game on! i've played with the iphone sdk and just the process to get started with android is simpler than apples offering. i just dont see how apple can be so closed in their sdk when they have this massive competition staring them in the face. dont get me wrong, i have an iphone and am even called, dare i say, an apple fanboy. but please apple, open up more! or else all your potential devs will bring the cool toys out for android and screw you again like you were screwed when all the apps came out for windows first.

i mean, does anyone really remember why windows beat mac 10-20 years ago? i really think it was because at that time, windows was a better development platform. they had more killer apps. it wasnt the hardware. apple - dont make the same mistake twice!

Window's dominance had nothing to do with the niceness of the dev platform. Computer purchasers don't care about that.

Windows beat mac because there were more hardware vendors that ran it, which drove hardware prices down, increasing market adoption. Apple, in contrast, reaped huge margins on its products at the expense of growing their user base. From a developer's point of view, if you like making money, the platform you develop for is determined by how large the potential audience is for your software.

So, if Apple manages to continue to improve the iPhone, and drives the price down such that it attracts customers at a greater rate than Android, it won't really matter so much if the API terms are onerous. Developers will go where the largest market is.

I don't really know which approach will win. I'm an iPhone/Apple fan myself, but Android will be able to leverage the efforts of every handset manufacturer, just as MS did in the 80s. The real question to me is whether the outcome will be the same for Google. I tend to think it won't, since the phone is different from PCs in one very important respect: design and style matter much more than they did in the PC wars. What phone you choose to buy often makes a personal statement about you (like a fashion accessory).

Given this, Apple's superior UI and industrial design will probably be enough of a differentiator. That, coupled with Apple's demonstrated ability to relentlessly refine their products (witness the numerous iterations of the iPod), gives me confidence that they are on the right track - even though I wish they were friendlier to their developers.

edit: And one more advantage for Apple: iPhones will appeal to any consumer that believes mp3 players and phones should merge, since the iPhone is the easiest way to enjoy your existing iTunes/iPod library.

Yes .. but Apple had the largest market share before and lost it!

Being so closed while competition is open is foolish and history could repeat itself.

Personally, I never owned an iPod.. I just want my music streamed from the cloud, from sites like Pandora and other upcoming music services who allow me to cache the songs for listening when no Internet connection.

Hopefully this forces Apples hand!

They didn't lose market share in the Mac vs. PC war because Windows was so open. Windows is proprietary too.

We won't really know who will win the iPhone OS vs. Android war for quite some time.

As developers, we need a comparison of the development experiences from someone who has written and actually shipped an app (preferably the same app) on both platforms.

Just released as part of the 4Q results: AAPL sold more iPhones than RIMM this quarter - 6.9M units.

>>design and style matter much more than they did in the PC wars.

agreed there. However, there's no stopping other phone manufacturers to pour more resources into making a pretty and usable phone. This could also work against apple when others are able to make a better designed product.

Making a pretty and usable phone is a lot more difficult than it looks. There's a reason the iPod still has arguably the easiest and least complicated interface for a media player even after its rivals spent millions on design and UI research in order to try and compete.

I have great hopes for the Android platform, but Google faces the same problem Windows Mobile has always had, which is that it's difficult to innovate and produce a seamless user experience when the people doing the hardware and those doing the software are not closely linked. Neither side has enough control over the other's choices to do the things they really want to do.

Apple's big strength with the iPhone is that they build the entire stack. You shouldn't underestimate that.

Yes, I do remember why Windows beat Mac 10-20 years ago, but I also look at why Mac is challenging Windows today. And don't forget who reinvigorated this mobile ballgame last year. Your average consumer wants something that does a few things, but does them extremely well. The iPod and iPhone success stories are a prime example of this.

I'm not saying that I believe open markets are bad, I think they are necessary for maintaing a competitive market and nurture innovation. But as far as the consumer is concerned, they'll head in the direction of quality over quantity.

Apple is doing a great job letting technology fit into our daily life without making it a hinderance. I don't expect cell manufactures and carriers to work in conjunction with developers to deliver a seamless experience 99% of the time, and this is where I feel Apple wins in their development offering.

Actually I think this is a real test. With phones Apple was in its zone. All the components needed, are their forte: Small electronics with appeal. Taking advantage of the availability of new hardware creatively. Simplifying user experience when & where it counts. Running an online outlet & making it some place people are willing to pay for 1s & 0s again. Creating a buzz that draws in the critical mass both for consumers & for developers. They have a massive advantage in these areas.

'Normal' mobile phone manufacturers (EG nokia), electronics manufacturers (eg sony), OS guys, all seem very disadvantaged here. I would have been very surprised if sony came out with a truly game changing product. Nokia & co. are (were) too into their paradigm with the 'partner' telcoms.Most likely they would have gotten bogged down into a situation were telcos operate the music/software shop side of things. I would have been surprised if Smartphone makers really focused on consumers.

All that put Apple in the ideal position to take this market to pieces. They're usually good at innovating this way. Less good when they need to deal with everyone else catching up. I think it comes bach to their software/hardware must go together. They don't need to wait for anyone to mke something that works. But complexes can make things that work eventually.

This is a good test. Personally, I think that the software/hardware combo is still an advantage in phones.

Besides the iPod I dont think Apple is dominating the smart phone or desktop OS industry yet. They have a fighting chance at taking over the mobile world. But they are a long way away from windows losing it stronghold.

Ding, ding. That's why Apple is winning mindshare now, because they are invested in the complete experience, from obsessive design of the hardware to focus on simplicity and elegance in the software.

it's true that apple is doing well now. it's true that they ship good stuff that people want (and believe me, i own a ton of). but i attribute apples market share gain to windows vista suckin the fatty. their only dominant market is ipod/itunes, the other stuff (macs/iphones) is still small compared to the overall market.

I think that's less and less true over time.

Watch the recent laptop intro and see Tim Cook explain how Apple now has 18% of retail unit sales and 32% of retail dollars. That's pretty impressive.

I'm under the impression open sourcing android isnt meant for the development masses. The code has some elements that I'm sure will be picked out to make development easy. But I dont think your average application developer is going to be diving into kernal code.

ya, no doubt there is a ton of stuff in there that your average app dev guy/gal will not wade into. but what im generally gettin at is the way that they are going about doing things. more open = better, imho.

Yeah, you're right, but it's the difference between Apple running everything, from top to bottom, and an open system where all kinds of devices and uses can be found for the code.

Excellent - now all I need is something to run it on. It would be good to see it ported as an alternate OS for a couple of existing smart phones.

It would be even better to see it ported for the older ARM CPU in the Openmoko Neo's. Then you'd have truly-free hardware for your free/open-source Google Android. Win-win!

Ah! I was searching all day about the app gallery and downloading android stack on the Google Code site. And co-incidently google releases the code today.

Just wondering why the source is 2.1GB? How do mobile phones it as? 2.1GB or a compressed and tailored stack?

Source form > binary form. In OpenEmbedded development (what I generally do, not that familiar with Android), my dev folder is >15 gigs and the image I create is <128megs.

There are a ton of things in the repository.

It contains a lot of embedded libraries such as WebKit. WebKit is shipped with hundreds of megabytes of test data.

This is great news. Finally some real competition for Apple iPhone's SDK.

Google couldn't manage to get android.org? I'm split on whether Google is doing the right thing by not paying for it or whether they should buy it and protect their branding for Android.

Just waiting for my G1 to arrive tomorrow to really start tinkering.

edit: It just arrived. Woot!

Great. I assume you have got a chance to use iphone too. Whats your take ? Would like to hear first hand.

Hardware is mildly disappointing. Not as nice "feeling" as the iPhone (though the 3G iPhone also now has a plastic back and doesn't feel as nice as the first-gen iPhone, so I guess things are tough all over). When taking the back off to put in the battery and SIM card, I felt like it was going to break. It didn't, but it felt like it was. Likewise for the little covers for the data/charge port and the SD memory slot...they're plastic and tiny and feel fragile. The one exception is the keypad, which feels very nice to me. Since I used a Sidekick for many years, everything feels very intuitive to me (where, as usual, "intuitive" means, "what I'm used to"). But, keeping in mind that the G1 is dramatically cheaper than the iPhone 3G ($179 up front and cheaper per month for the plan--though I haven't actually looked at different plans, I just kept the one I've been on, which is about $10 cheaper than iPhone--so $240 over 2 years), I think it's a great buy, and a whole lot of hardware for a very small price. Price wasn't my primary deciding factor (openness was), but it certainly didn't hurt that I wouldn't have to pay more per month to upgrade to the G1, while I'd pay out $240 more over 2 years for the iPhone 3G for the same service. I'm going to see if I can drop down to a smaller voice plan--the Sidekick I had before had minimum plan requirements, but I didn't see any such requirements when signing up for the G1, so I might even be able to save $10 per month with the G1 over the Sidekick, since I never use the phone. I use maybe 100 minutes per month of a 1000 minute plan.

Software-wise, it's plain awesome. I find it pretty intuitive...the lack of two-finger gestures, as found on the iPhone, is somewhat disappointing, but it's no slower to use the popup magnifier buttons, once you're accustomed to it. Dragging and such is smooth and accurate, so I guess the touch screen is pretty good quality.

Contacts works well, the phone sounds good and clear, having Google mail, contacts, calendar, etc. is sweet (my old phone couldn't handle more than about 500 messages via IMAP, and I get more messages than that in a week, and obviously GMail just works great with practically infinite mail). Web pages look great, and browsing is fast. WiFi was quick and easy to setup. YouTube videos work great, both on 3G and on WiFi. It's my understanding that T-Mobile's 3G network is still somewhat small...so if you don't live in the valley, your mileage may vary, but it works fine for me here in Mountain View.

I installed an Open Source ssh client off of the web--no jail breaking required...this was a big issue for me with the iPhone. I don't want to have to have permission to install arbitrary apps that I've written or someone else has written. I also installed Compare Anywhere, and a bubble game from the app store, and the quality of everything is really slick. Really impressive for a launch day catalog, especially since everything is free right now. I haven't spent a lot of time with the apps on the iPhone, so I don't have much to compare to. But, I'm excited to play with stuff.

Also, it worked right away when I plugged it into my Linux desktop. No futzing around with weird stuff to get songs onto the device. The iPhone/iPod is a bitch in that regard. That one thing made me ecstatic in ways I haven't felt over a device in a long time. Coming off of years of screwing around with iPods and an iPhone, and it never quite working right, having a drag and drop music experience is miraculous. (Take this with a grain of salt, as I may be strange. I find iTunes incredibly confusing and difficult to use, so on those occasions when I've given up on getting Linux to work and rebooted into Windows and run iTunes for the purpose of putting music onto the device, I've ended up spending a long time futzing around anyway, because I never could figure out what all the syncing options meant or how to use them...so every time I would fiddle until something happened, and occasionally it would just end up deleting all of my songs either on the PC or the device, and I would give up in disgust. I also have trouble using several other Apple software products, and find them hard to use, so I could just be a retard.)

I wonder if the dude in the video realizes how ridiculous that earring looks.

Hah - I mentioned that to the Google guys on the irc channel. No offense to the guy in question, who is presumably a super badass hacker, but it's really distracting to watch that earing bounce around.

It looks like a D20 at the end or something.