I get my new Sony Ericsson X10 tomorrow. I’m really quite excited [too excited to be dignified if I'm completely honest].
Anyway, as part of my pre-arrival review-surfing I’ve been looking through the android app market to pick the apps I’m going to download as soon as it arrives. The thing is, it looks like a different world…
In the last couple of years I’ve got used to viewing the web through google, google reader, google mail, a bit of evernote, and the guardian. I’ve got through a lot of content but it’s looked similar – white, shadowed and googley – and its had a similar logic.
Apps though, look different to each other: one of the popular one even talks like a pirate. Compared to google, I found it all a bit messy. It made me wonder how I’m going to make sense of it. How will I figure out which ones are for me, which ones work together, and which ones are embarrassingly lame?
Although I really really want to believe in a democratic and open web… I can’t help thinking that as people later in the adoption curve choose Android, they’re going to want to see one or recognisable or dominant brands to help them edit and choose. Of course, if that does happen, the question is which brands are these going to be?
I’ll see how I get one when I actually start using it. More [much more] to follow…
One Comment
Mr Buchanan!
Similar sentiment from me too. I have been prodding and swiping at my Nexus One for the past few weeks and it is true; the state of the app world is in a bit of a flux. Even Google’s own suite of apps for the Android remains inconsistent in its design; the lack of visual cohesion between applications developed by the same design house fails to inspire brand building.
But what is the point at this juncture? The ‘market’, ‘app store’ and ‘app catalogue’ of this world are either still too primitive or fragmented for any meaningful investment in cultivating an Adobe or SAP in the macro computing world. We will see homogenisation in the future; perhaps an app house will build up a suite of applications, bundle them, create them across all platforms, build a consistently recognisable interface, and become as indispensable as Photoshop, Word and Excel.
Wars between OSs will continue to rage, all it takes is a developer to cross the trenches and aim for a higher cause!
So, how is the X10???
Liam Giet