Steve Jobs’ rant against Android, RIM, and 7″ tablets couldn’t go by unnoticed, of course. We already had the rather dry response from Google’s Andy Rubin, but Mountain View isn’t the only one who responded. TweetDeck’s CEO wasn’t particularly pleased by Jobs distorting TweetDeck’s story on developing for Android, and now we have RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie who slammed Cupertino pretty hard.
Let’s start with the TweetDeck CEO, Iain Dodsworth. Yesterday, Jobs referred to TweetDeck’s blog entry on developing for Android. This is what TweetDeck had to say. “To date we’ve had 36,427 active beta testers and below you can see the massive variety of phones and Android OS versions everyone is running,” the blog entry reads, “We were really shocked to see the number of custom roms, crazy phones and general level of customization/hackalicious nature of Android. From our perspective it’s pretty cool to have our app work on such a wide variety of devices and Android OS variations.”
Jobs butchered this statement, and twisted and turned it to make it fit an anti-Android agenda. “Twitter client TwitterDeck [sic] recently launched their Android app, and had to contend with 100 different versions of software on 244 different handsets,” Jobs said, “That’s a daunting challenge.”
That’s a rather different interpretation, and TweetDeck’s CEO isn’t pleased. “Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t,” he said on Twitter, “We only have 2 guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is.”
There’s bigger fish than TweetDeck’s CEO out there, and one of them is RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie, and he isn’t happy with Jobs’ rant either. Jobs said: “[We] handily beat RIM’s 12.1 million Blackberries sold in their last quarter. We’ve now passed RIM. I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. It will be a challenge for them to create a mobile software platform and convince developers to support a third platform.”
Bilsillie’s response in full:
For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience.We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.
And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 ^aEUR“ 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple’s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders.
As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story.
Interesting how he specifically contests Apple’s claim that they surpassed RIM; the official figures will have to confirm or deny that one.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Well done RIM, hope that knocks Jobs down a peg or too. I’m sure it won’t though, but it would be nice.
Meh. Show me a RIM device with an e-mail client that doesn’t force me to pay my wireless provider for the privilege, and then I’ll believe RIM really understands what the customer wants.
RIM’s response was rambling and the talking points were lofty and abstract, not to mention unoriginal. I don’t care which side you’re on, Jobs hits Android square in the nose with this one. Android has fragmented, and that has demonstrable effects on both users and developers. Linux has shown that fragmentation is the death knell for a platform. iOS on the other hand is as unified and cohesive as Android is fragmented. All apps are forward compatible, and iOS4 can still be run on three-generations-old iPhones. You have to give it to him that he spun ‘closed’ in a very interesting way.
Uhm, Jobs “hits Android square in the nose” with a non-issue. Your supposed “demonstrable effect” was just refuted by actual developers (oh look, it’s in the story above). Like a moronic fanboy, you’re perpetuating FUD.
As for the Linux desktop, it’s about 1/8 of the Mac’s market share. If that’s dead, then the Mac is certainly not doing well.
iOS is powering exactly one (1) type of device. Linux is everywhere, on stuff ranging from wrist watches to supercomputers, and still managing to hold its own against super-specialized software on their home turf. “A platform”? Try a thousand platforms. More platforms appear everyday and you can bet Linux is tried at some point on all of them.
But ok, let’s look at one single platform. The one I’m assuming you mean is the PC desktop. Where Linux has had a slowly climbing adoption rate for the past decade, fighting against super-rich companies. And still what it has to offer today is on par with the best from Microsoft or Apple. Pretty good for a free OS with no advertising, no direct income, no focused goals. How’s that for dead?
If you had any notion of biology you would know that diversity ensures survival, while super-specialization leads to dead-ends. It’s an immutable fact of life. Any key change in the environment (technical, business, social) and super-specialized software goes down like a brick. I trust you can think up some past examples on your own.
I will give you only one. It’s crude and merciless but that’s how life is. If Steve Jobs dies tomorrow, it’s the end for Apple. May God bless him and may he have a long life, because he’s irreplaceable. I doubt we will see somebody with the exact same vision, taste and dedication to perfection replace him.
And another thing: integration is good for the end user, granted. But in accepting extreme integration the user gives up control and customization. And not all people like that. If they did there would be no iPhone jailbreaking and no Android adoption.
This whole thing is just Jobs drumming up the flamewar just in time for the holiday season. Free publicity and all that. I mean please, Windows = open? You’d have to be an idiot to even entertain the notion, and he’s not.
We won’t, no. However I think that Jobs might have now got Apple into a similar position to Disney’s position when Walt died. That is to say, it loses its central dynamic force, but has enough momentum to keep on going as a huge, powerful company nonetheless. It would be a worse Apple after Job’s death, but probably still a strong one that continued to grow.
Oh, no doubt about that. Just by sitting on the accumulated cash and they would last quite a while.
I mean, look at Microsoft after Bill Gates. It lost whatever vision it had (ruthless and unremarkable as it was) and just goes through the motions. But it still has piles of cash and keeps on lurching. Short of wasting it on something stupid (such as a bad major aquisition, barely dodged a bullet there with Yahoo) they will last a while longer.
RIM could open QNX wide open to put their code where their mouth is. It could be a better QN-X than OS-X.
IMHO, I think one thing Apple did right was not including Flash in IOS. Of course, one could argue that they had ulterior motives and I am not inclined to disagree, but I also believe that less Flash on the web is better for everyone (except Adobe), so I don’t really care why Apple is doing it, as long as they’re doing it.
IMHO, Apple started out to do the right thing by not including Flash, but then proceeded to do totally the wrong thing by people by also not including non-proprietary open codecs (specifically, WebM, Vorbis and Theora). Every browser except Apple’s will support the latter.
IMHO, that means that Apple deserve to end up in a position where rich web content won’t work on their iDevices at all.
Meh, I don’t care about open codecs. I only care about the closed ones that really suck ass, and Flash falls under that category. If it works out of the box and doesn’t require Flash, I’m a happy camper. I don’t even mind paying a small license fee for the privilege. Just get rid of f**king Flash.
It’s impossible to both have a free web and support the iOS platform at the same time (without making a special “iOS version” in parallel). If that’s unimportant to you, then you’re probably one of those who think it’s just great to have your old documents stuck in a format you have to pay money to read. You’re giving your content away to the patent holders.
Oh, wait, you’re just a consumer, and don’t own the content yourself.
Well, it’s like this… I graduated from high school about 15 years ago. Thus, I didn’t come from the Entitlement Generation who expects everything to be handed to them for free. So no, I don’t mind paying a little something for the apps I use.
In regards to accessing the content, if you’re going to use a proprietary format for that, just make sure you’re using something that can export to other formats if needed. Later on down the road, you can always use an emulator if you absolutely need to get at the app you used to create it.
Slightly offtopic, but the Entitlement Generation is always one generation after your generation.
Hah ha ha!! So true. It’s never our generation’s fault, it’s always the one before us, or the one after us.
Hm, you seriously don’t get it at all, and your sleazy double ad hominem is entirely unimpressive. What you just said is that you’re younger and less educated than me.
There’s more to a free web than in “free to consume”. When using non-free codecs, there is an extra cost of producing content as well, a part-transfer of ownership to the patent holders. Should every video on the web be entagled in MPEG-LA’s patents? Apple thinks so: it makes all internet video their own property, to some rather small degree. You think you’re willing to pay for that because your not part of the “Entitlement Generation”. In reality, you think it’s worth paying for because you’re fucking crazy.
I don’t know much about video, but I assume it works like audio in that you record in a raw format (such as a .wav file) and then compress it when you’re done for mass consumption. As long as you have the original (uncompressed) content, the owner of the compression algorithm doesn’t ‘own’ a thing. But, if you record in a proprietary format and have no way to convert it to something else, then… well, you’re a moron.
Anyway, if you’re going to use a compression algorithm that somebody else owns and wants money for it, then yeah… you’re probably going to have to pay for it. Why shouldn’t you? Just because somebody’s labor comes in the form of 1’s and 0’s doesn’t automatically entitle you to have access to it for $0. And in this case, unless the owner is selling t-shirts or coffee mugs, there’s no way he can give away the source and/or offer it up royalty free and still profit from it (AFAIK).
Edited 2010-10-20 22:04 UTC
There are several free codecs available that Apple won’t support — or even allow others to support — in order to force people to use patented technology if they want to make their content available for the iOS platform. I’m not asking Apple to free their tech, I’m just pointing out that they want people to pay a toll to make their own content available to iOS users. They’re restricting freedom of information.
For someone so hung-up on “entitlement”, you sure are oblivious to Apple’s entitlement to control internet media. But perhaps you’re being intentionally dense for the sake of argument.
LOL, they are NOT restricting freedom of information. If you have information that you want iOS users to see, then pay the license fee (if it’s required) and encode your content in a format that iOS supports. Problem solved. If your religion forbids you from using a proprietary format (or one you have to pay for), then I guess that’s your problem.
Don’t get me wrong… I think that having a free codec is better than having one that requires a fee to use (who DOESN’T like free?), but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it if I have to pay a little for the privilege. If Apple doesn’t support free codecs on their platform, it’s obviously because they have a business reason for not doing so, and I don’t expect them to set aside the profit motive. Afterall, they’re not in this for the good of mankind. If you had something you were trying to sell, would you give away your competitors’ products for free? Think about it.
That being said, I don’t agree that they should be able to restrict what codecs you can run, but then again… that’s what jailbreaking is for, and it’s legal now too
Well, if you like browsing the web back in the 90s then Apple devices are for you. Despite the the issues with Flash, it provides a richer web, along with WebM which Apple doesn’t support.
People make the assumption Flash is bad based on the desktop version, when Flash on Android has proved this not to be the case on hand-held devices.
I hope Apple device owners enjoy animated gifs but I’ve got to hand it to Apple though. They’re the first company to make their 21st century devices act like a time machine, to view the web back in the 90s.
Edited 2010-10-20 14:48 UTC
It’s nice how people twist the truth to their advantage. (Of course everyone does this, Apple no exception).
Jobs however talked about fragmentation and how in the end it’s worse specifically for users but even for developers. He gave the example of TweeterDeck’s charts. However, he never claimed that TweeterDeck was complaining about Android Development.
He also mentioned the mess of the (4) App Stores in the Android world; nobody seems to be talking about this even though it was probably the most important point.
OK some people like choice, but what this leads to is the mess that is the Android Market and similar stores and numerous handsets with almost no differentiation (consequently filled with crapware by the vendors so they can stand out).
I’ll let someone else speak on my behalf regarding the problems of choice: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_…
As for RIM, good for them, thinking that they’re still ahead and I like their eagerness to support 7″ tablets. Of course, it would be nice if they had an actual product that was selling to prove their point instead of this vapourware (yes vapourware noone has even touched it, let alone try out the new OS) that they’ve been tossing around the press this past month.
I’d say that you are not an exception either. Had Mr. jobs not misquote TweeterDeck, there would be no reaction from their part. But he did, and no spin doctor can make it seem right to any non fanboys. Yeah he lied, he also lied about the antenna, he also lied about the motives of not supporting flash and so on and so on. I suggest you get to grips with the fact that he is not a god, and money is his primary motive. Not your best interest, but money.
He has taken a page right from microsoft when it comes to competing with oss. Start with a bit of FUD, sprinkle a little bit of propaganda and voila … you are still relevant despite sub par hardware and mediocre (to say the least) software
Oh, so he misquoted them did he? Where exactly? He made a statement, a personal observation, based on something they published. He didn’t misquote them at all. In fact is was they who misquoted him by suggesting he called it a “nightmare”. He did nothing of the sort. I’ve looked up “nightmare” in a number of dictionaries and a thesaurus and not one shows “daunting challenge” as a meaning or synonym.
It’s about time the Jobs haters out there moved out of their own RDF and looked at things from a balanced perspective. Is the guy a God? Hell no! He’s an arrogant egotist. But he’s also someone who is brilliant on a whole range of levels, one of which is using published material to bolster his marketing goals. Saying that he misquoted someone by misquoting him is simply grandstanding – an attempt to gain favour of those who already don’t like him.
OK, here we go again (reposted from a previous thread)
I read their blog about a week ago… their tone is rather celebratory, along the lines of “look how cool is that.” I don’t think Jobs’ way of using TweetDeck in his rant is a faithful representation of what they actually claim on their blog. It’s a huge spin. “Has to contend with” dramatizes the whole situation, and he concludes with depicting coding for Android a “daunting challenge.” If this is not spin for you, I don’t know what is. TweetDeck developers recognized it as such and debunked it.
I hope this clarifies it for you… I didn’t know this needed to be explained, but some people seem to have a problem grasping the obvious.
He used them as an example that fragmentation was a problem. From the post they said that fragmentation wasn’t a problem. The fact that there were so many different versions of android but tweetdeck had no problems running on all the different versions.
So what if there is fragmentation? As long as apps work in the same way where is the problem in having choice?
So here you’re telling me that the iOS app store is not filled to the brim with crapware?
Yes, and I am no mobile developer, but how hard can it be for a twitter client to adapt…..not very I’d imagine. The more intensely an app pushes the boundary of what any hardware is capable of, the more 100 variations (or whatever) becomes a problem.
In my recent buying decision, Apple was the devil I know, and not just because I owed a 1st gen itouch. I simply could not be sure if a) whatever brand of android handset would be upgradable to newer OS’s (due to hardware maker or network’s resistance) and b) if all apps I might be interested would work without hassle on whatever particular handset I bought.
Since all the handsets are subsidized (Canada), I choose the Iphone. However, time will tell regarding both points. Certain handset makers will have a better or worse reputation for upgrades and people will complain more or less about fragmentation / compatibility. If my fears were unfounded, my next phone might very well be android.
So you bought an iPhone, where nothing is guaranteed to work on a handset that is not the current or previous model. Dudey, Apple is probably the worst offender when it comes to this.
In order to use the latest iPod, you need the latest iTunes, which requires the latest operating system, which will only run on the latest Macs. Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but Jobs himself said that you should only target the latest and previous iPhones – which makes my father’s 16-month-old iPhone 3G officially unsupported.
Whereas, with a custom firmware, you can pretty much run Android 2.2 on a 2-year-old HTC Dream.
1) The only iPhone that’s depreciated is the 2G, which is ~four years old. Your father’s 3G can run iOS4.
2) All applications are forwards compatible. Expecting applications to also be backwards compatible is insane; that would mean the featureset of the phone could never be improved on.
And with how much features disabled exactly ?
I find these discussions about firmware upgrades a bit pointless. Upgrading a firmware is a dangerous task which can break the device if something goes wrong. Not to mention potential performance issues, with iOS4-like market fragmentation as the sole known alternative, and usability ones if the new firmware behaves differently in some way (I’ve seen a real-life example of this with an iTouch which had been upgraded to iOS 4). Average users just shouldn’t have to care about it.
If you were satisfied with the device you bought and if app compatibility is done right, you shouldn’t need the upgrade. If you weren’t satisfied, you shouldn’t have bought the device in the first place.
Now, if you tell me that upgrading the firmware is for geeks only, then I’m okay with that. But geeks have enough knowledge to install a custom FW, and to try to fix the device themselves if they break it.
Edited 2010-10-20 06:11 UTC
And exactly where does the average village idiot get custom firmware? How does the average village idiot install that huh? The world does not revolve around geeks friend. It’s about usability.
“you are still relevant despite sub par hardware and mediocre (to say the least) software”
I guess you’re right there. That would explain Apple topping consumer satisfaction charts year after year (by quite a margin).
“So here you’re telling me that the iOS app store is not filled to the brim with crapware?”
There’s crapware and then there’s crapware.
Have you ever used the Android Market? I have, and boy is it a mess.
All retailers apply some censorship when it comes to putting up goods on their shelves. They don’t just put up whatever’s available to them.
The good one’s do this more than others because people don’t want junk.
Everything you say is just as applicable to the ios app store as any other.
The paradox of choice is about something else entirely. You’re doing exactly what you’re accusing others of.
What 7-inch tablets? You^aEURTMre not shipping one to next year. _actually_, really? Odd use of tense there. You didn^aEURTMt say _good_ web experience, just experience. Flash has been shown to be a bad experience. It halves the load speed of pages that have Flash ads and the only good in good experience is “good enough”. Flash on mobile shows you the content, yes, but you pay a price for that in everything else.
Overwhelming majority? Hold on there. I do very highly doubt that an “overwhelming majority” of sites contain Flash _content_. Oh, Flash _ads_, sure. I would wager that an ‘overwhelming majority’ of consumers wouldn^aEURTMt want those.
Those 7-inch tablets that aready sells like hotcakes, I would venture to guess. Lots of different models are readily avalible. As an example, when viewing this site without adblock, i get regular ads from lightinthebox who sells several different tablets.
That the “brand” names are a little late in the game and that the shipping tablets are low-spec compared to the iPad, does not change the fact. Those 7-inch tablests sell. The main reason I would think is the very competive price(IMHO the rigth price range for such limited/specialized devices).
Edited 2010-10-20 06:41 UTC
Kroc pointed out…
They’re already here–admittedly they’re not running RIM’s OS, but they’re still here already. I have one myself, a Pandigital Novel with Android 2.0 as its base OS. Once unlocked, (and hacking one of these is as simple as pushing a home\launcher replacement across the USB cord via adb) you end up with a rather nice and inexpensive Android tablet.
Is it as good as the iPad? Of course not, it was intended as an eBook reader and based on what I keep seeing at Slatedroid clearly slapped together by a bunch of monkeys with no optimization done to make even the advertised features (like video and audio playing) work well. Yet the category does exist. I think what Balsillie is really saying here is “Don’t count out the 7” tablets as a category until we get ours out the door and can show you what we can do.” Myself I think he’s a bit late to the party, as there are literally hundreds of Android based tablets being developed and making their way around the world from China right now.
Sure these aren’t all going to be powerhouses or as good as the iPad, but my Pandigital Novel lets me play movies (depending on the firmware older ones work better on my v1 board) listen to music, read eBooks with Laputa or Aldiko, catch up on my feeds with FeedR my offline feed reader, get my email, facebook, even play Angry Birds* and other great games! All for a mere $139 after some pricematching and coupon work at Kohl’s. And with the SD card slot I can easily expand my storage all the way up to 32GB…try that with an iPad!
–bornagainpenguin
*Angry Birds has some graphical issues still on my 800×600 screen, but it still works. Hopefully as the code gets optimized more and more it will run better and better.
And neither did Jobs. “Daunting challenge” is hardly calling it a “nightmare”. And Jobs is right, it is something that’s daunting when you first look at the project, and then want to make sure the thing works across all of those variations. How can they even be sure it will without specifically testing it on every variation? Personally I probably would have called that prospect a “nightmare”, but that’s not what Jobs said. Misquoting him in order to appeal to geekdom is nothing but grandstanding.
Similarly with the comments by Mr RIM. Using the classic approach of diverting attention from their own weaknesses by attacking things that are perceptions created in the minds of those who have no ability to understand something is just schoolyard bullying tactics, something I’d expect from a 12 year old. Other than making baseless claims about distorted sales figures did he in any way refute the main point Jobs was making? Instead he chose to use rhetoric to attack something that clearly RIM, like many manufacturers as well as some who frequent this forum, don’t have the logic and reasoning abilities to comprehend.
Great point. Even if it’s not hard to write an app that runs stably across the hundred software/hardware combinations, you still can’t be sure the app doesn’t crash unless you’ve tested it on on every single one of them. That’s the daunting part.
You’re right. As someone who has developed desktop software, I always made sure to buy every possible combination of computer hardware and test my software on those boxes so that I can be sure that I knew it worked.
Are you a clone of Piot?
http://www.osnews.com/thread?445801
If diferent hardware/OS version is bad for programmers, how the hell is everyone still doing apps for windows?
Do you think one has to try every combination of hard/soft before deploing? because that would be just insane….
“This is pedantry up with which I will not put.” -Winston Churchill, after being criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition
It is sure amazing that the fruity fan bois here can nit pick over the mistake Tweetdeck made, but can completely ignore the amazing liver-mans distortion about what they originally posted.
I know Android is so scary for fruit loving folk with the hundreds of phones in various styles, some even with keyboards. No right thinking person should be subject to so much choice.
And the gods forbid that the phone companies have some control over the phone and store on their network. That is something only the phone maker should be allowed to dictate.
+ 1 insightful, methinks
Edited 2010-10-20 12:09 UTC
The ipad isn’t that portable, I see people hauling them around in ipad cases which are no more convenient than a laptop in a skin.
Not having Flash on the iphone is fine since its main purpose is to make phone calls. However a tablet is all about surfing and should provide a full experience. If battery life is a concern then Flash should be opt/in when the tablet is not plugged in.
Android fragmentation is a real problem though especially on the hardware side. The new 3.0 release at least has minimum hardware specs which will help the situation.
Edited 2010-10-20 15:12 UTC
I own and mobile software company, and we never have 2 developers work on 1 project. + all they are doing is porting the app. He just basically confirmed the reasons why I don’t do Android yet. Costs to much.
I can see putting the effort out for a very high volume app though..
Edited 2010-10-20 17:59 UTC