Comments on: As Google Takes On the iPhone, True Openness — and Developers — Are Key

By: timjones17

timjones17 — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:17:33 +0000

Om and team – Of late, I have noticed more balance on smartphone-related stories on GigaOm. Noticeably less iPhone fawning articles, and more coverage of other platforms. Apple, blindingly loved by mainstream bloggers already gets plenty of coverage from them. I was always disturbed that your team has, in the past, unquestionably profiled Apple in always so glowing light. I'm glad that you are now moving towards more balance.

By: iphone developer

iphone developer — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:15:07 +0000

Googles best chance at making the Nexus One a success is making it enticing for developers to code for it. Apple has done a great job at making their app developers rich and Google needs to do the same. Developers are going to go where the money is and right now its in the Apple app store!

By: avalokman

avalokman — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:20:37 +0000

I have first hand experience that suggests that this price comes with an unbelievably low level of customer service, at least in the ordering process. I placed an order for an unlocked phone this morning, to be engraved as a birthday gift to my wife. Engraved phones are to be shipped 72 hours after order. 20 minutes after I placed the order, I realized there was a a typo in the engraving. I sent an email to their customer service via Google Checkout, but that was replied with a form letter stating no changes can be done to an order once placed, and the only way to make changes is to cancel the order and place it again. But guess what - cancellations are allowed for only 15 min after you place the order. So in this case, the customer is SOL. A call to Google's general number at 650-623-4000 gets you to a Google operator who has no authority to transfer you to anyone in Nexus One Order or support department. In other words, there is absolutely no human support for an order for a $550 item. Just unbelievable.

By: Roshan Shrestha

Roshan Shrestha — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:11:31 +0000

Maybe not for a majority of application, but sometimes multitasking of third party app is useful. For example, to use the Dragon Naturally Speaking app, where you speak and it transcribes, you have to copy and paste the text to another application (such as email), since the dragon app is unable to run when other applications are running.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:33:08 +0000

I fully agree with COM_by_CRAIG. Google has to make it open if they want to compete with Apple and Microsoft in the firld of smartphones. It is important for google to increase the adoption level of android operating system as this will help them in increasing their market.On the other hand they should work on the software problems their consumers are facing in android based phones.

By: COM_by_CRAIG

COM_by_CRAIG — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:13:29 +0000

Mr. Jobs you do make some good points but even you can understand why you cannot store apps on a SD card. There would be no more developers if they did this. You could easily pop the SD card out and put it in another device. Even it is protected or encrypted someone will figure out how to hack it. Come on you should know this! Maybe it would be more proper to criticize the amount of internal memory available.

Did you actually use the phone? I think your employees are lying to you: CNet reports "Call quality was quite good on the whole. Conversations were clear, the volume was loud, and we heard little static or interference." Also about performance: "Applications loaded in a flash and there was no lag when switching between features."

Mr. Jobs don't worry your iPhone is great. I use one everyday. The Nexus is not an iPhone killer, actually I'm not sure if one will be. Collectively, yeah maybe.

BTW: I'm looking for a job. Oh yeah, ANDROID IS CRAP!

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:49:22 +0000

Google nexus one is the best phone to hit the market.

I think its priced way high for huge popularity. It has its advantages to I phones, but still I phones have thousands of apps.

Hope this phone succeeds.

By: Trevor Cape

Trevor Cape — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:21:18 +0000

Sweet! Another cool device on Android to develop for. Now basically anyone can develop apps for Android with the emergence of highly effective and reliable mobile development SDKs, like Titanium.

Titanium is open source and allows the development of cross platform (iPhone and Android)applications with only the knowledge of HTML, CSS and Javascript, oh, its free also.

Check it out:
http://www.appcelerator.com/appcelerator-platform/titanium-architecture/

By: Sebastian Rupley

Sebastian Rupley — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:13:47 +0000

@Darwin, @Ryan, I agree that multitasking isn't for everyone, but the specific example he cites are good ones. Running Rhapsody in the background, and location apps....I think like that will pick up as people become accustomed to it.

Sebastian

By: Darwin

Darwin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:34:08 +0000

Android is not "open" by any stretch of the imagination and Google doesn't want or need it to be no matter what they may say.

Google tries to make much of the fact that it is ideologically open, despite the fact that this doesn’t necessarily benefit customers, and isn’t necessarily any more the case for Android phones than for the iPhone or any other smartphone model. Apple also uses open source code in its core OS and within Safari. At the same time, Android phones “with Google” and Android Market apps are similarly closed off by security partitions and restrictions. Outside of supplying the hot air that inflates’s tech media wags’ opinion pieces regarding Android’s vaunted openness, the idea that an Android phone is any more “open” than the iPhone in any measurable way relevant to consumers simply has no real meaning, certainly no more than pleadings by GM to “buy American.”