Ballmer Slams Android As Cheap and Overcomplicated 645
jfruhlinger writes "On the day Android Ice Cream Sandwich was released, Steve Ballmer livened up the Web 2.0 conference by lobbing potshots at Google's mobile OS, calling it the choice of 'cheap' phones and claiming 'the biggest advantage we have over Android is that you don't need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone.'"
Re:He does have some good points (Score:5, Insightful)
And you typed it all in less than a minute...
In other words, (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows Phone 7 will be not-cheap and not-complex.
This means it will be expensive and not do half the stuff Android does.
Out there (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the impression Ballmer hasn't even used an Android phone. Exactly what part of the OS is complicated to use? Really, that's just an absurd, out-there statement.
Re:He does have some good points (Score:3, Insightful)
That's some first post. What are the odds you didn't have this astroturf typed and ready knowing this article would be posted? Pretty much zero.
Re:Steve Ballmer, Product Designer (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:He does have some good points (Score:4, Insightful)
I think he refers to the "icon grid" UI paradigm. Most people who say that Android is like iOS mean that.
Re:Out there (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:He does have some good points (Score:1, Insightful)
On top of that it supports .NET and Visual Studio, which quite honestly is the best developing environment on the planet.
Too bad it doesn't come with a system where most of the actual development environment, like libraries, are as close as an apt-get install. But the editor is great!
But as years go by, I find that GPL and Linux geeks fall under that a lot - they completely ignore what people actually want, and the answer is usually something along the lines "do it yourself". Sure, that's fine for a hobbyist project, but you shouldn't be surprised if people choose other products instead or point out why they do so.
Yeah and that petty internet, running on top of all that open source. Sure looks hobbyist, no wonder people chose... No wait they didn't
Re:He does have some good points (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Out there (Score:3, Insightful)
I love my Nexus S, and maintain it via Cyangenmod, but the simple fact is that the majority of handsets are hopelessly out of date, with known security problems, and the networks just don't give a shit.
Re:He does have some good points (Score:5, Insightful)
many times, I am critical of MS but I think the guy did not deserve to be modded down to 0 points.
I am gonna get (ice) creamed for this... but the ui is indeed well done, the way the os works to safegard against misbehaving apps yet allow flexibility is good, the developer tools are nice (it took me about hour to write a simple app - time to download visual studio included - and that time I ever touched .net), since it is .net not prisoner of one language, good tool developing visually, advertising is as simple as adding an ad control... they actually put some efforts into this.
Not sure if they'll get many developers interested in the marketplace at $99 a year unless their device sales pick up though.
Android isn't for everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a T-Mobile MyTouch 4g running Cyanogenmod 7.1 in my pocket right now. It's a very, very nice phone. I also have a friend who is looking to buy his first smartphone. He just wants the Internet in his pocket, and reading product barcodes to immediatly find reviews & prices interests him. No games or videoconferencing or anything fancy.
The main reason I told him to buy an iPhone is that if you go into a store to choose an Android phone there is no way to know if, when an OS update is released, you will receive it at all. The "latest-android" might be out, and you are wondering when you'll have it pushed to your phone. The carrier says to talk to the manufacturer, the manufacturer says they released it to the carrier, no-one knows for sure if you'll get it all. LG, Motorola, HTC, Samsung multiplied by T-mobile, ATT, Verizon and you have a huge matrix of possibilities and no-one can tell you before you choose a handset if that one will recieve OS updates, or how quickly.
Even folks on the same carrier but with different brand handsets see wildly different timeframes for updates.
I can update my Cyanogenmod myself, but he can't & shouldn't need to. He should just be able to walk out of the store with a smartphone and, when an OS update is released, just have it pumped into his phone right away.
Android phones are great for enthusiasts but for my friend & most other folks, the iPhone is a better choice.
Re:He does have some good points (Score:2, Insightful)
Or he's a subscriber and had time to pre-write it.
Re:Out there (Score:2, Insightful)
Unlike with a Windows phone where you can... still do nothing about that. If a hardware vendor wont update the software the way you like it, you dont buy from them again. Which OS they refuse to update has little to do with it.
True, except Microsoft magically seems to have solved this problem with their partner relations. Did you miss the fact that 98% of Windows Phones had the Mango update available within a four week span [venturebeat.com]?
Microsoft hasn't been getting a ton of press, but their WP7 update work is seriously impressive and deserves credit. Google doesn't remotely have their shit together in the update arena, which is a big part of why I have no interest in any Android phone.
"you don't need to be a computer scientist" (Score:5, Insightful)
"you don't need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone.'"
My mom plays with my android phone when I go visit. She's about the farthest thing from a computer scientist I know. I still occasionally have to remind her how to move a file between directories (on Windows). She finds the android OS to be very intuitive, and would get one herself if she had any need for a smart phone.
Criticizing Android's faults is one thing, but descending into ridiculous hyperbole that no one in his right mind is going to believe is pretty stupid.
Re:He does have some good points (Score:1, Insightful)
Being a shill is nothing to be proud of. Besides shouldn't you be on the MSN online service? This Internet thing is nothing but a hobby or a toy since it is based on all that open source software.
Re:Out there (Score:2, Insightful)
An iPhone 3GS bought in June 2009 can be updated to the latest OS. How many Android phones sold in June 2009 can be updated to ICS?
An iPad bought in April 2010 can be updated to the latest OS. How many Android tablets will be updated to ICS?
In fact, I updated an iPhone 4, a 4th gen iPod Touch and a 1st gen iPad the day iOS 5 was released. How many Android users will be able to upgrade to ICS today?
Re:He does have some good points (Score:5, Insightful)
Give up already. You had the comment pre-written. WinPhone7 might be great, but if it is let it win on its merits not your astroturfing.
You can say lots of about a product and not be a shill, prewritten comments and promoting tons of product from one vendor at once is clearly shill behavior.
Re:Business smarts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Out there (Score:4, Insightful)
And Windows 7 has been available for 2 years and less than 20% of Windows PCs have been upgraded....
It's easy to do updates when you have a brand new OS with a limited number of hardware platforms to test - all of which are still being manufactured and sold. Just wait until those Windows Phones go EOL over the next 24 months as new models are brought to the market. How many manufacturers and networks are going to be willing to support updates of old phones, which they make no money from? It seems inevitable that, at some point, Microsoft will stop providing updates for old phones. Just look at the hardware platforms that have already shipped with Android. [wikipedia.org] It is not feasible to test the functionality of upgrades on all of these devices. If Windows Phone turns out to be as popular (and that's a big *if*), then they are going to end up in the same boat.
Re:Actually tried a late model Windows Phone here? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who made comments about VCRs being hard to program was a moron.
Re:Android isn't for everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
The update issue is a separate issue from usability.
And this thinking is why Apple is cleaning up. Ease of updates is not separate from usability. How you activate your phone is not separate from usability. What happens when you plug your phone into your computer is not separate from usability. How easy it is to buy apps is not separate from usability.
95% of the consumers out there just want a cool phone that does what they want. They don't want to hack it. They don't want to run through some third party procedure to get the latest firmware because their carrier decides they don't want to release a Gingerbread update to a particular device. Crap, you'd think that if you were to buy a new Android device it would already have the latest firmware on it, but some carriers are still selling 2.2 and even 2.1 devices. That's complete garbage.
Re:He does have some good points (Score:5, Insightful)
Why such a negative connotation?
I'm sure there are plenty of people that would love to have that job.
Do you also blame individual soldiers when the war is lost?
No, I blame soldiers when they obey illegal orders knowing full well that they are illegal.
Just like I blame astroturfers for performing unethical activities knowing full well that they are unethical.
Re:He does have some good points (Score:5, Insightful)
you blog is wrong, it is comparing stock android to HTC modified android. The HTC modified android looks a lot different than the Google android on the nexus phones.
All these brainless comparisons of Android vs iPhone vs Windows 7 GUI styles are made hopelessly irrelevant by one simple fact: the Android user interface is completely changeable on a moment's notice by installing one of numerous third-party home applications. Right there in the Market: no tweaking, rooting or hacking needed. Just click and run: some of the best ones are even free! Even though both iOS and Android are Unix-derived operating systems at the core, one of the two locks you into what the manufacturer thinks is best for you ... and the other doesn't.
.. Regina 3D is good for that, "No way this is Android." "Yeah way". "No, no way.")
Hell, there are so many home apps in the Market (some of them are seriously slick) that there are several "home manager" apps that let you switch between them at will! To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, currently on my rooted G2 I have ADW Launcher (the default for Cyanogenmod, my favorite Android ROM), ADW Launcher Ex (my current favorite home app), Launcher Pro, Go Launcher, Regina 3D (uses the GPU and is visually stunning) and a few others. I sometimes switch interfaces just because of what I happen to be doing at the time (or, ha ha, who I happen to want to impress
Furthermore, there are Android distributions that have completely rewritten user interfaces. There are several variants of the MIUI ROM: one of the more popular ones that is more iPhone-like in operation. Don't particularly care for it myself, but then again I don't particularly care for the iPhone. To each his own, I suppose. Regardless, it is utterly painless to give your Android device a complete GUI makeover in a matter of seconds. Consequently it's really, really hard to say that any phone's GUI is better than Android, because there are a ton of easily-installable options, many of which are very professional. I'm also tired of iPhone fanboys making cracks about "well, if I wanted to have to recompile my OS just to get my phone to work I'd have an Android." That's just pure ignorance (or spite) and belies the fact that Android really is pretty goddamned flexible, in ways that iPhone and Windows Mobile will never, ever be. Now, understand I'm making no claims about anything special about Android per se: it's just another smartphone operating system. What I am saying is that Android owners gain the many benefits of an open-source environment. Neither the iPhone or Windows 7 Mobile will ever be open. Period. End of statement. Do they have a "better" user interface than Android? Hard to say: which Android user interface are we going to compare against? Which version of Android? See the problem?
We may also be seeing an early trend by device manufacturers to start opening their boot loaders. HTC, for example, has actually released a bootloader SDK. That's a first, and it's amazing. I'd be willing to bet money that since Google now owns Motorola that that company will change its stance on third-party operating systems (I believe Cyanogenmod already supports the Atrix.) It's past time that handset makers start treating their products for what they are: general-purpose pocket-sized portable computers, and not dedicated black boxes of which they maintain ownership after they're sold. If this continues, it means that the concept of "rooting" will become a thing of the past, and that user choice in operating systems will become a reality. Not something that the likes of Microsoft and Apple ever want to see, but it's good for the consumer.
Speaking on a more general note about operating systems, one thing that generally stands out in the Linux world is the number of distros which are derived from a few older ones. Debian, for example, is the foundation for a number of other distributions (Ubuntu/Ku