What if the phone came before the iPhone?
What if an online music store came before iTunes?
What if an mp3 player came before the iPod?
See where I'm going with this?
I see what you did there. ^
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What if the android had came first...
- Thread starter Apple-NoEscape
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I see what you did there. ^
I don't think Android could have come first... with Symbian, WinMo and RIM
dominating a market that moved at a geologic pace, I can't imagine any of the
device manufacturers taking a chance on "Android" five years ago. Sure they
could have stuck Android on an existing stylus or physical keyboard device,
but I don't think anyone would have given it a chance.
It took a clean-slate approach like the iPhone to reinvent the segment.
dominating a market that moved at a geologic pace, I can't imagine any of the
device manufacturers taking a chance on "Android" five years ago. Sure they
could have stuck Android on an existing stylus or physical keyboard device,
but I don't think anyone would have given it a chance.
It took a clean-slate approach like the iPhone to reinvent the segment.
No- the hypothetical was what if x never happened... Like what if Germany won WWII or what if electricity had never been discovered... It's use your imagination and logic to draw up a hypothetical picture of what things would be like now.
I'm confused. What is X here? I thought the hypothetical was "What if the android had come first..."
It's functionally similar in the US. Every music download case has been targeted to people uploading. The RIAA/MPAA love torrents because they can sue for uploading, but the public gets the impression that it was for downloading.
What if iPhone had been invented before electricity? What then? I think only Ben Franklin would have had iTunes.
Android got the touch user interface from iPhone, so that would not be the same. Google's strong suit isn't software design, so they'd be stumbling through the same mistakes that Apple has gone through. Also, there probably wouldn't be an app store--at least not to the extent that Apple has made it popular.
Apple would still be fine. Why? They make better phones than the Android phones AND have a better OS.
No, I don't think this would have worked out any differently.
Google and Apple are very different companies from an engineering perspective. Google is all about connecting you to everything that is Google. If they totally had their way, your phone would start ringing when you walked by a restaurant that you've searched once before to spam you with an advertisement for their special of the day. Google didn't START their company with a business plan to make money.
Apple, by comparison, has been in the tech business far longer and, more to the point, has been a publicly traded company with a correspondingly non-dot-com type of balance sheet for decades now. This has always required them to "Think Different" but with at least some sanity in their P&L. They can't be all R&D...they have to create products. And since their inception, they have always been a fairly closed architecture company, focused on developing hardware and software designed to exploit that hardware. A "walled garden" model if you will.
Two very different companies with different roots and different cultures. I've spoken to some members of Google Ventures, their VC arm, and they are still to this day looking for ways to monetize the value of the Google brand. Apple doesn't look for ways to monetize their brand...they look for ways to create new products that do that for them.
So IMHO, it would have turned out pretty much the same as it has. Google, being a software player, has no concept of hardware design w/integrated software. They have no walled garden. They try to wall in the garden thats called the internet, but do so very loosely.
Apple is all about getting you to come into their walled garden...and then closing the gates behind you so you can't easily leave, nor do many want to. Self-induced abductions, as it were.
The game changer for me would have been "What if either Apple or Google had bought Sprint or Cingular or some other wireless provider prior to their rise to dominance?" There's a part of me that, culturally, still remains totally surprised that Apple chose AT&T as their partner for the iPhone. That is just so out of character for Jobs to partner with anyone he can't pull into the walled garden with him and FORCE them to be comfortable living there. When Google launched Google Voice (after acquiring the predecessor GrandCentral), I somewhat thought they were headed that direction. But GV hasn't turned out to be much more than a passing fad for them, like so many of the other things brewing in Google Labs.
Google and Apple are very different companies from an engineering perspective. Google is all about connecting you to everything that is Google. If they totally had their way, your phone would start ringing when you walked by a restaurant that you've searched once before to spam you with an advertisement for their special of the day. Google didn't START their company with a business plan to make money.
Apple, by comparison, has been in the tech business far longer and, more to the point, has been a publicly traded company with a correspondingly non-dot-com type of balance sheet for decades now. This has always required them to "Think Different" but with at least some sanity in their P&L. They can't be all R&D...they have to create products. And since their inception, they have always been a fairly closed architecture company, focused on developing hardware and software designed to exploit that hardware. A "walled garden" model if you will.
Two very different companies with different roots and different cultures. I've spoken to some members of Google Ventures, their VC arm, and they are still to this day looking for ways to monetize the value of the Google brand. Apple doesn't look for ways to monetize their brand...they look for ways to create new products that do that for them.
So IMHO, it would have turned out pretty much the same as it has. Google, being a software player, has no concept of hardware design w/integrated software. They have no walled garden. They try to wall in the garden thats called the internet, but do so very loosely.
Apple is all about getting you to come into their walled garden...and then closing the gates behind you so you can't easily leave, nor do many want to. Self-induced abductions, as it were.
The game changer for me would have been "What if either Apple or Google had bought Sprint or Cingular or some other wireless provider prior to their rise to dominance?" There's a part of me that, culturally, still remains totally surprised that Apple chose AT&T as their partner for the iPhone. That is just so out of character for Jobs to partner with anyone he can't pull into the walled garden with him and FORCE them to be comfortable living there. When Google launched Google Voice (after acquiring the predecessor GrandCentral), I somewhat thought they were headed that direction. But GV hasn't turned out to be much more than a passing fad for them, like so many of the other things brewing in Google Labs.
+1
Couldn't have said it better myself. Personally, I've always loved the "walled garden" business type. Closed systems (i.e. App store) are the best way to filter out the bad (viruses, spyware, etc.), and keep the good.
Well, er... yeah...
I mean like "what if the iPhone was never introduced?" or "what if Android happened before iPhone?" Same thing really... either way, we're speculating as to if Google could've dominated the market Apple has if the iPhone wasn't already available.
People keep ignoring the fact that Google is not, nor has ever been a software company. They are a marketing, research and analytics company who leverages market trend data by exchanging various services... of which; Android is a strategically placed tentacle...
A company who's prime incentive is just to make a product that people like and want to buy will always have the advantage over a company who's product is a tool for an ulterior motive -- the prime directive gets in the way of the product eventually.
You could make an argument that iAds is Apple's attempt to move into marketing- but thus far it's just proved to be merely an effective incentive to bring quality developers to the iOS platform to make free apps.
Apple is facilitating the quality of their product by leveraging advertising incentives.
Google is leveraging the quality of the product to facilitate their advertising business.
What if the phone came before the iPhone?
What if an online music store came before iTunes?
What if an mp3 player came before the iPod?
See where I'm going with this?
what if an eBook reader came before the iPad?
When you look at it like this its amazing what apple has done to the industry!
I don't know what you mean. The iPhone 4 is still the same as the first iPhone in a lot of regards.
It still has a 3.5" screen
IT still has almost the same UI
It still has nearly the same features as the first iPhone, they have just improved. IT is very logical to assume that we would get these features (if more slowly) eventually regardless of competitors.
I'll respectfully disagree. I think you don't understand the Apple user base. That's OK. It's like you hear the sound but don't get the music. I think this is why we see people talk about fanboys, colored plastic, and other such stuff. It's like watching people dance when you can't feel the beat. You wonder why people are flailing about in unison.
The original comment was correct. "It's like asking why can't a unicorn have two horns." Android before Apple would not have looked like it does now because it took Apple to break the mold. It was only a few years ago so you should remember. When the iPhone first came out it was roundly ridiculed for not having a physical keyboard. Now a touchscreen phone seems normal.
If Apple had not made the iPhone then phones today would still look like they did back then. They would all have keyboards and their functions would be controlled by the phone companies and their crippled browsers would suck.