Android - looking forward

I'm a little bored today sitting in San Francisco at the BlackBerry Developer Conference...not RIM's fault, just waiting for things to start...

As a way of background, I wrote some of the first apps on the original Mac, the original PC and the Next machine - as well as Android, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, BlackBerry and iPhone. I think the key here is that the closed ecosystems of the Apple personna yield only marginal value (vs. the potential monsterous value). The Mac clearly should have won the "pc war" - it was a better operating system, it was 'tight', etc. You could say the same thing for the Next machine. The fundamental problem is that the development 'costs' (most of which are not financial) were too high on those platforms and were not 'open' in a way for people to truly innovate. "Here's your box, stay within the lines." The ecosystem was 'closed' (or at least severely throttled). [Believe me, I know the argument between 'deveoper open' vs. 'consumer experience' all too well...]

Anyone remember how much the original 3 Mac programming reference books were in 1984 (note: I still have mine)? or, better yet, how much the insane price of the Next developer program was (which you were required to join to get any API information whatsoever)? ($1500) They were out of reach for the common tinkerer developer. Enter the PC and Charles Petzold's book. Cheap to develop on, lots of APIs to get yourself in trouble, no barrier to distribution. Outbound marketing by a developer relations group that actually wanted you to succeed (vs. the pinhole the iTunes App Store has created vs. the floodgate it *should* be...).

Android will succeed because it is far more accessible to the average developer - from an overall 'cost' *and* a process standpoint. You cannot get monsterous growth like Microsoft had on the PC revolution by hyper-controlling the environment. Someone else will come along (be it Android or ??) and leverage the developer masses interests.

Believe me, I think the Android OS is incredibly slow, clunky interface, and needs some BlackBerry engineers to fix the underlying JVM - so it ain't perfect. However, getting off of being only on T-Mobile (meaning picking up real networks like Verizon and Sprint) and adding Samsung, Motorola and others as distribution partners, will cause it to succeed.