The Rival To Apple’s IOS That Is Not Exactly A Rival

With the launch of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ we take a look at the other side of the coin and see why some people prefer Android.

The first inkling most of the world got that there would be another operating system for mobile phones and other smart mobile devices, was the 2007 beta release of Android. It took nearly a full year but before 2008 was done a 1.0 version was commercially available. Some five years later Google could announce that a billion activated devices use Android as an OS, that’s a business model of uptake alone of which crack dealers would be envious. Why has it proven so popular so fast? That’s simple. The competition is absolutely ghastly.

I should explain, before all the Apple fanbois begin to scribble furious emoticons to Blackjack Champ HQ, that whilst the Apple system is very stylish it is is also almost entirely locked down. You can use what Apple want you to use with it, nothing else, and the proprietary nature of the tech always meant that people were forced to pay over the odds for a cable or other peripheral required. This closed shop rankled and it was always only a matter of time before a rival arrived, but unfortunately for the world these were also dire.

Offerings from well known phone manufacturers were wholly unimpressive, either by dint of being slow, unintuitive or just badly supported in terms of apps and facilities, and even the giant Microsoft, who’d been in the mobile OS game since 1996, still hadn’t actually managed to create a system with the fluid ease of Apple’s iOS and yet allow greater access and customization ability for both developers and users alike. Windows CE, Windows Mobile and now Windows Phone have all come and will probably all go because Windows is a desktop not a mobile screen.

Android’s incarnations have been swift in coming, about every six months or so, and have consistently added to and improved upon the former versions of itself that it is replacing in the latest generation of handsets. This evolutionary process is assisted not just by the Google monolith, who are as equally objectionable as Apple in many ways, but by the Open Handset Alliance, which has more than aided in keeping the software environment fresh and the new technology running smoothly, which is more than could be said for the iPhone 6 launch presentation coverage online which simply didn’t.

Apple And Sole Ownership Of Your Soul

One of the big reasons for Android’s popularity is that Apple is disliked by vast swathes of the population who found the idea of handing over total access to their data, photos, etc. to a single company was somehow just asking too much. Google might want to control everything we look at, but we CAN go and use other sites and facilities, when you with Apple, it’s them or no one. This difference is a huge drive in sales for Android devices that tend to be bought by people who think Apple fanbois need culling.

Apple also did its reputation no good by moving production to facilities in China where conditions, working hours, wages and suicides have all been under the spotlight. So horrible were some of the tales coming out of the Foxconn factories that headlines were made and promises too. Nothing has been done about workers conditions and windows of upper floors still have nets outside to stop workers killing themselves and ruining production quotas for the iPhone 6+. Android devices are also made in China under what are likely to be similar conditions, but Apple are the ones that got caught.

The abuse of Chinese workers by demanding western capitalist corporations says much about the modern world and how we demand more and more from it. Apple demand huge inventories be filled quickly by factories in poor nations, but this demand never goes away because after the iPhone 6 there will be the iPhone 7 and the demand will still be there. Chinese workers don’t need to gamble on getting some overtime this week, they’ll get overtime every week, working themselves to death so you can play iPhone casino games on your way to work.

Android Devices Number Over One Billion

Android casino applications share their DNA with their iOS cousins but the more open nature of the architecture allows a far more simple transition for small time developers who find the Apple App farming set up to be a tad restrictive or the new versions of their operating system to be inflexible. Of course screen size still poses some issues for casinos aimed at the smartphone and mobile market, but it is far easier to create a playable experience of some games than others, some of the larger table games do suffer on a screen barely five inches across, so what does that leave?

If you strip poker blackjack and roulette from the possibilities you’re really left only with the now hugely popular mobile slots. The number of these various version of what is, when all is said and done, merely the old concept of a fruit machine rendered in pixels rather than on a pier arcade or in a pub, extends into the thousands and whilst the quality of some is to be questioned the constant development of better rendering and fluid animation improvements allow each one to carry with it something new, it is a mechanic, a narrative or a method of interaction.

Of course the more wholesome image portrayed by Apple, who are so good at marketing even Goebbels would have taken his hat off to them, means that sometimes tabloid headlines strike up another silly scare story about Android mobile gambling applications but it’ll be Apple that removes their versions from sale. Google is a tad more relaxed about things remove those that break the law, not those that merely alarm a small moral minority who still believe it’s the 1950s and that anything in any way fun is probably sinful.

However this has in no way dented the rise of Android slots or the other casual games of chance and opportunity that people like to play. The android platform has revolutionized the industry giving access and possibility to small third party developers that have responded by rivalling Apple in every major area, except price. The premium paid over the cost of a similarly spec’d Android phone by Apple fanbois is a staggering testament to how much people are willing to spend on fashionable whimsy and the ability to flash a phone that’ll be out dated within a year by its own successor.

~ Read more about the new iPhone and gambling ~.