I like the the concept of Android, it’s a good concept, besides the fact that it’s influenced by Google’s decision.

I tried Android once, before I move to iPhone, and I haven’t moved back, because I’m not a Java developer.

Development on Android is not as easy as iPhone, and I’m not talking about which one has the best technology or software development tools, it’s more on ease of use and development.

I’m not sure how do you build OpenGL apps on Android, or how do you use the existing C library on Android, and I don’t know if Android has Core Animation like iPhone ?

Other than that, I still believe Apple has made the right decision by choosing Objective-C as its main programming language for their frameworks. They don’t need their apps to be cross-platform (no need for Virtual Machine, and they have their own market for their hardware), and they use the most convenient OOP I have ever learned so far.

While it is a very popular platform as it is now in almost all Nokia phones, as a runtime for applications it will quickly loose ground to iPhone and Android IMO. I would ignore it as well.

One thing that irritates me is when I encourage people to enrich and expand the unofficial iPhone development community, which has produced several useful software in the jailbreaked iPhone community (The effort by Jay Freeman a.k.a Saurik, etc.), they think it’s an unprofessional activity which they consider as “amateur hacking”.

I guess iPhone users and Apple themselves are not into those device-enhancement, and collaborative development.

Where on the iPhone, the app just adds another service, like a new game, or the ability to make fart noised. You cant do away with the standard iphone apps (as far as I am aware).

Just my 2p!

finishing above ..

Point is the quality of the apps will vary according with the users that are using it. If you got a different kind of user, a younger type, the quality of the app for him will be different from one that is older that can be looking to functionality other than looks.

Symbian = Rest of World. iPhone = USA. The US car industry focused on SUVs and totally failed to compete globally like the Japanese and European car builders.

Now, I tried Fring to be ableto IM. Or Facebook to keep in touch. On my android, I get notifications when I use these apps. On my iPod, I get nothing if the app is not open.

I think people but fart apps because they’re looking for anything to do with their phone, because most everything barely works. ;)

Having both, I use my apps on my android because they work better for me. Multitasking is important!

Of course, everyone generalizes using a single example. At least, I do.

The Cocoa and iPhone SDK is pleasant, so developers like it.

The only reason I don’t go to other mobile device development is because I don’t like J2ME or C++, and their unpleasant IDE / API.

The iPhone is keep on improving at its young age, and if other platforms are still ugly as I see it, I can see a reason of more developers are switching to iPhone, when they got the chance.

Less developers on other platforms, less apps will be produced, so ?

No?

I totally agree with the points you’re making – but what’s up with the M$ stuff? It was probably clever back in 85 when someone first used it – but homie it’s 2009 and well, saying it’s been played out ad nauseum would be the understatement of the year ;-)