Android’s quest for world dominance is quickly becoming a reality. Over the past few months, we’ve seen several well-know Apple enthusiasts, or “fanboys”, make the switch to Android. Guy Kawasaki, who was once an Apple employe, recently made the switch to Android and is even now a consultant for Motorola. Social media extraordinaire Robert Scoble has also recently made the jump, saying “I am no longer an Apple fanboy” in a post on Google+. This week, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Andy Ihnatko is making the switch to Google’s mobile operating system. Ihnatko has loudly voiced praise for Apple for years now, giving every iPhone a glowing review, but now, he will start using a Galaxy S III full-time. “My positive reviews of new iPhones and new editions of iOS have always been sincere… Sometimes they’ve been downright florid,” he says. “I’ve been so enthusiastic that I’ve often been accused of saying those things because I’m an Apple fanboy.”
Ihnatko says he’s never disliked reviewing and using Android phones, but whenever his review was complete, he’d pack up the device and send it back to the manufacturer without second thought. He’d then proceed to grab his iPhone and go back to Apple territory. But recently, a shift has taken place according to Ihnatko. “Here’s what changed: Android got great. The OS got great, and the hardware got great,” he wrote in part one of a series on TechHive.
Andy says that of the driving forces behind his switch to Android is the better keyboard selection. On iOS, you’re stuck using the stock keyboard, which is good, but not great. On Android, there are a plethora of options including SwiftKey and Swype, the former of which Ihnatko praises for its word suggestion feature. Andy also loves the big screen devices Android runs on. He says the new “bigger” screen on the iPhone 5 really doesn’t compare to the ones found on devices like the Note II and Galaxy S III. Anyone who says big screens are worthless, is wrong in his opinion. “People whom I know, and respect, and even consider to be friends have dismissed large phone screens as a cheap marketing gimmick that targets gullible consumers in the showroom, and which doesn’t offer any practical benefits. Yikes. That’s so incorrect, so far out of whack with reality as I experience it… that I can’t even mount an argument against it. I can’t think of anything to say other than, `Nope. Wrong.'”
While one person switching to Android may not seem like such a big deal, it really is. With all the recent vocal Apple fans making the jump, they are informing their hundreds of thousands of readers of their decision, many of which look up to them for advice. This will hopefully show Apple that the next version of iOS needs to offer something revolutionary. If they want to succeed, they have to win these tech pundits back.