I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,“ Jobs said. "I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this… I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.

I’ve been seeing this quote pop up all over the web this morning.  This reads, if you’ll forgive me, like a temper tantrum.  Apple needs a strong and competitive Android handset marketplace for many reasons.

1. Android innovates on a much shorter timescale.  This gives Apple the luxury of taking what’s working from Android and making it better.  Thanks, largely, to Google’s throw-spaghetti-against-the-wall approach to introducing new features, Apple can hang back a little, take what works, and make it actually functional.  No better example of this exists than Android’s built in voice search (Aug 2010) vrs Apple’s Siri assistant (Oct 2011).  You see this same pattern all over iOS 5.

2. To avoid Microsoft style contentions of anticompetitive behavior, Apple needs a vibrent and effective competitor in the smartphone space.  If you think Windows Mobile or Blackberry could provide such a thing I’ve a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you shares in.

3. Apple always positions itself as a premium brand.  The BMW of computing.  This branding is in jeopardy when your cab driver tells you about an app he’s working on for his iPhone.  Android provides the fat ugly step-cousin for the white earbud crowd to look down their noses on.  (On a related note Android has it’s own share of Apple hating neck-beards of course, this is by no means an Apple only phenomenon.)

As much as I admire Steve Jobs, I find it hard to believe, given Apple’s obsession with secrecy, that a bunch of former Side-Kick employees could have somehow copied the early version of iOS before it was released.  Further, as is customary with Apple, they were not the first company to release a full touch-screen device.  They were not the first company to have a main screen full of icons.  They were not the first company to attempt to revolutionize the mobile phone industry. They were just the first company to do it well.

When I’m a multi-Billionaire, I’m going to build an Arc B.  Load it up with all the sneering Apple-is-Better-No-Matter-What-You-Say people and the chest thumping Android fanboys and send them off to colonize another planet Douglas Adams style.

Seriously, the two platforms are both goddamn amazing.  Please stop with the Team Android vrs. Team iPhone crap.

…maybe I’ll send AT&T with them.

the popular Galaxy S smartphone that sold 10 million units last year and the 7-inch Galaxy Tab tablet won’t be upgraded to Android 4.0. The company’s argument is that they lack sufficient RAM and ROM to run the new OS alongside TouchWiz and other “experience-enhancing” software.

Link

Samsung has just dealt a blow to the Android ecosystem.  They have, in a sense, proclaimed that their bloat-ware (including an application I helped write) is more important than their customers.
When you cling to your own software at the cost of innovation, you do us all a disservice.  This announcement, if it goes un-reversed, makes it almost impossible for me to justify buying a Samsung branded Android device…. and who’s idea was it to call it TouchWiz? 

Is Siri the new Clippy?