The underdog vs the Chihuahua

Ok, so first of all I've always been a "dogs" person, but this post will be about Apple, yaaay.

Anyway a long time has passed since my last post, it seems everytime I start writing something I save it and decide later it was all horrible and give up fixing it, so I think I have atleast 10 pages of text in my "Drafts folder"

But! let's get to it.

So about a month ago Apple released a new phone, the Iphone 4, So what's new about this phone? well it's definitely faster than the older ones, although I don't think the 3GS was slow, but more speed is always welcome, it has some design changes which I couldn't care less about, and it has a nice screen, however it's still not a OLED screen like the majority of Android based phones are using, but it's a screen with probably the best resolution out there for a phone screen, so that's good, and the only thing that really touches my geek spot. But then comes the turn off that makes me swear once again to never buy from Apple.

Apple, or Steve Jobs proudly presented the phone as magical, which doesn't really bother me that much, just comes off as stupid but yeah he then goes through some of these new features, one of which is the Antenna(most of you probably already knows where this is going). And how it's built into the chassis, interesting but by no means new, and I didn't know there was problems with the old antenna design, but yeah here it comes, the problem is that this antenna is on the outside if your chassis, and Wlan bluetooth and 3G signal doesn't combine well, so if you're left handed, like me, or just have the phone in your left hand and decide to use it like you would a phone, well your hand will connect the antenna for the bluetooth and Wlan with the 3G antenna, signal gets fubar and you drop a call. What was Apples reaction? Well seeing that a lot of the new phones don't have this issue I think the first step was to put something over the part of the antenna that got short cuircuited, not that Apple would ever admit that, but that will become clear later.

first there was the email, of a happy Iphone 4 owner who got a reply from Steve Jobs when he asked about this very issue, the only response from Mr. jobs was: Just hold it differently.

So there was so much of an issue that Apple decided to hold a press conference. Well like a 12 year old who got caught for something bad, Steve Jobs response was basically; But everyone else was doing it too! except they weren't Nokia and RIM(Blackberries) both went out against Apple because Apple in it's attempt to claim that there was no design flaw said that Nokia and Blackberry had the exact same problem(which they never had). And then they went on to claim that there really was no Antenna issue, but if you had bought a faulty Iphone 4 they out of their goodness of their hearts were prepared to give you a free cover, but not because the phone had any flaws...

It's this arrogance and complete disregard of it's customers I find to be so dispicable that I would never support such a company, now you might find it to be a little excessive, but this isn't the first time this has happened, google Mac Screen yellowing, or Timecapsule issues it took the two years to finally start replacing defective Timecapsules, 2 years!? They didn't even fix this problem they just gave you a rubber casing for your designer phone and told you to stop whining.

How anyone would put up with this when there are many alternatives out there is beyond me.

So where does my title come into all this? I've pretty much always been cheering for the underdog to win, in Processors I've always wanted AMD to do better because I feel they usually made great products that was the same quality as Intel, and they are trying to compete with them. While Apple have always been complaining about how big and mean Microsoft is, while it might be pretty true they don't seem to try and compete, They make their own terrible system to try and grab market and they make sure it's completely closed off so they won't have to compete with others. Ok Microsoft have an unfair advantage too and I really hope with forces like Google we will finally see someone break open this closed Microsoft deal, but that's no excuse for Apple to be worse than Microsoft when it comes to be anti-competition,. so as much as I've tried to like Apple, their arrogant attitude just puts me off and makes me hate them more than Microsoft.

And as much issues you might have with Microsoft atleast they seem to try, it didn't take them long to go from Vista to Windows 7, and there are things that Windows just does better than any Linux OS, and that's having performance as well as being user friendly, I try and hope desperately that tomorrow is the day that Ubuntu or someone else gets to run games and flash as good as Windows does it, but the fact is right now they don't even come close. I am currently running Ubuntu on a laptop at home, I keep it updated and all that, but I just can't use it as much as I use my Windows PC, with office stuff it works perfect and I can see them enter the world of offices and servers without problems, but casual surfing and stuff? Not yet.

But yeah to end this on my title, The underdog usually knows he's the small one and will therefore work extra hard for you and deliver you great stuff, while the Chihuahua will just bark it's head off and never shut up, and given the power it would just chew off it's owners face.

My first entry!

You might wonder about the name of this blog? Well I've always had a fascination with the "fights" between tech companies, and today is probably the time we see some of the most interesting "fights" ever, We have Microsoft, Apple, and the mighty Google fighting over the phone market, with 3 different approaches(Well ok MS and Apple's are somewhat the same)

Now I am a little biased towards google, my friends are quick to point that out, but even from an objective standpoint, the Android platform? Genius!

First of all, Although I don't really like the Microsoft CEO, he was pretty spot on when he was on the stage yelling developers, that is the "Food" that will make these phones succesful.

When you hear iPhone, you think, funky programs, like the one that turns your voice into a techno sounding voice, or the program that can recognice buildings through the camera and gives you information about it, Apple didn't make these, developers did. Probably the best example of this evarr is Windows.

Back at school we had a teacher that called Windows for Wintendo, And I like Linux, I try it sometimes, sometimes I feel it's really fast and better than Windows, but then I feel like playing a game, and although you can play games, it will never be as easy or as good as it is on Windows, Now games isn't the only thing Windows has working for it, the whole easy to manage and install part is a big part of it as well.

And now we see Apple moving in and starting to show some powers in the Smart Phone market, everytime I see someone talking about this they point to the App store, wich as I already pointed out what will make a phone like the iPhone succesful.

Now Microsoft is coming out with Windows Phone 7, now Microsoft did something smart, Had they called this the Windows Phone Vista, yeah I guess you can already feel the disgust going through you, never ever would you touch that. So yay for marketing, And they scrapped the old Windows Mobile platform, or any connection to it with this phone, wich again was a right thing to do in my mind, having owned a few Windows Mobile phones and PDA's Yeah it was never good, it's about time we accept that. So let's hope this new platform will be worth something, and they are making sure as many kind of developers can work on this platform, Games with XNA for Visual studio, and you can already make all other kinds of applications in Visual Studio, so they are set for development as well, and yeah I can almost hear Steve Balmer Yell developers..

Now What about Google? well the really interesting thing Google did was to not build a phone, and it's true, Google never built one single phone, Even the Nexus One you can order from Googles website(If you're American!) is built by HTC. All google did was to make a platform that would be used on the phones, much like Symbian, unlike Symbian however, Googles platform is Open Source from the beginning(Symbian did go open source not to long ago). So what does this mean? Well basically, no restrictions for developers, Recently Apple removed most apps containing sexual material, And apparently Apple is very strict when it comes to developing apps for their platform, You won't have this problem with Android, you might not find it at the Google "App store" but there's nothing stopping you from installing it if you can find it. Now it's a golden rule that Porn somewhat controls what will succeed, (Betamax vs VHS anyone?), So yeah when something becomes popular, you can damn well bet there will be some kind of porn for it, TV, Internet, Comics, Magazines, and Cave-drawings(heh), and to push that away, Well as my friend George Carlin would have said: You are JWF and SOL, meaning you are pretty much on your own, I'm no porn guru, and I don't think it would be popular to overflow the App Store with Porn, But that wasn't what was going on. Now you can read a lot of details about the news, and choose yourself what you want to believe.

So with that going for Android, I would say they are definitely set for winning the mobile wars. The other great thing about Googles choice of just making the platform is, if you're a nerd like me, you will want something with the best specs, like the Nexus One or the HTC Desire, both are phones with better screens, better processors and more memory than the standard Android based phone, they are also of course more expensive, And currently if you want like the HTC Hero, you get roughly the same specs as the iPhone.

Now don't get me wrong, I might be biased but I'm not blind, a certain fact is there will be a lot of useless annoying applications cluttering up the market for Android, however time will hopefully sort them out., and I saw a company pronounced Hawaii(Spelled different, didn't care enough to google it) are about to make an Android Based phone, and my only experience with that company is one of the cheapest phones I've ever handled.. And it broke after like a week of normal use. So the "quality" control that Google might have had if they build their own isn't there. That said, I do think that obviously the worst will be sortet out, But of course it will never be perfect.

Now I haven't talked that much about the Windows Phone 7, and it's a little because of the small details there are out on it, Specs looks nice, the thing about Microsofts approach is, they aren't Open Source, but they did do like Android and just make a platform, one of the benifits about the androids approach is it's possible for companies like HTC and others to make a budget Android phone, according to what I can find about Windows Phone 7 that won't be possible, they have very specific requirements, so the benifit seems to be a little gone, to me it looks like they tried to take the best from two worlds and instead ended up with the worst, A closed platform on a phone wich price will be held up by the requirements, and no quality control(It's possible to put good hardware on crappy boards). But we shall see of course, my guess is that the Windows Phone 7 will feel almost awkwardly like an iPhone.

Now I'm actually more of a computer nerd, so this isn't my strongest field, and I have to admit I was very wrong on the iPhone when it came out, I didn't see it as a success and it undeniably have been, my reasons back then was that it had been tried before, i had the Motorola A925, you will see this is pretty much like that, and yeah it was fun for the first week or so, but eventually you got tired of the touchscreen as it wasn't very precise, and being lefthanded it had problems reading my text, when I drew it, but I did try and fiddle a little with an iPhone and that was surely not the problem. So yeah I believe I've learned from some of my past mistakes.

So if you came to me and asked what phone to buy? Well as I do with computers, I make sure to let you know the good and the bad about everything, obviously I would say that I'm more attracted to the Android platform, and would go after some kind of HTC phone with that, but if the possible app quality problem frightens you, you should take a look at the iPhone, the new Windows phone 7 however? Meh, maybe if it's cheaper than the iPhone.

One last thing, I do in fact like the fact that Apple will pressure movie studios and such to lower their prices if they want to sell on iTunes, I'm all for that, but I also like my platforms open.

I hoped you liked this post, I plan to do more, probably a bit more computer oriented, I have a ton to write about AMD and Intel if that should be of interest.

*UPDATE*

I found this article at The Inquirer, I kind of implied that the quality of apps for iPhone would somehow be better, but it seems there isn't that much control at the App Store. Atleast not when it comes to the prices of the apps. Interesting article.

-Kim Leo

Anything