That's starting to change. The Nexus One is very nice, the Droid Incredible (which is basically the same thing with a better camera) is even better, HTC Sense is a very nice interface, and in June, Sprint's going to get the Evo, which is basically an Incredible with an even better camera (takes 720p video), a front-facing camera, 4G, a 4.3" screen, and the ability to act as a wifi router.
And one day someone outside of the Apple campus is going to wake up and realize that a big bag of features is no longer enough; you have to combine them all into a seamless environment so that people[1] can actually take advantage of the cute bits of electronics you stuff into ever smaller packages.
[1] By "people" I mean the 99.999% of the world who do not bother to read instruction manuals, would never use a command-line interface, and once had vcrs whose clocks always read 12:00...
With an iPhone or iPad, you can have it activated when you purchase it, buy music or apps wirelessly, add contacts, sync to MobileMe/Google/exchange, and do pretty much whatever you like.
I only connect my phone to my computer to do backups (because I don't want to lose my text messages), or to update apps >20MB (because I'm never on WiFi). You don't have to have a computer at all to use an iPhone. In fact, I have a friend who'd never sync'ed or backed up her iPhone once (and didn't know how to do it), and she used it without issues for well over a year before needing to do a backup.
I've never used Android, so I'm not sure what music store is available on the phone by default. Is it any good?
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That's starting to change. The Nexus One is very nice, the Droid Incredible (which is basically the same thing with a better camera) is even better, HTC Sense is a very nice interface, and in June, Sprint's going to get the Evo, which is basically an Incredible with an even better camera (takes 720p video), a front-facing camera, 4G, a 4.3" screen, and the ability to act as a wifi router.
And one day someone outside of the Apple campus is going to wake up and realize that a big bag of features is no longer enough; you have to combine them all into a seamless environment so that people[1] can actually take advantage of the cute bits of electronics you stuff into ever smaller packages.
[1] By "people" I mean the 99.999% of the world who do not bother to read instruction manuals, would never use a command-line interface, and once had vcrs whose clocks always read 12:00...
With an Android phone you don't even need a PC (or Mac), unlike Apple's stuff.
With an iPhone or iPad, you can have it activated when you purchase it, buy music or apps wirelessly, add contacts, sync to MobileMe/Google/exchange, and do pretty much whatever you like.
I only connect my phone to my computer to do backups (because I don't want to lose my text messages), or to update apps >20MB (because I'm never on WiFi). You don't have to have a computer at all to use an iPhone. In fact, I have a friend who'd never sync'ed or backed up her iPhone once (and didn't know how to do it), and she used it without issues for well over a year before needing to do a backup.
I've never used Android, so I'm not sure what music store is available on the phone by default. Is it any good?