Good alternatives to iPhone - Page 4

There really isn't any phone out there that can match the iPhone, sorry dude. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go whip myself 100 times with an ipod cable and pray to the mighty Steve Jobs, he who brings light where there is darkness.

Unless you want any of the many things that the iphone is perfectly capable of doing but apple has decided to block from the app store after someone has put in the hard work to write an app that people actually want.

Android is a little bit more free (more so if you are fine running unsigned apps that are not from the store)

Well that's true, in a way. Android Market currently has about 20 000 apps while the App Store has over 150 000 apps! So to claim that one would choose Android over iPhone because of the apps available is just ridiculous.

such an interesting anti-Apple argument there. Apple has long long loooong espoused the argument that 'why do PC people need all those application choices when we bundle the seven things you need to be able to do and do well with each and every Mac purchased'...and now of course they sing the praises of the wide availability of applications for iPhone as a selling point. Not picking on you particularly there Patrician, but I do find that fascinating.

My favorite iPhone-like smartphones are the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, and the Nexus One. Both are awesome devices...

...but I still like the iPhone best (sucks for me since my carrier doesn't have it available).

That is not what they were saying - what people were saying is "why do you need 30 apps that do the same thing, but they all suck."

No. Does that adequately answer your question?

dl

Exactly my point....you want to hazard a guess at how much duplication there is among the 150000 iPhone apps?

Why would there be more duplicates (in per cent) among iPhone apps than Android apps? Let's say that 20% of the apps on App Store has no duplicates and that we remove the remaining 80% of apps. That would leave 30 000 apps on the App Store. Let's do the same thing on Android Market, remove 80% of app duplicates, oh, that would only leave 4 000 Apps. It's like saying that there can't be two competing drug stores on the same street because one is a duplicate. It's called a free market. This isn't USSR, you know. And sure, maybe it's a cheap trick by Apple to run ads saying they have 150 000 apps on the iphone, but so what? It's true. Did you think companies run ads to be your honest buddy? They do ads to sell, and that goes for Google and Apple. You think it would sell if they ran an ad saying "The App store now has over 150 000 apps, but hey there fellow, remember that only 15 000 of those apps are original, the other 135 000 apps are just duplicates! " Free market equals free competition which leads to more competitors. Isn't it beautiful?

I never said there was, I just think it is ironic that Apple, which for years has trumpeted a 'who needs all these apps when these half dozen will do just fine' now trumpets 'buy an iPhone, where we have a zillion apps' - that's all. Actually when you think about it, they are singing both messages at the same time for different product lines...buy a MacBook, it has 6 preinstalled apps that do everything you will ever need, cos any more apps than that are just a waste of space...and buy an iPhone, where there are 150000 apps that will do everything you will ever need." I was mostly just commenting on the irony of it, that's all. I seem to be spending a lot of time Apple bashing today. This is highly irregular.

Because the idiots who are out there cloning apps are going to target the biggest installed moron-customer base--iphone users. I wouldn't be surprised if the average android user is slightly more discerning in their app purchases (and there are simply fewer android users as it is a newer platform). Just like how there are 80 shitty shareware versions of every good windows app, but mac apps tend to be more polished--I rarely have trouble finding some task that there is not a decent OSX program for, I simply can't find multiple options (Funny how there is that split between apple mobile and apple computers that Matt noticed).

Also, the android app store is more forgiving, apps that apple decides they don't like the look of can still be approved on the android platform. This means that you have things like functional Google Voice integration (google voice is pretty awesome and not being able to use it would prevent me from buying an iphone)..

Finally, the iphone app store has been around longer and was first. This means that they got to be the home of everyone's first attempt at an app--first attempts are usually some mildly interesting piece of junk as someone learns the language/system...Anything popular or with lasting value will have some equivalent on android but Fart Soundz 53 will languish in the app store for all eternity.