As I listened to the podcast Hypercritical with John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin lately, they discussed why we always give so much credit to the marketshare. Siracusa’s point was, that “we geeks” always feeled that the best operating systems on computers had “lost” to Windows, and that since this time we always were confronted with the PC-users who told us “Why use Linux / Mac? Can’t you see that everyone uses Windows?” even if it wasn’t the best platform (in our minds). (Well in this quotation, I’m not one of us, but one of everyone as I always found Windows better.) Therefore, since the iPhone “won”, we were happy that Windows Mobile lost. Since Android “won”, we were happy that Apple looses. If WindowsPhone7 should win, we’ll all be unhappy again – because it’s Windows again.
I never had this opinion. I would always look at how easy an operating system lets me fulfill the tasks I need to fulfill, including the initial learning curve, therefore I chose Windows on computers and iPhone on smartphones. I hate having to configure stuff all the time. I hate how the Android OS makes me click on way too small buttons and phone makers try to combat this with bigger screen sizes. I hate when I have to make way more clicks or text input to get anything done. And I really don’t like when the web browser stutters or I doubletap on a paragraph and it zooms to the sidebar. All pretty small things (yeah, rewriting the UI elements isn’t really a small thing), but if this were different, I’d definitely chose Android. And if Windows Phone gets more powerful and easier to use than iPhone, I’ll choose that one. I really don’t care about religion. And I never advised anyone to pick an iPhone “because everyone does” or “because it won”, and this is my only plea in this whole post: when you’re advocating for Android, please don’t mention that more copies were sold, as this has nothing to do with the quality of the hard- and software.
photo credit: kevindooley
As this post might have religious comments, here’s a disclaimer: I like iPhone best among smartphones, so in your opinion I’m a fanboy – no need to mention that again. I also love customization in my phone from time to time, so I’m jailbreaking – but I also didn’t miss it much when there wasn’t a good jailbreak available. And for the pricing: since here in germany the T-mobile monopoly fell, iPhone is not too pricy anymore – so leave me alone with “I can’t pay for it” – if you can pay 500€ in two years, you can also afford 600€.
