Althouse: Android is for poor people.

April 12, 2014

Android is for poor people.

Which is why designers don't design for them.

Via Metafilter.

34 comments:

rhhardin said...: How about an Estroid for poor women.; 4/12/14, 11:22 AM
David said...: More evidence of the gap between me and the upper reaches.

Also the silliest presentation of the digital divide--an actual social problem of consequence--I've seen in a while. It's also one of the only presentations of the digital divide I've seen in a while. Yesterday's problem, I guess.; 4/12/14, 11:33 AM
heyboom said...: In my house, my wife has an iPhone and an iPad. Our three daughters all have iPhones. I have a Samsung.

I like to think of myself as practical for being an Android user, but I would rather be poor than ever own an iPhone or any other Apple product.

Sent from my wife's iPad; 4/12/14, 11:49 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Omigosh. The stupid, it burns.

"The rich, it seems, use iPhones while the poor tweet from Androids."

The tech-stupid and media-obsessed and self-centered, it seems, use Twitter more than others.

BTW, my current phone is an iPhone.; 4/12/14, 12:01 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Also: non-Apple operating systems are for non-media people.

Even dumb ads about companies that market products primarily used by Windows users are routinely filmed with Macs and iPhones.

Media people (graphic designers, film people, and especially folks who write or talk for a living) tend to think that Apple is smart and everything else is dumb.

I'm typing this on an iMac.; 4/12/14, 12:06 PM
Anonymous said...: From the article "A designer has a duty to be empathetic; to understand and embrace people not like him/herself. A group owning different devices to the design elite is not a valid reason to neglect their needs."

Funny and stupid, yes?
As if a designer has money and time to burn. A designer is competing against every other designer on the planet to get his design to the market. A designer spends days and nights working his tail off in hope of the big pay day. The big pay day that fizzles if someone else beats him to the market.

A designer's duty is to survive his almost impossible dream, not to be emphatic to cheapskates.; 4/12/14, 12:14 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Maybe people who live in high crime areas don't want iPhones because they make you a theft target. Maybe they don't want their phone to do too much because then you've lost more when it's stolen.; 4/12/14, 12:22 PM
Revenant said...: Maybe it is just me, but I'm not seeing a significant difference between the two on these maps.; 4/12/14, 12:29 PM
Kevin said...: Android would have never gotten a foothold at all if not for iPhone's ATT monopoly which held for years. I was perfectly happy with Android until Verizon got iPhone, and switched as soon as the contract was up.; 4/12/14, 12:45 PM
Paddy O said...: Current number of Android apps in the market: 1,198,358

Percentage of low quality apps: 21%

Someone must be designing apps for Android.; 4/12/14, 1:06 PM
Boltforge said...: Maybe Apple products are over priced and suck. Therefore only those who want them for social status get them? "I'm so rich I have this crappy iPhone!"

Everyone else gets the smart phones that actually work.; 4/12/14, 1:09 PM
Chef Mojo said...: The dog whistles at the link are deafening!

Get with it, people! iPhones are for racists!; 4/12/14, 1:15 PM
Heather said...: I have a Windows Phone what does that say about me.; 4/12/14, 1:17 PM
Heather said...: I have a Windows Phone what does that say about me.; 4/12/14, 1:18 PM
n.n said...: This class war began long before the introduction of Android. Windows is for the bourgeoisie; Apple is for the aristocrats; Linux is for the academics; and Android is for the peasants.

Android is an application layer sitting on top of a Linux operating system. Neither the OS nor the application are particularly impressive; but, they are each functional in their own domains.

Actually, it's not Android per se; but, the large and ready availability of free and low-cost software. Windows, Linux, and Palm enjoyed similar success and for similar reasons.

Google is making out like a bandit.; 4/12/14, 1:26 PM
Henry said...: Those are well conceived visualizations. I find the issue slightly funny since what is being compared is an amazing technological device against a slightly more amazing, more expensive technological device. The main advantage of the (locked) iPhone platform may not be the apps, but battery-life, but let's let that be.

The issue of designers having trouble translating their Apple mindset to the common user goes back a long time. In the early days of the World Wide Web most design work was done on Macs since that was the optimal platform for Adobe Photoshop. One common issue that cropped up for the majority of users was poor text contrast. At the time the gamma-curve for Mac monitors was much more consistent than that of the cheaper Windows-targeted monitors. As a result, cool dark-on-dark web sites were unreadable on typical Windows desktops.

So it goes.; 4/12/14, 1:26 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I would bet that the lower cost of Android devices allows them to be purchased by the poor as well as the rich. We use both iOS and Android devices at our house, and that seems to be a common situation.

Also, two cities? Miami and New York? Hardly representative.

(Having used both extensively now, I prefer Android.); 4/12/14, 1:32 PM
Paddy O said...: "The dog whistles..."

Notice what color Apple stores and most Apple products are...; 4/12/14, 1:59 PM
n.n said...: Freeman Hunt, they become less affordable without carrier and government subsidies, or as an amortized expense.; 4/12/14, 2:04 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Maybe people who live in high crime areas don't want iPhones because they make you a theft target. Maybe they don't want their phone to do too much because then you've lost more when it's stolen.

Didn't think this was realistic, until I walking one night in NW D.C. near Dupont Circle. The friend I was walking with, when parting cautioned me that he had had his iPhone stolen on the street that I was about to take, so be extra vigilant. I was, and still have my iPhone.

Part of the problem is that phones in general are apparently fairly easy to hack, and break their security, if you know what you are doing. I thought that this was TV fantasy, until a friend told me of the black market in phones, including prominently, iPhones. You would think that the phone companies would not allow stolen phones to connect to their networks. Easy enough to do. But, they don't care - money is money to them, and it means that they get to sell you a new phone.

Not sure though how hackable my iPhone is. I got it while still working in a law firm, and they wouldn't authorize iPhones on their network until encryption software could be developed for them. Until then, we were all still stuck on BlackBerrys. That is one reason that I haven't replaced it yet, since acquiring the digital certificates and the like is pricey (easy for a large firm to afford - much less so for me).

Interestingly though, one big reason that iPhones were not initially allowed on the firm network was that one of the IT people showed how easy stock iPhones are to hack from a short distance away. Be interesting to see if they have figured out how to secure Androids yet, and get them on the firm network.

I think that I might ultimately try an Android, because it is a much more open network (anything is more open than Apple products, except for maybe the old IBM computers), and I am a programmer at heart.; 4/12/14, 2:09 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I sort of miss DOS. Black screen with a white or green cursor. Cleanest interface there ever was. Tell it what you want to run and there it is.; 4/12/14, 2:13 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: I have never liked Apple technology, from my first time that I used a Mac for work (Motorola Semiconductor, where I was in charge of software licensing there and involved in the technology for the PowerPC). Motorola later dumped their corporate Mac network in favor of Windows machines, despite manufacturing (at the time) the processors for Macs. Jobs came back, and dumped the cloning program, and Motorola was the biggest cloner of Macs, besides manufacturing the processors. And, the company had carried Apple through several downturns, when it couldn't pay for its shipments of processors. Indeed, Apple was the reason that Motorola got involved in the PowerPC processor and AIM (Apple, IBM, Microsoft) alliance (which I was the IP attorney for). After a screaming match with Jobs, the Motorola CEO pulled the plug on Macs, after Jobs told him to take a hike.

That sort of arrogance has colored by view of Apple products since then. So, no surprise that when I went for a tablet, I tried the Windows platform first. It kept hanging, and so traded it in for an iPad, which, again is too expensive, but works well, esp. with my iPhone.

And, not surprisingly, I was able to break the Mac operating system more effectively than anyone else in the Motorola Austin offices, given my programming bent. Much more easily than Windows - esp. since by the end there, I was running NT. Turns out, that the earlier Mac OS's were designed for graphic designers, and not to protect them from programmers who tend to push the OS a bit more.

Still, it is the arrogance of Apple that continues to drive me away. There is the right way, the wrong way, and the Apple way. Two (or more) buttons on your mouse? Who would want more? I do (current mouse has 4 buttons, plus a scroll, and I use them all constantly). Ditto for a lot of their other design choices. The lack of serious configurability on my iPhone and iPad drives me crazy.; 4/12/14, 2:24 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Two (or more) buttons on your mouse? Who would want more?"

Having never used anything other than a Mac, I have never known what the second button was for.; 4/12/14, 2:39 PM
Ann Althouse said...: And don't tell me. I don't want to know. I am busy writing and working on photographs and videos, and I don't see any deficiency that makes me want more buttons. The buttons are on the screen...; 4/12/14, 2:40 PM
Fernandinande said...: a depressing divide in America

So, "diversity" is depressing.

Since when, and why, are programmers called "designers"? Cuz it sounds all artsy 'n' anti-nerdy?; 4/12/14, 2:51 PM
Anthony said...: There's a map of San Francisco in that article, with an arrow labeled "but not here" pointing to a black space on the map. That black spot has a name: MacLaren Park. The last couple of letters of "here" obscure San Francisco State, a hotbed of iPhonies.

Also curious, at least in SF, the iPhonies are *on* the roads much more than the Androids. Are people with iPhones more likely to actually use them while driving, or does Android report the location less accurately?; 4/12/14, 3:29 PM
John henry said...: Heyboom said:

In my house, my wife has an iPhone and an iPad. Our three daughters all have iPhones. I have a Samsung.

I like to think of myself as practical for being an Android user, but I would rather be poor than ever own an iPhone or any other Apple product.

Amen, Heyboom, Amen.

I have no desire to ever own or use any Apple product. I had an I-Pod once (a gift) and it sucked.

I could not load anything on it without going through I-Tunes.

One I loaded I-tunes, It screwed up my Windows computer. I could not get it unloaded and wound up having to reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything.

Thanks Apple.

I use a Sandisk Fuze for my MP3 and podcast listening. My computer just sees another USB thumb drive.

John Henry; 4/12/14, 4:51 PM
Steven said...: Android would have never gotten a foothold at all if not for iPhone's ATT monopoly which held for years.

Yeah, right. Everybody else in the whole cell phone industry would have packed up and gone home, and all the carriers would have gladly accepted permanent servitude to Apple as the monopoly handset maker. Sure. Never mind the whole Open Handset Alliance was a reaction by every player in the entire industry to make sure Apple would never control it.; 4/12/14, 6:14 PM
Paul said...: I have an HTC One Max. An iPhone looks like a joke next to it and my iPhone owning friends are jealous. It's very fast, big screen, great camera , and the battery has never gotten below 50% with a full day's use.; 4/12/14, 6:43 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: You are right that loading I Tunes on a Windows desktop will abasolutely screw up your contacts book . Moves it up to the Cloud where it's not accessible to your desktop without a lot of rigamarole.

OTOH the contacts addresses are accessible on my mini IPad--go figure. More Apple arrogance (sez me with an IPod and and IPad--both received as gifts).

The one good thing about Apple is their Facetime app loaded on the Ipads (and presumably on the Macs). It's far superior to Skype and lets this new set of grandparents in Los Angeles regularly check in on the new granddaughter in London.; 4/12/14, 7:18 PM
rehajm said...: In Miami there are not trailer parks near the airport. There is Trump Doral at $400+/nt, Also affluent Latinos.; 4/12/14, 8:42 PM
dhagood said...: @FreemanHunt: (Having used both extensively now, I prefer Android.)

me too; 4/12/14, 9:05 PM
Unknown said...: Can you give is the technological demographics of your reading audience? Huge percentage of Apple users?; 4/13/14, 2:11 AM
Alex said...: I resent that. I own devices from all the OS makers. I also resent the idea that only Apple understands design. This is blatantly false. In fact I find Safari to be hideous.; 4/13/14, 6:51 PM