Google’s Honeycomb tablet OS is rife with problems. But the issues extend to the entire Android ecosystem. Here’s how they can dig their way out.
Well, my tough love article on Android Honeycomb yesterday has fuelled the fires on an interesting pair of responses from my ZDNet colleagues. I suspect that with the chord that it has struck with a lot of folks that at least a few more are still in the works.
Ed Burnette, probably one of the smartest guys I know when it comes to Android development, suggests that Honeycomb isn’t rotten to the core, but rather, the fundamentals are good, and it needs a year of tweaking and another generation to become appropriately productized.
Okay, I agree with that on principle.
However, he also notes that Google’s tablet OS has been the unfortunate recipient of “Malignment” by writers like myself and WSJ’s Walt Mossberg (who essentially issued the kiss of death to Honeycomb’s LG’s G-Slate today) and John Paczkowsi that are giving the software a terrible reputation a la the mass condemnation of Microsoft’s Windows Vista from a few years ago. Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Also Read: Is Honeycomb Android’s Vista? (Dev Connection)
Look, Ed. There’s a big difference between Vista and Honeycomb — Vista was a product based on 20 years of development and success with previous OS products by Microsoft and a much, much larger scale project that was plagued by substantial cases of managerial misalignment and organizational differences between the goals of the Consumer division and the Server division.
Members of the mainstream and technology press, myself included, were fully justified by beating the hell out of Microsoft for releasing it in the state it was in. The implementation was awful. Even Ballmer himself was pretty much forced to admit it when Windows 7 came out.
Also Read: Ding Dong, The Vista’s Dead!
On the other hand, Windows Server 2008 was excellent, worked pretty much flawlessly and used the same kernel and drivers and basic systems architecture as Vista. The difference? Once it left the “Core” team at the company and got in the hands of the consumer division, it got mucked up, and it took Microsoft some time to clean up their act and put out a unified front and a clear strategy for both the Server and Desktop products with Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.
Google has a totally different set of problems. First, Android is an operating system that has only been under development realistically since 2003. While it is based on heavily on Java and Linux, to suggest that it is a mature product even in its smartphone implementation — where it is currently enjoying a vast amount of success is a stretch.
By comparison, Apple’s iOS has only been productized since 2007, but we have to remember that the technologies it uses is based on continuous work by successive generations at NeXT and Apple since 1985.
As sophisticated and as powerful the technologies in Android are, there’s an awful lot of continuity and stability that Cupertino has to its advantage which Google doesn’t have the benefit of relying on. Google doesn’t build OSes traditionally as part of its core product strategy. This is a completely new game for them, relatively, compared to Apple and Microsoft.
Additionally, Apple has virtually no hardware variation to contend with because there are no OEMs. Nobody has to build custom kernels and software overlays to support 40+ branded flavors of iPhones and iPads. Google, on the other hand, has many OEMs that do. And it appears that if you want to stabilize your experience and get the most out of Honeycomb today, you need to root your device and swap out your kernel.
That’s just fine if you’re a developer like Ed that knows exactly what’s going to blow up in his face or a very knowledgeable end-user like Scott who enjoys tinkering with Linux and firmware and are willing to work around issues to make things work.
Also Read: Motorola XOOM versus Galaxy Tab 7, A Study in Usability
But consumers aren’t Android developers like Ed Burnette or veteran Linux system admins like Scott Raymond. If Google really thinks they can air their dirty underwear on their front porch and expect consumers to try it on like they do with GMail and other “Perpetual Beta” products, then they have all of their priorities completely out of whack.
