An alternating circus of asymco, marco, and daring fireball all trying to spin everything in the iPhone's favor, each referencing each other as moral support.
I've since decided to stay with Nokia because I've come to rely on the free GPS with downloadable maps. But for people like me who really want to get the best phone for the money, there is a tyranny of choice here and Google/Android phone makers ignore that at their peril.
How do you buy cars?
I don't fall for the tyranny of choices that forces me to believe that just because there are 200 options all of the same insane high value that the insane value is somewhat sane.
New cars only come out once a year.
Cars are very feature/price segregated (on equivalent models).
The phone market isn't like that at all. Smartphone's are only a couple years old. New android devices are coming out at the rate of a few per month (or so). With carrier incentives and discounts you have a choice of 2, 4, 8, etc. phones for the same essential price ($99, vs. $149, vs. $199) are basically the same (when compared to $12,000, $16,000, and $19,000 in the car market).
So yes, there are a lot of cars to choose from. But people have been buying them long enough to know the basics about each manufacturer, they only come out with new models once a year, and they are priced in easily recognizable bands.
Is it just turtleneck and jeans and turkey and swiss on rye everyday?
Again, not the same at all - I've been buying food and clothes all my life so I know what I like and what I don't. There's also the issue that I generally don't spend hundreds of dollars for food or clothes at once so there is a lot less potential regret. But yes, I do generally have a class of food and clothes that I like and those are generally what I buy. And if that $25 of fish I decided to experiment with turns out to be a mistake, I can live with that. For a $500+ phone (remember I want an unlocked phone), that's a risk I'm not eager to take.
I'm not sure how buying a phone is really any different from buying any other kind of consumer electronics -- and I'm guessing everybody on here has been doing that their entire lives as well.
In many ways it's better, I probably won't replace my $2500 TV in the next 5-7 years, but I will definitely be replacing my $500 phone within 2 years -- so if I made a marginal choice my "suffering" won't be so long.
Just do the same thing you'd do buying xyz other electrically powered widget, get some spec sheets, read some reviews, talk to your friends, then go buy it.
And just like with flatscreen TVs or netbooks (another consumer electronics item), the different between top of the line and bottom of the barrel isn't so vast that you'd really be suffering in any meaningful sense either. So long as you avoid the complete crap stuff you'll probably be in the clear.
I can tell you how everyone I know buys their electronics - they generally ask me what they should buy, or they buy the cheapest thing on sale at Walmart. I suspect my experience is not unique.
* but I will definitely be replacing my $500 phone within 2 years -- so if I made a marginal choice my "suffering" won't be so long.*
When I need my phone, I need my phone, so a software bug, or lack of support can have real consequences. A defective or sub-optimal TV is an annoyance. A defective or sub-optimal phone cam have life-alternative consequences. YMMV. And of course in 2 years, the entire phone landscape will change again!
So long as you avoid the complete crap stuff you'll probably be in the clear.
It's more than just avoiding the bottom of the line stuff - there are otherwise well-regarded Android phones that may not be getting updates. It's just one more headache to deal with in the decision matrix that I would rather not deal with.
But to answer your question, it's not the same thing at all, especially in my specific situation. First of all, I have a job that requires a lot of travel, which means I rent a lot of vehicles - those extended "test drives" help a lot in terms of including or excluding potential cars from consideration. There's also the fact that new cars generally all come out at the same time, so I'm not worrying about the "next big thing" coming out next week. Finally I have friends and colleagues who drive a variety of vehicles and I can add their experiences to my decision tree. When I pick I car, I make sure to maintain it to the best of my ability in case I can't find another car I like as much (hence the reason why I've had the same car for 13 years and decided to put $2000 into it for a new clutch last fall rather than get another car).
Smartphones aren't similar at all - like I wrote above, there's always the next hot new phone around the corner which makes me hesitate. I don't have an opportunity to try out most phones since most people I know who have a smartphone generally have an iPhone or a Motorola Droid (yay marketing!) And there's the issue of which Android phone will be upgradable in the future. It may not be a problem for you, but it is a headache for me, especially when I'm dropping several hundred dollars for a phone.
I read the piece and thought it added nothing that hasn't been debated and discussed countless times before.
Yet, the market has spoken, hasn't it? A year ago such was the argument about why Android could never succeed, with so many confusing choices and options against the iPhone's simplicity. Android has done pretty good for itself in spite of that, I suppose. In fact I thought the current angle was "of course Android would do well with so many handsets and so many options".
Does that make any of them wrong? If that didn't happen would that make any of them right? I'm not really getting the significance here. It's the internet. People link to things. You don't have to pay attention to any of them.
Absolutely. And of course people who believe the same thing naturally come together. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. It's how it is supposed to work.
However there is a perspective lens when the posts from the same group are widely propagated, reinforced through repeated assertion. It's an opinion bloc more than valuable or interesting insight.
No one cares when a couple of guys at the bar rabble off about their opinions. When they're, say, Glen Beck and his cohorts of a certain sphere, though, the discussion of course changes because their opinion is propagated widely. Stop the presses: Glen Beck and all his cohorts disagree with something the administration does.
It's similar to the current "browser wars." We're all over-privileged and spoiled to have 4 (soon to be 5) standards-compliant, fast, extend-able browsers to choose from on any platform we want. It's basically just nit-picking and personal preference at this point.
It's the same way with smartphones now. We have dozens of handsets that come in a bunch of different flavors (Android, iOS, Windows Phone) that are for the most part very well designed. We're just as spoiled with them as we are with browsers right now. Isn't it enough that we can all choose our favorite equally-awesome version of a smartphone without having to trash the slightly different competitor and write dissertation after dissertation over-analyzing how the other will fail or is bad (when clearly they are succeeding and a large portion of the market enjoys the product)?
Marco, Gruber, and co: you can stop. We get it, you like Apple. Good for you, not everyone else does. Isn't there something more productive you can be doing with your time?
The Apple defenders have to be so strident because Apple rarely has the high ground in these debates, except perhaps for its Flash position.
The Google defenders have to be so strident because freedom and openness are important but invisible attributes.
No they don't, and I'm not being facetious. They are all Apple Tech Writers, not Tech Writers. They don't understand or care much about technology beyond Apple, so if they didn't glowing pro-Apple articles, they wouldn't have much to write about.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/13/hardware-choice-...
Also, if you're talking about Ryan Paul of Arstechnica, then I certainly wouldn't regard him as neutral. He's an advocate for open source software. I disagree with his stance on many subjects. Doesn't stop me reading his articles though.
To make it clear - If for example Paul went and started telling people on a daily basis that don't use Windows as it gives too much hardware choice, kills puppies, gives your data to NSA, Windows will never succeed and what not - that is totally different than what he does currently - covers open source and may be hints at "you should try this" which is way more reasonable. As far as I know he hasn't done the former.
(See what I did there?)