Thinking about buying an iPhone2 is one of the things to do lately, and with the upcoming mobileme there is a whole new dimension to the pondering: should you go for an open standard like Android, and the google side of the street, or for a seemingly open, but appearantly pretty controlled environment like the iphone and mobileme?
I honestly don’t know. I was in favor of an iphone until very recently, when mobileme turned out to be a pretty restrictive thing in terms of interoperability with other online services, that I use (like gmail).
I am a fan of the apple-philosophy – to build few but very good things – and to make your computer run with a well integrated and spectacularly useful user interface. But now I have doubts, whether this approach scales up to web based systems. The apple experience is about a box with perfectly tuned stuff inside. What is the cloud about?
I think it is about integration beyond hardware, and far beyond sticking with a single company to provide you with everything – especially since you trust a lot of stuff into their hands. Unlike for hardware, and my computer box, which just has to run, I would like to be able to use web-based services by lots of different providers in a convenient fashion. I just can’t see a single provider having all exiting ideas – and I would like to try all of them.
So I might as well wait for the second iteration of android phones, and hope that they come with decent hardware.
A piece in Wired describes the story behind Android.
mac the stuff 