The bigger issues are size and decrepitude. Google is a relatively new org. So is Apple in the sense that it crashed in the nineties and was reestablished. Microsoft seems to big and old to change.

The bigger issues are size and decrepitude. Google is a relatively new org. So is Apple in the sense that it crashed in the nineties and was reestablished. Microsoft seems to big and old to change.

Add Microsoft size success and it’s almost impossible to change an organization. Don’t wish your favorite org great success. It’s a curse.

The first generation iPhone sold 1.4 million units in its first two quarters of its existence! That is, 1.4 million iPhones were sold between June and December of 2007. There were no preexisting iPhones before that.

So, the statement that the iPhone was ‘already in production’ when it reached sales in the millions is a misrepresentation bordering on a lie.

I am a great example for this discussion:
When my Treo broke, I bought Android 1.0 & used it for a weekend. I returned it Monday.
I hated the way the device worked & the keyboard was awkward, felt that much of the (supposedly) ‘cool’ software to dload was redundant, and the device had potential but was not well integrated.

Then I bought an iPhone 3G. > 1 yr later, I still feel this phone is incredible. There are great apps, tons of apps, etc — and the phone is incredibly well made & designed. I got mine just before 3GS and ‘cut / paste’ were implemented.

But to address the term ‘benevolent’ dictatorship:

Apple is not benevolent. They are a corporation focused on profit. They take 1/2 of all app sales & iTunes downloads. You can’t dload for iPhone from other sources w/o cracking it — which is doable, but challenging. And the security factors are really annoying too.

(One funny iPhone note — Google has actually improved my iPhone experience by enabling sync for contacts & calendar, + they provide maps & so on. How did they bypass the dictator?)

So when Google makes a product that is almost as good, I’ll get theirs vs Apple’s.

I hear Droid 2 is much better. Google moves very quickly for a software mega-giant. Hopefully they will make the best offering … soon!

http://www.rekzkarz.com

Another aspect of a benevolent dictator structure is that it is needed in order to innovate. If you want to bring new technology to the masses cost effectively, you have to simplify the supply chain. You also need clear vision from the top to get over the fear of pursuing new technological advances. There’s a great book called “The Innovator’s Dilemma” that talks about why large companies rarely innovate.

The trade off as a customer is that you don’t always get all the features that you want.

Google, on the other hand, strikes me more as an optimization company with their philosophy of fast testing. They’ve released some innovative products since their search engine such as Adwords, Maps API, Gmail and Wave. (I like Wave, but not enough of my friends use it). But these products were designed either when Google was still relatively small or in incubation. When looking at their other top shelf products such as Analytics, Optimizer and even Android, these products were copies of existing software and released for free.

For the consumer, you’ll get a lot more variety but you’ll miss out on the really innovative leaps as the company will always be in catch up mode. Plus, you will always have to deal with the problems that extra complexity adds to any ecosystem.

Iphone locked down? As a mobile device it works for me. I don’t have to be concerned about anything, it does what I need it to do with no fuss or maintenance. Can it be improved? Alot.

A great majority of apps are useless? That is a reflection on the developers who put this junk out, not a reflection on the iPhone. There are heaps junk software available for Windows and some come with the added benefit of spyware, where’s the outcry there? And if Apple did censor useless apps, the same people would be complaining about that too.

First off, the Nexus One is being sold through one significantly smaller cellco in one country. Everywhere else (where the phone actually works – it doesn’t work in Canada, for example) you have to pay the full unsubsidised price for the phone, making it about 3x the price of the 3Gs and almost 6x the price of the 3G.

Second, the iPhone has been in production for almost two years and has had an unprecedented amount of press attention lavished on it. It was being shown on shows like Good Morning America. The Nexus One hasn’t received anywhere near that much side-press.

According to various articles, the average iPhone user download about 4.8 apps a month and of them 3/4s are free apps. What makes it big is that there are a lot of apps (and it has to be noted – almost 2500 of the 110,000 apps are fart apps – yes, we counted… the single largest group of apps are ‘webscrapers’ – they put a UI on a website – the easiest possible kind of app to write… one fellow had over 1000 apps up based on a simple shell that he just adjusted for each site).

Apple’s benevolent dictatorship is more about stopping companies from releasing apps that could take revenue from Apple (browser apps, iPod equivalents, etc) or might show up the weaknesses in the iPhone design (Flash anyone?) It works because most people are easily distracted by shiny objects and less because there’s any substance behind most of this.

I notice you also leave off the third option: Windows Mobile – which not only is wide open in the sense that MSFT doesn’t dictate anything to you about what you can or cannot do – but also doesn’t force you to go to their app store to sell or buy your apps.

Apple can easily pull a Nexus One given their patents, research and Google can easily pull an iPhone given their mobile experience. They chose to limits certian features (multitouch, network providers, background tasks, …).

Well played APPL/GOOG!

IMO google has done a pretty poor job marketing this phone. Nobody is really talking about, and nobody thinks it does anything new or better than the iphone, other than unrestricted content. If the nexus succeeds, it will take time for it to do so. Once more software has been developed for users to play around with, and people start to talk about how much happier they are with googles version of the appstore, only then will people look at their iphone and say “this sucks, i want ALL apps, not just apps mommy and daddy at apple approve”. You have to be honest, it is quite infuriating to have some company telling you what you can and cant have on your own phone. Imagine if Microsoft refused to allow you to put certain games on your pc.

Anyway, this is all coming from a happy iPhone user. But mind you, I am not happy because it is being run by apple. The phone itself is a nice piece of hardware with a great user interface and I was able to buy it cheap. If the nexus didnt gost over $500 brand new I would have gone with that.

But it is true that dictatorship works better (sad, but let’s face it) in many cases. Apple’s strict policies are pain in the … for developers but result in better apps (some might argue) and happier clients in general.

We’ll see how Google’s democracy will translate throughout the time, and I hope they don’t treat NexusOne like a Google Code project.