Huh? That isn’t why they set standards. It’s not because the OS is inefficient it’s because they wanted users to have a common experience that they could ensure was good and so devs could create apps to that standard.
an iPhone dev knows exactly what the end user will have in their hand when he writes a program. That’s a very very good thing. An Android dev doesn’t have a clue what is out there or what cheap phone may ship next...so what standard does this dev write to? Does he make it work on the latest and greatest or does it find the cheapest of the cheap and try to make it work on that phone? Does he create 10 versions of his app to work on different builds?
The standards were set for devs and consumers not because of an inefficient OS.
Yes, but they’ve set the target pretty high, presumably because the environment is not as small/efficient. Now, that said, there is a place for this kind of environment, but they’ve kind of painted themselves into a corner by changing their name from “Mobile” to “Phone”, at precisely the wrong time. They should be moving from phones to an array of mobile devices, as there will increasingly be devices between the PC and the phone, like iPads, other tablets, handheld mobile computers (N900), etc. (See: MeeGo/Maemo/Harmattan)
It just sounds to me like their platform is going to be a little fat to really prosper primarily on phones.
All of this is, of course, MHO.
Google has finally come to the realization that they need to control the UX more tightly. The superior UX of the iPhone is precisely why Apple has been so successful.
The claim that some how Tiles are a superior taxonomical convention is nothing more than hyperbole. I’d like to see the usability test results.