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MacBooks: I have an old MacBook Pro I keep around for Mac software testing. I typically carry an Acer sub-notebook, dual-booting Linux and Windows, when I leave my home office. BUT now I'm getting accustomed to carrying a 7" Asus MemoPad tablet and this nice Bluetooth keyboard. I also have iRig directional and hand-held mics, and a clamp-on wide angle lens, so my tablet is a total "reporting machine." At some point I want to get a 9" or 10" tablet with a 12MP (or so) camera. Then I'll *really* be in business.

Oh - the iRig mics. They're set up so you can plug in your 'phones or buds while recording and monitor your sound. I wish *everybody* did that. Don't you?

Stop drink the Cupertino KoolAid. The 5 is NOT the thinnest phone around.

http://www.androidguys.com/2012/09/12/there-are-at-least-three-android-phones-thinner-than-the-iphone-5/

That doesn't matter. The jury found that this phone infringes on this patent. No matter what kind of UI it uses, nobody is allowed to make a phone which resembles the iPhone drawing more than the Samsung does and nobody will want to test the boarders.
Yes, it really is that bad. Apple has successfully patented the rectangle and defended it in court.
This is a truly awful, awful result.

Challenge accepted. Weather app designs that don't look like Apple's:

Here's one unique design.

And another unique design.

And another unique design.

Yet another unique design.

Another unique one.

And another unique one.

And yet another unique one.

Even more unique designs.

And even more unique designs.

And it keeps going with the unique designs.

Yet another unique design.

Another unique design.

And the final unique design.

All of these look just fine and aren't inconvenient.

YESSIR, because the absolutely only way to design a weather app is to make it look exactly like the OS X dashboard widget from 2005. and your evidence is a Google image search showing a bunch of people who ripped off the OS X dashboard widget from 2005.

nobody could ever design anything different.

good job! *thumbs up*

I think you are working off old data. Motorola already indicated they have sold 400,000 Xooms in just the second quarter and estimates sales around 1.5 million units for 2011. Of course, this is much lower than they would like, but it is not dismal, afterall. Plus they are working on a Xoom 2.

They had a rocky start with disappointing sales in the first part of the year. But as the bugs were shaken out and the price dropped, sales started picking up steadily. They also lost momentum with not having the WiFi model available right at the start. Initial pricing was their biggest problem- they simply could not ask for the same price as the iPad and get stellar sales.

On the non-Xoom scene, the Asus Transformer is being sold at something like 400,000 units PER MONTH. Samsung is doing OK too. If you add up all the Android tablet sales, it is not a horrible number of sales at all. I suspect, but I am not sure, that this stuff will take off big time for Christmas and keep going up in 2012. Guess we wait and see.

http://www.androidguys.com/2011/07/29/motorola-expects-15-million-xoom-sales-2011/

Meh. This isn't news. The app is available on some third party app markets (read: not google's market) which are used on the other side of the planet. There was a time when a malicious text message could damage or brick an iphone.

There was a proof of concept that could execute arbitrary code on iphone by sending about 500 SMS and which worked about 20% of the time, as explained by the hacker here. Of course serious bugs aren't really news on either platform. There was a time when Android would execute all text typed into the phone as root, then there was the Android bug that sent your messages to random contacts or the one where an SMS corrupts Androids SQLite database. People in glass houses should throw stones you know.

"Apple will never unleash mass market versions of their products, Linux has and will."

1999 called, they want their quote back.

Ever heard of the iPod? iPhone? iPad? I think those are all mass market versions. How's the Linux mp3 player doing? Or Linux tablets? Even Android phones are just barely competing with iPhones despite having being offered by every carrier and having dozens of models and being free.

Android loves to say "Look, we're beating the iPhone!" but how hard is that when you pay people to take your product? I could beat Walmart's sales in no time if I was paying people $25 to take a new LCD and underwear.

Not sure if you were going for teh funnies but:

This tweet from Dan Morrill, Android Open Source & Compatibility Tech lead, means more than meets the eye. This officially opens up all possibilities for custom ROM makers, as there aren't any minimum processor requirements for Honeycomb.
http://www.androidguys.com/2011/01/07/dan-morill-minimum-requirements-honeycomb/
The tweet referred to above:
http://twitter.com/morrildl/status/22845294886518785#

I was mainly referring to Jobs' attempts on Android (here's an audio clip). Also, you've probably heard of the iPhone 4 antenna problems. I don't bookmark these stories, so try google.

Oops, sorry. Looks like they are already pursuing this.

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/06/24/intel-android-x86-netbooks-tablets-summer/

So what you're saying is that you want to pay your hard earned money for a PC that the developers will actively seek to prevent you from gaining root access on,

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/08/08/google-removes-easy-root-android-market/

who's apps can only come from one place

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/06/29/att-explains-opt-android-market/

(if those android game devs were deveoping on apple's platform they'd be SOL. On android they're free to set up their own market, distribute without a marketplace app or use one of the other marketplaces that already exists). And I've certainly heard enough horror stories about the review process to turn me off from ever trying to sell anything on the iphone.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/apple-responsible-for-994-of-mobile-app-sales-in-2009.ars
http://larvalabs.com/blog/android/android-market-payouts-total-2-of-app-stores-1b/

So what you're saying is that you want to pay your hard earned money for a PC that the developers will actively seek to prevent you from gaining root access on,

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/08/08/google-removes-easy-root-android-market/

who's apps can only come from one place

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/06/29/att-explains-opt-android-market/

(if those android game devs were deveoping on apple's platform they'd be SOL. On android they're free to set up their own market, distribute without a marketplace app or use one of the other marketplaces that already exists). And I've certainly heard enough horror stories about the review process to turn me off from ever trying to sell anything on the iphone.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/apple-responsible-for-994-of-mobile-app-sales-in-2009.ars
http://larvalabs.com/blog/android/android-market-payouts-total-2-of-app-stores-1b/

http://coreplayer.com/content/view/28/69/ for symbian, palm and wm6 devices.

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/06/25/beta-test-rockplayerbase/ for Android (in Beta, but works great!)

Nothing for iphone, sorry. try this instead: http://www.gadgetsdna.com/how-to-install-android-2-2-froyo-on-iphone-3g/3501/

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Play-MKV-Files-On-Playstation-3 Best bet for PS3 (which seems ridiculous, but tevs)

I said...For the majority of the market, meaning the majority of the smart phone market, the iPhone is a great product. I even capitalized the smartphone part of that sentence. I didn't say it was the end-all be-all of phones. I merely don't understand slashdot's group-hate towards what is, in my opinion, a great product. I think the majority of "the haters" only hate it because they see others hating on it and think it would be nice to be a part of that group, for whatever reason. I really don't care that some developers "can't" develop for it (even though that's a flat out lie) or that everything has to run through the app store. I don't care about any of these things because I'm not a developer. When it comes to phones, I am a standard end-user, and for me, the iPhone (or Droid, it has some cool features too) does everything I want it to.

Anyway, based off your link, I went and looked up a few things myself. Does everyone who buys a cell phone buy a smart phone? No, obviously not. Of the smartphone market, Nokia has the largest marketshare, at 44%. Android is a distant fourth, behind RIM and Apple. Are they gaining ground? Sure. But between blackberries, Droid phones and iPhones, Nokia has decided to get out of the market completely.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/smartphones-to-overtake-feature-phones-in-u-s-by-2011/ --This link is for when smartphones are expected to over-take "regular" cell phones.

http://gizmodo.com/5418797/nokia-to-halve-smartphone-production-in-2010-official-suicide-watch-starts-now --Nokia getting out of the smartphone market?

I went to look for percentages in the US just to see what was what. I gotta say, I was rather intrigued by the results:

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/05/10/android-edges-apple-smart-phone-market-share/

Relevant quote: The Android train keeps gathering steam as evidenced by the latest report from The NPD Group. According to their estimates, Android has eclipsed Apple for second place in the United States in market share, behind Research in Motion. Android sits at a 28 percent share while RIM commands 36 percent. Apple trails in third with 21 percent.

Everything I was basing this off of is that of all the people I know, and the phones I've seen them with, exactly 1 guy uses an Android phone. Everyone else either uses a non-smart phone or a blackberry or iPhone.

Anyway, thanks for the links and whatnot.

P.S.: I expect, when Android gets a huge marketshare, for slashdot posters to start hating on those smartphones too, because that's the "cool kids" thing to do. Apple used to be "a great little company" that built quality computers and devices. Now, since they've had such huge successes, it's suddenly cool to hate on them. It gets old. I'm suspecting the majority of slashdot posters can't code Hello World properly and wouldn't know vi from emacs if emacs pimp-slapped them. (FTR, I am not referring to you in the above response, merely saying in general)
 

Yeah, because AT&T is not at all about control. A phone is as open as the phone company lets it be.

Androidguys has an awesome series about android development. Ignoring the version issue for a moment, the other aspect that can cause "issues" is being a responsible multitasked process and screensize. They have articles on those specifically:

http://www.androidguys.com/category/ag-originals/building-droids/

But back to the version information, 1.5 is the base version on any device out today but pretty much everything out there will be getting upgraded to at least 2.0. 2.1 is almost a feature set upgrade for 2.0 as opposed to a different release. I think a good rule is if you're developing something simple and "stupid" like a fart app, go 1.5. Gaming? Go 2.0+ (and look at using the NDK for that matter). Productivity I'd go 1.5 to reach the widest audience.

there is no ARM version of Flash. Let's repeat that: there is no ARM version of Flash; it does not run on any ARM based system.

False:

However, in the past week we have seen Flash running on the new Nexus One released earlier this week. Additionally, the Droid has now been shown successfully running Flash as well.

Guess which architecture the Nexus One and Droid run on?

AT&T is the only wild card because of their exclusive deal with Apple. AT&T was slated to have an Android phone enter the market this month. It seems they came to their senses and realized their offering was too far down on the ladder. Speculation is AT&T will still have an Android offering by the end of the year but exactly what form that offering will look like is questionable. Regardless, many are not expecting a high end offering on AT&T because it will seriously compete with the iPhone and endanger then exclusive deal. As such, most are expecting an upper-middle class offering rather than the low end offering they previously planned and canceled.

But ignoring AT&T, just about everyone else that matters in the US has already committed to at least one Android offering by the end of the year. Some will have two offerings with T-Mobile primed to *possibly* have as many as three.

I'm like you. I currently have a G1 on AT&T, sans 3G because of hardware frequency limitations. Just about everyone I know would willingly grab an Android phone if it were offered on AT&T, save one. That one person is on T-Mobile and the only reason they don't have an Android phone is because they just finished renewing their Blackberry and was locked in before they learned about Android.

On the other hand, most everyone is anticipating a very strong Android offering from Verizon as their AT&T/Apple F-U move. Verizon has been trying hard, but completely unsuccessful, to get a piece of the iPhone money. They have repeatedly been given the finger by Apple. In response, everyone expects Verizon to hit the ground running and push Android real hard. Obviously this is not fact (we'll see) but everyone involved in Android will be very surprised if the Verizon offering is crippled. In fact, they are actively attempting to lure developers to enhance the Android-Verizon experience; for whatever that means. I do know they desperately want Verizon exclusive applications to bring in the masses to both their network and Android phones.

As for Sprint, I'm not sure what to think there. It seems they are a little more timid, but far less so than AT&T to offer an Android solution. Most are expecting a toe in the water to see where it takes them. Time will tell.

Regardless, you will soon have many Android options available.

Back when Google was running the first round of the Android programming challenge, a lot of excitement was generated by an augmented reality app called Enkin. To everybody's surprise, it didn't make it into the first round of finals, and seemd to disappear from sight. Turns out that Google had some other plans for them.

I did see one AR app in action on a G1, but I don't remember what it was called. The results were so-so... Hit and miss, sometimes it would get the buildings right, sometimes it wouldn't. But AR is definitely a very appealing possibility, and it'll probably improve very quickly. All the basic bits seem to be there.