It's not as good as something one hardware manufacturer (Apple) has put on their phone (iPhone OS).
No user (statistically) cares about GPL 1, 2 or 3 or the possibilities some modular design opens for either hardware or software developers. They care about the UI not sucking. At the end of the day, that's the gap Android has to bridge.
I've had an iPod Touch and my girlfriend has had first an iPhone 3G, and now 3GS, for about a year; and on Tuesday I got my Nexus One. I think the Nexus One is the better device. There's a lot of polish missing, with too many taps required for some things, not enough finger-swipes etc., but everything else considered - especially background apps - I would not swap it with an unlocked iPhone. (And I have a fair choice of networks, being in the UK.)
The ability to go onto the marketplace and download e.g. a battery monitor app that could display a number on the notification bar rather than the 5-state default was refreshing. I had to jailbreak by iPod Touch to get similar functionality. I similarly had to jailbreak it to disable auto-rotation; that's a default option in the N1. And the sense of freedom in being able to e.g. download Opera and replace the browser is refreshing. This is a device that doesn't necessarily need Google to improve it - competition can play its part too.
There's a lot of polish missing, with too many taps required for some things, not enough finger-swipes etc., but everything else considered - especially background apps
At this point you are in the far distant percentile of power/advanced/ideologically-inclined users, though. Obviously some people will care a great deal about the precise display of their battery status. But you have to recognize they are far fewer than the number of people who care about being able to do basic things with 3 fewer taps.
The effect is more subtle than that, and hard to explain. The iPod Touch seems relatively primitive to me now. The screens are miles apart, while the Apple device has smoother scrolling etc.
The best way I can think of to describe it is like a Mac vs PC, except with the Unix subsystem made completely locked-down on the Mac. PCs are just better and more productive machines for my way of approaching the world. It just feels more industrial-strength, more adult, less toy-like, at an emotional level that's very hard to express concisely.
Apple has been making software for their hardware from day 1.
No user (statistically) cares about GPL 1, 2 or 3 or the possibilities some modular design opens for either hardware or software developers. They care about the UI not sucking. At the end of the day, that's the gap Android has to bridge.
The first leads to the second. I would hack on Android if I could actually use my changes on my own phone, which I would be able to do if Android were GPL 3. If I could hack on Android, the UI would be better. Multiply that by 1000+ other people in a similar situations, and you can see that GPL 3 would lead to what users actually care about.
The evidence for this is sorely lacking. Great multitudes contribute to the open source Gnome, KDE, GIMP and so forth and have for years. The UIs remain lackluster to at best.
Whether they "get" anything is a matter of what criteria you use to judge them. They're surely profitable, and I suppose that buys them a lot of accolades for "getting" the technology they sell.
And yet, if they did the exact same thing they're doing now but weren't making a profit, I'm sure the vast majority of the people who are praising them now for "getting" the technology would excoriate them for "not getting" it.
I never said that profitability was the main criteria here. I just seems obvious to me that Apple creates a great blend of hardware and software that is pretty much unmatched in the industry. That doesn't mean their products are perfect for everyone or that I even own one -- just that they get how to build hardware and software. That's fairly rare in this industry.
Now your argument seems to be that regardless of what they do, profitability is no way related? They're profitable because they make products that people like and buy. If they weren't profitable it would because people don't like their products and don't buy them. I'd say that's rather significant.
"They're profitable because they make products that people like and buy. If they weren't profitable it would because people don't like their products and don't buy them."
I agree with the "buy" part: that's obviously necessary for them to be profitable. Not so sure about the "like" part.
There are many reasons to buy or not buy a product apart from liking it.
You could buy it because that's what's used at work, or because that's what all your friends have, or because they have a monopoly on interfacing with other products you need to use (like games, or photoshop, or tax or music software), or because that's what you've been using all along and it's just too much of a pain to switch, or just because the product is marketed so well that you feel the need to buy it without having any sort of clue as to whether you'll like after you've bought it (or any sort of clue as to how good the competition is).
I don't see any evidence that the reasons I cited are statistically insignificant or temporary. They clearly do happen, but to what extent? I don't know of any large-scale studies that show why people buy iphones or ipods.
As for not adding anything to the discussion, the same could be said about your own comments. Or you could also be accused of being "desperate to defend Apple".
But I wouldn't accuse you of that because I don't think that's a very constructive way of having a discussion.
> I don't see any evidence that the reasons I cited are statistically insignificant or temporary.
Really? So you think the overriding reason that people buy a product has nothing to do with whether they like it? Because that's the argument you seem to be making. I'm not desperate to defend Apple, I'm desperate to defend logic and common sense.
Honestly, I have no idea what point you were trying to make on this little aside to my original comment.
