Marco Arment comments on the state of so-called ‘open’ systems Linux and Android in his post Great since day one. The article is a must-read for anyone interested in new technology, but also a reality check for geeks.

Too often, kit from tech companies—often Apple, but others too—is slammed online, due to the geeks who write the tech press getting their knickers in a twist about a ‘lacking’ feature from a product (despite it only being of interest to them), or praising a product for something so niche that a consumer would never discover it (let alone care if told about it by someone considerably geekier than they are). Note that I myself have been guilty of this, especially during my earlier years of hackery. These days, I am extremely careful about checking my tech writing against an internal geek filter.

To me, Arment’s post wonderfully sums up why it’s going to take a lot for Apple to be beaten to a pulp by Android. The latter is a good system, and there’s a lot of noise online about it, but much of the drive is by geeks who like the geekiest aspect of the system. By contrast, the iPhone and other iOS devices are typically favoured by normal people. In the long run, I think there’s space for both systems (and others), but to expect Android to conquer iOS due to offering features because it can rather than because it should is bafflingly stupid.