I have to agree with this post! I bounce back and forth between the AT&T boards and the VZW boards. The number of one-time trollish posts is amazing, especially between iPhone and Android. It reminds me of the Chevy vs. Ford debate.
kenyu73 wrote:The post is a copy/paste iPhone solicitor..... anyone who visits a forum, posts 1 SINGLE huge essay of a negative review is a anti-android forum troll...
Nuff said.
M91-30 wrote:
iphone, you revolutionized NOTHING but are idol-ed like a god.
I love Android and dislike Apple as much as the next guy, but I disagree with that statement. Take an honest look at where smartphones were at before the iPhone, and now look where they are today. There is no denying the fact that the iPhone made a statement, a statement which caused a complete overhaul of the smartphone market. Before it, there were the same, ugly old Windows Mobile 6.1 phones and tired old Blackberrys. Oh, and Palms, but those were dying out regardless. After the iPhone, all of a sudden there was a quite sudden and rapid upswing of Android development, Microsoft suddenly woke up and rushed the WinMo 6.5 refresh to market with the promise of big things in 7.0, WebOS came out of seemingly nowhere, and even the Blackberry, after the 5.0 refresh, is getting a complete overhaul in 6.0, which looks like it will finally be worthy of competing with the smartphone of today.
Now, you can argue that some of these projects were started long before the iPhone ever came to market, which might be true, but again, Apple didn't just raise the bar. No, they practically invented a new game. I honestly don't believe that smartphones would have evolved half has far as they have between the original iPhone release date and present day, had it not been for that device. The iPhone has done to the smartphone world what the iPod did to the portable music player world. Apple is extremely good at taking an existing concept, reinventing it, and making it super-cool again. After all, Sony started the portable music craze with the original Walkman, but does anybody at all think about a Sony Walkman when thinking about portable music players? No, you say mp3 player, and everyone instantly visualizes an iPod. That brand name has become 100% synonymous with portable music. Their goal was the same with the iPhone, to say "smartphone" and have everyone instantly think of the iPhone. Now, I don't believe they have been QUITE as successful with the iPhone as they were with the iPod, but it is still a huge success by any measure. And I believe I can safely say that just about every single one of us believes deep down that, despite all its faults, or the faults of the company that built it, it really is a great piece of technology.
With all that said, I still believe the iPhone could have been even bigger than it is, had Apple's (or should I say Jobs') arrogance not kept getting in the way. I'm sure AT&T can share some of the blame as well, but it's mostly on Apple. Despite having the brilliance to create a device that would spur a ridiculous amount of fast-paced growth in a particular market, I very much dislike Apple's business practices. I believe they are as bad, if not worse, that Microsoft on its darkest day. Their level of walled-garden integration goes far beyond anything Microsoft ever achieved, and have only been allowed to do so due to lack of market share. However, that's not going to hold out much longer, as we see there are already antitrust lawsuits being filed against Apple in the realm of digital music sales. If they could just figure out how to stop telling their customers what they should want, and start listening to what they actually do want, then I believe we'd see a whole new Apple. If Apple operated like Google, they would probably be much more of a mainstream choice in computing, not still an expensive, niche option. They lost a HUGE opportunity when they shut down Psystar, a company who was producing Mac clones that were much more powerful for a fraction of the cost of the real thing. Apple insists on maintaining their luxury brand status, and are excluding themselves from a huge chunk of the PC market because of it. And as for the iPhone and/or Apple being idolized, I very much disagree with that. I love my Android phone, but at the end of the day, it's just a phone. I do not worship it or the companies that made it.
Of course, now Google has entered the game along with Apple and Microsoft, bringing for the first time a very viable Linux-based platform to the table. Ubuntu was the best Linux option to date, but despite efforts by Dell, it just never took off much outside of geek territory. Lots of people returned the Dell Mini netbooks, once they found out that they ran Ubuntu instead of Windows. It was just too much of an unknown to the general populace. Linux needed a corporate giant with a great reputation and virtually unlimited resources to give it a chance, and Google has done just that. In fact, I think it's actually better that they started small, with smartphones, instead of trying to break right out onto the desktop PC scene. On a phone, consumers don't have to worry about hardware compatibility, device drivers, etc., and can use the time to get familiar with the platform. And though it's currently limited to smartphones and MIDs, it will be on tablets and netbooks soon enough, and I believe it's only a matter of time until it enters the desktop arena (commercially, not by hacks) to compete head to head with Windows and Mac OS. If the app store concept is maintained, Linux will finally be simple enough for general consumers to use. Linux distros have had package managers for years, but let's face it, they are all ugly and difficult to understand and use. People should not have to be bothered with strange dependancy warnings for packages they know nothing about, and they should never, EVER have to know what a compiler or source code libraries are. What the consumer needs is "here's an app for your computer, click the button to install it". I will give an honorable mention to Linspire, as they actually developed a true app store for Linux, and a fairly user-friendly interface. However, I think it tried too hard to mimic Windows, and with the company being the startup it was, just didn't have the resources to make it big. Google, on the other hand, has about as much marketing power as Apple (if not moreso), and instead of trying to make everything run like Windows, has created something new and different, yet simple to use.
I know a desktop version of Android will have to get much more complex, just as the hardware and applications are more complex, but I can see it happening. As long as they keep it simple enough for the general population to use, yet allow the geeks to get under the hood and do the equivalent of tuner transformations at will, I believe they will have a big winner. Anyway, here's to the future Android. The future looks exciting indeed. 
