Aral Balkan

For the vast majority of people who will buy Android phones, "open" is an illusion because now that Google has abandoned their direct sales model, Android firmly puts the final decision making power for the overall experience of the phone back into the hands of the traditional carrier/vendor relationship that ruled the space before the iPhone came out. Apple, unlike other phone vendors, is capable of going toe-to-toe with the carriers and is willing to do so to fight for a better user experience. That's why we don't have AT&T branding all over our iPhones. That's why we don't have the mandatory 15-second spiel before voicemail that Verizon users have to suffer through. Apple is at least an equal partner with the carriers who sell it. Most of the other phone vendors, to put it bluntly, are the carriers' bitches.

Read Illusion of Open by Jeff Lamarche.

Comments

• This message seems spiteful. Could you possibly elaborate a bit more? When you say "we" do you mean Apple or just you?

  by Anthony Cintron on 2010-05-21 16:52:15

• Google just announced so many features that it makes the iPhone look rather lame in comparison. To say it's all an "illusion" because they won't be a hardware distribution point and carriers will have more control is a bit ridiculous.

  by Keith Peters on 2010-05-21 17:02:53

• People seem to forget that you can skip the middle man and buy directly from manufacturers. I did and bought my HTC from HTC themselves and comes without any crippling from my broadband provider (T-mobile UK). Wasn't much more expensive if you take into account the length of the subsidized contracts (12/18 months). J

  by Zarate on 2010-05-22 06:23:56

• Oddly, I sort of agree with Jeff... Google needs to put some controls over what the carriers can do with Android. The problem with that is that, the sheer act of doing that kills the openness of the platform. Though, oddly enough, allowing the carriers to do what they want also kills the openness of the platform.... I sense a downward spiral... @Keith - It CAN be an illusion if the carriers are in control. If you've been around the block with smart-phones over the years, then you would know that the carriers cannot be trusted to do anything that is good for the customer, unless they are going to make a ton of money off it. Allowing the customer the openness required to really use the features of FroYo is likely not going to happen in many cases. I, for one, am really wondering how the whole mobile hot-spot, and tethered internet is going to work...

  by Ross R on 2010-05-21 17:25:55

• Carriers have held smartphones back for years with their entirely closed systems and archaic and user-hostile business practices. The only reason we have Android, WebOS, etc., is because Apple revolutionized the industry with the iPhone and left everyone else back in the stone age, forcing them to react. Now, with Android, Google is giving power back to the carriers. It has dropped the reins of the platform and cannot control the UX. I don't see how it can compete with Apple on UX from this point onwards. It has begun to compete against UX with features. That's a losing game in the Age of User Experience. If I continue, I'm just going to start rehashing Jeff's excellent post. Needless to say, Google will come to regret this decision. It appears Apple maintains its monopoly in understanding UX for the time being (although I have high hopes for Palm/HP and WebOS).

  by Aral on 2010-05-21 18:07:40

• Jeff's postings in the past couple months can be summarized as - "i don't want devs to lose interest in apples platform otherwise my position in the industry is lessened"

  by Sean on 2010-05-21 19:27:13

• This is a really bizarre post. How in the world did Apple flip the phrase "open" to mean they have to control things to make them open. Take Linux. At any time a vendor can take Linux and wrap their own stuff around it and sell it in a non-open manner, but that doesn't change the fact that Linux itself is open. This model has existed for years. The key, like Zarate said, is that you as a consumer will have options. You could buy direct and buy from the carrier. You could buy into one way of innovating a UX AND quickly adopt and adapt to new emerging standards. I will go so far as to agree that the carrier can additionally make something a bad experience. I have owned an iPhone for a few years now and AT&T drops my calls when I need them to work the most. Talk about a UX downer! I believe the writing is on the wall with regard to Android. It is open and it is leading now. Apple was already chasing Android features when they announced their iPhone OS 4. The HTC Evo is setting some records in presales at some US electronics vendors and the stats on HTML5+CSS3 running on iPhone OS are so dismal (Android runs HTML5+CSS3 up to 4 times faster and it seems that anything reasonable written in HML5+CSS3 runs at a near-max of 3fps on iPhone.... Horrible UX and proves that Apple doesn't care about open; they care about making excuses for not playing well with others.) I think that developers care about "open" because "open" means choices. Apple isn't about choices or open... they are about control. All my home computers run OSX. I work on an iMac and a Macbook Pro. But I feel like Apple has recently jumped the shark, being that their decisions are turning them into the very thing they used to accuse Microsoft of being. I know many other developers are feeling the same way right now. There is something subconsciously soothing about someone else setting boundaries for you, but we are all grown ups here. I really don't need Apple pretending to be my daddy and limiting me "for my own good". We need to go back to a more traditional attitude about open and stop re-branding the emperor's new clothes. Open means "and", not "or". Final word on open. For anyone who has worked with Linux. You may remember the story that wrapped around Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a flavor of Linux with a really tasty install. In fact it took much of the "geek" out of Linux and made setup and use very simple. It is basically what I would consider the leading consumer UX for Linux. As a technical model for "open", Ubuntu is to Linux what HTC TouchFLO is to Android. And the cool thing is that if better paradigms for touch emerge, Android will be able to instantly wear that face, while Apple would need to re-direct / re-control their audience of enslaved developers to adhere to new and updated interface standards. It is also worth mentioning that Apple is being sued by Elan Microelectronics, the patent holders for multitouch. That same company successfully sued the company Synaptics. They have asked the FTC to demand that Apple stop importing for sale any Apple iTouch device until this gets resolved. HTC is doing the same thing on 5 other mobile device patents. I don't think Apple is really the leader/innovator here. I think they are simply becoming the very thing they used to accuse Microsoft of being.

  by steve on 2010-05-23 12:01:48

• @Aral - you said... The only reason we have Android, WebOS, etc., is because Apple revolutionized the industry with the iPhone and left everyone else back in the stone age, forcing them to react. ... you need to go read up on the companies that are suing Apple over their patents. I will give Apple credit for putting a number of innovations together. But the best of the Apple iTouch devices are currently patented under companies not controlled by Apple (and more importantly are not Apple innovations). Oddly enough Xerox could make the same claim you are now making about iPhone. If it weren't for the Xerox innovations there would be no Apple! Who even thinks about that anymore? I have room for Apple in my heart, but I think people need to kill the fanboy ridiculum and stop trying to force people to pick sides! In an effort to walk my own talk, I will be investing in an HTC Evo this next month. It will be my first HTC Android device and I am looking forward to innovating.

  by steve on 2010-05-23 12:13:22

• I finally read the original post, and stopped reading after Keith Peters' rebuttal. Keith Peters is right. For one, I don't think Jeff Lamarche gets what "open" means. But more importantly almost every argument is based solely on speculation ("mobile carriers could...") while at the same time Apple+AT&T are doing the sort of stuff he speculates about. One example would be tethering. Right now one could tether an android phone to their laptop and get to the web from anywhere. Apple already announced the opportunity for this. Without speculating we know that either Apple or AT&T are the culprit for why this isn't possible for the iPhone today (in the US market). We also know that there are a hand full of pretty nifty APIs in the iPhone OS that make all sorts of additional cool stuff possible (Aral, didn't you write about this not long ago). For some reason despite that fact Apple decided that apps implementing those capabilities wouldn't be allowed in the iPhone App store? (Didn't your barcode scanning iPhone app go down for this reason?) The fact is, while it is true that Apple will go toe-to-toe with mobile carriers, it seems it is only to their benefit and not the benefit of the consumer/ developer. It is still a viable business model to work with the iPhone, but I think Apple will soon need to actually open up a bit or be left behind. PS. Droid Incredible sales are through the roof and backordered. Android Evo are now in their second-tier of preorder. Competition means innovation. This can't be a bad thing.

  by steve on 2010-05-24 13:58:05