Q (from us): “One of the things about Android is that it seems a bit clunky? Are we going to see a sea change in a more user friendly OS?”
Andy: “I understand what you are saying. I would characterize Android as an early adopter platform (or for those married to people that are tech enthusiasts). We know the difference between customization and personalization — that was the concept. We wanted to allow people to change things with widgets and menus. We had to make concessions there. Anyone can go to the Android Market now and start personalizing. I think you will start to see more of what you are talking about.”
Last night Andy Rubin spoke at D: Dive Into Mobile. I’m sure you didn’t miss it. There was talk of Gingerbread, Nexus S, and of course the preview of the Honeycomb tablet. Of course that means most, if not all, the focus was on those items. Yet, the one statement that caught my attention the most was the words in bold above, “I would characterize Android as an early adopter platform (or for those married to people that are tech enthusiasts).” Is that still true? Throughout the days of the G1, Jesusfreke, Haykuro, and a lack of code names – sure. Through the time before the Nexus One, most likely. But now?
If this is the case, we are still the fringe. Andy is saying that in many ways Android has not yet hit it’s stride. There is still a lot of work to be done. That is true. But can you really say that it is still an early adopter platform after it has launched in 50 countries and has been built into 172 different models of phone? I don’t think so. The problem is the numbers don’t add up, you cannot have the kind of penetration that Android has and still be an early adopter platform, not in the sense of the cell phone market.
Could he mean the core? Those of us who are always tearing apart every minute detail of the SDK to find gems like this
Or to port over the Gingerbread keyboard or add the 2.3 Launcher to 2.2 courtesy of Modaco’s @paulobrien. The general public has chosen to embrace Android and I don’t think that we can still look at it as an early adopter platform any longer. Maybe we can look at it as driven by the early adopters. Those who purchase the latest and greatest(?) phone, tablet, TV, or even the connected Refrigerator, but it has moved past that stage for everyone else. We are still the beta testers. O.G1 owners, were the Alpha testers. People who picked up the MyTouch or Hero were the Release Candidate 1 test group. The Droid was RC2. When the Nexus One dropped we entered the prolonged Beta phase which continues until the release of Honeycomb. Perhaps that is what Honeycomb is going to address.
Maybe Honeycomb is going to end up being the first “real” Android platform. Integration with Google Chrome OS, built-in Google music store, and a Market that just works right for the consumer, developer, and critics as well. If that’s the case, I’m going to go to this bar in San Jose and drink a beer at the fateful spot where the iPhone 4 was found and drink a beer with my true iPhone killer and a smile.
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No way is it still early adopter, It has had a hell of a push by early adopters and the eager hackers and dev’s working on custom roms, but in the end I see a lot of average users using it for just what it is, an awesome affordable smart OS, not just a group of tech savvy geeks hanging out in a basement cooking the bleeding edge into there phones :p.
android is the best of both worlds and the worst of all wolds! lol! as of now i have a g1 with the latest 1.6 gotdonut rom and 2.2 v3 on it… it’s a great os but sometimes in the wrong hands it can get a bad rep! what i mean is some of these brands shouldn’t be sporting android!
htc + android = great
android + samsung = bad
thats what i think!
Well if this is true sign me up for Honeycomb, allot of people I know are android users because I converted them from those dreaded Blackberry’s,
And the iphoney and this is ever sense I got my G1, My Touch, Nexus One, and now the official Nexus 2 the HTC G2. After all these to findout that I’ve been impressed by only the start of my life long addiction to Android and things are going to be better I say bring it own!
Yeah, I basically didn’t believe that he was right with that statement. That’s why I wrote the post.
I think we may have gotten the love going, but it is much bigger than us now. I, for one, couldn’t be happier.
[...] right folks, Andy Rubin has tweeted his second tweet. Our “Early Adopter Platform” has been growing like gangbusters. We all knew that Android was growing but this is pretty [...]
[...] right folks, Andy Rubin has tweeted his second tweet. Our “Early Adopter Platform” has been growing like gangbusters. We all knew that Android was growing but this is pretty [...]
What we really need to move forward is someone to sell OS upgrades: Google, Cyanogen, Samsung, Red Hat, whomever. Samsung finished the code for 2.2 US VZW Fascinate a long time ago, and put it on opensource.samsung.com, yet Verizon has yet to publicly commit to release. This is not a phone, it’s a computer, the first organization to treat it as such will win our $.
AG was put in a “prove you are better than iPhone position”. He handled it better than I. I would have been tempted to say, “Look, we released one of our core products for them, and they refused to allow it for sale on the App Store. I want to focus on products that I can deliver to my customers on a platform that welcomes all.” Then for each timee they brought up the iPhone, I would bring up another of Evil Steve’s control freak moves: needlessly attacking a partner, because the product was too weak to run flash trying to control what languages are legal for programmers to use, etc.