Sometimes I wonder how much of this drama is staged, or at least welcomed, by both parties.
I remember back in the 90s how the desktop war was always discussed in terms of opposing giants. It was always PC versus Apple. There were a lot of interesting competitors that had to struggle to get a mention: OS/2, NeXTstep, BeOS. You see that in the browser wars, too, with how Opera has to struggle to even get a mention.
The same pattern plays out in the DVCS space: it's always Git versus Mercurial. Sorry bzr, no mention for you.
So I wonder, is this enormous conflict between titans really just their way of freezing Windows Phone 7 and Palm out of the trade press?
At least with git vs. mercurial, I'm pretty sure there's no marketing department on either side scheming to start a war between each other to choke out the other alternatives. Similarly, both Apple and Google might welcome the press, but that's very different from actually staging it.
More like each press outfit wants to draw more links by sensationalizing conflicts, whether real or imagined. Other press outfits don't want to be second with the story, so they run their own exciting stories.
At that point, it's an arms race of words. Whenever two competing companies actually compete, it's "war" and "slugfest" and similarly overblown adjectives that Americans are now quite familiar with.
It's stupid, but it's the media, and just the way it is. When Windows Phone 7 starts becoming available, we might hear as much about it (if it's compelling enough not to be marginalized).
Re: video:
I don't think the average user cares about playing DiVX/XViD/etc. That's a niche's niche.
Re: internet: Apple's products are almost as prepared as Froyo for accessing the broad internet. Both companies are pushing for custom apps. Apple is trying to regulate the quality (for better or worse), but I wouldn't classify Google as being non-App/all internet. Apple's very pro HTML5/web standards, so don't rule them out of the web-is-the-app business just yet. They may not be providing the web apps/services like Google does, but they certainly know their users want to be able to access the latest and greatest apps the web has to offer.
I remember back in the 90s how the desktop war was always discussed in terms of opposing giants. It was always PC versus Apple. There were a lot of interesting competitors that had to struggle to get a mention: OS/2, NeXTstep, BeOS. You see that in the browser wars, too, with how Opera has to struggle to even get a mention.
The same pattern plays out in the DVCS space: it's always Git versus Mercurial. Sorry bzr, no mention for you.
So I wonder, is this enormous conflict between titans really just their way of freezing Windows Phone 7 and Palm out of the trade press?