For starters, you can read Daniel (Fake Steve Jobs) Lyons’ rant about how he’s switching to Android now, because Apple got “lazy”. Whatever. Never thought the Fake Jobs thing was funny. Always knew this turd was an-anti Apple dillweed, anyway. (Most Apple fanboys fail to realize that, for some reason.)
Let’s recap why literally dozens of nerds are prophesying Apple’s demise:
Google announced a TV product that crashed so hard, they had to ask the audience to shut off their phones to try and get the network going so it would work.
Android 2.2 (Froyo) was announced. Big feature: it’s faster than the iPhone at Javascript. (I just know my mother is going to be in line for a Droid once she hears that.)
Flash on Android is still beta, but it was demoed for the first time without completely crashing. Reports from beta testers are that it heats up your phone enough to cook an egg on it, and it sucks your battery life to nothing in minutes. Well done, Adobe. Keep proving Apple right on that one.
Android will now support tethering. Hmmm. Think Apple has had that covered for a year now, though not in the US, thanks to AT&T. But I guess the rest of the known world doesn’t matter.
Android will now allow you to purchase music over the air directly onto your phone. Hmm, thought I’ve been doing that for a few years now on the iPhone. It will also let you stream music from one of your computers to your phone. Ahh, got me there. Apple doesn’t do that directly through iTunes. But there are several apps for that.
Apps? What are apps? Android people don’t like to talk about that.
As far as I can tell, that’s the crux of yesterday’s big announcement day. Android 2.2 will be faster at Javascript, and some Flash sites will work eventually, though you’ll probably kill your battery in the process.
And because of this, Lyons claims that “Apple is now chasing Google.” And Google is “blowing past Apple in terms of the technology it’s delivering.”
He also states flatly, as if it were a fact, that “Android OS is already outselling iPhone OS in the United States.” Fact: Android, in its best quarter ever, outsold an historically slow quarter for the iPhone OS—once. That’s a far cry from “is outselling”. It’s also of little significance, since Apple’s iPhone sales are still growing in the US, which means Android isn’t taking customers away from Apple. When Android grows at Apple’s expense, then it will matter.
And worldwide, iPhone is simply killing Android.
This would be funny if it weren’t the general mood of the press today. Lyons is far from alone in thinking that Google actually announced something of substance yesterday. And several people are literally suggesting that Apple needs to catch up or be left behind.
What?
The Google TV thing is maybe something to get excited about. I don’t know, because I couldn’t stop laughing at the fact that the demo FAILED so epically. Seriously, you’re a billion-dollar corporation; you might want to test out your demo at the facility the morning before the announcement, guys.
But Froyo? Let’s get serious. Here’s a list of why Froyo won’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things:
- It’s called Froyo. Say what you want about Apple using names like Leopard, Tiger, Panther. At least people know what a Leopard is. And using names instead of numbers is actually really good marketing, granted that people are familiar with the names. And yes, I understand that Froyo is an internal code name, but when you use it in your slides during your presentation to the world, that makes it very public. Which means Google thought it was good marketing to make that name public.
A name like Froyo tells you all you need to know about who will be excited about it: Dungeons and Dragons nerds. And no one else.
Let me explain something about hard core nerds. They write all the important code in the world. They are responsible for all the great technology we enjoy. I love them dearly, and I’m grateful every day that they are out there, in basements, coding away. But they couldn’t get a girl to buy a Droid if their lives depended on it. Froyo, as a name, has zero chick appeal. That alone will prevent Google from ever overtaking Apple at anything important.
I’m being a little facetious, of course, but my point is that Google sucks at marketing. It really does. And bad marketing hurts sales.
- The big feature is faster Javascript performance in the browser? Ok. I’ll admit, speed is important. But it’s only important as a comparison point if your competition is perceived as slow. “They are slow and clunky. We are fast.”
The problem is, you never hear anyone saying: “Man, my iPhone is really slow.” You’re even less likely to hear that said about the iPad. Apple is about two weeks away from announcing an iPhone that runs on the same faster processor as the iPad. With the small screen of the iPhone and the fast processor of the iPad, the new iPhone should scream. And likely that new iPhone will ship before Froyo does. Which leads me to my next point.
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Froyo isn’t out yet. By the time it gets released, Google’s few days of press coverage will be long gone, and the world will be gaga for Apple’s new iPhone again. Apple wins the media war—always. Not because the press is full of Apple fanboys, either. Quite the contrary. They win because they are better at it than anyone. And because their demos don’t tend to blow up. And their keynote presenter is actually good at public speaking. And because they don’t name things Froyo.
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Remember the Pre? All this doomsday stuff about Apple sounds familiar to those of us who have been paying attention for a reason. This time last year, Apple was supposedly doomed because of Palm’s WebOS. We all know how that turned out.
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Who will get Froyo when it finally does arrive? Most Android users aren’t able to upgrade their software. Why? Because the carriers won’t allow it. Say what you want about Apple being tied to AT&T. I hate it as much as the next guy. But at least Apple was smart enough to negotiate free updates to users at Apple’s discretion. When Froyo is released, Nexus One users who paid full price for a non-contract phone will get Froyo right away. Verizon users will wait months, most likely, before they will be allowed to download it. The bulk of the rest of the Android community, including many people who bought their devices within the last year, will be left with crappy old versions of Android, and thus never get any of the excitement of Froyo. Which means they won’t be proselytizing Froyo to their friends and families, either. More likely, they will be pissed at Google for not giving them all the joy that Froyo offers. Good way to breed loyal customers, Google.
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The Flash war is already over. Google wants that bullet point on its marketing materials, but it’s not going to matter to the masses. My mother won’t care about the fact that some Flash sites that don’t use the latest in Flash code will eventually work sometime in the future on Android. She doesn’t know what Flash is.
When an iPhone user gets to a site on an iPhone that doesn’t work because it was written in Flash, she’ll blame the site, not the phone. When the battery on an Android phone dies in a few hours because of Flash, he’ll blame the phone, not Flash. That’s the way it works. Users don’t know enough to care, and they blame whoever is perceived to be at fault. That makes it your responsibility, as the one that will be perceived to be at fault, to fix it, even if it’s not directly your fault.
- “Walled gardens” produce better products. Google’s garden has pretty big walls, too. And at the end of the day, users don’t care about gardening or masonry. They like to smell the pretty flowers
So Lyons and a dozen other nerds can drop the iPhone if they want. It’s not going to matter to Apple. Lyons would call it arrogance that Apple thinks they can afford to lose him. I call it naive to think that Google is going to win more than a few sales with a Javascript speed shootout.
The fact that Google’s ENTIRE presentation yesterday was made up of jabs at Apple should not be taken as a good sign, either. If you’re doing well, you barely need to mention your competition. Show me some real innovation, Google. I’m not seeing anything remotely revolutionary here. All I’m seeing is you running scared and losing focus.
Do I need to remind people that Google has had three MAJOR FAILS in the last nine months alone? Wave is DOA. Buzz is going nowhere fast, despite the fact that Facebook has no regard for user privacy. And the Nexus One experiment failed miserably.
Apple has had nothing but record quarters during a recession, has launched three amazingly successful products (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) on a unified platform, overtook Walmart at music sales and stayed there, made inroads into eBooks, created the App Store ecosystem, and increased Mac sales tremendously in the process. And its retail division is still growing, too.
In the face of all this success from Apple, praising Apple is considered being an “Apple fanboy.”
In the face of all this failure from Google, criticizing Google is considered being an “Apple fanboy.”
Gotta love that double standard.
Google is a one-trick pony that succeeded at one thing once (search/ advertising) and has failed at pretty much everything else it’s tried lately. So while Google TV might be a great product that I’ll certainly watch with interest, I can’t say that it’s a safe bet, by any stretch of the imagination. And Froyo? Beyond helping Google further crush Microsoft’s mobile plans, I can’t see how it’s going to matter at all.
