Jordan Crook, TechCrunch:

But what’s happening with iOS vs. Android is different. Instead of seeing an epic clash between two companies, or watching a customers-vs.-company saga unfold, we’re seeing customers in Group A join sides with Company A, while Group B joins sides with Company B. Apple and Google are supposed to hate each other, but just because we use their products doesn’t mean we need to hurl hateful, meatless comments at each other.

The problem is that those who would debate mobile platforms in this manner are basically stuck in the myopic, Microsoftian attitude that “there can be only one.”

I have an iPhone 4S and a Galaxy Nexus (as well as an iPad, Kindle Fire, and some other stuff not worth mentioning). I can see the appeal of both Android and iOS platforms — they each have their strengths and weaknesses and are actually so fundamentally different that in reality they cater to entirely different kinds of people.

I guess I can appreciate the differences because I am, in some ways, a semi-reformed nerd. My twenty-something self would have been all over Android and had little interest at all in iOS — I was a tinkerer back then, and I enjoyed things I could play with, hack, extend, etc. Now, pushing 40, I want something that “just works” for my day to day use (not that Android doesn’t, but it still tempts me to tinker more than I want to :) ).

The bottom line, however, is that the attitude that one platform has to — or is going to — dominate is absurd. We live in a modern world of multiple platforms and interoperable, interconnected apps. As we move closer and closer to putting everything in the cloud, it’s going to matter less and less what device a given person is actually using.

Consider how well even entirely disparate platforms co-exist. Gaming consoles are a great example…. You don’t hear many flame wars among gaming console users declaring that the PS3 is going to kill the Wii or Xbox, and these particular platforms are far less interoperable than the mobile platforms with a relatively open developer environments.