Calling the Android operating system “hideous" and its tools “horrendous," you might wonder why Joe Hewitt would eschew Apple’s iOS for the platform he seems to despise.
Hewitt, the man behind the wildly successful Facebook app for the iPhone, Tweeted his not-so-flattering thoughts about Android earlier this week. Yet in the end, Hewitt switched sides due to his frustration with Apple’s App store policies, which he referred to on Twitter as “big brother telling me what to do."
This comes at a time when carriers are waged in a battle royale over smartphones and operating systems, and a successful developer’s words can carry weight. Just two weeks ago, sales figures showed that Android had become the third-most used OS in the world and No. 1 in the U.S., overtaking BlackBerry. Of course, Apple’s iPhone – the only one running iOS – still outsells any one individual Android-based phone, but the numbers show the gap is shrinking. BlackBerry, meantime, appears to be headed in the wrong direction as competition grows and Research In Motion’s stock price falls.
In the U.S., smartphone sales jumped 50 percent in Q2 compared to the same period a year ago.
