Android OS, iPad and Netflix and Dropbox

The iPad created a new computing platform. Nevertheless without the cloud - and apps like Netflix and Dropbox, it would be nowhere as useful.

2010 was in point of fact a transformative year for Android. It's made such a huge leap in the past 12 months that an Android 1.6 phone from late 2009 would be completely unrecognizable. Android 2.3 is a fully mature mobile OS and anybody who feels as even though they can't describe or discuss it except in terms of how it compares to the iPhone OS hasn't been paying attention. 2010 was as well the year in which Android moved from being a niche handset OS to being thoroughly freaking everywhere.

In addition to its full feature set and its unequalled personality, although, 2010 was the year in which Android's role in the mobile industry was when all is said and done clarified and defined for the foreseeable future:

Yes, it's everywhere. It's a successful commercial staple of the industry. Now it's just a basic ingredient that gets processed, flavored, and interpreted by many sets of hands earlier the end-user gets to experience it. And God knows what these processors do to it earlier it's served. Some carve it carefully, stuff it with apples and dried cherries, rubs it with rosemary and garlic, and bakes it to perfection. Others grind it into a course powder, mix it into a slurry with gels and extenders, mold it into a cutlet-like shape, and at that time sell it as a bland sandwich in a nationally-franchised sub shop for a suspiciously-low price.

That's precisely the sort of thing that happens afterwards Google releases a terrific new edition of Android. First, the phone manufacturers adapt it to suit whatever their goals are this quarter and their own idea of what a handset should and shouldn't do. They'll enhance some bits of the OS, cripple others, and throw away some parts in every respect. At that time the manufacturer releases the handset to the mobile carriers, who at once make their own rounds of changes.

Even when the results are wonderful - they often are - the consumer's relationship is with the carrier and not with Google. An even better new edition of Android will be released and it could be months previously the carrier releases a version that'll work with a specific handset. And an updated build might never be released at all, if the carrier feels as although it's time to goad the customer into coming back into the store for a new phone and a new two-year contract.

And we haven't even gotten into the differences in the contract terms for each of these carriers. If the experience is this inconsistent among multiple users of the exact same piece of hardware, try to picture how bad things get when we try to define "The Android 2.3 experience" across multiple manufacturers.

Developers wrestle with this problem constantly. High-performance apps only work so then when the developer exploits all of a device's specific hardware resources. In Android space, a developer has to consider multiple devices in multiple families. Is it any wonder that Skype rolled out an iPhone edition of their new video-enabled chat client as time goes by for New Year's Eve celebrations, and have only announced Android as "a priority for 2011"? If the Android Marketplace stays a pace or two behind the iPhone's App Store every year, this will be one of the major reasons.

Android's big win of 2010 is its explosive popularity. It's surpassed the iPhone in raw international numbers of activated handsets and even if Apple gave a damn about that statistic they wouldn't have any real means to reverse it.

But it was an expensive win. I've stopped seeing any of these gadgets as Android devices. Instead, it's a Motorola phone, and a Samsung tablet, and a Barnes & Noble book reader. Google, and Android, have no perceptual connection to them whatsoever.

Android, simply put, by no means whatsoever presents itself as a promotable feature of these devices. When a consumer sees a phone with the Apple logo on it or a notebook with a Windows 7 sticker on it, they can start off with a basic understanding of what they're getting - the good with the bad. However the statement "this device runs Android" means thoroughly nothing without a lot of furthermore information and hands-on experience. It's like saying that the device is based on Texas Instruments' OMAP 3 CPU, or that the case is made from a in effect awesome kind of plastic.

The worst news about Android in 2010

But that's not the worst news about Android in 2010. The worst news is the phone industry's clear and consistent attitude, proven over a year's worth of great and wretched Android handsets. They consider the Android OS to be a free pile of software that saves them a buttload of development costs. They don't seem to think of it as a something that brings a functional advantage to be praised and extended.

What these companies do to the Android OS is practically criminal. My Nexus One phone runs the edition of Android that left Google Intergalactic HQ. It's Google's vision, unmessed-with. In many ways, it's beautiful. I'm an iPhone user and I envy many of its elements.

And many third-party enhancements to Android are quite splendid. Do a YouTube search for "MIUI." This is a replacement ROM and OS, built by the worldwide Android developer community, available for a selection of existing handsets. It's after all the Android OS, nevertheless it's been given one hell of a makeover that incorporates a lot of the best UI ideas from every mobile OS out there. MIUI shows off the polish, clarity, function, and simplicity that could be on every Android device, if only the carriers and handset manufacturers only wished for those things.

First-time iPhone buyer into a lifelong Apple customer

If Google ever catches up to Apple's ability at turning a first-time iPhone buyer into a lifelong Apple customer, it won't happen until a serious revolution takes place. It'll probably need to be an armed revolution, too; one that replaces Google's hippie, tree-hugging "whatever you guys want to do is fine by us" philosophy with one that defines what a user has a right to expect from an Android device. When you tell your neighbor that you don't care what they do to your lawn, you have to expect to wake up one morning and find that he's dumped a few rusted-out old appliances on it.

But I promise you that Google cares even less about the $2.99 Chicken Sub effect than Apple cares about the iPhone's market share, strictly speaking. Google's whole business is based on inserting as much Google code into as much of your life as possible. From their perspective, a hundred mediocre Android phones serve the company's mission statement better than five superb ones.

The great Android devices are out there

The great Android devices are out there. Consumers just have to work a lot harder than they ought to if they want to find them.

Well, evidently. Apple had a hell of a year. You'd need to be dangerously over-caffeinated to in fact overstate what Apple achieved with the iPad in 2010. They invented a whole new category of computing.

Alright, yes, they did it only in the same sense that they "invented" the mouse-based computer. Nevertheless for cripes' sake: Apple had sold 7.5 million iPads even earlier the holiday season. Everybody's talking about new tablets that HP, Motorola, RIM will introduce at the Consumer Electronics Show. Those companies sure aren't trying to ride on the commercial coattails of 1989's GRiDPad.

IPad for review

Apple sent me an iPad for review and I liked it so much that I bought the 3G model as in the near future as online ordering began. Seven months later, the honeymoon continues. I'm writing this column on my iPad right nevertheless, to tell the truth. It's the "crossover" computer that I've always wanted. It's thin and light enough that I take it with me whenever I'm going to be out of the office for a few hours, such as a matter of policy. Even so it's flexible and powerful enough to serve as my sole computer when I'm going to be away for two or three days.

Which brings us to a common observation about Apple's products and its users: "People's preference for Apple devices is an emotional response." At times the commentator is making a neutral observation, nevertheless sometimes it's obviously meant as a sneering dismissal.

List of all of the things that Motorola

I could produce a list of all of the things that Motorola and HP and Rim and Samsung and all of 2011's tablet-makers will have to do in order to approach Apple's success with the iPad. Nevertheless really, nothing is as important as inspiring that fundamental, holistic sense of Rightness that permeates the iPad from top to bottom.

So for the foreseeable future, nobody is going to be able to compete with the iPad. In the best case, these other companies can only exploit the markets that Apple isn't serving. It's hard to imagine any bigger or more decisive Win for Apple than that.

I've chosen Netflix and Dropbox to step up to the podium and collect the physical award because of their unusual accomplishments this year. Google moved Android to the then and there level of utility and consumer acceptance. Good job. Apple invented the slate computer. Oh, that's at any rate going into the family Christmas letter; then done.

Netflix, in particular, became a clear kingmaker. It doesn't matter if you're Google or Apple or Sony: if you're producing a piece of hardware that adds digital media features to a TV, you don't dare release it without a Netflix app. Without that feature, it's dead in the water.

The Apple TV

Just look at the Apple TV. It was on the market for years. Apple developed the box, the library software that manages a user's video and music, and a store filled with movies and TV shows.

Despite all of these advantages, it was a largely irrelevant product. Apple saved face by referring to Apple TV as "a hobby" for the company and refusing to release sales figures. The most important new feature of the 2010 edition? It streams Netflix content. Apple is but very happy to tell anybody who'll listen that they've just sold their first million.

Pre-Dropbox, putting data on mobile devices reminded me of George Carlin's "A Place For My Stuff" routine, where he was always packing smaller and smaller versions of "his stuff" while trips. I had one version of "my stuff" for my desktop, a smaller version for my notebook, another for my old netbook, and an even smaller one for my phone.

Dropbox redefined that whole relationship. I never sync files. There's a built-in implication that this file I'm working on right however will be accessible from my desktop, my iPhone, and the Android device I'll be playing with tomorrow.

The top of the list for 2010

So you see why I rank these services at the top of the list for 2010. Apple or Google got to design their products from the ground up and they had full control over their entire working universes. Dropbox and Netflix had the more complex task: they designed services that harmonize with and enhance huge range of present and future devices. That requires true insight.

And in innovation, as in middle-school report cards, "plays so then with others" marks something as the presumptive MVP.