[mrshoe]

I sync my music with a Perl script that looks at my xmms2 playlist and copies the music in there to the phone.

For some reason I don't think this is exactly what Gruber had in mind when he said, "The goal should be to make a phone that is better than the iPhone. Better."

[jrockway]

It's better for me.

I think a lot of people design systems for imaginary users that don't actually exist. I try to make stuff that works for me, because then at least it works for one person.

(I assume "normal people" use some sort of GUI for this. If you are using Amarok, for example, it's a simple matter of drag-n-dropping your playlist to the icon that says "Android Phone".)

[unalone]

"Normal people", by which I mean myself, want to plug in their iPhone and have all of their stuff synced without ever clicking any button. Drag-n-drop is nice, but even that's more of a hassle than I care to bother with.

[krschultz]

"Normal people", by which I mean myself, want to plug their iPhone in and NOT have it sync, because I have more music than can fit on it, so auto-sync for a subset of my playlist is nice, but even that's more of a hassle than I care to bother with.

[unalone]

...which is why iTunes also supports drag-n-drop, and subset syncing. Are you trying to make a point?

[krschultz]

That your personal experience is not the "normal", it is YOUR experience. Extrapolating from your preferences to "normal" is a common fallacy with hackers and you are making it right there.

Usability testing should trump hunches. I polled my room mates (small poll, but still 4 > 1), none of us have a music library small enough to fit on an iPhone and none of us want all of our music/videos/photos on our mobile device for a variety of reasons. Drag and drop in iTunes is preferable for us.

And I have an iPhone, I've had it wiped out by iTunes. I'd rather have drag and drop like a normal file system from Explorer.

[jrockway]

Are you?

[unalone]

My point was that Apple offered a seamless system that works more fluidly than Android's for the people that want it. My current irritation comes from kr's snarky response suggesting that some people don't like Apple's syncing system, when Apple does in fact offer alternatives and doesn't default to syncing to begin with.

[igorgue]

I don't use iTunes, how do I copy music to my iphone? btw, I use Ubuntu...

On the Android part I sync my music with Banshee ;)

[unalone]

Simply by using Ubuntu, you've made yourself a very niche user. I get the point you're making, and for your case Android certainly works better, but the point I'm making is that most users are not like you, and that your set-up has many things that would irritate me that keep me on OS X and an iPhone.

This article isn't about Apple's doing everything perfectly, it's saying that there are a lot of things they do incredibly well that Android sucks at, and it's saying that it wishes Android would make itself less sucky at those things. That's what this conversation's focusing on, not "Does Android do some things better than the iPhone?". We know the answer to that is yes and it's foolish to argue it.

[jrockway]

Most users that write smartphone software are like him, however. And the only reason you need users for a platform is so that people write apps to make it useful.

People write for the iPhone because of the imagined mass market (which brought the cost of every useful app down to 99 cents), and people write for Android because they are programmers and it's cooler. The end result is lots of apps in both cases.

Remember, you are not a Google or Apple shareholder, so all you should care about availability of good apps. Both phones both have the same good apps, with a slight edge towards Android (because of more capabilities).

[ezy]

This is a wierd perspective. You need users other than developers on a platform to make money selling the platform and the devices. If the company doesn't make money, it can't continue to upgrade the platform and make new devices. Do you really think that a platform just for developers and gadget geeks is even sustainable over the long term? This is a whole new level of crazy...

[unalone]

We're not talking about apps. We're talking about people using phones. The iPhone is more consumer-friendly than Android in every way but the AT&T network. John Gruber wrote an article saying that Android should become a better phone. Apps don't figure in here whatsoever.

The argument over applications is one-sided. Apple's doing a shit job. But people still write more applications for it, because Apple offers a better product than Google does. Not a better development environment. Not a better marketplace (though that one's debatable). A better product.

[tedunangst]

"I think a lot of people design systems for imaginary users that don't actually exist."

If I had to determine, based on previous personal observations, which was more likely to exist, iTunes users or perl script users, I would have to conclude that you are imaginary.

[nailer]

I sync music to my Hero with iTunes using DoubleTwist on my Mac, since I came from iPhone and have my playlists in iTunes.

My wife syncs music her G1 using Windows Media Player, because she's used it for years and likes it.

People who use Linux plug in their phone and Banshee syncs to it.

I don't think iPhone does WMP or Banshee. Sure, it's made by Apple, but my wife doesn't really care: she just want's it to work with her computer, without having to change all her software.