The consumer isn't choosing the iPhone or iPad because it is closed, they are choosing it because it is easy to use, sexy, and supported by lots of apps. You can still have those things and be open, and Android is proving it.
Android is neither as easy to use or as sexy as the iPhone. The dismal sales of the nexus one despite it's superior spec sheet and androidness are proof of this.
But I do agree with you, most people buy things out of which they get the most utility, and ease of use an sexiness are a big part of that. But the person I was responding to mad the claim that people won't buy the ipad because it is closed. It would only be possible to believe this if your head was buried deep in the sand.
Android is neither as easy to use or as sexy as the iPhone. The dismal sales of the nexus one despite it's superior spec sheet and androidness are proof of this.
True. But if you compared those numbers to the sales of the iPhone 3G or 3GS, they would look less rosy. What you've got there is a non-smartphone without an app store on a smaller carrier being compared with a smartphone with an app store on a larger carrier that's famous of not having many options in the phones you can select because of its CDMA network.
Anyway, the whole discussion of which is doing better is completely unrelated to my original objection to the top-level poster.
You should especially not say that since the comparison is not really fair, considering the iPhone OS was an unknown quantity, and iPhone lacked an app store, was on a smaller carrier, and was not launched during the holiday season.
Sales are not complete proof of sexiness, but they are evidence. It strikes me that if the iPhone on a single carrier can win out against an entire ecosystem of phones on many carriers, it probably has something they do not.
> The dismal sales of the nexus one despite it's superior spec sheet and androidness are proof of this.
In a carrier-locked-down market like the US, where the norm is to buy phones that are married to a given carrier, it only proves Apple has better marketing and carrier relations than other companies.
Also, Android is not a phone - it's a platform. The Nexus One is only one of many competing offerings - that compete not only with iPhones, but between themselves.
I think the effect is real, but of course it's not as direct as this. Now that the iPhone has a viable competitor that's more developer friendly, it seems likely that apps will start to appear first on Android, and then only later on the iPhone. I think that might effect consumers' perception of which is the sexier device.
Having a platform that's easier to develop, publish and distribute software for is only half of the "developer friendly" equation. The other half is having a user community that's willing to spend money on that software.
Are there many Android developers who've been able to quit their day jobs and make a living from app sales? (That's a serious question, not a snarky one -- I don't follow the market closely.)
Seems like if that were going to happen it would have happened already, or we'd at least have seen some sign of a sea-change. Yet the ports still flow in the opposite direction (when developers even bother). Maybe because Android appeals to the spendthrift, and iPhone to people more open with their wallets?
The other explanation is that iPhone is plenty open to developers who make the types of apps people want to buy, and closed only to the tinkerers who would not have been making salable apps anyway.
Is the Android really more developer friendly? A very profitable application category on the iPhone are audible applications. That category is a nonstarter on the Android because Java latency causes noticeable sound artifacts.
