[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...

[joeyo]

Given that Android is open source, why does it need to make money exactly?

[ezy]

I don't understand, aren't there supposed to be entrepreneurs on here? Let's be honest with ourselves:

What do you plan to run your software geek nirvana on, anyway? If noone buys the platform, what happens 3 years from now?

As a meta-question: What do you think would've happened to linux and it's desktop if solaris' or even windows server licensing terms were more reasonable at the outset? If Mr Shuttleworth decided his money was better spent feeding children on his home continent rather than making Debian look nicer? Think about it...

[joeyo]

Cell phone hardware is a commodity to a first approximation already and that will become more and more true as time goes on, Apple's attempts notwithstanding. I can't speak to Google's plans and motivations, but Android already has been ported to phones that it was not "indented" to run on, paralleling Linux development on PC hardware. Buy the platform, don't buy the platform, whatever. It will still exist and hobbyists will always be able to put it on their devices.

But that's not even the point, really. From the perspective of the cell phone manufacturers, eliminating or reducing the expense of developing an OS is good for their bottom line. As long as Android is "good enough" for most users, I foresee it continuing to be used.

[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.