[EVO 4G General] Award Tour:
Assumptions are nice.

The iPhone appeals to people who like a well developed product. Its easy to use, fun to use, and is well designed. If you like to modify your phone, you can jail break too. To 99% of users a stock Android phone is like the iPhone but not as good. Why? Because most people do not modify their phones. They don't know what open is. And since you brought it up, the open angle on Android is pure marketing BS on Google's part anyway.

What does open really mean? That Android is open source? Tell me, how does that benefit the average user? I've been a programmer and designer for practically my whole life but my passion has always been marketing, in fact marketing has been what kept my projects/businesses ahead, so everytime I hear open in reference to Android I laugh. You're just as big of a sheep as the Apple fanboys. You hear Google and the Google websites yell "open" and you just go with it.

Lets see what open really means. For about 1-5% of users who know anything remotely worth knowing it means that you have access to the Android source either from AOSP or from what OEMs are obligated to release (which basically amounts to the former again + some drivers). From that 1-5%, a even smaller percentage are able to use it to create modifitions to their phones - kernels, ROM ports, etc. Ironically, many of these things have been done for years and mostly for "closed" phones.

The truth is that the most significant open thing about Android is that it's source is open to the OEMs that make the phones. What does this mean? It means that it's the manufacturers and carriers that it benefits the most. In fact, what they want most is to lock it down. OEMs want Android to be HTC Sense 2.x or Touchwiz 3.x, not Froyo or Gingerbread. If they could make a good proprietary OS, they would, but they can't. Carriers want to make a extra buck so they lock it down, remove features and then charge you to unlock them. They add (almost) unremovable bloatware to make a quick buck. They (are/will) attempt to overshadow the OS marketplace by creating their own thirdparty app stores - and trust me, once the app/developer exclusivity deals start to come, everyone (aka most users but the pirates) will start to scream.

Google knows this and doesn't care because the oppurtunity that it creates for OEMs/carriers is making Android spread like wild fire. And with every new eyeball on a Android phone, Google's main cash cow (ads) grows.

This type of modding has existed way before Android; and like I said, even on "closed" OSs. What Android's openiness really is, is 99% a strategy for OEM/carrier adoption and 1% a identity campaign for fringe Android fanboys.

Google, Apple, ANY company really, is in it for the money. Apple attempts to get their share by making well designed, controlled experiences -- disagree with some of their decisions but their ridiculously high margin products live or die because of quality (or its lack of it). And Google? They came up with a shady strategy.

I expect most people to continue to be blind to this fact. And no I don't hate Android. I really believe that the _Android team_ is creating a great OS, I am afterall using a Android phone right now. The bad thing is that their vision is limited to a few phones (basically the Nexus family) and a few fringe developers (like Cyanogen) and only a very, very small percentage of Android users will ever actually experience it.