又到了每年的这个时候。

    谷歌的I/O峰会于5月28日正式开幕，苹果的全球开发者大会也将于一周半后如期举行。两家公司都想抢足眼球，在气势上压倒对方，在渴望点击率的科技媒体的怂恿下，各种泄密、发布和令人惊叹的头条即将竞相登场。

    今天是苹果的Apple Pay，明天就会是其它什么东西。自从乔布斯称安卓是个“偷来的产品”，并发誓要彻底毁灭它以来，几年的时间已经过去了。这种说法虽然早已冷却下来，但问题还是同样的问题。谷歌的安卓就是靠复制苹果才做出来的。它先是复制App Store做出了Google Play，现在又在复制Apple Pay来做它的Android Pay。

    谷歌当然有很多值得敬佩的地方。我很钦佩他们勇于解决一些极为棘手的工程问题：机器学习、自动驾驶汽车和地图绘制。谷歌绘制的地图涵盖全球所有道路，单单这一点就令人钦佩不已。

    但安卓有点不一样，它是个防御型的项目。考虑到当iPhone开始研发的时候，谷歌还在苹果董事会有一席之位，说它有些卑鄙也不为过。

    安卓一直没能做得像iOS一样好，但它也算不错了。而且它为亚洲的许多快速追随者们打开了一扇门，后者向市场推出了大量相似产品。

    乔布斯当年曾经威胁要“核平”安卓，或许就是因为他预见到了这一幕。后来乔布斯向法庭讨公道，但这也是个防御性的举动。苹果的长处在于设计一些连我们自己都没有意识到我们需要的设备，而不是打官司、买专利，或是为了竞争而添加这样那样的功能。

    据高德纳公司统计，去年全球出货的安卓设备超过了10亿部，达到了苹果出货量的5倍。在功能和服务上，两大平台已形成均势。

    不过值得安慰的是，虽然我们不知道安卓和iOS的对拼会怎样发展，但市场总有足够的空间容下两大智能手机操作系统。另外，安卓现在还在纠结怎样赚钱的问题，而iOS早已使苹果成了这个星球上最有价值的公司。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    审校：任文科

    It’s that time of year again.

    Google’s I/O conference begins today and Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference follows in a week and a half. Get ready for a barrage of competing leaks, releases and screaming headlines as each company tries to upstage the other, egged on by a click-hungry tech press.

    Today it’s Apple Pay. Tomorrow it will be something else.We’ve come a long way since Steve Jobs called Android “a stolen product” and promised to destroy it. The rhetoric has cooled, but the issue is the same. Google copied Apple to make Android. It copied the App Store to make Google Play. It’s copying Apple Pay to make Android Pay.

    There’s much to admire in Google. I’m awed by their willingness to tackle truly daunting engineering problems: Machine learning, Autonomous cars. Mapping the Internet. Mapping, for that matter, the world’s roads and highways.

    But Android was something different. It was a defensive play, and a sneaky one at that, given that Google had a seat on Apple’s board of directors while the iPhone was in development.

    Android was never as good as iOS, but it was good enough. It opened the door to Asia’s fast followers, who flooded the market with me-too products.

    Jobs may have seen what was coming when he threatened to go “thermonuclear” on Android. He turned to the courts for relief, but that too was a defensive play. Apple’s strength comes from designing must-have devices we didn’t know we needed, not from filing lawsuits, buying patents or adding features to keep up with the competition.

    Last year, more than a billion Android devices were shipped, according to Gartner, five times as many as Apple. In terms of features and services, the two platforms have reached a rough parity.

    If there’s any consolation for the way Android vs. iOS turned out, it’s that there seems to be room in the market for two dominant smartphone operating systems. And while the competition is still trying to figure out how to make money from Android, iOS has made Apple the most valuable company on the planet.