Oct. 29, 2010
Android is a ghetto

When people try to engage me in iPhone vs. Android arguments, I usually concede to almost all of their pro-iPhone, anti-Android arguments. The iPhone user experience is paramount. I do not know of a greater technology user experience than that of using those hand held Apple products. Android is a total ghetto.

The problem for Apple is that all of the interesting things come from the ghetto. Hip hop and punk rock came from the ghetto. Apple does not have a single gram of punk rock in it's entire being - they are the furthest possible thing from punk rock in the technology world. Apple is the U2 of the technology world; bland, pleasant, and pushing all of the right buttons to make us feel good. Apple is easy, and easy is utterly boring.

Examples of this are clearly emerging now into mainstream conciousness. Brilliant apps which simply can't work on the Apple platform because of the restrictions placed on them there, are emerging on the Android platform right alongside the multitude of hideously ugly, broken apps which are also emerging. This is called evolution. It's ugly, and complicated, and it is much better at optimising for survival. It's the exact same reason why Free Software (also a technology favela, upon which Android is based) has been so incredibly successful in the last 20 years.

Android is succeeding because it is the ghetto. Sorry Steve Jobs, you will never understand how people can reject your pristine perfect jail for the thriving, ugly richness of the software underbelly.

"I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world. If you're out there and you're cute, maybe you're beautiful. I just want to tell you somethin' - there's more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS than you are, hey-y, so watch out."

-- Frank Zappa