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.
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.
>>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.
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.