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from the reality-distortion-field-is-impenetrable dept.
Chris Smith writes that Apple CEO Tim Cook, speaking during the WWDC 2014 opening keynote, took clear hits at his company's main rival, making fun of Google's Android several times. "Over 130 million customers who bought an iOS device in the past 12 months, were buying their first iOS device," Cook said. "Now, many of these customers were switchers from Android." "They had bought an Android phone... by mistake," Cook added, igniting the crowd in attendance, "and then sought a better experience, and a better life, and decided to check iPhone and iOS." Cook went on to say that nearly half of Apple's customers in China in the past six months came from Android.
Cook took another hit at Google for its fragmentation issues. "If you look at a broader group, over a third of [Android] customers, are running a version of Android from four years ago," Cook said. "That's like ancient history." Cook also addressed Android's vulnerability to malware. "Android dominates the mobile malware market," the exec said, because of its fragmentation. "No wonder experts are saying things like this," Cook said, quoting ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: "Android fragmentation is turning devices into a toxic hellstew of vulnerabilities."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 05 2014, @04:46PM
Basically what you just said, but probably didn't mean to, is that Android fans are really really worried about what their phone says about them.
Except that it's completely false IMO. Most Android users just get Android phones because they're super cheap; you can get them free with contracts these days. Any "fans" probably only like them because they're not Apple products.
Personally, I'm a big Linux fan, but for me, I only grudgingly tolerate Android. It was a good idea, but the execution has been terrible. They don't perform very well, and they're horribly inconsistent. The carriers and mfgrs don't support models more than 6 months old, because they just want you to buy a new one, and Google either doesn't care or is powerless to change this. The only really great thing about Android is that it uses a Linux kernel. Everything else is shoddy. But unfortunately, the options aren't any better. iPhone is made by a control-freak corporation with even worse ethics than Google, and only lets you do things in The One True Apple Way (tm) using their horrible iTunes software. And Windows Phone is, well, after decades of being forced to use MS products I'm not about to pay good money for a phone from them. Blackberry might be a consideration except that they always look like they're on the verge of bankruptcy.
(Score: 2) by everdred on Thursday June 05 2014, @10:09PM
You bring up good points, and there's much that frustrates me about Android, especially when someone asks me which device they should buy.
But there are some other nice things about it to keep in mind:
- In a pinch, you can walk into most stores and buy a decent, sub-$100 (or even sub-$50) contract-free phone with a somewhat-recent version of Android.
- If you don't like Google, you can replace just everything Google-related without replacing the ROM. Set whatever apps you want as your defaults, or disable Google the apps entirely. Use a third-party app store, or no app store thanks to sideloading.
- Custom ROMs (if you have a somewhat popular device) if you really want to tweak stuff, or if your manufacturer has dropped support for your device. YMMV in the latter, though.
- There's a choice of hardware. Sure there's only be a small handful of devices at any given time that *anyone* should even consider buying, but there's a choice.