Russell Ivanovic comparing his experiences at WWDC and Google I/O. For instance, the differences between Apple and Google developer representatives.
Perhaps it’s just the ones I’ve met at Apple, but I’ve never had this experience before. Our developer rep is a nice guy, but he’s not the least bit technical, and in general I could only talk to him when he contacts me. I say ‘could’ because ever since we’ve had success on the Android platform he’s made it very clear that his services are no longer available to us. Perhaps that makes me bitter and jaded about the Developer Rep experience at Apple, but if you ask me it’s justified.
Seems to be in line with how Apple handles the press. A long, long time ago, Apple loaned me one of the first Intel MacBook Pros. Those models got notoriously hot to the touch under heavy use. I dared to mention in my review that the device would sometimes get uncomfortably warm. Let me just say that it did not exactly go down well with Apple.
Moving on, it’s not just the companies’ employees that have differing attitudes.
One of the first things that struck me was the contrast between the kind of people that attend I/O vs those at WWDC. Granted in both cases I didn’t meet all 5000 attendees, so there’s nothing scientific about what follows. That said everyone I met at I/O was open-minded and tended to work on more than one platform. As such it wasn’t the least bit strange when someone pulled out their iPhone to check something on it. The majority of phones there seemed to be Androids, with the Nexus 5 making up the lions share of the devices I saw. What I’m getting at, and let me put it bluntly if I may, is that it highlighted just how insular and superior a lot of Apple developers act and feel. If you don’t believe me, just join a group of them at WWDC and whip out your Android phone. Within moments, you’ll wish you had whipped out something less offensive, like your genitalia instead.
Apple’s employees seem “overly obsessed with Google”, he notes, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering the amount of time Tim Cook spends bashing Android during a keynote – often with facts of questionable value. This kind of stuff trickles down to lower employees, too, of course.
In any case, this doesn’t exactly seem like a great way to treat developers. I wonder if this will ever come back to bite Apple in the butt.
Android is a free product, so Google are all about friendly and happy and use our stuff!!
iOS is essentially keeping Apple afloat (not quite true, but it keeps share holders and board members in expensive suits and nice cars 😉 ).
When I was at the Google Glass Dev presentation, the demonstrators started out all friendly and nice. Then as soon as I started pointing out flaws in the device they become very cold and defensive. At one point I camera crew started filming me and and asking me questions about how I was finding the experience… I started describing the experience and the Google Guy had the audacity to tell me I had given the “Wrong Answer”…
I guess my point is, companies become more defensive over products that they sell, than products they give away for free 🙂
Such childish behavior for a 53 year-old man.
Apple is trying to replicate the Mac vs PC thing. What they ignore is Android customers are mostly happy with their phones.
The Mac vs PC campaign was questionable too regarding it’s facts, but at least the campaign sometimes echoed what was the general perception of users. But with Android, most people hear the supposed issues Cook mentions and say “What? neither me nor my friends have this problem”.
For example, we all have a friend who had malware problems with a Windows PC. But what was the last time a friend of yours got Android malware? What was the last time anyone complained 4.0 ICS or 4.1 don’t look as modern environments and hence feel the need to upgrade to the latest version?
Edited 2014-07-01 10:17 UTC
That’s what you do when you play catchup and you compare yourself with the best. You try to bring them down to your own level.
Apple are assholes towards their devs.
Google is friendly but wants me to use my real name on YouTube.
So are those alternative devices available in Europe yet?
BB? Jolla?
BlackBerry in a list of alternative OSes…and nobody can disagree. Is Windows Phone also considered alternative or is it “part of the big 3”?
The way Apple mentioned Google and vice versa during the KeyNotes was indeed very telling. Apple was spreading FUD, Google was spreading Facts
(I was impressed by both Keynotes though. Seems like both are moving in the same directions at a very high pace now)
In Germany and Portugal it is surely part of the big 3.
I see people carrying them almost every day.
Jolla is pretty European but still invite only, i think?
wut? you’ve mixed it with oneplus 1 maybe? you can get jolla quite easily…
Well, last time I read about it was Thom’s first review in January, so I may be out of the loop a bit
Jolla mobile phones have been available in Europe for quite some time now.
Reminds me of the first Apple users i have the “pleasure” of interacting with.
Was over IRC, and he was supposed to send me a zip archive.
At the time he was using OS9 or something, and so the file didn’t have a .zip ending. Didn’t go over well with my IRC client, as it was set to block transfers of all but a specific set of file types.
Ended up with a long spiel about how Apple’s resource fork approach was the superior way of doing things.
Anyways. One thing i liked about the latest Google IO, was Google’s willingness to attempt to boot up Project Ara on cam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cV8JDSO1NS…
Complete with a jumper on a wire for power button, and a slider on a wire for what i think is backlight control.
No way this would get past Apple’s marketing/image watchdogs.
You’re right. Project Ara is a terrible idea that doesn’t actually work. But sure, kudos to Google for demoing a product that will never work by showing, quite appropriately, a non-working device.
We’ll see.
It was more about the difference in attitude and willingness to have something fail in public than the technical aspects of what they were showing off.
During the same session they where demoing their latest Tango device, and had to go through multiple cables, tablet, and TVs, to get the demo working properly.
There is a certain air of geeky playfulness over it all.
Probably after you complained about the missing extension? 🙂
About the OS9 time i actually felt this was the only pro Mac argument they actually had that made sense, basing file type recognition on an extension is primitive and fragile. I still regularly encouter web sites that serve broken content-disposition headers resulting in the browser saving a “download.php” or “file.asp” that you need to fix the extension before you can open it, which is especially annoying on a phone.
The world would be a slightly better place if there was a standard metadata format that worked on all file types. Of course if there was it would probably be something annoying to work with like XMP
Complained? Nothing of the sort. Best i recall i simply explained why the connection was refused and got a lecture in return.
As for meta-data, there is always mime codes.
Edited 2014-07-02 16:40 UTC
This is clearly a hit piece for anyone that actually bothered to read the article. This blogger was happy because his company’s app had premium placement at I/O, and got “better SWAG” (2 free watches, etc), so duh, of course he’s gonna love I/O better than WWDC. But you may have missed that. Y’know, words and all.
Did you bother to read the article? Because the swag thing was ONE PARAGRAPH, and the placement was the last PARAGRAPH.
Or do you think you’re a mentalist, able to figure out a person’s innermost reasons from one paragraph out of a much larger article?
Did you notice how Tim Cook made one joke about Android and Thom has been going on about it ever since? I guess everyone has their own pet agenda.
Except Thom’s basically contributing most of the front page content and there’s nothing new to talk about.
For me, it’s not about agenda. There’s nothing wrong with having an agenda. The only thing that matters is whether someone is wrong. And I think it’s wrong to focus on one paragraph as though that was the key to everything.
You clearly didn’t watch the keynote – or any of the previous ones.
Apple is obsessed about Google/Android, just as they were obsessed by Microsoft/Windows before – and the fanboys just trod along. It’s hilarious.
SO you’re saying that it nicely balances out all those pro-Apple hit pieces?
The largest difference I see is Google is continuous improvement, small things, but every 3 months there is a new iteration, a new phone, tablet, or web service that is better in a small way.
Apple goes in leaps. They update products far less often, so they have to jump much farther or do something that redefines the industry. But there aren’t a lot of opportunities for a game-changer like the iPad, or hardware like a retinal display. And those are duplicated in Android hardware in the next (far sooner) iteration.
Sometimes things top-out. Windows XP was the final real improvement to NT. Longhorn was thrifted into Vista, then repaired as 7, and – I don’t know what is with 8. But they aren’t better than XP.
The phones and tablets are in a similar position. You can thin out the fonts, and copy things like a pull down notification or bounce. But we are now getting smaller increments. Different, but not better.
Maybe one or the other can make something which is a phone/tablet and something super special. I wish I knew what it was, but maybe there won’t be something.
IMO, 8 is 7 with a new start menu.
And it seems that 9 will use the presence of a mouse and keyboard to decide if it should show a more 7 like UI or a 8 like UI. And they changed the start menu to incorporate some of the live tiles from 8.