Thought this was a funny observation about the equally frustrating but different aspects of owning Android phones and iPhones.
Via Geekosystem h/t fnordramen
Coincidentally, I spent about half a day last week upgrading to CyanogenMod (@cyanogen), which is still the closest thing to running vanilla Android if you’re not rocking a Nexus One or Nexus S. The latest version, CM7, is based on Gingerbread 2.3.3.
I haven’t noticed many differences in Gingerbread, other than the browser is wicked fast, but CM7 is very slick as usual. Kudos to that team for an awesome rom.
The upgrade experience is very Android, i.e. I had to backup, factory wipe (which isn’t as easy as you’d think), load CM7, then restore application and system data. Since Froyo, if you enabled a new device with your Google Account, all the Android Market apps you’d previously downloaded, free and purchased, came down like rain from the cloud.
Not so this time. Guessing here but, it only seemed like a third actually made it, and the Android Market has an incomplete history of the apps you’ve downloaded. So, I had to go off memory, which makes a service like AppBrain even more valuable.
I wonder if this is a Google problem or a modded phone problem. Can’t be user error 🙂
Cute comic. I wonder though – what is the perceived difference for the guy or gal on the street? Say CyanogenMod to the average smart phone user – even one with Android that came with the phone from the vendor – and they wouldn’t have a clue. Does the average non-geeky user get it? Nah they just want stuff to work and to download apps easily. I’m intrigued by the what the ‘average’ user (always a bit dangerous to assume there is such a thing I guess) thinks of the relative user experiences between the two devices.
Android’s user populations seem to be A) very technical and B) not at all technical, which is the one I think you mean. Apple has many users in the A group too, but I suspect finds its sweetspot among another group of semi-technical users, who either can’t be bothered or don’t care about the latter case in the comic.
Unfortunately for Google, I think the B and C groups would prefer Apple, costs being equal and assuming carrier agnosticism. Having been in both Group A and C and knowing several people in all the groups, I’m basing my theory on anecdotal evidence.