I don’t get the whole iPhone 5 hate, really. So they fell flat against the hype and rumours and yada yada, big deal. Blame Steve for setting the bar so damned high for gadgets worldwide that his successor can’t even keep up. So Apple is now reduced from “greatest thing ever” status to “one of the best smartphones around” status.
Hey, the iPhone 5 is still a pretty frickin sweet phone; it’s faster, thinner, lighter, has widescreen and LTE and all that – AND has the ultramassive App Store behind it. After all, that’s what we all want, don’t we? Awesome quality apps that almost never make it to Android? No? Okay maybe it’s just me.
As an Android user with root and custom ROMs and all that, it sucks that the best looking and best functioning apps ALWAYS get on to iOS first, and most never get developed for Android. Why? It makes sense for developers, really.
I quote from Why Apple iOS and not Android is developers’ favourite:
Take GameHouse, a maker of games such as “Doodle Jump” and “NCIS the Game.” It makes three to four times more revenue on an iOS title than on an Android game, said Ken Murphy, a vice president at the company, which is part of RealNetworks Inc.
It’s also not as easy to charge Android users for apps as it is on Apple (AAPL) devices. With iPhones and iPads, owners’ credit- card accounts are already stored on iTunes, which makes app purchases simple. Android doesn’t have the same mechanism for all its users, Farago said. “Consumers are more trained to get free things on Android,” he said.
“Developers can make more money on iOS,” Farago said.
Also, a report from Localytics shows that iOS apps are used way more than Android apps. So it makes sense for developers to continue making apps for iOS over Android – and as an Android user, that is really frustrating. The same reason why people use Windows over Mac, and why Nokia is losing so badly even with awesome hardware and UI – but that’s another argument for another day.
Bottomline for me as a non-fanboy either ways: A smartphone is a piece of hardware. If it’s smooth and fast, and has great UI, hey that’s good enough, right? And if I have quality apps to choose from (regardless whether I buy or otherwise), hey that’s the dealmaker.
But apparently fanboys just have too much pride to get along with the other team.
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Just a note, this is based on the preference of app library over specs. Addressing that, a non phone gamer such as myself who only uses a handful of practical apps has no need for a vast library. Also, for newcomers to the iPhone market, it might be worth the upgrade, but for iPhone 4 or 4s users, it makes little sense to embark on this sidegrade, rather than simply continuing to use their current phones. As we all know, common sense is so rare its a God damned super power.
It’s not so much of the vastness of the app library that I’m going for, but rather the significant *quality* of the apps. Also, since there are many apps that do pretty much the same thing, iOS users get to choose the one which suits them best, again upping the overall quality of apps. Indeed there is no point to upgrade if you’re a practical user, just like how I’m not upgrading to the Galaxy S III though I use a 2-year old Desire HD. But it doesn’t justify all the hate towards iPhone 5 that I’m hearing about, really – litigation wars aside, that is.