Last week, Google announced the
Open Handset Alliance, a group of mobile and technology leaders committed to improving the mobile experience and
Android, the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Then just recently, they released an early look at the
Android SDK for developers interested in building applications for Android. Google also announced the
Android Developer Challenge, which provides $10 million in awards for developers who build great applications for Android. But Android, received a yawn from Robert Scoble, a well-known blogger.
“I didn’t see ONE feature that will get normal people to switch from the iPhone.”
1. It was released without a personal approach.
2. This stuff is still vapourware.
3. The UI looks confused.
4. No real “love” for developers.
5. Google needs to get atomic videos.
6. Google’s PR comes across as “only caring about big bangs.”
7. It looks too much like a poor copy of the iPhone.
Then he added a little insult to Google by writing, “I think that’s because Google is coming across as too arrogant, too interested in only “important developers and people,” and doesn’t understand how to pitch end users and developers at the same time.”
If I were to react, it would be similar or close to these following comments which I took from Scoble’s blog:1. I don’t think Scoble understands this very well. This is not iPhone versus Android.
There is no reason iPhones can’t run Android applications. Android is designed in such a way that it would be easy for Apple (or Motorola or Palm) to make products that support Android apps?
Why would they want to do that? Because there is going to be a massive community of developers out there building awesome cross-platform applications.
Comment by sigh
2. “I didn’t see ONE feature that will get normal people to switch from the iPhone.”
Dumbest statement. Ever. Hate to break it to you Robert, but there aren’t that many iPhone users out there. It is a very, very small market. Anybody just going for that market would be setting their sights low. Now of course Apple is hoping to expand that market rapidly, which is why they dropped the price by 33% just a few moths after the highly touted debut.
Further, it is silly to compare some prototypes to a polished retail product. The real success of the Android platform will be how many phones are built with it. Now you can definitely compare those phones to the iPhone. That would be a true apple-to-Apple comparison…
Meanwhile as others have pointed out, this is a huge difference maker for developers. Mobile device development is so fragmented and painful right now. This is not just an SDK, it is an SDK that provides access to phone hardware that is rarely accessible to most developers. Plus it runs Java, so one can imagine that many Java based apps and games are already going to work on this thing. That should be no surprise since Google Mail, Talk, and Maps are all Java apps.
Comment by
Michael3. Why are you such a negative douche-bag? Is it because of the Fake Steve Jobs post re-telling the story of you being a sucky-baby when you were screaming and whining to Google to give you a Google-phone?
Like that article said, check with your friends Dave Winer or Om Malik first. At least people listen to them.
Comment by Mao Tse Tongue
4. “I didn’t see ONE feature that will get normal people to switch from the iPhone.”
Normal people won’t buy the iPhone!
As for other phones — it’ll be cheap. The iPhone has been out what, a few months and yes it’s a great status quo. But if you compare what Android does vs pretty much any other phone, it starts looking pretty competitive I reckon.
Comment by
Julian5. I don’t get you Scoble. Half the time you say some insightful things and I learn a lot from reading your blog - but the other half of the time you come across as a whiney 12-year-old.
If the OHA is successful, people are going to throw this post back in your face just like people did with the posts of all of the haters when Apple announced V1.0 of the iPod.
In my opinion, and I don’t pretend to be some grand wizard of technology like you do - apparently without any justification whatsoever, I might add - there is clearly a movement toward more open standards in technology and Apple, regardless of the gee-whiz technology they’ve included in the iPhone, is making the same mistake they made with the Macintosh platform back in the 80s. There’s a reason Apple only has 6% of the home computer market. And don’t tell me that finally releasing an SDK - while still controlling what applications are available via iTunes - is really making the iPhone “open.” More open, yes, but truly open as it appears the OHA handsets will be, not a chance.
Also, the iPhone’s features - while they may have been difficult to envision in the first place - are not difficult to copy. And the iPhone is merely going to set the benchmark for successful mobiles in the future - including any OHA mobiles that want to be successful.
I guess you post junk like this just to stir up a controversy and thereby boost your page views, but it’s frankly insulting to you readers and should be beneath you.
Comment by Ronald Horowitz
6. You are well off the mark here.
First, understand Googles target audience with this announcement. Heres a hint - its not hi-profile tech-savy bloggers like yourself, or end customers, duh!. Btw, I don’t work in tech or phones, and these videos from google were more exciting to me that any of your recent videos. Their targets are developers and phone manufacturers. And developers don’t want atomic videos, they want documents and specifications and this is what they’ve got. Imagine a developer saying “How do I implent feature x?, s**t theirs no atomic video describing the API, now I’m screwed”…. yeah, right!
And all this crap about how you haven’t seen it, its vapourware, etc, well boo-hoo - if you look at all the release info some of the google devs have been using android on mobile devices for 6 months! Note that android is based on technically the best software stack you could conceive - i.e. a linux core with Java apps - both established, open and proven technologies in the mobile world. This approach takes care automatically of perhaps the biggest problem the iphone is encountering in allowing 3rd party apps, namely security. Additionally, realise that due to this approach, it would be easy to mix in non-java code in the future.
As to the multiple interface control options - you’re again missing the point. They are talking about the capabilities of an operating system, not a single device. Phone manufacturers can expose control options as they choose in order to make a coherent interface. They point is *they have choice*.
As to the $10 million prize for apps, yes google are buying developers to write apps, yes they are seemingly a little late to the game, and yes this shows that they are bloody serious about android. Ultimately what your observations of the iphone hacking scence should have taught you is that a key reason people buy ’smartphones’ is for 3rd party apps. So how successfully do you think a financially incentivised open source mobile operating system designed for 3rd party applications will be? Don’t be stupid, this is going to be huge.
Your blog post reads very much as a “give me one of your new toys to play with or I’ll trash it for no good reason”.
Comment by Steve S.
7. Scoble: It is not a phone! It’s a framework, with an SDK available for Windows, OS X(Intel), and Linux, which allows developers to write applications in Java and test them in an emulator. There is complete and excellent documentation of the very extensive API, and an emerging support community. What you saw in the videos was very likely an early hardware prototype, and not representative of any final incarnation of the Android platform on a device.
That should put the whole iPhone comparison thing to rest.
In terms of the SDK, Android is indeed pretty exciting, due to the sheer breadth of libraries available (OpenGL ES, XMPP, full phone stack/contacts access, etc) and the elegance of the API (it’s NOT another version of J2ME, please at least look at the sample code).
It’s hardly vapourware from the point of view of a developer. You can, today, download the SDK and start writing applications which have access to nearly everything on the phone. Sure, OpenMoko would be even cooler, with the hardware accessible now, but Android is by no means a certain dud.
Comment by Shajith
8. Speaking as a developer, I can’t remember the last time a platform has excited me as much as the iPhone. I know many developers are, like me, already hacking away at apps on jailbreaked iPhones in preparation for the official SDK. Its capabilities are simply awesome. Developing for it is a joy, even without any official tools; it’s OS X, after all. If Apple plays their cards right, we’ll see many revolutionary, killer apps to emerge on the iPhone well before any Android device has even seen the light of day. No bribe from Apple required. I’d even be worried if I were Nintendo — iPhone will be the dominant platform for the next generation of mobile gaming, mark my words.
Android? It feels like Symbian all over again. I’m very underwhelmed.
Comment by Ben
9. This is a ridiculous post. I built my first Android app yesterday in about 15 minutes using the handset simulator. The SDK is exactly what I am looking for. The platform looks very solid. As a long time Apple developer I know better than to invest resources to support proprietary Apple technology again. Jobs does not care about developers. Google obviously does. Thank you Android team!
Comment by scott
10. So the iPhone SDK is “well thought-out” is it? That’s interesting - because as far as I know, neither you nor anyone else has seen it.
You’re happy to talk about the iPhone SDK as if it were god’s gift to mobile developers, while complaining that the Google SDK, which is here, now, is vapourware?
Comment by
Ian Betteridge11. Holy cow… Talk about rushing to judgement.
Comment by esmith
12. You could be very wrong this time Robert.
What Google has presented so far is a very impressive mobile platform. Yes betamax won out against VHS, but the innovation that has gone in to Android from what I’ve seen makes me think this thing could have legs.
I’m a developer, I enjoyed the videos, I wanted longer videos and more information.
Comment by
craigbbaker13. “They didn’t talk about ONE thing that the iPhone doesn’t do.”
Well google.com didn’t do anything that yahoo.com didn’t do…it didn’t even do a fraction of what it did. I don’t think anyone would of predicted the success of Google if they had seen an early version of it (they would of just compared features).
In general, it is actually very difficult to predict the success of disruptive technologies. Your way of comparing feature-for-feature is the non-disruptive way. Apple may be happy having 5% of a market (due to wanting to control everything), but someobody has to do something about the other 95%.
Comment by Henry S.
14. Author is so not getting it; this will bring all the OTHER phones up to par with the iPhone… consumer wins.
Comment by bobo moreno
15. Haha! You are just pissed off because Google doesn’t love you!
Comment by
FSJScoble may have gained a great number of hits on his site because of his unfair criticism on Android and Google, but he certainly loses some credibility.
I've been following Android since its inception in November 2007. I'm referring to the open source Linux-based software platform for mobile devices developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance.
