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Cyanogen Tackles How Developers Interact With Mobile Devices (sdtimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Cyanogen has announced a new integrated mobile platform designed to change the way users, developers, OEMs and MNOs build and interact with mobile devices. Their new platform MOD provides developers with APIs they can use to implement intelligent, contextually aware and lightweight experiences natively into the mobile operating system. It also allows users to extend the functionality of their devices.
"implement intelligent, contextually aware and lightweight experiences natively into the mobile operating system"
That came out of one of those technobabble generators, didn't it?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I really don't like Cyanogen getting chummy with Microsoft. Doesn't bode well.
I was hoping they'd have said "all mobile devices" instead of just "mobile devices". Oh well, props to Cyanogenmod for everything they've accomplished so far!
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Crayons Tackles How Developers Interact With Mobile Devices
intelligent, contextually aware and lightweight experiences natively into the mobile operating system.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Sure sounds like a great way to get some light interactive experiences, err, I mean, ad-fun-dvertising into developer's hands. I'm at least glad flash is dead, because if it wasn't, then you'd have flash popups right in your OS.
I really really hate it when some group does things "for my own good" when I want the exact opposite. For instance I really hate the phone app on the iPhone. Yet I can't remove or improve upon it. I want fine grained control over what my apps have access to and what information they get from my phone.
For instance I don't only want to cut my apps off from access to things like my camera, phonebook, GPS, etc. But I want to lie to my apps about cutting them off. So the app will think that it has access to these things but will only have crap fed to it. This way the app can't even say, "I won't work without access."
I want a firewall on my phone that cuts off anyone I want including the device manufacturer.
I want to run apps in the background, or not.
I also want to install apps that the company really really really doesn't want me to. So adblocking is not something I want apple, or google to decide for me. Apple is sort of going in the correct direction but what if they change their mind under pressure from government or other large corps?
I also want the ability to have apps that really manage my communications. For instance when I tell the phone to silence a call then I want that person's calls silenced for a very long time, an hour, a day, etc.
Then we get things like the phone only remembering so many calls back. I want my phone to remember every call I have ever received. What kind of storage would that take? Not much.
I want to be able to easily record my calls. By default it would be nice to record them all and then at the end of the call say, "Erase"
I want to encrypt the shit out of my phone with no risk of a back door. I want whatever type of encryption I want.
Basically I want to actually own my phone.
As a bit of an aside to these comments...
I had a couple phones that I installed various releases of CyanogenMod on as soon as I got them. Those phones had pretty uniform experience, even between versions. Then I got Samsung phone that I just never bothered to root. I didn't like its dialer, but I assumed that was just the standard dialer application for that version of Android.
Then I got an LG phone. The Dialer was different from Samsung's and also from a Nexus phone, which finally gave me the "Eureka!" moment that dialers are a module component on Android. Five minutes later, I had disabled the existing LG dialer via ADB commands and installed the CyanogenMod Dialer I actually like.
I bring this up primarily because, in spite of being well aware that things like the Contacts, SMS Messaging and Calendar apps on Android devices are almost always vendor-supplied rather than a stock version, I had never considered that the Dialer would also be that way. Moreover, it's trivial to find an alternative if you don't like the one you were given.
iPhone users are of course still hosed if they don't like Apple's defaults, but they signed up for that the minute they bought a Fruit device.
These don't address the fundamental privacy issues related to the parent post, but once you've agreed to own a smartphone it's fairly clear that you're already giving up a huge chunk of your privacy no matter what you do.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Seriously? Did they see the confusion between CyanogenMod and Cyanogen OS and say "I think if we buckle down and try, we could double - no triple - the confusion!"?
They really don't see an issue with having both CyanogenMod (the original AOSP derivative) and Cyanogen MOD (which is actually not initially going to be available on CyanogenMod - just Cyanogen OS)?
Good luck trying to google for Cyanogen MOD topics...
Aren't these the guys who are now in Microsoft's pockets? While they were independent, their offering, as an alternative to Google's Android, was attractive. Quite frankly, now that they are in Microsoft's pocket, not so much.
Customization is a double edged sword. (You can even argue about which edge is sharper)
Sure you can't customize the phone app. But neither can anything else. More importantly, nothing else can "customize" it without your permission.
The things you describe (like lying to apps about their permissions) are really really really edge case and really would just create a huge amount of support headaches. ('Hey grandma your facebook app wasn't working because you had it set to present--but-really-deny camera access" - "What? You little shit. Where's my Instamatic?")
Smart phones, Apple devices in particular, are consumer devices designed to make the average user's experience as easy as possible. If you want to do weird stuff to it you'll have to look elsewhere. Don't think plocking down 700 bucks for a shiny device entitles you to Apple's support when you want to do weird shit that's clearly only wanted by a tiny fraction-of-a-fraction of a percent of their customers.
Your problem is you want an Android phone and got an iPhone instead. You want control over every little thing? Android gives you all the tools and APIs and tweaking ability to have your phone do exactly as you wish. Get a Nexus phone and load on your exactly customized version of Android you built from the Android source code.
iPhones don't have that sort of control - Apple retains a lot of control to give a more unified experience and to avoid a few issues like sending texts or making phone calls without your explicit approval (that's why the dialer cannot be replaced - when you want to dial a number, the iPhone brings up the dialer with the number pre-loaded, and you give the dialer (not the app calling the dialer) permission to make the call. That way no app can force you to make a 1-900 call - at best they can bring up the dialer and populate the number, but not force you to make the call.
Of course, with that level of control comes a level of responsibility since a misconfiguration could render your phone unable to make a call or even worse, unable to answer a call because of some strange dependency issue. Another reason why Apple doesn't want to give users that level of control.
Designed to be used while sitting on the sofa watching TV, at the dinner table with friends, or on the toilet pooping.
I want my phone to remember every call I have ever received
My crappy Windows 6.1 phone (XP on a phone...) does that, it also saves every text message. What 'advanced' phone do you have that doesn't that?
In regards to recording calls, yes I'd love to do that (so I don't have to jot down a number or ask someone to repeat something 10 times), but keep in mind it's a legal mine field. For USA, it's illegal wiretapping to record a call depending on the states each party is in. In some states recording anyone is fair game, in other states only one party needs to know a recording is being made, and in others states all parties need to know about the recording.
Given that MS now funnels money to Cyangoen to integrate MS apps (what's the likelihood of a government backdoor here) who cares, the platform has been corrupted by money. Or in other words, you now develop for mobile in .Net. I kid of course, but how can it be trusted given that MS has known collaboration with the spooks?
Jezus timmy, how did it come to this?
And while I had played around with Android on a few tablets, when I went to a smart phone I went kicking and fighting the whole way to an iPhone. I didn't want an iThing, but what was available for Android phones just felt "wrong" and were a PITA to just use as a phone.
Unfortunately I think the iPhone physical format has sucked since the 5 series came out, and I'm gonna need to replace my 4 at some point... not looking forward to things...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
True, but what has this got to do with this story?
If you want a phone where you can change the dialer, don't buy an iPhone
If you want a phone where you can feed false data to selected apps, buy an Android phone that is supported by CyanogenMod or some privacy oriented custom ROM
The Cyanogen phone app has a really cool feature where it will do reverse look-ups on numbers that call you. It can usually identify numbers with the business/person name, so you can decide if you want to answer. I don't know what database it uses but it's really, really useful.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
and if you can keep all that, while those around you are loosing it, you'll been a terrorist my son.
I want my phone to know the lottery numbers in advance. I want my phone to automatically know what I want, before I know I want it, and have whatever I want ready for me once I realized I wanted whatever it was. I want my phone to be able to create time ports so I can go to the future and get the next version of the phone with money I put into bonds. I want my phone to attack talking dogs with speech impediments.