Gizmodo
Fake Steve's lengthy stream of bile laying waste to the Google Phone isn't simply pure invective, it's actually a mostly well-reasoned indictment of coalitions that trumpets the values of "one vision, one man, one genius." It's worth reading in its entirety, but this is our favorite quote:
The only companies that join consortia are the ones who are too stupid or shitty to make a great product on their own. It's like, Hey, we've got forty spazzo companies that can't fuck their way out of a paper bag; let's put them all together and maybe they'll magically become some kind of big bad powerhouse.
There are, of course, numerous cons to the singular "hand of God" approach, but the problems with consortia that FSJ lays out are real. It's hard for everyone to agree, and rarely do all involved push for the "greater good" at their individual expense. It might be different this time around, but with so much at stake, martyrs for the Alliance probably won't exactly be lining up. And oh yeah, there's no phone to wrap our hands around yet. [FSJ via Daring Fireball]
Comments
does this mean AT&T is the axis of evil?
What are you talking about? Don't be put off by their techno-jargon. Consortia is just fancy word for committee! And we get so many important things from committees!
Legislation, UN Resolutions, Meetings, NCAA rules, Mission Statements, Strategic Visions, Meetings about Meetings, Ad Campaigns, Discussions about Meetings - we owe them all to committees! Our political parties are both run by committees.
HUAC? A Committee. Communism? A Committee.
Committees are so great it's even a cliche!
"It looks like it came from a committee."
Yeah, cause it's so good!*
(*The above comment may be put up for approval at the next meeting of the Consortium On Committee Knowledge.)
Hear hear!
Now let's have a reading of the minutes...
This guy is STILL being FSJ?
Be the real you man, not a fake someone else.
Why are you clowns even listening to someone who is pretending to be Steve Jobs? what a waste of time!
Hopefully the real SJ will comment though..
After thinking about it more. Its going to be a hard market to break into. Firstly users have to like it. Change is hard. Apple has a lot of fanboys that are loyal. MS is what people are use to and feel comfortable using. Linux, just that name scares people away. Ok big players pushing. But if the interface is not perfect, neither will the device. I dont know how long they have been working on it but they got like 7months to produce something better the MS and Apple, that I think will be hard in itself.
I'm thinking MIDI is an example of competitors coming together to create something good. The MIDI protagonists were brilliant. The spec gave rise to so much more than had ever been initially contemplated.
@92BuickLeSabre: dude dont take it literally...
but i get the "communist" point, it will be really hard for so many companies (about 15 or 20?) to finish a product, only if they know each other well, familiar with each other's operations, and all, and i doubt that.
seriously i am pretty disappointed when Gphone turn out to be an alliance to produce a new phone with just google softwares due 1 and half years later, which we somewhat already have today with our iPhones and other Blackberrys, i mean, does it really have to take so many companies to develop a phone with the capabilities to have google softwares?
When your conversations on the Gphone are interrupted with audio-based ads, context sniffed via langage recognition, with Google's clouds passing the Turing test in order to pimp pizza joints within walking distance, this will all start to make sense...
AMEN Strider!!!!
I have never agreed more!
nvidia is shit?
what a moron.
@zakeen: If the interface is not perfect people wont use it? No offence but no phone out there, and i mean NO phone has a perfect interface.
The interface has to be usable, thats it, no more, no less, and people will use it.
This is the first FDJ thing, i completely disagree with, given the fact that Apple uses technology from several different companies in every single product it releases. It is impossible to say that working together is a bad thing.
Its also pointless to say that sometimes people disagree in these alliances, but its the only way to get really great things done.
@frigg:
Have you ever used AT&T? If the call was interrupted by ads I would be satisfied that there was at least a reason for the call to be interrupted.
On this point, FSJ is a moron.
This is NOT about releasing a consumer item, such an an iPhone competitor. This is 100% about creating a unified API/OS for mobile development that is not controlled by any one company.
Dell and HP can sell a bazillion PC's a year with Windows on it not because Windows roxors the customer base, but because there are a trillion-bazilion pieces of software that run on Windows, and every user needs two or three of them. The downside for Dell and HP is that they have to pay the MS tax and they cannot innovate on hardware like Apple does because they cannot control the OS.
Intel and HTC and every other hardware vendor wants to be able to innovate. The software companies that want to develop phones (such as Google) want a single OS to develop for. But neither the software guys nor the hardware guys want to create another Microsoft that totally controls the mobile market. So they create a consortium that releases OSS. Now everyone is happy.
Except Microsoft and Nokia, both of whom wanted to be "the Microsoft" of mobile handsets.
Methinks the FSJ is feeling the RSJ's fear.
One thing that pisses me off about Apple is their notion that they know better and do their best to make the users of Apple products use it the way Apple thinks it should be used. A perfect example: the one button mouse. Every time I use a Macbook I am infuriated by mousepad with only only one button. God dammit, I want two f**king buttons! Get it? TWO!
But I digress. Apple should be scared. Fanboyism will not save them from the gPhone, and if one of them looks anything like the "Dream", the iPhone is screwed.
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?