Andy Ihnatko Switches to Android
At some point in his lengthy, three-part article at TechHive on why he switched from the iPhone to Android, Andy Ihnatko says, “This isn’t the story of why Android is Way Totally So Much Better Than iOS. This is the story of this one dude who switched phones. Andy Ihnatko moving to Android isn’t a pivotal moment in the history of mobile computing.” No, it’s not, but Andy’s piece is still an utterly rational, carefully presented, well argued, and nicely supported explanation of how Android is legitimate competition for the iPhone, even for serious users. That’s a good thing — strong competition is the rising tide that floats all seaworthy boats.
Competition is not simply a benign force that "floats all boats." Some boats sink in the rising tide, and that's a good thing.
'Utterly rational' says this:
"The Galaxy S III's screen has roughly the same pixel density as the iPhone 5 (they're both greater than 300 ppi). . . A movie or video is large enough that I feel as though I'm seeing all of the rich HD detail I was meant to see."
You guys need to get away from those phone and visit a movie theater. Or maybe visit the Grand Canyon - the real one, not the virtual one.
What I find interesting about this is that the reasons that Andy gives for wanting to move to Android are exactly the reasons that I do not want to move to Android.
I would also add that I don't want to run Android because I do not want to spend time worrying if something as critical to my life as my iPhone might have malware on it or if I should run anti-virus software, or if I need to manually manage running apps.
And I look at this as similar to the decision in the 80's over Mac versus DOS and in the 90s of Mac versus Win95/98. Do I want to work ON my computer, or do I want to get work DONE on my computer. Every time I have to tinker with something, that is time I'm not doing something productive. I spend enough time not being productive already.
I'm speaking only hypothetically here, since I've not used an Android phone for real, but I think I feel somewhat the opposite. I decide what I want to do on my devices, then I set about figuring out how to do that. To get my work done requires capabilities that Apple doesn't consider important, so I always have to go beyond Apple's defaults. Sometimes there's an app for that, but often there is no single solution and I have to put together a system that accomplishes my desired task. So tinkering is an absolute necessity for me, in the traditional sense of the word, as being what a tinker does (mending and creating appliances).
In the end, reliability is less interesting to me than the productivity boost of using my system. Reliably unproductive is not a help, and I'm willing to tinker with my systems on occasion to boost my productivity when they are functioning properly.
I agree with Lewis. Android is a confusing mess to me, and I've seen a lot of them. Not everyone wants a big huge phone in their pocket, I really don't like the Galaxy for that reason, and it feels cheap. As an Apple fan hate to see Google and Samsung do the same as Microsoft did in the previous decades, serving as copy machines. It is easy to innovate if you let someone else create 95% of the look and feel of both hardware and software..
I've enjoyed Andy's comments and found that they echoed some of my own, especially when he describes the Android ability to pass information from one application to the next. Like Andy, if I COULD do this on my iPhone, I would, many times each day. I also agree that it's time for a larger screen. I've held the Galaxy III and it looks and feels fine. I do a fair amount of reading on my iPhone, and it's starting to feel too small. And no, I don't want to carry my iPad. I want my phone to provide a good "opportunistic" reading platform. And lastly, and this is purely subjective, the iPhone is starting to "feel" stale to me. I own and love a 4S. It's a great device, but I feel no great drive to wait for a 5S that is merely faster and taller. These are the particular two "new" features that matter most to me, and they're not enough to keep me in an iPhone. LTE ... perhaps. But for now, I'm leaning to Andy's point of view.
There are, absolutely, things that Android can do that iOS cannot do that I would like. Passing information more easily is one of those things, I wouldn't mind having an NFC chip either.
But I am not willing to give up the reliability and security of iOS. So I will wait and hope that some of those things get added.
The other thing, of course, is that I do not want to buy many hundreds of dollars for Android that I already own for iOS. This may not be that much of an issue for Andy, but it is for me.
Once again Andy is proving not to be the greatest source of good tech information.
That's a pretty broad statement that needs support. Can you point out any factual errors, rather than places you might simply disagree with Andy?