 minutes later with a new one)

But Apple will keep biting their "form is all" pill and hoping to hold on to a lot of market share. This is a last think that pisses me off about them (but they're clearly not targeting people like me). I respect their products as quality things, but their practices and attitudes can be damn unsettling.

** edit: I mentioned a bunch of philosophical things here but the side effects on users are not invisible:  for example Apple's app store have a rule that disallows apps that mimic functionality already found on the phone. This for example makes it impossible for potentially the most important apps to be approved, real life examples are Google Voice and Fennec (mobile Firefox). This is a serious encroachment on what I expect to be allowed to do with my phone!

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