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High Expectations For Google Android
Several readers have pointed out recent articles discussing the development and features of Google Android. Silicon.com has what is essentially an FAQ for Android, providing the relevant basic information about it. Apcmag questions whether Google can meet the high expectations most enthusiasts have for the platform, and The Register discusses Google's claims that it will be competitive with Apple and worth the wait. We discussed a preview of Android last month. Quoting The Register:
"Google mobile platforms guru Rich Miner acknowledged that for the moment, Apple may have an advantage. After all, Steve Jobs and company have actually shipped a piece of hardware, while the first Android handset won't arrive until 'the second half of this year.' But Miner also told the crowd that Stevo hasn't treated developers as well as they deserve. 'There are certain apps you just can't build on an iPhone,' Miner said. 'Apple doesn't let you do multiprocessing. They don't let your app run in the background after you switch to another. And they don't let you have interpretive language in your iPhone apps.'"
iPhone will be hard to beat. Apple is way ahead of the curve no matter how you cut it.
I'm all in favor of openness and thus I don't plan to buy an iPhone, but it sounds like Google has to look pretty far to find advantages for Android. These "flaws" in the iPhone are obscure enough that I don't think most regular people would even understand them.
It's interesting to note that iPhone doesn't allow interpreted code... while Android doesn't allow native code. Which one of these is more "open"?
Using my many years of reading Slashdot as a gauge, the enthusiasm for the Android handsets, and lack thereof for the iPhone, that are evident on this site lead me to believe that Android will flop and the iPhone will take over the mobile market. Large-scale market trends always seem to defy the common wisdom brokered by the denizens of this site.
Of course, I'm not making a prediction. Just a hunch, based on self-selected observations. My take means nothing, ultimately.
I don't think that Google really intend to try beat iphone. There is room in the phone space for more than one phone.
iPhone will take over? When is that going to happen?
OpenMoko will put all the pretenders to rest.
Get back to me when you have an honest-to-god product to sell me, not a plan for a product. Right now it's all promises.
Keep in mind that the road is littered with the bloodied corpses of alleged "iPod killers", and that the iPhone is undoubtedly the chosen scion of the same clan.
However, I do welcome any competition to the space, since a competitive market benefits everyone. Right now the competition is a wee bit on the pathetic side.
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
you can buy consumer hardware and run android on it today.. there's a good summary of what has been done at http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4262102607.html
I am running the zaurus version which uses Poky linux as its base, and it looks quite cool. Admittedly, it is a bit of a hack, as it's not fully working, but it's much better than using a desk-bound virtual machine!
No, I think you're largely right. I've watched so many "for sure" predictions become patently false on this site I've begun doing the exact opposite most of the time.
Example 1:
"OGG is the new hotness and will rule the compressed music formats."
How's that market domination working out for you? I'm glad I didn't invest my personal collection heavily in that format. Does it have a use? Absolutely. Will it ever come anywhere near matching the ubiquitous MP3 format? Nope.
Example 2:
"This is the year of Linux on the desktop!"
Mind you, this was said in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001...and so on. Are there players? Sure. Microsoft's missteps with the delays of and eventual bad user experiences with Vista and their stopping sales of XP opens a door for companies like Ubuntu, but no one's quite gotten their foot in despite your personal experiences to the contrary. Apple's been the real winner there, doubling their market share in the last few years while Linux has remained constant.
My take on Android versus iPhone (disclaimer: I'm a very happy unjailbroken iPhone user) is that they're not meant to compete with each other, at least not directly. Google offered a platform that depends on vendors to customize. Lots of potential? Sure. Lots of potential for suckage? Absolutely. Look at some of the stark differences between different Symbian and Windows Mobile devices and then tell me that Android is going to win hands-down. Hell no. Some company might be able to make phone with an interface and functionality to match the iPhone, but saying that it's better just because it's open is ridiculous. Better for who? Better for the consumer? Or better for you?
Apple offered not just a platform, but an "experience" where everything, if you'll pardon the over-used expression, just works. 99% of iPhone users aren't going to care less that software isn't GPLv3'd and you can't do whatever you want with your phone, and the sales they've racked up so far pretty much indicate that.
By the end of 2008, Slashdotters may find that they have 10 million so-called "pretentious hipsters" to deal with while they're still bitching about how bad the iPhone is. Yeah, that's me all right, a pretentious hipster. Windows/Exchange admin posting on Slashdot.
First off, there is no such thing as an iPod, what you got is everything from the iPod shuffle to the latest iPod touch and what a LOT of people forget is that it is the lower end models that sell best.
This makes the iPods of which Apple sells most very simple single purpose devices. Play music.
Now ask yourselve just how many people actually use iTunes to BUY music and not justas a way to put music they already have on it on to the iPod as nothing more then a extremely bloated uploader.
By definition almost the iPhone is NOT just a phone. If you JUST wanted a phone, you can get far cheaper devices.
The idea is that mobile phones will become the PC's of the future, well ask yourselve this. If this is true, which one is the IBM PC and which one the Apple?
Cast aside the hatred of MS for a moment and remember WHY it was WinTel didn't just win the race but left overbody else standing. No, the reason isn't that Bill Gates produced a superior product, the reason was that he simply didn't do everything he could to ruin his own project. MS didn't win because they made the right decisions, they won because everyone else made far worse decisions. Atari, IBM and yes Apple, they ALL screwed up.
Now look at the iPhone again, for that matter, look at Apple itself, has it really learned from past mistakes? Remember, there was a time when APPLE led the field, but lost it. Is the iPhone not about to make the same mistakes as before, too much control when all people want is to use the device as they want?
Didn't we just have a story about Atari in which multiple posters pointed out how Atari never had proper documentation on how to develop for its systems so people just went to the IBM instead and went to work with the PC? Hell, that I can use PC as a synonym for an x86 bases cpu running MS software says it all really.
Apple may have sold a lot of devices, but they also sold a lot of Apples in the beginning, and then the PC happened and expanded the market to extents few could have imagined.
The iPod is a simple music player that for an awfull lot of people works PURELY as an MP3 player. Is the iPhone a simple mobile phone with a few added apps OR is it an attempt at the fabled mobile computing we heard so much about?
I personally haven't bought a single phone in recent years that did NOT allow me to install any java app that I wanted on it. (Europe is different regarding telcom control then the US), why should I NOT allow my carrier to decide what I run on my mobile computing phone, but give Apple total control?
In my eyes Android will have to launch on a sexy phone to get the same headlines, but if it truly introdudes an open PC like platform on which I can run what I want, how I want, then it is the clear winner for every user who runs non-apple or non-ms software on their computer.
It all depends on wether people buy their phones as single use gadgets or buy into the mobile computing hype.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Personally I'm just hoping Android will allow users to merge the innate genius and usability of the current iPhone with the freedom of OSS software creation. My only gripe about the iPhone is that the applications released for the thing are all under the totalitarian control of Apple (making my dreams of an easy to use SNES or NES emulator attached to my phone/music player/organizer/Internet appliance almost impossible).
Of course, if it also lives up to the expectations that the rest of Slashdot seems to have for the platform (heals the lame/blind, resurrects the dead, fellatio on demand, etc) that would be an excellent bonus.
It seems like when you say "the iPhone is nothing but another phone" every Apple apologist in the world jumps all over you telling you that the iPhone is actually a full blown computer.
."
But as soon as you want to do something crazy like, say, run more than one program at once, you hear "Well, the iPhone is first and foremost a phone. .
So which is it? If I want to quit an application I imagine I am completely capable of doing so, and the iPhone runs OS X which these same people tell me is the most advanced OS around, and it ought to be perfectly capable of not giving a program in the background a lot of resources. Why is security on an iPhone suddenly such a huge deal, if its really a computer?
I guess I just don't get it.
*Gets ready to be modded -9999 Troll*
Another is to assume that cos they have a head start they will keep the lead, Apple had the head start on MS with PCs, but who won that one?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
The iPhone is a great phone, and IMHO without peer in the US. But being the best cellphone in the US is like being the valedictorian of summer school.
My prediction is that the iPhone will always be more stable and have a more consistent interface and user experience. It will always be a great phone. But Apple is about giving you the core features you need and knowing what to leave out. That leaving out bit burns we basement dwelling robot building slashdotters. But Apple's brilliance is giving you a great user experience, and I don't see that ever changing. To apple the iPhone will always be a closed platform (sure you can put some apps on it, but don't try to fundamentally change it). It will always be a phone or/and ipod, not a computer.
The Android is whatever people think it should be. So it's a phone, a computer, a bottle opener. etc. It will have lots of uses in lots of arenas that apple doesn't want to play in. It will allow other countries phones to really kick ass. It will also be much less consistent as lots of people code for it. To a lot of people, this is insanely exciting, and provides the first glimpse of a unified geek tool in your pocket (are you glad to see me?).
Android being free will be super attractive to phone makers, and to consumers. It will gobble up marketshare in many markets. And I suspect that Apple is just fine with that. Apple is in a great place taking the top portion of the markets they play in.
Sheldon
CPU on smart phone/PDA has capped at 600MHz for the past 6 years. This is quite sad. This has been 4 gens of Moore's Law and nothing has improved. Resolution has gone to VGA, but has dropped to QVGA. Until the smart phone processors go > 1GHz, smartphones just won't achieve the promise of the convergent device.
What it really comes down to is how polished the developer tools are. I've written professional apps for about 5 different mobile operating systems so far, and I can tell you that it's not so much in the languages and OS that it uses, but in how refined the tools are.
Right now, I don't like the Android emulator one bit. It's not an emulator. It's a marketing demo that pretends to be a phone, and tries to comfort me by adding "developer tools" as an option. An emulator is supposed to be able to run a ROM image of the OS taken from a machine. If the Google people put the OS on a piece of hardware and dump an image, THAT is what I want for testing my apps. Not some fake toy app for salespeople to be wowed by. I should be able to right click on the thing and load another ROM, save a ROM, and encapsulate a ROM for testing. Palm did that with their original emulator, and while it had lousy network support (I believe you could get a third party app called Mocha PPP that fixed that), it was easily my favorite mobile OS emulator for development that I've worked with. The Windows Mobile emulator is great for debugging and communication, but is crippled in a zillion other stupid ways. I disliked the Symbian and Brew emulators I've used as well, and most of the Java emulators out there have been equally bad. Folks always forget about how important emulation is, they just think that we can just buy a dozen phones and test on all of them. THAT is why homebrew apps don't get made, and those are the kinds of apps that build the entire economy around your OS.
The development environment needs to provide extensive command line support for automated scripting along with a system that makes it brain dead simple to debug and build apps. I don't honestly care if I'm writing an app in Java, C#, or C...I just want an IDE that lets me hit a simple, easy to remember control sequence that builds, debugs, runs, checks code into the repository, whatever. I don't want something that barks at me because it wants me to do things IT'S way, I want it to be flexible enough to do things MY way.
If Android can't deliver this, and a whole lot more, it's going to be only one of many mobile Linux OSs currently hitting the market. Everyone and their mom is releasing mobile Linux OSs. Like we saw on the desktop, it doesn't matter if the big corporations (like Novell) are backing you.
iPhone developers are not allowed ask each other for help on the SDK
http://lists.apple.com/archives/Cocoa-dev/2008/Mar/msg00567.html
Meanwhile, Android developers are free to give each other advice
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers
The only thing that this NDA is protecting is Google's ability to get more functional apps to market sooner.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
At the gym when I'm on an elliptical or AMT machine all of the TVs are muted and broadcasted in different FM stations. If you want to listen to the TV you need an FM radio. I have an iPhone and think an FM Radio would be a great feature considering that many cheaper MP3 players have it no problem.
there won't ever be any android phones, android is a PLATFORM for phones. and android will beat iphone because it focuses on the developer, i don't really give a fuck if it becomes the market leader, i just want a better mobile platform.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Not true for laptops either, at least according to this research:
http://www.displaysearch.com/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0A424DE8-DDE80D6A/displaysearch/hs.xsl/6305.asp
Search RapidShare and MegaUpload!
The "that phone" he refers to is Openmoko (which is a platform, not a phone). I presume he *really* means the Neo FreeRunner.
Here's an edited copy of an earlier post I put up about the Neo FreeRunner:
FIC produces a totally open phone. The firmware for the GSM is closed, but I believe that's a legal requirement in most areas.
The Neo 1973 & Neo FreeRunner are linux ARM computers with full GPS, bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, USB (client & unpowered host) and 480 x 640 touchscreens. The FreeRunner also has two accelerometers and wi-fi. You can buy the Neo 1973 now (<-- no longer accurate; you can only buy used 1973s while FIC is gearing up to produce FreeRunner), and the FreeRunner is expected in March or April.
You can (of course) play video, music, and run PDA apps on the devices. You can also view PDFs and the web, use bluetooth keyboards (or bluetooth anything else, for that matter), or do anything that you or someone else cares to port from the desktop, assuming the hardware resources are sufficient.
I've been playing with my Neo 1973 (currently recommended only for people willing to debug, and tolerate alpha level software) for a few weeks, and I'm having a great time with it.
Not only the software is open - you can get CAD files for the case, and schematics as well. There are also i2c, etc. bus standards used so adding new hardware is easy as well, if you're so inclined. Obviously the real market there is for a cottage industry distributing neos with extra hardware built-in, but the hobbyist can experiment at home, too.
Check out the Openmoko wiki for much more information about Openmoko and the Neo phones.