Tag: John Gruber

iPhone vs Android the way normals see it

Android’s conscientious users are the same people who choose to run Linux on their desktops, said Dan Benjamin in a discussion with John Gruber on the latest episode of The Talk Show.

Now, this is nothing more than total annecdotal evidence that doesn’t prove anything, but this I found it interesting: A discussion on a normal, non-techy friend’s Facebook wall asking “iPhone or Droid. Which way does this current BlackBerry girl go?” (I’ve removed names and some off-topic responses.)

  • DROID
  • I am currently a bb girl too, but when I’m not I’ll be a driod!
  • Droid.
  • iPhone, baby!
  • Love my iPhone, but my ATT service is terrible when I go to IA…so how’s Verizon in your neck of the woods?
  • Droid all the way.
  • Apple blocks Porn in their App store, that should be enough to tell you to stay away.
  • Ummm not that I’d download porn from a App Market, but it’s the point that they block it as if they think they known what people should and shouldn’t have access to.
  • Droid. It is what i upgraded too and I HEART IT! HEART IT!
  • Love my iphone.
  • Droid.
  • Good poll…I was pondering the same thing this week. I’ve been begging for an iphone, but now I think I will wait until this summer to make the switch. I heard there will be a new version of the iphone for Verizon out then and hopefully the bugs will be worked out of the system.
  • Work with people that have both. Even the ones with the iphone wish they had a Droid. I got one too. Love it! Beats the hell out of the blackberry I had.

So 12 answers, only of which are three pro-iPhone. It’s a glimps into the way normals think about Android (which they don’t think of as “Android” but, rather, as Verizon’s “Droid” branding of Android). Also interesting was the comment a non-geek made away from keyboard about being unable to figure out his s0n’s “iTouch,” the term for an iPod Touch that instantly labels the user as a non-geek, while at the same time having no trouble navigating and using his own “Droid” phone.

Android and iOS, better and right, saying and linking

I find John Gruber, when he’s got the snark dialed up to 11, annoying, grating, vial and egotistical. But that’s only when I disagree with him. I, of course, love it when we’re on the same side.

Gruber seems like a smart guy. His analysis and reporting is usually good. He’s willing to point out the iPhone’s and Apple’s flaws, even if he sees the world of technology from a decidedly pro-Apple perspective. That’s why, as someone who as never owned any Apple device, I continue to read his blog.

But I was surprised to see this in his latest piece, ‘First to Do It’ vs. ‘First to Do It Right’ about the way Apple doesn’t rush features to market:

Here’s the test. Take some normal people, where by “normal” I mean people who have never heard of TechCrunch or Daring Fireball. Give them brand new still-in-the-box iPhone 4’s and HTC Evos. Now ask them to make a video call to one another. With the iPhone 4, they’re going to be able to do it. The only thing that’s technically confusing about FaceTime is that it only works via Wi-Fi (I think many people have little understanding of the difference between Wi-Fi and 3G data — at least insofar as why a feature would work over one but not the other). Otherwise, FaceTime is as easy to use as making a regular voice call.

There are many things in Android that feel like technological demos. (Google Goggles, built into Android starting with 2.1, is a perfect example of this; taking a picture of what you want to search for or add to your contacts is a neat idea, but rarely works well in practice.) And it sounds like Gruber’s right: normal people will be able to figure out FaceTime much, much faster than HTC Evo’s “Android Time.”

But “as easy as making a regular voice call”?

Well, as easy as making a regular voice call to someone with the same model of phone connected to WiFi, sure.

Yes, I’m sure normals can probably figure out how to make a FaceTime call pretty quickly, and they may not need another account. But they still need to make sure the person they want to face call has an iPhone 4 and can connect to WiFi. (While Apple says it wants to make FaceTime an open standard, it hasn’t yet and there are no devices in wide use that can makes these calls, at least until next week when the iPhone 4 is shipped.) That’s not hard, but that’s not “as easy to use as a regular phone call.”

Apple’s implementation does sounds vastly superior to anything Android offers, but it gets sticky when we slap the word “right” in there, as if there is a final, correct way to do things. Is Apple’s implementation of this feature “right” or just “better”? Is Apple’s iOS 4 multitasking done “the right way”or just done a different way? Marco Arment, the lead developer at Tumblr and only developer of Instapaper, has some suggestions for improvements for iOS 4 multitasking. (For what it’s worth, my favorite Android app, the podcast app Listen, allows me to have it update and download new episodes in the background when it’s plugged in and on WiFi.)

How did he declare this the “right” implementation? I might find Gruber’s argument more convincing if he, or anyone else outside of Apple, had used FaceTime for more than the demo time alloted at WWDC, or if he could find something to link to backing up that assertion besides Apple’s own product page. It’s sort of like backing up an assertion that the iPad is actually magical by linking to Apple’s iPad page. I’ve come to expect better from Gruber.