iPhone or Droid Incredible? In other words, is AT&T really so bad? (2 Viewers)

[Ted Todorov]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveF
But it's still a "wink wink nudge nudge" situation, as I understand it: anyone can "sideload" (as I've read) a non-Markeplace app for free tethering. Maybe there's rooting involved. Still this sweep will certainly capture the majority of users. And it seems likely that Verizon, like AT&T, will attempt to identify and bill on-the-sly tetherers.

Well the iPhone has always been "wink wink nudge nudge" as well -- a couple of apps allowing free tethering made it through to iTunes and stayed up long enough to probably be downloaded by a million users before they got pulled (one had made it to #1 in the sales ranks before Apple finally reacted). And for those who were too slow, the iPhone tethering code is available as an open source app -- so anyone who is a developer or knows a developer can go that route. Note that none of this requires jailbreaking.


Thus I think your last sentence is the operative one -- the phone companies will simply start billing those tethering on the sly. It may be something as simple as scanning for a browser user agent that doesn't exist on a smartphone. Busted.

 

[DaveF]

What I mean by "wink wink" is that Google explicitly endorses these alternative methods for dodging the carriers. Apple seems ever more vigorous in enforcing such policies, even though there are chinks in the armor. I'd guess that if a tethering app appeared in iTunes today, it would be found and pulled much faster than a couple years ago when Apple was still sorting out its policy on the matter.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Interesting thread -- but Apple doesn't ignore the cheap people (even if Gruber does) which is why it sells the $49 iPhone 3GS and the iPod Shuffle. And Apple tends to keep specs on the iPod Touch low enough (vis-a-vis the iPhone) that they can afford to sell it for less than any possible competitor -- thus the utter lack of iPod Touch competition (you'd think, with Android sweeping the world, someone would have gotten the brilliant idea of a 3.5" WiFi only device -- the reason there isn't is Apple's very low price.)


On the Lyons vs. Gruber argument I side firmly with Gruber -- simply because Lyons is being disingenuous -- all the arguments of his sort pretend that other iOS device that are not the iPhone (like the iPad and the iPod Touch) don't exist. So far iOS has been spanking Android with everything that is not a phone. Even the much mocked Apple TV absolutely slaughtered Google TV in the marketplace.

For Android to beat iOS, Google would have to convince the best developers to write their apps first/only on Android. To do so Android would not just have to outsell all iOS devices, they would have to outsell them by such a large margin that developers start making more money from Android sales. Right now App revenue is something like 10 to 1 in Apple's favor, as iOS users are way more willing to spend money than Android users. The most prolific app buyers are iPad users, where Android competition is very weak. The fact that most high-performace video games are written in C (iOS supported) rather than Java (Android's lingua franca) doesn't help. Android would also have to beat Apple in corporations, and again there is no evidence of it happening. iOS' more controlled environment is more appealing to IT departments getting weaned off BlackBerry. In the medical profession iOS was shown to be way on it's way to a 65% market share by a recent survey -- no surprise there, with a large number of highly sophisticated medical apps that are iOS exclusive.

Bottom line, what Lyons predicts just isn't happening just isn't happening. These two well reasoned posts make good reading:

http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/05/01/carnival-barker-edition-show-me-your-ios-licensing-certificate/

http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/30/the-emperors-new-network-effects/

 

[DaveF]

Where is the Lyons' article? I've read on this topic by Blodget; but nothing recently from Lyons.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I suspect the main reason there hasn't been much in the way of direct Android competitors for the iPod Touch is because Android smartphones have (largely) not been carrier-specific whereas the iPhone was tied to AT&T until of late -- that plus Android hasn't really matured enough for that until the past year or so. It probably has little to do w/ how good the iPod Touch is or whether it can seriously dominate that market if the Android camp bothered to compete there (w/ recent incarnations). If the iPhone was available across all major carriers (and can be used w/ nominally priced data plans), then I'd think the iPod Touch market would've been much smaller -- maybe even non-existent like Jobs originally wanted and/or expected.


But yes, there actually are small, non-phone Android devices (eg. Archos) out there nowadays though I'm not sure they can really compete all that well w/ Android smartphones anyway, let alone iOS devices.


And now that the iPhone is also on Verizon and T-Mo is about to merge w/ AT&T (while the Android competition continues to catch up), you might start seeing the iPod Touch market shrink a whole lot going forward. Heck, as much as I liked using the iPod (and then iPod Touch) for portable music listening (and the Touch for a few apps, including infrequent web browsing and email access), I've gotten used to using my Blackberry for that instead nowadays -- and I see plenty of folks in the city do likewise as well. If you're a serious app hound (and/or need more regular web/email access), you're probably gonna want the iPhone or an Android smartphone anyway. If you're not that, the iPod Touch probably won't have such a huge lead over the alternatives anymore...


As for the iPad/tablet market, although Apple still has a very sizeable lead, that lead might not last too long. It really still remains to be seen what's coming up ahead and how things unfold. For instance, if rumors of an Amazon Android competitor comes true in the 2nd half of this year, that could certainly turn the tide a good deal. Certainly, B&N's lower-spec-ed Nook Color running an unassuming flavor of Android seems to be quietly turning some heads even while Moto, Samsung, et al. made all the tablet waves w/ their Honeycomb announcements/launches. If Amazon can do likewise, but w/ an order of magnitude (or two) greater all-around push, the iPad may not stay on top for long...


BTW, I thought iOS uses Objective-C, not regular C. They have similarities -- and Objective-C is a sort of (non-exclusive) descendent of C -- but they are not the same at all. I've only had passing experience w/ it (back in the very early NeXT days), but it's probably more like C# for .NET and I would think you'd be in trouble developing for iOS if you still do so as you would in regular C. In at least some of the most important ways, Objective-C is probably closer to Java (and other OO languages that have some sort of framework support) than to regular C. And if iOS has some sort of support for regular C, it's probably much like other platforms and is not really recommendable, but is only there for legacy support.


RE: the corporate setting, I'm not sure iOS really has much of a lead. It might impress some corporate big wigs and may have some advantages, but then it also seems to have its fair share of disadvantages (for the corporate setting) as well. With how things might be developing, maybe RIM's Playbook will end up weathering the storm alright and land on top in the corporate setting. OR the corporate world will just go neutral and stay away from investing into any one platform at all. Afterall, is there really anything they need to put on these devices that can't be done in neutral fashion via web apps that run on mobile browsers for instance? OR if it certain apps work much better locally on the device, it's probably better to use some sort of cross-platform SDK to do that instead since they probably wouldn't be doing anything so intense, demanding and performance-critical as video games that would require more native dev work. Going neutral w/ cross-platform and/or web-based dev would certainly make more business sense if you ask me.


Yeah, the medical field and certain other fields will probably be different, and I can see iOS maintaining a big lead there, if it already has that big lead.


_Man_

 

[Ted Todorov]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ted Todorov
Right now App revenue is something like 10 to 1 in Apple's favor

Actually I was being too generous to Android -- the 2010 App market share numbers are:


Quote -- source: http://www.isuppli.com/Media-Research/News/Pages/Apple-Maintains-Dominance-of-Mobile-Application-Store-Market-in-2010.aspx

The Apple App Store in 2010 generated $1.8 billion in revenue, giving it 82.7 percent. ... This allowed Android Market to take 4.7 percent share of global mobile application store revenue in 2010

Android are in fourth place behind Ovi or BlackBerry -- although clearly I expect them to pass those two soon.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Man:

Long post -- but I'll just make a couple of points:


Obj C is a 100% superset of C -- meaning you could have 100% Ansi C compiling under the Obj C compiler. In practical terms this means that if you have written you video game engine in C -- and AFAIK most are written in C -- it can run, unmodified, as part of an iOS app. What you would need of course is Obj C hooks for all iOS API calls -- however, most serious video games are mostly self-contained -- so a large part of the code will be C and will stay C.

(The reason code where performance is paramount are written in C rather than C++ or Obj C or C# or Java is that C gives you far better performance (and in turn Obj C/C++ perform much better than Java as they are true compiled languages vs. and interpreted or JIT "compiled" language).


Yes there are some iPod Touch competitors but they remain utter failures in the marketplace (the now dead Zune HD probably had the biggest success). You are claiming that the iPod Touch will be less successful in the future -- I have seen no evidence of that happening.-- in fact iPod Touch sales have been growing steadily -- it has been devouring iPod market share rather than getting eaten by the iPhone. The reasons to have one haven't changed -- a pocketable "app computer"/media player without having to pay for expensive cell phone service. The iPod Touch sells fine in places like France where the iPhone is on every single carrier -- because you may want to give it to your 10 year old, but wouldn't want to give her an iPhone as one example. Also France is a good example of what happens to Android when the iPhone is on all carriers -- not much of a market share. I think that everyone is extrapolating the current Android growth to continue apace in the US market -- I think that as the iPhone moves to all US carriers Android market share will stall. I will say that I don't expect it to drop, but that iPhone/Android will grow at a similar rate eating both dumbphone share (which at this point is under 50% in the US) and BlackBerry share.


As to the Playbook (which, sorry, is a joke right now) ruling the corporate world or any other market -- only the future will tell. My money is on the iPad. Lets revisit the iPad/Playbook battle in 12 months -- one of us will be right, one will be wrong. Maybe you'll be right

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by ManW_TheUncool


BTW, I thought iOS uses Objective-C, not regular C. They have similarities -- and Objective-C is a sort of (non-exclusive) descendent of C -- but they are not the same at all. I've only had passing experience w/ it (back in the very early NeXT days), but it's probably more like C# for .NET and I would think you'd be in trouble developing for iOS if you still do so as you would in regular C. In at least some of the most important ways, Objective-C is probably closer to Java (and other OO languages that have some sort of framework support) than to regular C. And if iOS has some sort of support for regular C, it's probably much like other platforms and is not really recommendable, but is only there for legacy support.

Not that it matters much but: Yes, OS X and iOS use Obj-C as their fundamental development language. Obj-C is a superset of C. At its origin, it was an object-oriented programming language. Apple in recent years added on new features (far beyond my knowledge of programming). From a bit of experience (a long time ago) and from listening to Jon Siracusa's podcast (Hypercritical), it seems fair to say that in the most important ways, Obj-C is more C than Java. This relates to its lack of automatic garbage collection and some other new programming methodologies the cool kids use today.


Siracusa's discussion on this is interesting (a revisitation of an article he years ago regarding OS X): Apple is behind the curve on modern programming languages, and risks losing its edge in the long-run if it can't transition to a modern system.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveF
Not that it matters much but: Yes, OS X and iOS use Obj-C as their fundamental development language. Obj-C is a superset of C. At its origin, it was an object-oriented programming language. Apple in recent years added on new features (far beyond my knowledge of programming). From a bit of experience (a long time ago) and from listening to Jon Siracusa's podcast (Hypercritical), it seems fair to say that in the most important ways, Obj-C is more C than Java. This relates to its lack of automatic garbage collection and some other new programming methodologies the cool kids use today.

I can't remember if Siracusa mentioned it, but the current version of Obj C does in fact have automated garbage collection (it didn't for many years). But yes, Obj C is more C than Java. It performs better than Java, is is less abstract than Java. The future of OS X/iOS will never be Java -- even Ruby, via MacRuby stands a better chance.

 

[DaveF]

Interesting. The bits I've heard are that iOS does not have any automated garbage collection -- so not Obj-C per se, but its implementation on the mobile devices at least. Perhaps that has changed.


Edit:

http://www.levelofindirection.com/journal/2010/8/13/we-dont-need-no-stinking-garbage-collection.html


Yep: OS X has it but not iOS (as of 2010, anyway)

 

[Ted Todorov]

Good catch -- you are correct -- I remembered that it got it for Mac OS X but forgot about iOS being different.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Thanks for the details on Obj-C. I've been out of that loop for ages now -- and only had passing experience w/ it during its early days. Interesting that it's handled differently on OS X vs iOS. These days I'm more of a .NET/C# guy.

Originally Posted by Ted Todorov


_Man_

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by ManW_TheUncool


Unless the belief is that a large majority of current dumb phone users will actually stick w/ dumb phones, I can't see there being all that much future for the iPod Touch, especially now that there's also the iPad and other tablets in the marketplace now. Not saying that market will just die tomorrow, but I don't really see it going anywhere going forward.

Even though a new iPhone is as little as $99, my mom buys a "feature" for the keyboard and taking pics.


Friends with kids and tight budgets won't get a smartphone because of data plan costs.


Coworker who's a computer, Mac, and car enthusiast uses a cheap, no-data plan feature phone does does music and plays videos.

A 50-something NASA guy I know has a company-cell phone simply for making calls. Has no interest in anything fancier.



I'm seeing people get iPhones that I wouldn't have expected it, but I'm seeing many people cling to the simpler, cheaper dumbphones and feature phones. I think it's going to be a slowish. In fact, I think the next big phase will be for "Feature Phones" to be replaced by stripped-down Android phones with minimal data plans.

 

[Sam Posten]

I'm strongly of the opinion that data plans will drop in price faster than anyone expects and it will be well less than ten years from iPhones birth that nobody buys feature phones any more no matter how much the Luddites scream they don't want or need a smart phone.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Yes -- agreed. Dumb phones will go away in manner typewriters and Wang word processors went away -- they will simply stop being made -- there will be people who still want them, but they won't be able to get them. The distinction will be the the data plan (or lack thereof). When voice disappears as being separate from data, all phones will indeed be smartphones. My guess -- within a decade -- possibly much sooner, but a decade is the outer limit.


Edit: I was answering DaveF, but obviously I agree with Sam as well.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yeah, I tend to agree about the inevitable drop in data plan pricing as well. At minimum, I'd expect the carriers to offer something nominally priced for lower usage customers, if they still want to charge the higher prices that they do now. They've already been testing the waters w/ that in the past 1/2 year or so, and w/ the economy as it continues to be for the forseeable future, that progression may indeed happen much faster than expected.


_Man_

 

[mattCR]

I think that pretty well nails it. I think all phones switch to smart phones, and it's happening faster then we think. Even if people opt out of a data plan, all of them are still wifi enabled, so people still get the use of them (airports, libraries, restaurants, hotels.. everyone throws out free wifi)


I think you're seeing ATT pitching the iPhone at $49 now for the 3GS if you take a data plan.. because they want the monthly money. But I think that may change soon too. I think people oppose the "smart" phones because of cost. But realize, even prepaid phones are now pitching smart phones; Virgin and Boost and all of those are offering Android offerings right now.


To get to the heart of the question, does ATT suck? Yes, yes it does suck. I know they are about to buy up T-Mobile, and that will give them probably the largest reach. But their customer service is basically a crock of s---. I have never been as dissappointed with a company as I was today with ATT. Client with 44 phones on their plan - so not a HUGE number of phones, but you're still talking about 5k+ a month to ATT easily, and we had an issue with a person dropping their phone and it getting busted.

So, we call ATT to see about getting some help. On hold for an hour. ATT finally gets on "well, it's outside of the plan" "we have protection on it" "yes, but (long reason why we'd still have to put down a deposit fee or something)." So, the owner of the company for the client comes in, and he's kind of a jerk, but whatever, it's his money. He listens for a while "I spent the cost of a house with ATT last year, and you're telling me you can't express me a phone?" "No, Sir, that's not our policy".. "Well, maybe I should switch!" "Sir, we'd be happy to talk to you about xxxx.." This went on for about 30 minutes before finally we got a rep who worked it out to express them a phone, and they just paid the shipping.


But it was absolutely mindblowing to me. I thought to myself: these people are idiots.


I have no idea what happens when the T-Mobile merge happens.

 

[DaveF]

Clearly a difference in temporal perception. By slowish, I was thinking 10+ years. Whereas you think quickly, in only 10 or so years Even then, it makes for a 20 year transition, as the move to smartphones started in 2002 with the Treo and Blackberry.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Sam's 10 years from iPhone's birth would put it something like 6 years from now, no?


Also, if you consider how these things generally work, it might only take 2-3 years from now (out of those 6) for 80-90% of the current dumb phones to be swapped for smartphones and then another 3-4 years for that final 10-20%.


Of course, if the carriers do somehow manage to hold their required data plan pricing lines longer than we're thinking, then it can certainly take that much longer for the migration...


_Man_

 

[DaveF]

In the progression to phones becoming pocket computers, there are two things I wonder:


Does the greater population want pocket computers, rather than simple phones? Many people do. But does 80% of the buying population? Maybe. Probably. I don't know. Maybe they'll get what's best for them,regardless, like the home PC


I've read an article or two arguing that demand for wireless data is growing faster than infrastructure. And we're seeing signs of pushback on data pricing with AT&T's caps on wired, home internet. In the long run, cell data should drop drastically (and also see the death of separate voice, SMS, data plans, etc). But it could be a bumpy ride.


Smartphones are moving quickly, and purchase prices (with contract subsidies) are no more than I paid for a dumbphone six years ago. My overall bias is that, time and again, futurists are far too optimistic about the speed at which technology advances and becomes commonplace. I don't think we'll all have smartphones with cheap data in two years. But in a decade from today? Sure, 80% of the US's population will see nothing but phones exceeding the iPHone 4's capabilities when they getting a new phone on contract in the year 2021 at Verspratt stores