Is Android becoming Kitchen Sink?

As a product manager, I look at each feature addition very carefully. Recently (in froyo release of android) google added a feature where users can install the application on external media like SD card. The first reaction to this feature would be : Wow!. Google 1 up over apple as iphone memory is fixed and I cannot increase that but within a month challenged have started to show up.

Users can now take this application on the stored media and use it in another device without buying the application. To prevent this piracy google announced a new feature today: cloud based licensing service. Again the first reaction: Cool idea. The service lets the developers control and lockout the user in case the app cannot ping cloud periodically. Think about the impact of such a feature. Now if a developer chooses to add this feature then what happens when network is not available like while I am in flight or bad connection. I understand that the developer can control the behavior and also the frequency etc… but still this is way too complex. More decision points for developer and clearly developers are going to get hurt either which way they go.

This is a great example of feature bloat in products where customers get negative value for a feature added over long run.

Why I’m Craigslisting My iPads

I have been meaning to write a blog about this thought as well but techcrunch beat it to me. Here is the link to a great article: http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/17/why-i’m-craigslisting-my-ipads. I completely agree with every word in this article and here are few more supporting facts:

1. Lack of flash: Every evening (pretty much) I sit down with my iPad and within 15 minutes I end up at a website which has flash and I have to move to me real computer (macbook Pro). Even websites that dont have video are using flash for interactive experience and without flash my web surfing experience remains incomplete (as it stands today)
2. History of web pages visited and books mark sharing: Firefox launched a plugin yesterday but I dont use firefox. At work during the day, I get tons of interesting links which I want to revisit in evening and they are not in email so in evening there is no way to find the, other than my work laptop. This is an area where apple should focus so that there is information sharing between multiple devices. Firefox home is an iphone extension to do the same.
3. no multitasking and tabbed browsing: I dont need to elaborate this for all you readers. This is purely painful.

I really think ipad should run general purpose OS and that will solve all my pain .