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Comment by thought_alarm | Hacker News Reader

It's all about the carriers.

A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants an iPhone. He'll get an iPhone.

A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants a Windows Phone. He'll probably be talked into an Android.

A guy walks into an AT&T store without a clue. He'll walk out with an Android. It's the most profitable for the carrier, because it's perhaps the only smartphone left that grants the carrier full control over how it's configured and what software is bundled.

Patent attacks against individual Android manufacturers and individual models are irrelevant. Your carrier will always have a wall of indistinguishable Android phones for the next customer to choose from.

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Indded, one of my friends went to buy a windows phone recently, c# dev looking for a phone he could work on.

The clerk literally told him they only have display models and don't hold stock and that he'd been told not to push them. The clerk couldn't even organise for a windows phone to arrive at the store so my friend decided he'd try learning obj-c and walked out with an iphone 3G (as said dev is a jaded ex-java enterprise programmer and hates the language with a vengeance).

Seriously? They didn't have the phone he wanted so he let them sell him something else entirely?

From what I got told he asked which store had one and he was told none of them do, he asked to order one and they said they wouldn't from the store but he could order online. The guy is a grumpy troll of a man so I would of imagined him loosing his temper and just demanding something else. I know his old phone had stopped working so he did have a little pressure to get a phone ASAP, but yep I raised my eye brows as well considering he is a known to rant about Apple (but I assume the hate is less than what he holds for java).

That story is quite hard to believe if I'm honest.

I'm guessing a Windows phone developer would own a windows pc and not a Mac as you say he is known to "rant about apple". Since you need a Mac to develop/publish for iOS would he really buy an iPhone, learn obj-c and buy a Mac just because the store he visited didn't stock Windows phones?

The bit I found hard to believe wasn't that he ended up an iPhone, it was that the store was essentially refusing to sell windows phones.

Anyway just dual boot you're desktop its really straight forward these days.

I recently rekitted my workstation to a i5. To install lion was literally as easy as boot off a USB drive, insert the install lion USB drive, let it do its thing, grab the associated drivers and put them onto your desktop, run the MultiBeast tool. Bingo running OSX.

Your friend should consider doing a full-length blog post about this, naming the carrier he visited. That's a pretty shocking story.

Vodafone New Zealand was the carrier. Store was in Wellington.

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