Week 12

I guess if an Apple user or an Android user were to tell which software is better, they might be biased in their opinion. However, I am a Blackberry user, so I'll try my best to give a fair share of opinion. Honestly, I don't even know why I have decided on buying a Blackberry for myself, I guess it's because of the peer pressure I got from all my smart-phone user friends. To me, owning a smart-phone seem pretty cool, and I just want to get into that 'loop' where I won't be left out. Thus, the Blackberry. But then, I slowly learnt that it was not all about being 'cool', it was instead to be able to get hold of the 'services' that was built to provide for the users. It was when I was walking around the streets of Sydney that I started to appreciate the services my Blackberry had provided me with, such as the GPS/ Google Maps, BBM, and other sorts of social related applications.

As Roth has said it in his article, "Under Android rules, everyone's their own boss." I am very envious that Apple and Android has much more applications than the Blackberry's. And the best part of all, Android's applications are created by a third-party and wait for it.... IT'S FREE! Unlike other software's application, it's either you would have to pay for it, or you will be asked a bunch of questions, in order to get through that barrier or signing up/ downloading for an application. After reading the article, it's much more clearer to me why people would much rather prefer getting a smart-phone than a laptop/ computer. With no doubt there's definitely thousands or more purchases of laptop/ computers everyday, but the smart-phones are also out there in the market. And almost everywhere I go, I'll see people of all ages on their mobile phones. Reason being, as long as the smart phones are as accessible as laptops, it would hit the market.

Applications are not Android's main concern, the concern is how the software would/ could affect the network. "Google will supply the basic starter apps, but Android's secret weapon is really the network effect." Since there are dozens of people whom are able to create new and improve applications for the smart phones, there is not much to be worried about. All they need to be focused on is the matter of whether users could enjoy the experience of using the software or would it cause them too much of a hassle. "We've learned from computers that it's really nice to have complete connectivity, to be able to connect anything in a kind of open way. We've also learned that it's really nice to be able to run any application you want to run, also in an open way. For a lot of people and a lot of the time during your life, the phone is your main computing platform. We look at those technologies and say, wow, we could do a whole lot more." (Roth, 2008) Today, it's all about the connectivity.