I’ve been thinking about the current status of the “iPhone Vs Android” debate. Here’s a brain dump of where I think this is at.
In no particular order

• Android 4.0 is pretty slick. It has taken this long though. The earlier versions weren’t actually that good
• It will continue to get better, but unfortunately progress will be hampered patent spats. Apple are the biggest offenders here. For some reason they seem to be targetting Samsung over everyone else
• Well, I say “some reason” but Samsung are selling a TON of devices. They’re very good devices too
• There seems to be big difficulty in getting Android users out of their obsession with “free”. Paid apps still hugely disappointing when compared with iOS
• But, there’s a strange sense of entitlement amongst Android users. If you’re a known brand and you release iPhone only, you will get a lot of responses from angry Android owners.
• This does not mean it will be worth your while to produce an android app
• Divergence continues to be a problem. Even when you explain, people won’t necessarily believe you
• No doubt about it. If you want big reach, you can no longer ignore android.
• Native continues to give you best results.
• The snake oil salesmen will still continue to flog cross platform solutions. These will continue to suck

Today, we welcome Gavin Rooney into the team. Gavin has studied games development at Carlow Institute of Technology, so brings new capability to the Tapadoo Team. He describes himself as “a games coder/designer”; Brevity seems to be his thing.

Gavin’s working iOS and Android, and is focussing on 2D Graphics, and we’re delighted to have him on board.

To join me in welcoming Gav to the team.

It was reasonably late last night in Ireland when the changes to the Twitter API was announced. My initial reaction was similar I guess to John Gruber’s. I was concerned about what it meant to developers; I thought the matrix in the announcement was very “un twitter”.

But I’ve since calmed. I don’t hate it it that much. Yeah; Twitter won’t be as great as before, but at then end of the day it will either be good enough, or not. I think I summarised it ok in a tweet:

Basically

When the dust settles, if the experience of using twitter affects the benefits of using it I’ll stop using it. If it doesn’t, I won’t.

— Dermot Daly (@dermdaly) August 17, 2012

I think its easier to drill into this with a few bullet points:

• Twitter was never really about the user experience. People came to it for the content. Or more correctly for the conversations
• Great clients like Tweetbot provide the great experience, but using tweetbot is simply a choice I make of a tool to access twitter by. It was never “I like tweetbot so I should use twitter” (that would of course be backwards)
• Twitter are now trying to take control of the client experience, presumably to monetize it
• They have to do this; without monetization twitter would fail, and we’d have no twitter anyway
• The “new twitter” experience will presumably have ads and/or promoted tweets
• Lots of users will hate this
• More users (than the previous point) won’t hate it, nor will they care
• If the experience turns out to be terrible, people will stop using twitter if and only if getting off twitter is more acceptable than seeing ads
• This is unlikely, as we really like the conversations we have there
• Or more specifically, the larger general public won’t leave because Beyoncé (or Justin Beiber or whoever) is still on it, and the main reason they are on twitter themselves

It strikes me that many earlier adopters of Twitter (say the first 5 million users) consider that they own twitter because they were around from the start. They where the ones who explained it to their friends, even when their friends were skeptical. But you don’t own it. And, if it were to continue without appreciable revenue, it’ll be gone anyway. So it is changing.

Unfortunately, the changes are deeper to the seasoned twitterer than newer members. But hey – The seasoned guy is probably harder to advertise to and so forth.

I think the group with the most legitimate gripe is the developers. Twitter was launched with a basic web site, and an API which allowed Twitter to say “Knock yourself out – lets see what you can do”. And developers answered amazingly. There are great apps out there; and this undoubtedly meant that twitter could be available on every browser, desktop and mobile device with no development cost. Those developers did twitter a great service. They are getting the two fingers from Twitter, and this is wrong. (Who’s idea was the arbitrary “200% from today” crap anyway?)

I think this has yet to play out more. It is a calculated risk by Twitter. It may yet get tweaked. I don’t think Twitter will eat itself from within with crappy changes; If something is causing too much of a push back, they’ll alter course.

Twitter’s making their omelette. We’re seeing the inevitable breaking of a few eggs.

Many years ago, Microsoft made a decision to OEM their operating system. It went stellar, and runs on machines built by lots of manufacturers. These machines support peripherals developed by an even larger number of companies. There’s no doubting the success this has led to.
There’s a knock on effect though: Microsoft’s Beta Programmes have to be aimed at this wide audience; Secrecy is pretty much non existent if your beta programme involves millions of people.
So. Microsoft pre-announce early. If they didn’t, their beta programmes would let all the cats out of the bag, and there’d be nothing to talk about.
But when they build their own product, their marketing teams are conditioned by years of early announcements, and see this no differently. They early-announce their Surface product, and with this early announcement, have to leave out the yet-to-be-decided facts.
People’s reactions are are bemusement: When ? How Much?

This is the knock-on effect of the OEM programme.

Many years ago, Apple made a decision to build all of the ecosystem, and keep it internal. It grew slowly, and took years to make the slightest dent in the PC market.
But, this gave them the luxury of secrecy. When you own and make it all, you can ensure people keep their traps shut.
So, when Apple announce their products, they can say things like

“Today”

and

“$2,199″

People’s reactions are then about sprinting to their local Apple store, or reaching for their credit card.

This is a knock-on effect of playing the long game.

Different approaches…eliciting different responses.