Woz Says Android Will Dominate

cloudcreator writes "Woz [said] that Android smartphones, not the iPhone, would become dominant, noting that the Google OS is likely to win the race similarly to the way that Windows ultimately dominated the PC world." Update: 11/19 04:54 GMT by T : Apparently, Woz's words were taken slightly out of context.

Re:Gaming

[Pojut]

I didn't say a single word about phones vs handhelds for gaming.

As far as gaming on phones are concerned, check out some of these numbers [macrumors.com]. Keep in mind that article is now a year and a half old.

Not to mention the elephant in the room. [product-reviews.net]

I'm not saying that smartphone gaming will ever replace actual handhelds, but they still sell a hell of a lot of copies. To pass them off as being anything other than a growing business is foolish.

If you compare what is available on Android to what is Available on iOS, the vast majority of games worth playing are currently only available on iOS. Again, that has NOTHING to do with handhelds...I'm talking strictly about phones here.

Re:What did they expect?

[StuartHankins]

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, so let's look at the numbers. These charts show historical sales of iDevices. One shows iPod sales being replaced by higher-margin iPhone and iPad sales. And they're increasing, not decreasing. I think iPhone sales are more important as we have device convergence. If you truly want to look at just iPod sales another graph is there too. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/23/the-ipods-rise-and-fall/ [cnn.com]

Re:Maybe

[mcgrew]

Bullshit. Windows was sucessful first, because DOS (Windows' father) ran on the IBM PC and "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". By the time Windows came out, MS OSes were installed on almost every non-Apple PC made, which is why it continued to be so successful.

Re:open vs closed

[wed128]

i said userspace, not user interface. Android is not binary compatable with desktop linux (even desktop linux that has been ported to whatever hardware you happen to be running android on). that's the only point i was trying to make.

Android is not linux just like OSX is not BSD.

Re:Take that, Steve!

[Timmmm]

Well it's not completely undocumented. There is a lot of documentation, but there is also a hell of a lot of missing documentation.

http://www.google.com/search?q=android+%22completely+undocumented%22 [google.com]

Re:Just so long as

[grub]

Heads up, all.

Woz was misquoted. [engadget.com]

.

He was Misquoted

[tk77]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/18/exclusive-woz-misquoted-almost-every-app-that-i-have-is-bette/ [engadget.com]

Woz says he gave the De Telegraaf reporter a lengthy demonstration of voice commands on iOS and Android, pointed out that Android offered the ability to say "Navigate to Joe's Diner," and suggested that Apple would catch up through its purchases of Siri and Poly9. According to Steve, that's about it -- he says he'd "never" say that Android was better than iOS, and that "Almost every app I have is better on the iPhone." Woz did say he lightly prognosticated that Android would become more popular "based on what I've read," but that he expects Android "to be a lot like Windows... I'm not trying to put Android down, but I'm not suggesting it's better than iOS by any stretch of the imagination. But it can get greater marketshare and still be crappy."

Re:Take that, Steve!

[BitZtream]

Show man an android device to which you have the source required to go from pure source code (no binary blobs at all for the device) to a working phone.

You can't. You need binary only graphics drivers, or radio blobs, all sorts of crap. Hardware manufactures aren't giving away the keys to the kingdom either.

Throw Darwin into the mix, and you've basically got the same thing as android is concerned from the kernel perspective. Both have some open code that build a decent base, but both have serious, required components that are closed tight.

Userland is different, sort of. iOS, completely closed. Android, somewhat open, sorta, if you want something different than pretty much every phone actually sold, since you know, pretty much everyone has closed source UI mods and other things to make their phone actually have something their competitors don't.

Every company that makes money using Linux as a base does so because it has proprietary software and services on top that you'll never see the source too.

Does the pseudo OSS nature of android make it easier to work with? I've seen no actual proof that its true, just people spewing on about how its OSS so it must be useful because its open.

I suspect you have no concept of whats required to make android work beyond the OSS source tree, nor do you have any idea what goes into most Android devices sold. Do you even own one?