Re:Locale app for Android "wouldn't even be possible" on iPh...
by Chocobean on Friday October 03, 2008 @01:18PM
(#322836)
+1 on this point: "the two attract entirely different sorts of developers, and because I think Google and Apple both REALIZE that they aren't directly competing here."
on a semi-related note I really don't like people comparing Android to the iPhone. One of them is a good looking smart phone...the other one isn't even a phone. Apple has birthed a whole and completed creature, beautiful to behold. Google meanwhile has conjured up a spirit, or a virus that can latch onto any form. Google is hoping that android sticks around and reincarnates into various physical form factors which will one day out number or out-slick whatever any one single manufacturer can come up with. (Like the Nokia Morph!?) If successful it can be eventually be embedded to whatever device replaces the cell phone one day.
Not that many people on the planet knows what Symbian is either, but that's okay with Nokia Ericsson et al.
More apps? Possible, but it's up in the air. More developers? I would doubt it.
What Android offers in flexibility, it lacks in simplicity and availability. Most people on the planet don't know that Android exists. They wouldn't recognize it if they saw it. Compare that to the App Store, which got pushed out to every iTunes on the planet, and the iPhone, which is kind of a big deal news-wise. (I remember seeing it on the front page of the local paper. That's big considering it was just a tech announcement.)
The iPhone has things to offer developers that Android doesn't. For one thing, it offers slickness: the same slickness that Apple offers with most of its stuff. The ability to easily code apps that feel lickable. It's got the "high quality" name behind it. A lot of developers follow things like that. I'm thinking primarily of Instapaper - Marco has said before that he does not look at Android with any sort of eagerness, and that he doesn't think a Google OS is worth it. And I think Instapaper is by far the best and most useful application I've seen.
No, the iPhone can't pull off Locale. I disagree with your thinking that Apple WILL implement it. Locale seems nifty, but it's not a gamechanging app or anything. I personally LIKE that my apps can't run in the background. Obviously, other people are going to disagree. But you can't look at this and say "Oh, look, Android is going to cream Apple," because it's not, because the two attract entirely different sorts of developers, and because I think Google and Apple both REALIZE that they aren't directly competing here.