I just thought about something about that big post from yesterday, saying having a mainstream os is restricting the community to want to own it because of it's uniqueness? How about the iphone homebrew community, they are at least 1000x bigger than we are, and that is the most un-unique device known to man.
I think we're having different definitions of unique here. The iPhone is unique - Apple doesn't offer any Android either. Actually, Apple is one of the best examples (probably THE example) for success through not giving users the obvious, unless it has been fully questioned, enhanced or even reimplemented in an uncommon way.
I wrote about the iPhone in the first link I provided (the google translated one).
Nothing makes the iphone hardware special other than the fact everyone owns one.
And everyone owns one because it was VERY special once. Right after the iPhone was released, even mainstream users got the idea behind the device, saw that it's unlike other mobile phones and understood how to use it. But it wasn't actually intuitive, everyone just thought it was. If you hadn't been taught by Apple (or someone else) to pinch your fingers to zoom, you may never have found out, because it was something totally uncommon. Apple did a great job on changing the way most smartphones work today. Without the iPhone, Android most definitely wouldn't be the way it is today.
In the same way, by spending effort on making the Pandora Angström a good experience, the argument of Android being more usable and "hip" can be made void.
You bring in interest from the mainstream and your underground community will grow... bottom line... just think about it, it's just numbers game of stupid end users to developers ratio, you have it with any system.
If the mainstream grows, the underground community may grow because more future underground community members will hear of the product. An underground community by definition doesn't have the same needs the mainstream has.
I can see not having a working android port to avoid a flood of people wanting it, but once a solid manufacturing process begins and they are looking to sell mass quanities of pandoras a solid port of android WILL bring TONS of customers....
I guess I did not express myself clear enough here, sorry. It's not that I think no one would buy an Android Pandora. It's just that mainstream people buying a Pandora will probably be mightily unimpressed by the device. When using it they'd probably experience that it's "another Android device" with
special gaming controls. As has been mentioned before, this doesn't mean that most Android software might not run pretty well on the Pandora. However, it makes the Pandora more of a "casual machine". Some of the mainstream people that don't care about how the Pandora works might just think that another Android device without the gaming controls but with an integrated phone function and a smaller form factor would have been better for them. After all, that's the kind of device most Android software is being developed for, so it works pretty decent on these kinds of devices (decent enough for mainstream users). And so their negative word-by-mouth would spread, saying that buying an Android phone might be better.
The problem is that users that are TOO mainstream and don't care about the backgrounds would complain that Pandora with Android is similar to any Android phone, just not as portable and without the phone. That's what the kind of person that doesn't see (or isn't taught) the backgrounds and possibilities of the Pandora would see. By using Android as an official OS and offering it pre-installed, you would end up attracting this kind of person. In the beginning, it would be good since the number of sold Pandoras would probably rise at first, but in the long term it's very dangerous.
Of course, they'd also complain about the current Angström system. But it's much better to improve that wherever necessary than to use Android.
And in the end, the Pandora is about giving people some form of freedom. In my opinion, even Craig is better off by NOT focusing on trying to increase sales, but instead focusing on trying to improve the Pandora. Because done right, that does also increase sales - long term.
Personally, I only release something when it's good enough so that I'd want to use it myself. I would never advertise something that's not worth of being advertised, because otherwise people would no longer trust me as much (and rightfully so). That way, they would no longer believe me when I'm talking about features that are indeed incredibly great. Actually, that's much like the way Steve Jobs does it - he once said that Apple wouldn't sell any netbooks anytime soon, because he didn't know how to make a netbook at a netbook price that is not crap. In other words, he did not want to try to sell people something that he knew would be crap. And that's why many people believe that something big is around the corner when a new Apple product is leaking (remember the rumors and hype around the iPad prior to its introduction?). He has a reputation, he's not the typical evil company boss.
The idea behind all this is that more doesn't necessarily mean better. A nice example for this is the Opera browser. When Opera Software stopped trying to primarily market it via its vast amount of built-in features, it became more popular. The features were still there, but they had no longer thrown them into the users face and instead relied on the users taking the initiative. In a similar way, Android as a community project would be a great thing to get new customers (and a nice thing overall, of course). I wrote about this in the automatically translated link, too.
android may not be as popular in your area of the world but in america (people don't mind spending 300+ on a mobile device... android phones run 500-600 usd without the discounts) it's by far the newest craze... some people will buy anything that has that little green robot anywhere on it.
Indeed, most people in Germany tend to compare and like whatever is best for them instead of wanting what's the latest craze. Even though most phones are much more heavily subsidized here than they are in, say, the US.
