New Droid TV spot happily rips Apple
There I was watching the Yankees suck yet another victory from the very duodenum of defeat, when along came a rather sweet Apple TV spot.
You know, music that makes you glad your lungs function even after a night on the tequila, and a white background with a soothing typeface telling you some simple things that Apple will do to make you even happier.
Then I put down my cup of green tea (Decaf, naturally. Only way to watch the Yankees) and realized that this was a rather vicious list of the iPhone's alleged shortcomings: the inability to run simultaneous apps, for example. And the lack of 5-megapixel imagery.
I still wasn't quite convinced that this wasn't Apple with a cheery punchline. But no, this was somebody throwing a nasty right cross at Cupertino's double chin.
For there was the line "iDon't allow open development." Closely followed by "iDon't have interchangeable batteries."
Well, goodness, this was somebody who had sauntered into the temple and tossed curse words toward the altar.
I realized this just as the ad ground to a slightly freaky halt and the words told me "Everything iDon't...Droid Does."
Please forgive me if I didn't immediately realize that Droid was a phone rather than yet another awful horror/zombie/paranormal movie/video game/TV series.
However, I am told that this little tease (as one calls it in the persuasion trade) is the precursor for the imminent launch of Verizon's Droid antiphone, a sort of sane lover after you've been through a few rather colorful ones.
I have no idea what this Droid thing will look like. Although perhaps it would be a positive step if it had a pointy head, nasty little eyes and spoke to you in extra-terrestrial tones.
However, I am pleased that someone has taken the trouble to produce an ad that seems to offer a little hope for anyone whose delicate self-image would urge them to be seen with something other than an iPhone.
There are more of them out there than you would ever believe.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
The speed of development on Android is amazing.
As for 'genius' one could also make a point that the ad doesn't make any sense unless you know what an iPhone is. In essence it's advertising for Apple because it brings up the brand in the viewers mind.
I've had four Motorola phones (my favourite is still the old StarTac) in a row and quite frankly they have gone from great to poor at best.
Motorola's share and customer satisfaction have been slipping for many a year now. Certainly this is close to a make or break phone for them. I wish them well but for my money my next phone isn't likely to be Motorola.
I do find the anti Apple folks rather amusing, you'd swear the iPhone has a HUGE market share. Nokia however has a sizeable lead in phone share. Heck, even Blackberry has more share than the iPhone.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-iphone-market-share-up-blackberry-down-2009-8
Android has its appeal, it would be nice if Google would really try and start to push the OS hard. Perhaps monolithic Linux will succeed on phones better than it has in the desktop arena since it's open source and free. Time will tell and somehow I'm thinking not. I expect that Windows Mobile will keep Android at bay just as easily as it keeps Linux at bay at the office and home.
As for the "amazing" speed of Android development - I've seen a grand total of ONE Android phone in the wild. Apparently sales aren't as amazing as the development speed, eh AppleSuxLeo?
Mac sales are NOT GROWING, iPUD sales are NOT GROWING.
[CNET editor's note: Personal attack deleted.]
Pfft! Keep dreaming.
Pfft! Keep dreaming."
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That's right... but someone will... and then everyone will have to.
Because it's not a sandbox... it's a beach.
Go android.
Better phone on a much better network. Already like 9,000 apps for Android , and Google Voice works natively ! PWND !
Why Android will fail is because it supports too many hardwares. People will get confused when companies try to brand their own Android - as with what happened with Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile has like all this support yet for basic apps you have to pay 30 bux. I went to that freeware ppc place and it just sucks. Android is nothing more than an OS without a home.
Google returns 1,660,000 results for "iphone alarm clock app", possibly - only slightly - indicative of how many duplicate apps Apple offers. Is there anyone in the world that actually uses over, say, 1,000 apps? 9,000 is far more than that. 90,000? I'd rather spend time installing the single Android app than sifting through the hundreds of potential iPhone apps that do virtually the same thing trying to find which one is best.
Let's look at this in reverse, though, since you are so inclined to point out that Android - as simply an operating system - will fail because there will be too many apps (?) that are not always compatible with all hardware. How much software is available in the world for PCs? For Apple? Is it common for you to download a Windows program and have it not work because your computer is not from a specific manufacturer?
Cool !
Useful !
But unless they have something akin to iTunes which can sync and manage all functions of the phone as well as organize everything in your multi-media library, it won't have a chance. What haters fail to mention is that it's the complete package that Apple offers that others simply do not which make the iPhone a great piece of hardware! Sure, it's not perfect, but that can be remedied in time.
iTunes DOES do all of those things, so if you were being sarcastic, you just failed.
And if you have mobile me to manage all your Apple devices, device updates between computers and mobile devices are done instantaneously. It is precisely this type of syncing capabilities that makes the iPhone an instant standout over all other mobile devices on the market today.
9,000 apps on the Android is a good start, but when they get over 75,000 apps, that will be impressive. Until then, they are still playing catchup!
Oh and FYI iTunes doesn't even manage all functions of iPhones (on Windows anyway, I don't know about OSX). E-mail, contacts and calendar is managed with Outlook, iTunes merely links to Outlook.
Apple is never the first at what they do (for the most part), they are just the most successful at what they do. Sync software is not new, but Apple has made that experience flawless. Other device users probably don't use theirs since, they don't work well. Ask any iPhone user and I'm sure they will tell you it's an integral part of device management that is simple and easy to use. Not to mention, if you use MobileMe, the syncing is done instantaneously and updates your computer as well with any new contacts, calendars, etc. You'll never have to worry about your data again! And if your iPhone is lost or damaged, just plug it into your computer and in a few minutes your up and running like nothing ever happened.
Does your phone sync your multimedia content (photos, movies, music, videos, etc.) along with all your other devices features in one convenient package? Probably not. And don't be so quick to quip that you don't listen to music or watch movies on your phone. As time goes by, those will be equally important (if they aren't all ready) as any business related apps that the business set seem so fond of these days. Thinking that this isn't important is being as clueless as the poor sap at IBM, back in the day, that thought that no one would ever want a personal computer. Total convergence is the future and if companies can't see that and lack the planning to pull it all together, they will be forced out of the game, period!
Good luck to all those other companies out there that actually manage to converge all devices into a single device. Since when can a crackberry offer a real internet experience. Surfing the net on one of their devices is like a throw back to DOS. Not exactly user friendly or interesting to look at. And BTW, it will be average users and not business users that carry this device market moving forward.
And YES, iTunes on a Mac manages all functions of the iPhone in a seamless and incredibly easy fashion.
The backup and most of those things that this commercial advertises...
WM 6.5 does.
Sorry but the HTC touch pro 2, is already an iphone killer.
I wish Droid the best of luck on other devices, that are/will be much much better than the iphone every pretended to be!
Change Microsoft by Verizon... or Microsoft by Droid and Apple by iPhone... and you got the idea!
The phone is the Motorola Droid, also known as Sholes I think? It looks like the hardware's not bad, it's got Motorola's convoluted doesn't work quite right MOTOBLUR front end, and a slide out keyboard. By far the nicest phone Motorola's been able to push out of their design shop in a wihle. (After all their market share has been tanking for almost two years now.) But in a lot of ways it's a solution looking for a real problem.
I mean really the iPhone has short comings sure (the fact that it still hasn't gotten me a date!) but really this is just stupid.
I don't have a real keyboard? Really cause I saw the thing motorola put out, looks like it's off centre since they had to put arrow navigation buttons (why are we using nav buttons in 09? It's a phone with a touch screen!) And the iPhone's keyboard actually makes me faster than on most BlackBerries I type with which have far far better keyboards than any Motorola I'ved played with (I sell phones.)
The simultaneous apps thing, what they don't mention is that most of the apps you want, are exclusive to the iPhone. Besides there are VERY VERY VERY few apps that would need to run in the background, especially on a 3GS. I can load up Beejive in like a second (more of a pain on a 3G). And to be honest all the phones that are running lots of background processes have users complaining about battery life. Would I appreciate it if there were some non Apple made apps that ran in the background on my phone? Sure but not enough of them to ever switch to a gawd awful Motorola.
As for 5 megapixels, the auto focus on the 3GS is brilliantly done, the pictures are really slick and unless image quality is actually better with the 5MP cam they're pushing they'd better keep their mouth shut. I've never heard anyone brag about how great the shot their Motorola phone took was.
As for customization, how does the iPhone not do that? You can change your background image, you can move around your apps, you can pick thousands upon thousands of apps to customize your iPhone experience, you can make your own ringtones (something I could see Verizon locking down on this one)
As for not running widgets, that's like Apple coming out and saying, "The Droid doesn't use our In line mic controls." Go figure a software model developed for a competing software platform doesn't work on my iPhone. I'm gonna be really mad when those widgets designed for Windows dont' work in Dashboard on my Mac (btw does anyone use widgets? Most of those are served by apps on the iPhone that are basically widgets.)
And... open development? Really! OK to be honest I don't like that Apple caps that, but if you say "Hey mom my phone allows open development?" What do you think my mom's reaction is going to be. I've seriously had people tell me as a sales rep I should mention that anyone can write an android app. News flash people, anyone who wants to write an Android app already knows it's an open platform. Anyone who wants to write an iPhone app could also get the developer tools for super cheap. This is not a real selling point, and certainly one that shows they're scraping the bottom of the barrel to mud sling instead of innovate.
It's funny cause I've certainly taken pictures in the dark with my iPhone and they turn out fine. Perhaps they don't have a wonky night mode, instead all you do is touch an area of the screen to mess with the white balance and bam!
On interchangable batteries, there are accessories even cases with built in batteries that you can use to recharge your iPhone if it's dead on the go. The nice thing about that, is it doesn't involve opening the phone up, adding extra thickness, scaring people taking their phones apart, or providing another place for water to get inside the phone. As a sales person I frequently see customers who haven't taken the backs off their phones ever. Though I suppose this might be a feature that's needed when you have limited quality control on apps which might have memory leaks and what not, that result in your battery being sapped insanely quick.
By the way, what Droid won't do is sync with my Mac terribly terribly well, it won't provide me as slick of a browsing experience. It wont' tie into every iPod accessory out there. It won't automatically sync with my iTunes library every time it's connected, it won't let me purchase from iTunes when I'm on the bus (Amazon doesn't have a Canadian music store, all the other Canadian options suck) and it won't work in a way that I feel nearly as comfortable showing my customers which results in many of them deciding to make the same phone choice I did. (I sell a hell of a lot of iPhones.)
Remember, when the iphoney first came out, it had no apps either.
Funny how the market determines these thing.
The iphoney is old. The Droid is new. Folks like what is new.
any changes on the iphoney is like putting lipstick on a pig.
No, that's a rebuttal. A user's real-world experience with his iPhone, comparing it to the content of the ad. If he had just said something ridiculous about the droid (you know, the quality of comments like most of the Apple haters on this page made), THAT would be sour grapes.
By the way, as Apple found out the hard way, the Beatles had this logo first.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90437894
I don't even like MAC computers. But have an IPhone
Wait a minute. There was so much going around the internet that VZW was getting the IPhone? Guess not.
That is Mac, not MAC which is something even your "Pc" has.
Those that pretend to be "open source" use macs,
Who cares about a mostly non-productive (loud mouthed and nothing to show for it) 8% of the market?!
Apparently a lot of people care... cause Verizon tends to have better network coverage, better 3G and somewhat of a better rep than AT&T. A lot of people seem to like this ad... I thought it was clever and amusing and again, I have an iPhone.
Personally I like the iDon't part, in spite of the apostrophe, however the end is lame.
Jeez, get a life...
has a cell phone by the age of 6 or so
I truly hope someone will continue to make dumb cell phones, sans camera, sans spiffy internet capabilities, sans everything but the abilitiy to send and recieve voice communications. Anyone know what the marketshare of the Jitterbug is?
- by Splashes October 18, 2009 5:00 PM PDT
- Ah, another iPhone killer.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- by gregorytga October 20, 2009 4:46 PM PDT
- Agreed.
- Like this
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