Android, FTW

Last night as we wrapped our weekly AndroidGuys podcast I was reminded why I prefer Google's Android OS and methodology to anything else.

Back in 2005, I was deeply entrenched in Microsoft's Live strategy, anything BlackBerry, and Microsoft Windows XP. Until 2006, that is when I started working for a small open source middleware company named JBoss based out of Atlanta, GA. My experiences at JBoss then Red Hat, showed me what open source is. Then how it goes about changing development and business models for consumers and enterprises. The main draw for me though was choice. Choice to use software or not use software, choice to sometimes pay or not pay for something as a customer decides where the value is for his specific needs.

Then I heard that Google had purchased Andy Rubin's Android OS and was said to create a mobile OS. The Apple iPhone had just appeared on the scene and it looked like a non-starter to me because its lack of ability, the seemingly closed development, and the perception that "there is no happy partner" when it comes to Apple. Oh well, I marched on with my BlackBerry and all was well until I heard that T-Mobile was going to develop an Android phone with Google to release in the U.S. I started reading all of the blogs on Android that I could find, around ten back in 2007 (AndroidGuys.com was one of those early ones), and looked forward to the big day.

Fast forward to October, 2008 when I got my first HTC G1. By then Apple had changed the mobile landscape with the AppStore and Android had followed suit with the ingeniously named, Android Market. While the G1 was subpar hardware by comparison, the physical device was not my goal but Android 1.0. No, to me it was a mobile computer running Linux that created an almost instant modder community and fan base.

Now after owning many Android devices they sit alongside a few Apple and Microsoft ones in my collection but without being a "hater" of the others I still see the value of choice in Android. Whether Google ever decides to change the OS and/or their way of developing and delivering the software, I do not know. But until then I will indeed be an Android Guy.