As I already said yesterday – a bit colourful to get me point across – this older article of mine has proven not to be as accurate as I thought it was, in light of a heap of new information. I want to offer some more background to all this.
Thanks to the Oracle v. Google court case, we’re treated to a fascinating and rare insight into the earlier days of Android development. Included in all this is a bunch of screenshots of early pre-release versions of Android, which show an interface that’s clearly focussed on QWERTY, BlackBerry-like devices, with a smaller screen. In addition, renders of an early Google phone.
I simply underestimated just how much Android has changed between the time of those screenshots and the release of the G1 – it’s hard, if not impossible, to argue that the release of the iPhone, which took place in between those two points in time, had no influence on Android. As such, I never actually did so – this is what I wrote in that article:
Now, does this mean that the iPhone had zero influence on Android’s early development? Of course not. Like the iPhone itself was standing on the shoulders of giants (iPhone to PalmOS: hi daddy!), Android stood on the shoulders of giants as well.
All I wanted to express yesterday was this: I underestimated just how large the influence has been. These new screenshots constitute new information, and since that article of mine is being quoted all over the place in discussion threads, I feel the responsibility to address this new information.
My original point still stands: Android was designed, from the get go, to be a versatile platform, capable of running on many different kinds of devices. It made perfect sense for early Android to focus on device form factors that were popular at the time, without actually mandating any specific form factor. In fact, at that time, Google had Android running on three different form factors (a detail certain folk happily omit), obviously focussing on the most popular form factor at the time.
When the preferred form factor changed (thanks to the iPhone), Android adapted – just as it was designed to do – and started focussing more and more on just touchscreen support, a process it’s still busy completing. The Android specifications from that time illustrate this perfectly:
Touchscreens will be supported. However, the Product was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption, therefore a touchscreen cannot completely replace physical buttons.
Back to my original article:
Android was never intended to run on just one form factor. Android runs on everything from candybar touch screen phones to qwerty-phones, and everything in between. Heck, there was a race to get Android running on laptops, and even before Android was well and ready for it, it was dumped on tablets.In other words, unlike iOS, Android was built to be flexible, and run on many sorts of devices, with different screen sizes and form factors. Hence, it is only natural that during its development, Google used various different form factors to test Android on – the first SDK release, as well as the first promotional videos which coincided with said SDK release demonstrate Android was being prepped to run on several form factors.
This all is still very much true, and in fact, has only been reinforced. The usual suspects omit the information about how Android clearly supported multiple form factors from the very beginning, as they are trying to construct an alternate reality where Android was 100% strictly a BlackBerry clone (despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary) until the iPhone was released, after which Android copied the iPhone in its entirety.
All the information we had, and the new information from this week, paint a very clear picture: Android was designed from the very beginning to support multiple form factors, including touchscreen devices. Since BlackBerry-like devices were popular at the time, this is what Android focussed on during its earlier development. When the iPhone came out, the landscape changed, and Android responded by focussing more on its touchscreen support.
I underestimated just how much Android focussed on the BlackBerry form factor during its early days, and as such, I underestimated the influence the iPhone has had on Android’s development. Android’s big shift in form factor focus was caused by the iPhone, and I would say that’s a pretty big amount of influence.
Rests me to say that as far as I’m concerned, this subject has become quite stale. People with a proper sense of history know by now just how much the iPhone, too, builds on that which came before – most notably PalmOS, and to a lesser extent Windows Mobile PocketPC CE Second Edition Embedded Compact Standard XP RT – and that this is exactly how the industry is supposed to work. I’m happy Android adapted to the changes brought on by the iPhone, and I’m happy Apple is adopting features from Android.
Most of all, though, I’m happy that both platforms were able to stand on the shoulders of giants, building on two absolutely fantastic platforms, which were far, far ahead of their time. History is repeating itself, and we now have two hugely popular, very different platforms that serve the needs of so many people.
I just don’t care anymore. I love how much my parents love their iPhones and iPad, and I love my own SII running CM9/ICS. There’s something here for everybody, and let’s hope that, despite the efforts by Apple and Microsoft to hold this industry hostage, we will continue to be able to enjoy this much diversity.
The topic is definitely getting stale. Obviously, the iPhone had a big influence on Android development. And no doubt, the iPhone took inspiration from devices that had gone before it, and has itself ‘borrowed’ features introduced in Android. Basically, everybody is copying everybody. And that’s all cool.
Now, can we stop the pointless flame wars about who copied what from who, and who did/didn’t innovate? These types of conversations always degenerate to Apple copying the GUI concept from Xerox, and it just goes ’round and ’round.
Enough already.
Edited 2012-04-26 22:21 UTC
+1.
The problem here is that this stupid patent war going is fuelling this absolutely stupid flamewar. Kill the patents, that’s how to stop it.
Well, that’s more about money than anything else, so let the lawyers fight that shit out in court. Of course, Thom is going to post at least 5 articles a week on the subject (even though I wish he wouldn’t), but that doesn’t mean people have to fight about ‘who copied who’ in the comments.
Big winners from software patents:
1) patent trolls
2) patent lawyers
3) computer industry is at a net loss for software patents. More claims have been paid out of the industry than royalty revenues are bringing in.
Top group blocking patent reform in Washington – patent lawyers.
I surprised myself yesterday when I decided on the spot to bid on a refurbished Motorola Admiral on eBay. I’ve always felt the BlackBerry Curve/Bold form factor was the superior one for smartphones, though I’ve never loved the software on RIM’s devices.
I’ve since been outbid and it’s now out of my budget range, but I am really considering an early switch to that phone if I can find one third-party at an affordable price. I don’t particularly care for MotoBlur based on my experience with it on the Cliq, but from what I’ve read it is much improved on modern devices, to the point of actually being usable.
There’s just something about the marriage of a Qwerty keyboard with a touch screen on a candybar form factor that just feels right. No more having to slide out the keyboard, and the Admiral is rugged enough to withstand the typical hard life I condemn my phones to.
So yes, I’m glad Android experimented with all the different form factors back in the day! It leaves us with even more choice when we decide on that software platform.
Agreed, that’s why I’m still waiting to be able to get a Samsung Galaxy M Pro B7800.
Did you know you didn’t actually save any characters by typing “’round” instead of “around”?
The Apple side proponents state is that GUI and interaction patterns are genuine intellectual property that a company can own. From that point of view these are Apple major inventions and contributions to the sate of art (more important than core OS technology) and any producers that featured big buttons, kinetic scrolling, pinch to zoom and swipe after Apple have simply stolen them. The fact they didn’t share any core technologies, algorithms is irrelevant. So the crux of argument is that Android deprived Apple of design IP more that any classical computer related stuff. The fact that apple has created the first successfully touch only hand-held device (asserting it’s true) is thought to prove their ingenuity.
Edited 2012-04-27 16:31 UTC
I think what is obvious from here is: Android design was simple enough to adapt to the new landscape better and faster, while everyone else struggled to release anything that would address finger touch orientation.
The fact that Android essentially had no legacy code base to try to move to a touch platform made it much easier. Microsoft was worried about keeping the PocketPC / CE apps going, RIM had their Blackberry users, and Nokia had their base. Adding fundamental touch support without screwing over existing apps where UI interactions were designed totally differently (interface elements too small to touch effectively) because of the working assumption of a keyboard, buttons or stylus – not as easy to respond to. Look at Microsoft’s final answer: drop the old mobile OS entirely.
From Thom’s original article: “In other words, unlike iOS, Android was built to be flexible, and run on many sorts of devices, with different screen sizes and form factors.”
The fact that Apple optimized their specific UI for a more controlled set of sizes and touch input certainly doesn’t mean the OS is somehow less flexible. If you mean the UIKit framework, sure, that assumes a touch interface – but the core of the OS has made it from NeXT workstations to current desktop machines, laptops, and phones and across quite a few CPU types to boot, and the lack of multitude of screen sizes had more to do with Apple not making 15 product variants because they didn’t think it made sense.
Apple TV runs iOS. iOS handles non-touch input just fine.
iOS – UIKit specifically – doesn’t have event processing at the SDK level for mouse or key events, which makes perfect sense since it’s designed for a touch interface – mouse movement/clicking and key handling isn’t the same as multi-touch.
I’d encourage you to take a look at how the iCade SDK has to work around the missing key events to get joystick and button events into games that support it. (Start with a hidden text field’s delegate and go a bit downhill from there since that delegate doesn’t know about ‘key down’ or ‘key up’ either…)
Again, that in no way makes iOS less flexible since it’s a UIKit design question, and having mouse events – or in 99.9% of the time keyboard events – in UIKit would needlessly complicate event handling, but it’s a stretch to claim it handles all kinds of input equally well.
If you weren’t working for Android at the time, its pretty difficult to jump inside their heads.
I’m not at all surprised that they focused on more conventional designs at the time. Because, for years, the rumor was that the google phone would be free and advertisement supported. Free phones wouldn’t have the most expensive parts.
This is all I can find dating to that period, but its typical of what I remember.
http://www.newser.com/story/8418/google-phone-rumors-build.html
So, how is Cyanogenmod 9 in the end ? Would you say that it’s worth an upgrade from 7.2 already, or are the stability or the feature set not yet there ?
You did write about it earlier, but you had only been using it for two days at the time. You also said you were working on a review at the time.
Edited 2012-04-27 07:23 UTC
I said I’d be doing a review once it hits final. It’s still pre-alpha, so no review.
It’s doing just fine. Battery life is four days, everything but the FM radio works (FM radio will never work, too proprietary). Zero crashes, superfast, better than anything else I’ve ever used on a mobile device.
Edited 2012-04-27 08:53 UTC
Which phone and ROM ? Galaxy SII & CM9 ?
FM Radio is working on that combination now with my app “Spirit FM”.
See my XDA thread for a link to the free version, and all the info & Q&A you can handle.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1059296
If you Google “Rests me to say that” you’ll find that the phrase is mostly used by Dutch people — just saying…
Considering I’m Dutch, that might make sense
.
I don’t think this phrase makes sense to people who don’t speak Dutch though…
I understood it just fine, and I’m a dumb American, as the sentiment goes here. It doesn’t take much in the way of reading comprehension to decipher an idiom from another language, given proper context.
Apparently when we sold New York (Nieuw Amsterdam) there was a vote what the official language was going to be. English edged out Dutch despite most people over there speaking Dutch.
Imagine if Dutch had become the official language of the States. All those cool sounding names (at least to us) would have become silly sounding ones. That silliness causes me to set all my devices to English.
Firstly, this is actually a common myth. Secondly, the common myth states it was German (Deutsch), not Dutch (which is actually a misappropriated name anyway.) – though looking at Wikipedia, is seems there is a Dutch version also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhlenberg_legend
Edit: and the “Dutch” spoken in Pennsylvania is actually German, just so that we are all clear
Edited 2012-04-27 09:43 UTC
German would have been even worse anyway!
Despite it being a myth it did make some sense, as I assume a lot of Dutch lived in New York as it was Dutch before we got rid of it.
There is even a farm that bears my family name, although my family name isn’t Dutch while I am.
It’s always romantic to believe that your language or culture drove some bigger picture. We English like to cling to that – though the US cherry-picked the best parts of our language and culture (as well as any other culture they could) and then made the rest up on their own.
To us Dutch English words sound very cool. Should you translate them, for example movie titles, to Dutch it sounds very silly.
When I grew up all computers were English. Later localized versions of operating systems appeared, but this made computers less cool, so I stuck with English which I was used to.
Translating English to German makes it sounds even worse than Dutch worse for us, translate it to French almost nobody knows what is means.
Belgians do seem to like to pronounce English worse as Dutch words, which is very funny to us.
Ha, you Dutch find the way we pronounce Dutch words funny anyway, doesn’t matter if they’re English from origin, ps the relationship is reciprocal :-P.
It’s just a PITA to change pronounciation style when using a word from another language. When speaking French I pronounce the technically English words as French words (as French do as well), when speaking Dutch I pronounce them as Dutch words. Usually it’s the ‘R’ that’s intervening with changing pronounciation, considering the Dutch ‘R’ from the Netherlands is more similar to the English one than the Flemish ‘R’ is, it’s not that illogical you prefer keeping the original pronounciation while we don’t ;-).
And we’re darn proud of that fact, too!
Y’all didn’t cherry-pick the best parts of the language, Y’all just trippin’
From what I remember from my grade school us history, there wasn’t a purchase of New Amsterdam as much as the English just sailed in one day and were welcomed as heros by the residents that were tired of the rule of their peg-legged mayor.
Wikipedia, seems to think there were wars fought over it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam#1625.E2.80.931674
From the Wikipedia article:
“After the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in November 1674, the city was relinquished to the English and the name reverted to “New York”. Suriname became an official Dutch possession in return.”
How I, and most people I know, learned it we traded New York for Surinam. From the quoted piece it turns out it was not really a straight trade, but part of a peace treaty.
It does make you wonder why 2 neighbors who have an argument fight it out on the other side of the world.
Better to export your violence rather than inflict it at home so that people who don’t matter can die instead. Cf. Crusades. #westfail
Edited 2012-04-28 07:12 UTC
Thom, I think the biggest thing you need to hold on to is this: Software is all about subterfuge. Software is all about playing a game of poker. I can point out numerous times in my career as a Software Engineer where sales and marketing sold a fictitious feature or exaggerated how complete as aspect of the software was. I have coded a feature in a weekend to meet a deadline created by deceitful managers trying to win contracts or business. It’s just the way the industry works. Create a spec, throw in vague claims and sweeping statements that can be twisted and manipulated, just remember the ultimate goal – success.
This is too funny for words.
Now that its a proven fact what pundits have been saying all along, the subject suddenly has become ‘stale’. How quaintly convenient.
The argument that ‘Android is a versatile platform that is meant to adopt a range of form factors’ is just a cheap scapegoat argument for not having to say “we really don’t have a clue what works and what doesn’t, so we’ll let someone else figure that out for us, and when they do, we’ll make sure we can adapt our tools to play in that space too”.
Is it a coincidence that the Android prototypes looked like a Blackberries in 2007? It sure isn’t. Blackberies were considered top of the hill before the iPhone came along. Nokia and Samsung also copied the blackberry format.