The problem is that he only sees a single market, and that's the high-end market that competes with Apple.
Competing with Apple sounds good, but it's hard. The Pre when announced had a huge advantage over the iPhone which has largely faded away in a matter of months. Apple have the development team, the advertising money, the branding, the fashion, the R&D department, and the connections with suppliers to get hardware features before a small-player can. You're doomed to be forever playing catch-up.
What's eventually going to happen is that most people will want a product that's almost as good for a lower price, on a different network, or want something in particular that's different to what Apple are offering. In the long-run, that's Android's differentiator, as Apple aren't going to want to cut features in order to compete on price, or offer a variety of specialist features such as a physical keyboard.
Finally, I hardly think telling people to wait for the 2nd generation means that people will be "waiting forever". So far, only a single manufacturer, HTC, have released Android handsets, and both the G1 (HTC Dream) and G2 (HTC Magic) were undoubtedly rush-released and flawed. The trickle of much superior second generation handsets has already begun - the HTC Hero was released last week, and the Samsung Galaxy i7500 is supposedly out next week in the UK.
Fashion is fickle. I'm looking at getting a HTC Hero because a) everyone has an iPhone and b) managing my music in iTunes has been annoying since I did a clean install of Mac OS X.
I second that. HTC Hero seems to be as capable device as an iPhone, but without crazy restrictions imposed by Apple and carriers.
And it has 5MP camera that will make iPhone owners jealous (although not me - I had N82 with 5MP and Xenon flash for 1.5 years now), which Gruber seems to imply is needed to gain from Apple. Frankly I think he is wrong. What's needed is as capable device and slightly lower total cost of ownership. Hero comes close IMHO.
The problem is that he only sees a single market, and that's the high-end market that competes with Apple.
Competing with Apple sounds good, but it's hard. The Pre when announced had a huge advantage over the iPhone which has largely faded away in a matter of months. Apple have the development team, the advertising money, the branding, the fashion, the R&D department, and the connections with suppliers to get hardware features before a small-player can. You're doomed to be forever playing catch-up.
What's eventually going to happen is that most people will want a product that's almost as good for a lower price, on a different network, or want something in particular that's different to what Apple are offering. In the long-run, that's Android's differentiator, as Apple aren't going to want to cut features in order to compete on price, or offer a variety of specialist features such as a physical keyboard.
Finally, I hardly think telling people to wait for the 2nd generation means that people will be "waiting forever". So far, only a single manufacturer, HTC, have released Android handsets, and both the G1 (HTC Dream) and G2 (HTC Magic) were undoubtedly rush-released and flawed. The trickle of much superior second generation handsets has already begun - the HTC Hero was released last week, and the Samsung Galaxy i7500 is supposedly out next week in the UK.