Apple and Google have received much publicity over their move into the mobile space. Apple has a very good handset, the iPhone, which combines their usual offering of iTunes with a capable cell-phone. Google has a mobile 'platform', an operating system that anyone can use to create a mobile device. Many such devices have been developed, some with the help of Google, and some independently. In the US, you can get an iPhone with AT&T alone, and an Android with T-mobile, Verizon and Sprint.
While most people see this as a clash of devices, the issue is much deeper: what computers will be in the future, and how we will interact with them.
Let us consider the two devices: a new iPhone versus a new Motorola Droid (an Android phone). The specific Android device does not matter for this argument, pick any Android device of your choice. At the store you compare device sizes, the screen quality, the network quality: AT&T and Verizon in this case. You might compare the user-interface, and notice the programs that come for free with each device.
Both devices are fairly sophisticated computers, hence the term smartphones. Both have increasingly complicated programs which previous phones were not capable of running, like full turn-by-turn navigation, or comparison shopping tools, or full browsers. These are tasks that were earlier accomplished by separate devices. Both can be programmed and software can be purchased for both. In short, both look very much like real computers. Computers that can also make calls.
What is not obvious at the store are very important, deeper differences: while the tools to write programs for both are free, Android applications can be distributed without permission. iPhone applications must be distributed through the Apple store, and only after Apple's explicit permission. I can write an Android program and put it on my website, allowing everyone to download it. Google and Motorola might be blissfully ignorant of this, and even if they dislike my program, they cannot stop me. Apple maintains a draconian control over what programs can be written for the device. Imagine if Microsoft had to power to disallow specific programs on the Windows platform. Imagine if they had disallowed the Netscape browser, because it 'duplicated existing functionality'.
Here's another difference: the Android software runs on many hardware vendors, while the iPhone software only runs on an iPhone device. This is similar to Windows running on Dell, Lenovo, and HP machines, while MacOS only runs on Macs. Apple has sued vendors who try to run MacOS on non-Mac hardware, so it is highly unlikely that the iPhone system software will run on anything except an Apple iPhone device. If you want Android, you could get it from many device makers: HTC, Samsung, Motorola. For an iPhone, you must get Apple.
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