My wife has a Droid and now my daughter has the Verizon Galaxy-S Android phone (Fascinate I think? Not sure of the name).
While I find the Droid to be rather primitive, the Fascinate seems to offer a pretty "iPhone-ish" user experience out of the box.
Until you try to start putting your music and videos on there. My daughter has been an i-something user for years now and has purchased several hundred dollars' worth of music and videos from iTunes. Yes, we are one of those strange families who believes in paying for our music/videos. Unfortunately, she went to drop all her music onto the Fascinate only to find a) iTunes doesn't recognize the device (no surprise there) and b) DRM-protected music won't port over there. Home-ripped MP3's are fine, obviously. There are workarounds like DoubleTwist that will let her move her ripped MP3's and movies over but they are just that...workarounds from her perspective. She has to work to get around Apple's "not invented here" mentality -or- Androids "We don't do Apple" mentality. Pick whichever side you want in the argument there....the consumer loses when companies can't make their tech work together.
Since the entire family is slowly moving away from Windows anything to Mac's, this is the localized 'net effect' value of having all Apple products. Everything works together, no fuss, no issues. So the Androids in the family, while interesting diversions from a hackability perspective, really just don't "work" very well for us. Everything we do auto-magically on the iPhone requires a kludge workaround or crude substitution on the Androids.
And I think thats where I land on Android phones. Its a far more open architecture and for someone who enjoys hacking and fooling around with technology, I think its a great substitute for an iPhone and iOS. But if you just want it to "work" for you, plug and play stupid-simple, nothing beats Apple products talking to other Apple products. Throw in the curated App Store where all the popular kids (games/apps) hang out and compare it to the Android Marketplace and the differences in the overall user experience becomes even more stark....Apple just presents a cleaner, easier-to-use experience from end to end. This is what Apple is all about. They never have the best hardware, they just have the best implementation practices and this means more to Joe Q. Consumer than anything else.
YMMV of course.
While I find the Droid to be rather primitive, the Fascinate seems to offer a pretty "iPhone-ish" user experience out of the box.
Until you try to start putting your music and videos on there. My daughter has been an i-something user for years now and has purchased several hundred dollars' worth of music and videos from iTunes. Yes, we are one of those strange families who believes in paying for our music/videos. Unfortunately, she went to drop all her music onto the Fascinate only to find a) iTunes doesn't recognize the device (no surprise there) and b) DRM-protected music won't port over there. Home-ripped MP3's are fine, obviously. There are workarounds like DoubleTwist that will let her move her ripped MP3's and movies over but they are just that...workarounds from her perspective. She has to work to get around Apple's "not invented here" mentality -or- Androids "We don't do Apple" mentality. Pick whichever side you want in the argument there....the consumer loses when companies can't make their tech work together.
Since the entire family is slowly moving away from Windows anything to Mac's, this is the localized 'net effect' value of having all Apple products. Everything works together, no fuss, no issues. So the Androids in the family, while interesting diversions from a hackability perspective, really just don't "work" very well for us. Everything we do auto-magically on the iPhone requires a kludge workaround or crude substitution on the Androids.
And I think thats where I land on Android phones. Its a far more open architecture and for someone who enjoys hacking and fooling around with technology, I think its a great substitute for an iPhone and iOS. But if you just want it to "work" for you, plug and play stupid-simple, nothing beats Apple products talking to other Apple products. Throw in the curated App Store where all the popular kids (games/apps) hang out and compare it to the Android Marketplace and the differences in the overall user experience becomes even more stark....Apple just presents a cleaner, easier-to-use experience from end to end. This is what Apple is all about. They never have the best hardware, they just have the best implementation practices and this means more to Joe Q. Consumer than anything else.
YMMV of course.
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