Monday 28 June 2010

Leo’s Basic Mistake

I hate all this my smartphone is better than yours playground arguments that go on in the comments of blogs and websites over which is better Android or iOS4. I have an iPhone and I love it. I’m sure if I had an Android phone I would love that as well. I’d like both, but the limiting factor of money gets in the way. We all can’t be Leo Laporte or Robert Scoble and have multiple phones.

But mentioning Leo reminds me of one thing that really does annoy me at the moment about him when I listen to his podcasts. That one thing is that when they discuss the iPad sales since launch, and the factoid of 3 million iPads sold in the 3 month peroid since launch. Leo always chips in with the following, “yeah but Android phones are selling 160,000 a day.” Which is totally irrelevant. Leo is comparing apples with pears. It doesn’t matter how many Android phones are sold, they are PHONES!!!! How can you compare phone sales against those of a completely different device type? I am really shocked that Leo keeps repeating this basic mistake across all his podcasts when discussing the iPad sales. If they were discussing iPhone sales like the recent stat of 1.7 million iPhone 4’s sold in 3 days, then yes his Android fact would be relevant. But not when talking iPad. Come on Leo wise up and stop making yourself look foolish.

I suppose what is even worse is the guests he has on the shows don’t pick him up on this. They just nod and agree with him like mindless puppets. I thought these guests were meant to be the good and the great of the IT scene, intelligent commentators and the technorati. Yet not once have they said “hey hang on their Leo, how is that relevant to iPad sales?” Not that great and intelligent then are they?

Oh well I suppose it could be worse, Leo could have a nobody like me on his show, pretending they know it all, and that they have great indepth thoughts on the subject matter.

It’s like my other bitch about Leo and his technorati club and their moaning about Apple refusing to let Google’s official Google Voice app on to the iPhone. At the time it was a none issue in the US and outside. Why? I’m glad you asked, and let me tell you. Back then it only affected a very very small minority of users out there. Google voice was invite only, and only available in the US. Not an issue for 99.9% of the iPhone using population. (I made that percentage up, just to illustrate how small a number I think were bothered by it.) But now in the last week Google has opened Google Voice up to anyone (as long as they are in the US). So now it has become (potentially) more of a relevant issue. And I expect that there will be more pressure from within the US for Apple to approve the Google Voice app now if it gets resubmitted. Still for those of US outside the US it is still a non issue.

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