I also agree with every single one of the author's points. I've had an Android device since the day the G1 launched. Today I have the G2.
First off, for both devices I needed to run cyanogen mod. The devices were completely unusable for me without it. The only acceptable Android devices are the Nexus' or ones with custom roms.
I have not purchased an iPhone, but I do have a 3g touch and an iPad 2. I have to say, I believe Apple's multitasking is vastly superior to Androids. The reason being is stability. "Real" multitasking is great and all, but if you can't make it stable then it just plain sucks. My experience is that apps open in the background frequently FC, take up too much memory and slow the device down. Sometimes finding the errant process is near impossible and forces me to reboot.
Apple's suspend style multitasking ALWAYS ensures that every app is getting the full resources of the device. The other day I was playing Dead Space on the ipad and downloading 6 other apps I just bought... the game never hiccuped, slowed don't or degraded in any noticeable way. I see why some people don't care for it, but for me the benefit in performance makes it vastly superior. On the topic of downloading, I could have 50 apps queued up in the app store and it will never fail. The android fucking market always fucks up the downloads. It's completely maddening.
Dealing with device support just plan blows. Nvidia has their own freaking market for their 'optimized' games. Netflix is rolling out only on select devices because they don't know how the fuck it will work on everything out there- fortunately the G2 was supported early. Amazon has the best market by far, but I still don't know how the hell to use it.
Talking about openness... I have to install cyanogenmod to get any semblance of open, and that's not even the case. Recently someone had a patch to spoof a phones personal data so that apps that steal your info and sell it would be grabbing junk. It appears that Cyanogen is playing nice and not including the patch to not piss off Google and the carriers. This is only as open as what the carriers and google will put up with. It's no different than jailbreaking the iphone (aside from that fact that you can actually build "some of" android from the source, but what normal person can do that?).
In the end I still have an android device for one simple reason... economics. I'm on t-mobile and my rates are far below att & verizon. I got my g2 for free as well. I tether my data connection (to the iPad) with no issues. Even though the G2 kinda sucks, it is good enough. Justifying paying $299 for a 32gb iphone and paying the jacked up rates of verizon comes down to simply not caring enough for a gadget. The iPad is a phenomenal value, the iPhone just isn't. I'll re-evaluate the situation when my contract ends in a year and a half. For now I'll be content with amazing turn-by-turn gps, decent browser, tethering, a few 3rd party apps and a pretty good phone experience- it's the best value out there. Boils down to taking a dirt cheap "7" over an expensive "10".
First off, for both devices I needed to run cyanogen mod. The devices were completely unusable for me without it. The only acceptable Android devices are the Nexus' or ones with custom roms.
I have not purchased an iPhone, but I do have a 3g touch and an iPad 2. I have to say, I believe Apple's multitasking is vastly superior to Androids. The reason being is stability. "Real" multitasking is great and all, but if you can't make it stable then it just plain sucks. My experience is that apps open in the background frequently FC, take up too much memory and slow the device down. Sometimes finding the errant process is near impossible and forces me to reboot.
Apple's suspend style multitasking ALWAYS ensures that every app is getting the full resources of the device. The other day I was playing Dead Space on the ipad and downloading 6 other apps I just bought... the game never hiccuped, slowed don't or degraded in any noticeable way. I see why some people don't care for it, but for me the benefit in performance makes it vastly superior. On the topic of downloading, I could have 50 apps queued up in the app store and it will never fail. The android fucking market always fucks up the downloads. It's completely maddening.
Dealing with device support just plan blows. Nvidia has their own freaking market for their 'optimized' games. Netflix is rolling out only on select devices because they don't know how the fuck it will work on everything out there- fortunately the G2 was supported early. Amazon has the best market by far, but I still don't know how the hell to use it.
Talking about openness... I have to install cyanogenmod to get any semblance of open, and that's not even the case. Recently someone had a patch to spoof a phones personal data so that apps that steal your info and sell it would be grabbing junk. It appears that Cyanogen is playing nice and not including the patch to not piss off Google and the carriers. This is only as open as what the carriers and google will put up with. It's no different than jailbreaking the iphone (aside from that fact that you can actually build "some of" android from the source, but what normal person can do that?).
In the end I still have an android device for one simple reason... economics. I'm on t-mobile and my rates are far below att & verizon. I got my g2 for free as well. I tether my data connection (to the iPad) with no issues. Even though the G2 kinda sucks, it is good enough. Justifying paying $299 for a 32gb iphone and paying the jacked up rates of verizon comes down to simply not caring enough for a gadget. The iPad is a phenomenal value, the iPhone just isn't. I'll re-evaluate the situation when my contract ends in a year and a half. For now I'll be content with amazing turn-by-turn gps, decent browser, tethering, a few 3rd party apps and a pretty good phone experience- it's the best value out there. Boils down to taking a dirt cheap "7" over an expensive "10".