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First, a bit of background. In 2007 I was a heavy Macintosh user and I had been an Apple fanboy since the early 90′s. I had lived through the dark times, survived OS 8 & 9, and then basked in the triumphant transition to OS X. Yet after proselytizing the Mac for many years, both personally and professionally, I actively avoided the iPhone when everyone around me was loving theirs. So when the android OS was first announced I was sure this would be a promising replacement for my aging blackberry and might give me the features I wanted without binding me eternally to iTunes. I had already heavily invested into the Google provided services and I hated AT&T with deliberate determination. (aside: this stems from them being SBC and not the AT&T we all grew up with.) Then when the G1 was released, three different people in my office bought them within a few days of each other. I was awestruck at what android provided, including copy and paste. I waited a month and a half until the end of our current cell phone contract, then my whole family went to T-Mobile to get new phones. My wife, unfortunately, picked a sidekick and my daughter got a windows mobile phone. But that was all a distant distraction, I finally had my G1. The early days of the G1 were a trying time, spent mostly waiting for applications to be released. Over the course of the last 18 months I have had uncountable twitter clients, to do apps, and notepads programs. I have watched the evolution of the ipod as a gaming platform, and the release of ever better android phones. All the while my G1 got slower and less stable.

So why, in the context of these problems and the ever widening dominance of the iPhone platform, would I choose to reinvest in android? I believe it will offer me the best solution for my needs. I will explore the three biggest factors in this conclusion: Integration, flexibility, and community. Yet to me the most telling point is that my biggest hesitation doesn’t come from the newly announced iPhone OS 4 or the recently released iPad but from the speculation that Google may release a Nexus One Pro with a keyboard. This speaks volumes about the decision I’ve made and how confident I am that android is the right solution for me.

As I said, even before my first android phone, I was deeply invested into Google’s services. GMail was my primary email, Calendar organized my time, and I practically lived in Reader. Since living with android and the integration into these services that it offers, I have become even more dependent on them and I don’t regret it a bit. My Google Contacts list is the way I keep track of the people I want and need to stay in touch with. Picassa is where my photos live online and Docs holds everything that the “My Documents” folder was designed to hold. Even when I had an iPod it’s biggest use was for Podcasts. Now I swear by Google’s Listen app. It’s Podcast done better that iTunes ever could. This level of integration has given me more than just a connected device, it’s really a connected system. A startling side effect is that my Laptop had become mostly just a host for my browser. The majority of apps I run are web pages turned to apps with Chrome’s “Create Application Shortcuts…” feature. I am almost living with Google’s Chrome OS already.

For me, though, this connected system really shines because it’s open and therefore more flexible than Apple’s solution. As an example I’ll discuss exchange integration. I recently started a new job where they offer the ability to connect a personal smartphone to the company’s exchange server, provided it supports certain security features. If I had an iPhone I would have to choose between syncing with my Google information or my work’s exchange server. On the android platform there are several exchange solutions, some baked in from the handset makers and others from third parties. I found Nitrodesk’s Touchdown and was elated. Not only did it provide a complete exchange solution, including all the security required by my company, but it kept all my work info separate from my personal Google stuff. It’s basically Outlook for android. This app, by virtue of it’s “duplication of built in features“, would never be approved onto the iTunes App Store, regardless of the number of users who would like it. I’ve found this to be the case numerous times with android applications. There are third party solutions for accessing Google Docs, Google Reader, and GMail tasks. How many solutions does the iPhone have for accessing iDisk or Mobile Me content outside of apple’s built in apps? And that’s when they eventually provide a solution.

But what, you may ask, about the future developments which are clearly leaning toward the iPhone. Most new apps are debuting there and it’s adoption rate isn’t showing any signs of slowing. To that I would answer with the community which has grown up around android and Google’s services. I can say it was liberating when I first Rooted my G1 and installed a custom ROM from Cyanogen. I was able to take my mobile computing into my own hands and, while excepting the risks involved, get better performance and functionality. Ever since then I have had a steady stream of new features and even updates from newer android versions that T-Mobile wouldn’t have sanctioned. And when there was a clash between Cyanogen and Google it wasn’t the Zero Tolerance policy that Apple has aggressively enforced. The end result was an amicable agreement that allowed new ROMs to be released and allowed Google to protect the components they had promised to their distributors. Because the parent company isn’t hostile to the moding community, many more high quality mods are available, including many impressive themes and several custom ROMs. This is most strongly evidenced by the existence in the android market of apps to download Cyanogen’s ROMs and third party themes. Both of which require a Rooted phone to work. Would Apple ever allow that?

I still maintain that the iPhone is a wonderfull solution, I tried to convince my wife that It would be a great solution for her needs just a month ago. She did eventually however choose a Blackberry 8520, which she has come to love. For me though the android philosophy is a closer fit and a better solution for my needs. So now I wait for FedEx to bring me my own Superphone and open the next chapter in my mobile computing life.

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I understand the problem everyone is having with Google Wave. I really do. From cries of “I don’t get it” to “This isn’t going to replace email” there is a roar of dissatisfaction with the initial release of Google Wave. I think this comes from people trying to set it into their current modes and methods. Wave doesn’t really replace any existing product completely. Wave won’t kill twitter or get you away from email. But I think Leo Laporte put it best on several of his Netcasts “Maybe for a paradigm shift it needs to be a product that we don’t get initially”. This sums up the disconnect many people feel with Wave. They have a hard time fitting Wave into their current view of work and communication because it isn’t the same as the tools they have used before.

Just as “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” holds true for situations with a lack of tools, I believe that once you get a screwdriver you don’t ask “how do i use this to drive nails”. A new tool can complement, rather than replace, existing ones. A new tool can both give you a better solution to existing problems (not inserting screws by hitting them really hard) and give you new capabilities that the old tools didn’t (you can remove screws as well). I think this is the state of Google Wave. It’s a tool that will make some current processes better, not emailing 12 versions of word documents back and forth, and allow new ones to be developed. This second part is what really excites me, what new things will we start to do with wave once it finds it’s place in our current workflows. How will we leverage it’s unique many to many, real time model to create things we couldn’t easily create before. All of the wonderful examples in the oft linked Lifehacker article are using wave for things that are currently accomplished with existing communication tools, most using one to one or one to many methods (ie. phone calls or email). And while I think that wave will be a great new tool in these areas, I really want to see what things will we use it for that we aren’t doing today because the existing tools fall too short to be workable.

So yes it slices, and you can use it for dicing if you want, but it won’t make thousands of Julienne fries. It may, however, help you create a new way to carve up your work.

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