There’s only one mobile platform that isn’t a real bore to talk about. Its name is Legion.
My apologies then for wasting a couple paragraphs of precious written language on a couple of contemporary operating systems for (among other things) smartphone devices: Apple’s iOS, and Google’s Android. If the universe truly is a finite phenomenon and one day all life and all matter is extinguished into a warm hum, I’m going to feel even more guilty for spending a little of my brief speck of time contributing to this vast universe on such a dull, pointless topic. I’m sorry to me, and since you’re reading this I’m especially sorry to you.
Apple’s iOS grew from iPhoneOS, which was basically a custom version of the OS X system that runs on desktop Macs. The original iPhone was a phone mashed together with an iPod, and the operating system was built accordingly. The relevant point for this discussion is that like the iPod, the iPhone was designed to be tethered to a PC for the purpose of shifting media on and off the device. This was one of the features that made the iPods so gosh-darned popular in the first place, so it was no surprise that Apple wanted to keep this feature in their new device. So despite the iPhone in essence being a regular old computer running a regular old OS, the system was designed to work differently.
The Open Handset Alliance’s Android, formerly Android Inc’s Android, but really Google’s Android, essentially came out of nowhere. Unlike iPhoneOS it was not the continuation of a previous product line, but rather a chance for some industry veterans to start again and build the system they wanted to build. So while it certainly had antecedents, it was not tied to any particular model and was free to come up with its own. As such, since its release on publicly available phones it has been a comparitively standalone system, not requiring a PC to tether to for backups, restores, and the like. Much of the personal information (contacts, calendars, etc) was maintained by syncing over the Internet to Google’s servers. Media syncing (songs, videos, etc.) was not handled at all, and was left up to second or third-party solutions.
Two different approaches, each with their positives and negatives. iPhones were much easier to maintain media collections on, with an integrated and automatically sorted media library, and built-in high quality playback software. But in order to maintain the phone, you needed to plug it into a PC. Android phones did not require plugging into a PC to run software updates, and personal profiles could be backed up and restored over the Internet quite easily. But maintaining a media collection was at best a chore when compared to the iPhone, with uneven software selection and often manual media management required.
One of the reasons that these sorts of discussions are as boring (even more so, I’m sorry) as I made out at the start is that partisans will often look at the state of the feature-set now as some sort of constant, and then backfill some grand philosophy about why we’re now in a state of perfection. The iPhone doesn’t need wireless updating, that would just kill battery life and anyway it works fine as it is. Android doesn’t need uniform media management, because freedom.
And then there’s the gloating on either side. Even more dull.
Platforms are not static however, and people who argue with the underlying assumption that they are do so at their peril. With the version 5 release of iOS, Apple has re-engineered their mobile platform to work independently of a host PC. The split that I described above is now altered, such that the iPhone now has superior media management capabilities, as well as catching up to Android as an independent platform.
This came up on Twitter as Apple released its first Over-The-Air update, iOS 5.0.1. iOS users were delighted at the ease of the process, Android partisans were quick to point out that the feature is old hat on their platform, as if fighting the old fight were somehow still relevant.
So what’s my point? I’m an iPhone user and have been and iOS user for longer still. I had an Android phone briefly and was not a fan, but I know several people who have no problem with it, and I’ve no reason to believe they’re not acting rationally. I’m not aiming to point out why iOS is superior to Android in general, but merely point out this one narrow set of features, how many of the arguments that spring from it are foolish, and hopefully hint at why the larger argument, ongoing in so many corners of the web, is such a waste of time.
Also, I want to use a lot of commas.
(Aside: As I said, the platforms are constantly shifting: Google seems to be making an attempt to address Android’s media management shortcomings with their Music service now in beta. Whether it succeeds or not, the attempt is a positive move. Once both platforms have succeeded in implementing these features, they can focus on innovating in new areas. Everybody wins.)