TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has made it very clear that he’s an Android fanboy. Hell, he may have started the movement (which is now rivaling iPhone fanboydom). And yet, according to a source close to the situation, he plans to buy an iPhone 4 when it launches on June 25. How good is the source? Well, it’s Arrington himself.
As regular readers may know, Mike and I tend to fight in our internal Yammer room regarding iPhone versus Android. Mike posts those from time to time. So I figured it’s fine for me to divulge his startling (to everyone but me) admission. “Yeah ok I’m buying an iphone,” Arrington wrote in Yammer yesterday.
This is humorous for a couple of reasons. First, Mike has never actually seen the iPhone 4, nor has he used one. I have and Jason has, but Mike has not. Even some iPhone fanboys are waiting until they get their hands on one to decide if they should buy it. Not Mike.
Second, just this morning, Mike was ripping me for liking the iPhone. “MG Siegler irrationally loves the iPhone and it has become an important fashion accessory and self confidence crutch in his San Francisco hipster lifestyle.” Again, I do love this new iPhone, but it’s because I have actually used it.
My former colleague Eric Eldon left a good comment on Mike’s post: “I’ll start calling MG a ‘San Francisco hipster’ when he moves to the Mission, dyes his hair black, gets an armsleeve tattoo, starts listening to emo, drinks Pabst instead of better beers, rides a fixie — and switches to an Android device just to go against the mainstream of what’s considered cool (the iPhone).“
He’s dead-on. Hipsters don’t love the iPhone anymore. It’s way too popular. Hipsters want the device that spits in the face of the mainstream iPhone. They want an Android phone.
When I questioned why Mike would make the move back to iPhone land, he quipped, “why take a strong position on something unless you fully intend to reverse that decision dramatically at some point?” Fair point, though my strong position was that he was going to change his strong position. And I’m holding firm.
Likely knowing I was going to call him out, Mike went on to clarify, “just to be clear, it will still be my second phone. must have android/google voice for primary. But the EVO frankly sucks.” Second phone or not, that’s still him supporting the “Apple dictatorship.” Also, if you see him around, make note of which phone he’s actually using more.
Speaking of the EVO sucking, Mike does back up my stance that the device is no good. After a string of improving devices, Android took a step back with the EVO 4G. And Mike should know, he’s switched his phone like four times over the course of the past few months to be on the latest and greatest Android phone of the week. Me? I’ve had the iPhone the entire time.
Android is a software platform for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in Java that utilizes Google-developed software libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code. The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards...
J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He...
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