Google’s Android platform exists as it does today because of Apple’s iPhone

“This might be a difficult pill for hardcore Android fans to swallow, but the Android platform exists as it does today because of Apple’s iPhone,” Zach Epstein writes for BGR.
“Seriously, watch Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz’s original Android demo video from back in 2007, when Google gave the world its first look at the company’s new mobile platform,” Epstein writes. “As you can plainly see in that video, Android was initially being developed as a terrible clone of the BlackBerry platform, and it might have followed BlackBerry’s platform down the gutter if things had continued as they were.”

“Meanwhile, all the top mobile companies that decided not to copy Apple saw their mobile businesses topple, including Microsoft with Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Nokia with its dominant Symbian platform,” Epstein writes. “Google and its Android device partners have continued to copy tons of features from Apple’s iOS platform over the past decade. They’ve also taken countless elements from Apple’s iPhone designs. The iPhone X’s notch is the most recent example and perhaps one of the most widely copied iPhone design features, but it’s hardly the first.”
“After all these years though, there’s still one awesome yet underrated iPhone feature that Android phone makers refuse to copy, but I really wish they’d come around because it adds so much value to the smartphone experience,” Epstein writes. “It’s probably one of the most impressive and yet underrated hardware features in Apple’s iPhones: The Taptic Engine.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: When you use a phone without a Taptic Engine – any Android iPhone knockoff – the lack of the Taptic Engine is glaring. As Zach writes, “The Taptic Engine is like hummingbird wings fluttering compared to the clumsy flapping of a chicken.”
Everything about Android feels cheap, chintzy, insecure, privacy-trampling, or just plain half-assed, but, listen, somebody needs to supply the hoi polloi of the world with bad approximations of the real thing. There’s no way Apple could churn out billions of cheap phones per year without damaging their brand, right? Or is there?
Anyway, here’s what Google’s Android looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:

Apple’s products came first, then Samsung’s:

And, here’s what cellphones looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:

People who buy Android phones and tablets reward thieves.
Interns, it’s been quite the beery week, filled with much Christmas cheer, so roll out some Hair O’The Dog, please! Cheers, everyone!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ladd” for the heads up.]