The problem is that in a capitalistic system, the whole point is an adversarial competition. Maybe they should “play nice” by abstaining from patent trolling each other (*cough* Apple *cough*), but as a whole competition is *good* for the consumer, leading to rapid innovation and lower prices. Playing too nice would lead to identically high prices and very similar and slow-improving features.

Bad license chosed that enable manufacturer to retain code and prevent community to follow google OS upgrade pace (noting that manufacture never cared about upgrade but for short term … all they want you is buy another candy with the new OS version). They should have gone thru GPL with “Classpath exception”, IMHO ! Doing so, any changes done to the Java part of the code (look and feel) can be kept at home, but changes to the core done to make the phone work could not be retained as it is done by now. This would have been quite protective for the manufacturer asset but without compromising with the platform evolution. The current choice is a danger for Android future :(

Perhaps.

But they will know the difference between the phone that has the “edgy” content they might want to consume (political satire, South Park, etc.) and the phone that is bland and boring, which maps pretty directly to open versus locked-down (respectively).

Apple lost the app wars on the PC front years before its marketshare tumbled because of its tight control over the app ecosystem on the Mac. You simply couldn’t get the variety and quality of apps on the Mac that you could on the PC. And even the Mac’s “killer apps” like Quark and inDesign migrated to superior versions on Windows.

These days, using a Mac is a statement rather than a practical choice — even the “Mac first killer apps” are developed for Windows first and then ported. We’ll know iPhone is on the brink of decline when the hottest apps for that platform are ports from Android rather than developed for Apple first.

And that will happen faster than people realize.

Google is playing nice. Apple is the bully.

Still, I wouldn’t call the situation from a few months ago “playing nice”. It was Google blindly submitting to Apple’s will. We need an environment where the two are working together, maybe even take steps to make it easier for developpers to bring compatibility between both OSes. But I’m just being overly hopeful here I know; the knives are drawn now.

1) Most consumers DON’T know the different between a locked-down iphone, and an open Android.

2)What you’re saying about the market being big enough for both, and your analogy of Coke and Pepsi, I AGREE! Just TELL APPLE THAT, and stop with the lawsuits.

“a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers,””

Today Apple feels very 1984 and thinking different does not seems to be all so popular anymore.

Talking about 1984, there are other companies to worry about too though …

Everyone needs to tone down their rhetoric, as this article points out. There will never be an “iPhone killer”, nor does there have to be. Android will be successful or it won’t (I think it will). There is room in the market for Windows and Mac, Coke and Pepsi, Ford and Toyota. There is also room for Android and iPhone. I’m glad that, as a consumer, the various products (in the smartphone OS market) actually have substantive differences and unique advantages, rather than having to choose the pile of crap with the prettiest skin (like we have to do in politics).

The problem is that Apple has nerfed a lot of their products and services. They restrict a lot of fresh ideas and applications because THEY feel it is unsafe, while they do that, those developers switch over to the Jailbroken apps where the same apps do very well, that is a missed market that Apple CHOOSES to drop because they lack the idea of Freedom.

Let us choose what we want to do with out phones. If someone wants to make a modded version of Android with a cool new interface and features…LET THEM, and give me one!! It would only further show the power of the Android OS. Apple is seriously imperialistic, only THEY can make Apple products because apparently they know whats best for their consumers, that being an overpriced and over-hyped hunk of junk.

“Free As In Freedom”