I for one know it's going to be complete dominance.
Oh, good lord, I certainly hope not. That would suck azz.
As for competing with "iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile" etc...
Those comparisons are due to the delusions of the masses. The same delusions that make them ooh and aah, and jump up and down about how much better piece-of-crap-car-from-ford is vs piece-of-crap-car-from-gm, or visa versa. They've got a pet platform (ford or gm ... or mopar, or whatever), and they just want to keep up with the Jonses, or one-up the Jonses. So as long as their drug-dealer (ford, gm, dodge, etc.) keeps giving them the same crap over again, only slightly better with a slightly different shine on it ... they ooh and aah. Meanwhile, their drug-dealer hasn't done anything interesting nor truly evolutionary (much less revolutionary) in decades.
What matters is not iPhone vs G1. What matters is:
- For you, as a consumer, does the G1, or the Android platform, with its application ecosystem, meet your needs and goals as a personal device?
- For developers, does the SDK give them the ability to develop the apps they want to deliver, and does the app-ecosystem and user base make the platform an attractive target?
- For device makers and Google, is the combination of the above healthy enough for them to meet their goals (device makers: selling devices; Google: ... "changing the world", or whatever their real goal is with Android), such that they keep delivering new hardware and/or android versions?
As Apple showed between 13 and 5 years ago, you don't have to do this by aiming for external goals (like competing with the Jonses named Microsoft and Dell). They looked at "who is our niche? and what do we have to do to retain a healthy market"? They didn't say "we have to make a Windows killer!" (in fact, they said exactly the opposite: Jobs came out and said "the war for the desktop is over, and Microsoft won", and basically meant 'get over it, forget about them, now lets get back to making a better Macintosh'). They said "we have to make our OS better than it was, but still focused on what we designed it to, and focused on what will keep our target market interested in it".
Further, when you look at the products from the 90's that said "We're going to make a Windows killer!" (OS/2, Be, etc.) ... not one of them survived. They had an artificial goal that had them focused externally on keeping up with someone else, instead of focused internally on being their own platform, and refining/evolving that "own platorm" goal. The "we need a (that platform) killer" model was shown to be a massive failure.
Saying "we need to have an iPhone killer!" or "we need to compete with Blackberry" is BS. It's a false goal. What we need is for Android to stick to its actual visions and designs, and refine those consistently and accurately, such that it retains healthy evolution and a healthy (application and device) ecosystem. None of that requires looking over our shoulders at what kinds of pretty candy is on the iPhone.
So, anytime someone says "we need an iPhone killer", or something equally stupid, it tells me that they really don't understand what it takes for a platform to be successful. It tells me that really, they're just jealous of that other platform in some degree (or jealous of the people who are using it), and don't really care about their own platform's health and viability.
So... if someone insists that Android needs "multi-touch", but they can't tell me a reason that doesn't involve the iPhone ... then I dismiss them as not really having a good idea. They're just trying to keep up with the Jonses. They're not really thinking about what will keep Android healthy and alive, and focused on its internal goals and targets.
If someone insists that Android needs "be like a Blackberry or business users wont take Android seriously", again, I dismiss them. They're just trying to keep up with the Jonses. They're not really thinking about what will keep Android healthy and alive, and focused on its internal goals and targets.
If you want to get my attention, tell me what about that specific feature will specifically enrich Android itself. What will it specifically let us do, that we don't do now, and that we NEED to do? How much better is it REALLY (what measures of usability are shown to be enhanced, what behaviors/results does it give us that are consistent with the Android internal goals and targets)? And, most importantly, how does it fit into the vision of what Android is, and should be?
