Sorry, but liking what you don't like doesn't make me a "fanboi", but calling me a "fanboi" over it makes you something of a prick.
The clear winner is the iPad. You can *prefer* something else, but there's no way possible to make the general statement that Android is "clear winner".
I'm sorry, did I insult your fruit-based sensitivities? Cause you seem pretty ornery. Or do you just not like people dissing the glory of all things Apple?
No, you're just an asshole who thinks that anyone with an opinion other than yours is stupid.
And are you sure you read the article here, cause I don't recall the part about the iPad being "head and shoulders above the competition".
Um, no, that was my words.
I'm pretty sure it said they were just about equal, and which you should get depends upon whether you prefer Apple's closed-space environment or Android's open one. I guess you must have been thinking about that Mac Life article you read last year.
No, they pretty much bent over backwards to try to pretend the two are about equal, like most Android vs iPad reviews. And you keep confusing me for some sort of mythical "fanboy". I don't read Mac Life. This is just another example of your "if you disagree with me, you're stupid" attitude.
I think most people know that a dual-core unit will provide better performance than a single-core unit, so no, it's not an usual question when comparing devices.
Yes, it's an exceptionally unusual question. Just so we're clear, you are honestly trying to say that people commonly ask, "is this tablet dual core" at Best Buy, Apple Stores, etc.?
It's actually a SMART question to ask. Unless they're buying it for show, and then they wouldn't care if it was powered by calculator guts.
And you continue to completely miss the point. Consumers don't give a fuck about cores and GHz and such. All they really care about is how the thing works. An Android device with 8 cores doesn't mean shit if a single core iPad is more enjoyable to use.
I know, I know, Apple fanatics don't ask those kinds of silly questions, they just want the device with the highest number. Cause what would their family think of them if they still had last year's model?!?!?
Again, you are being an arrogant prick. "If you disagree with me, you're stupid, you're a fanboy."
Clue: most people aren't nerds. They don't like what you like, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I just like poking the Apple fanbois. They've got so much bullshit stuffed up their asses it's hard not to.
In other words, you're just a troll.
And I wouldn't worry too much about Android in the tablet space. It's getting "clobbered" cause those not enthralled by Stevie J know when something isn't worth buying. Unlike Apple users who will buy anything and everything Apple sells without so much as a single nano-thought.
In other words, anyone who likes what you don't like are stupid.
Tablets are DOA devices.
Reality contradicts this claim.
The fact that Apple sells so many only underscores how braindead people like you are.
Back to the "everyone who doesn't share my opinion is stupid" line.
Tablets will either transform into something useful or will die out quickly. And then where will the iPad be? In landfills with all the other old and useless Apple equipment that cost too much and did too little (other than make you look cool to your friends and co-workers).
And a combination of ignoring reality and everyone not like me is stupid.
All you need as proof is the smartphone market, where Android has busted a dozen caps into Apple's ass.
The handset market is the *one* market where Android and iOS overlap which is significantly influenced by factors external to OS choice. Carrier choice, plans, prices all have a significant impact.
So, the one and only market which you can cite as "proof" just so happens to be the one and only market where Android and iOS don't directly compete without external influences. Bravo!
Also, your "proof" ignores much more relevant proof, which is the *actual* sales numbers of iPads vs Android tablets.
The claim was "clear winner", not best product (which, as you pointed out, is a different topic, and open to interpretation as to what "best product" even means).
Sometimes the "clear winner" and the "best product" (in terms of being the superior product, ignoring things like price) are the same (iPad 2), and sometimes they aren't (high end SLR camera vs point and shoot model).
No, I think it's clear that you're the one not giving consumers enough credit. They are choosing, in overwhelming numbers, the tablet that they actually want. You're the condescending prick who is saying they are just mindless drones buying iPads for social status, right down to explaining why iPads are so visible everywhere as some sort of "conspicuous consumption" type display.
Specs are absolutely meaningless except in as much as they effect your experience with the product.
Then there are those that actually do pay attention to specs and features. Cause if that weren't the case every laptop sold would be an atom-based netbook.
How so? Nobody goes, "oh an Atom processor? That's an in-order, dual core 32-bit CPU, presently topping out at 1.X GHz..." They just know (or are advised) that netbooks are dumpy notebooks and buy accordingly. And if they buy poorly, their *experience* is affected. Which is what I pointed out in my first post. It's not the specs themselves that matter, it's the user experience those specs lead to.
So a dual core Android tablet doesn't mean experience parity with the iPad. All it means is that the Android tablet has a dual core processor, and is *probably* better than a single core Android tablet.
And, like I said, few people ever walk up and ask if a specific tablet is dual core or not. All they care about is how well it works. And for that, the iPad is head and shoulders above the "competition".
And if you gave consumers as much credit as you say you do, you'd understand that.
What's going on is that almost all of the assumptions you've made prior to your question are ass-backwards. I'll address one of the ones you would least expect to be false:
stop paying the Windows tax and run FOSS Android instead
No major manufacturer uses the actual open source Android distribution. In fact, the only version of Android that officially supports Android is not open source. It's very much closed, and tablet makers pay Google for access to it.
It also leaves unclear what "new technologies and standards" they are referring to. This is really just a vague claim meant to provide some sort of "balance" in the review.
You keep saying "dual core" like that's all that matters. Do you think anyone ever walks into a Best Buy and asks, "is this tablet dual core"? Not very often.
Dual core (and other tech specs) on matter in as much as they impact the overall user experience. Even a quad-core Android tablet can't match the iPad. It's interesting that reviews have begun to give up trying to act like Android and iPads are comparable consumer options (market numbers for over a year now have disproven that), the lack of Flash has proven to be a non-issue, and only a handful of nerds care about the "lock-in" of the App Store.
So now it's down to price. It's an admission of defeat on the part of supporting Android. "Well, no one would actually choose an Android tablet over an iPad 2 at the same price, but some people will make do if the high-end Android tablets manage to drop the prices". Which is another assumption that is contradicted by reality and won't be able to hold up for long. Do you think that if Samsung and the rest could sell more tablets by lowering prices far below the iPad, that they wouldn't have done so already?
The Android tablet market is DOA. It's going to take more than making an iPad clone, even at $100 less than current iPad prices, for Android to make a dent in this market. The conclusion is hard to ignore, people just don't really want Android itself. Not in significant numbers.
So, based on those three metrics, the only three that are important, we have a clear winner: the only tablet that meets those three essentials.
End of story.
How adorable. You have found a "clear winner". Too bad for your theory that the iPad 2 sells more units in 2 weeks than the Tab sells in an entire year.
"The iPad is the best product, hands down, but if you don't mind dealing with a bunch of issues, the Android tablet is a strong contender."
It's like all reviewers need a horse race, and will bend over backwards to try to say nice things about the Android tablets. Do you think they'd do the same if the tables were reversed?
Companies are against software patents when they start up, because they use innovation instead.
When they run out of steam to innovate, they begin to consolidate.
Is this Google running out of steam and buying into the big company software patent detente?
No! It's Google protecting themselves from companies like Apple.
The Apple that only sues people who copy Apple's designs or inventions, and only has two lawsuits they've initiated on this topic? So what you're saying is that Google is defending themselves from actual innovators by buying up the innovations of others? Because if your stated reason is correct, that's exactly what's happening.
However, I'm not really convinced your reason is correct.
Besides, the best defense here is to innovate themselves. What innovation has Google brought with Android? They bought an OS that was a Blackberry clone, turned it into an iPhone clone after the iPhone was announced, an OS that was built upon a modified Linux kernel and based on the Java programming language.
Maybe, had Google had the talent to design their own OS, like Apple, MS, and Palm had done, they would have had some patentable ideas of their own, which would have protected them. Instead, they just copied everyone else, and are crying, "hey, don't sue us, we're *innovating*!" (which is someone interesting, given that none of these major suits, other than Oracle's, is targeting Google directly)
Are you serious? Have you seen the new products from the past year? iPhone 4, iOS 5, Lion, the new MacBook Airs from October, the upcoming iPhone 5, iPad 2, iCloud...
(hint: innovation does not mean coming out with completely new products every year.)
Apple is on an innovation streak. And they've *always* held the position that they have their own look, feel, and inventions, and that they think others should come up with their own.
Is Apple really suing over lost sales or brand dilution because of "near-exact replicas"? Or do they just not have anything else to fall back on? Do they have a next idea to move on to? These should be last years, out-of-style designs, if they're really innovating.
There are certain design features that are iconic to Apple. The Apple's current iPod classic is still very much recognizable as based on the original classic iPod from 2001. Even the iPod nano, until a year ago, fit this description. All of the unibody aluminum MacBooks have a shared design, the iMacs have a shared design since the G5 iMac and before with the Cinema Display.
And the lawsuit in question, the front of the iPhone has remained mostly unchanged since 2007. Samsung's phones (the ones in question) and their tablets, bear a striking resemblance to the iPhone and iPad. There are countless ways to design a phone and a tablet, which is readily apparent by simply looking at all the diverse models out there. *ALL* that Apple ever has asked is that Samsung come up with their own, and not so closely ape Apple's design.
Possibly they think that Apple (who's making lots of chips these days) may be infringing those patents, so it would be something to countersue with if Apple attacks Android.
Just to clarify some context here, because of how Slashdot feels towards software patents, patent trolls, Google, and Apple:
- Apple has only ever initiated suits against companies infringing on patents that Apple actually invented and uses. They aren't patent trolls. - Earlier this month, Google criticized Apple for buying the Nortel patents, saying they would litigate instead of innovate. Ignored in this is the fact that Google also bid on the patents, and now Google has purchased some other patents.
I don't think Google is going to use these patents offensively, but they damned well may use them defensively.
If iOS doesn't store passwords as plaintext, it's really dumb.
In order for your phone to authenticate with an online service, it has to send the password. In order to be able to do that, it has to retrieve the plaintext.
You could hash the plaintext to obscure it in some manner, but whatever process you use has to be easily reversable in order to get the plaintext back so you can send it off to the server (hopefully over a secure connection!).
You can only access the plaintext from that database if you've rooted your phone. Even then, you have to be using an application that you've allowed to run as root.
Given all of the above, there's no point in obscuring passwords. If the password database is compromised, the phone is compromised and whatever mechanism there is for retrieving the passwords is also compromised.
I don't think you understand. iOS has a keychain (just like OS X, upon which it's based). The keychain is an encrypted file that contains things likes passwords.
Either way, adding "+Chase App" is redundant. "Android PMP+No cellular" is already a micro-niche. Hell, you can even remove "+No cellular" and this will hold true.
The only market where Android is not extremely small is in the phone handset market. Interestingly, this is the only potential Android market where there is a high amount of artificial influence, raising significant doubt that people are actually choosing Android specifically.
Not if your discussion is being done via bullhorn.
Bullhorns imply you want your words heard by many people. The WiFi equivalent of a bullhorn would be either a signal booster or a publicly advertised network (like at a coffee shop).
It's possible to eavesdrop on conversations in your house from miles away, no bullhorn required. But people reasonably don't expect this to happen. The same is true for their WiFi signals. People reasonably don't expect a company going around and logging their information like this.
I'm not terribly outraged by this, although I do think Google knowingly went well beyond what is reasonable. I mostly find the nerd hypocrisy here to be ridiculous.
Apple gets called "evil" and thoroughly trashed here for *not* recording people's, or even any particular device's, locations, but Google gets a pass for *actually* treading on this territory (definitely logging the location of devices), and even logging actual network traffic!
C'mon, how do you write a program to log all MAC addresses, and not realize that it's going to collect all MAC addresses? Do you think they just talk to their vans and there was some sort of ambiguity? Like they said, "Google Van, please record MAC addresses and GPS coordinates", and it just interpreted it wrong because they were unclear?
You don't write your own software. You use a common off-the-shelf app that provides a data dump with everything you need. It's called Kismet. You should take a look at it.
Either way, it's impossible to argue the data collection was accidental. You don't send a van out running software without having RTFM and testing it out in some trial runs.
It's pretty obvious that they left debugging features in place in the production code. No conspiracy necessary.
What "conspiracy"? I'm just calling the defense (that *YOU* are stating, not Google) that they simply left some debugging features in place.
Right, they left it in place in their vans all over the world. And they somehow never noticed this?
The most obvious answer is that Google simply chose to log everything, and sift through it later. That way an *actual* bug would be less likely to omit important data.
Really? What malware is there in the official market?
Oh, really? Unfortunately, the story doesn't state whether the apps are from the Android Market, but I'm not exactly sure where they would have found 10,000 apps outside of it. But if you have reason to believe this is from outside the Market, I'm all ears.
The problem is that Google has a very hands off approach to their store. This is something that is treated as a virtue around here, but the downside of this cannot be ignored. Almost by definition it means that the Android Market is going to have apps of lower quality, including malware.
It may simply be the case that the micro-niche that you occupy lacks any alternative to the iPod touch.
The market for the iPod touch is not a 'micro-niche'. On the other hand, the market for iPod touch alternatives is. It's even smaller than the market for iPad alternatives, which is already extremely small as it is.
So if Google doesn't want this market, then what's the viable alternative to iPod touch?
Google doesn't want that market, because it doesn't make them very much money. What good are ads without an ever-present internet connection?
It does seem shortsighted to me, though. Even though an Android Touch would give Google less revenue, it's still *some* revenue. And it would help Android's market share, even if only by a little. Which might be a reason for this. If Android went head-to-head with the iPod touch, it would lose, hands down, similar to how it's losing against the iPad.
Sure, it would be talked about very nicely here on Slashdot, and perhaps even 5% or so of the people who actively post here might even buy such a media player, but in proper market numbers, it would be a complete failure. That's something that perhaps Google would, reasonably, like to avoid.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but liking what you don't like doesn't make me a "fanboi", but calling me a "fanboi" over it makes you something of a prick.
The clear winner is the iPad. You can *prefer* something else, but there's no way possible to make the general statement that Android is "clear winner".
I'm sorry, did I insult your fruit-based sensitivities? Cause you seem pretty ornery. Or do you just not like people dissing the glory of all things Apple?
No, you're just an asshole who thinks that anyone with an opinion other than yours is stupid.
And are you sure you read the article here, cause I don't recall the part about the iPad being "head and shoulders above the competition".
Um, no, that was my words.
I'm pretty sure it said they were just about equal, and which you should get depends upon whether you prefer Apple's closed-space environment or Android's open one. I guess you must have been thinking about that Mac Life article you read last year.
No, they pretty much bent over backwards to try to pretend the two are about equal, like most Android vs iPad reviews. And you keep confusing me for some sort of mythical "fanboy". I don't read Mac Life. This is just another example of your "if you disagree with me, you're stupid" attitude.
I think most people know that a dual-core unit will provide better performance than a single-core unit, so no, it's not an usual question when comparing devices.
Yes, it's an exceptionally unusual question. Just so we're clear, you are honestly trying to say that people commonly ask, "is this tablet dual core" at Best Buy, Apple Stores, etc.?
It's actually a SMART question to ask. Unless they're buying it for show, and then they wouldn't care if it was powered by calculator guts.
And you continue to completely miss the point. Consumers don't give a fuck about cores and GHz and such. All they really care about is how the thing works. An Android device with 8 cores doesn't mean shit if a single core iPad is more enjoyable to use.
I know, I know, Apple fanatics don't ask those kinds of silly questions, they just want the device with the highest number. Cause what would their family think of them if they still had last year's model?!?!?
Again, you are being an arrogant prick. "If you disagree with me, you're stupid, you're a fanboy."
Clue: most people aren't nerds. They don't like what you like, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I just like poking the Apple fanbois. They've got so much bullshit stuffed up their asses it's hard not to.
In other words, you're just a troll.
And I wouldn't worry too much about Android in the tablet space. It's getting "clobbered" cause those not enthralled by Stevie J know when something isn't worth buying. Unlike Apple users who will buy anything and everything Apple sells without so much as a single nano-thought.
In other words, anyone who likes what you don't like are stupid.
Tablets are DOA devices.
Reality contradicts this claim.
The fact that Apple sells so many only underscores how braindead people like you are.
Back to the "everyone who doesn't share my opinion is stupid" line.
Tablets will either transform into something useful or will die out quickly. And then where will the iPad be? In landfills with all the other old and useless Apple equipment that cost too much and did too little (other than make you look cool to your friends and co-workers).
And a combination of ignoring reality and everyone not like me is stupid.
All you need as proof is the smartphone market, where Android has busted a dozen caps into Apple's ass.
The handset market is the *one* market where Android and iOS overlap which is significantly influenced by factors external to OS choice. Carrier choice, plans, prices all have a significant impact.
So, the one and only market which you can cite as "proof" just so happens to be the one and only market where Android and iOS don't directly compete without external influences. Bravo!
Also, your "proof" ignores much more relevant proof, which is the *actual* sales numbers of iPads vs Android tablets.
The claim was "clear winner", not best product (which, as you pointed out, is a different topic, and open to interpretation as to what "best product" even means).
Sometimes the "clear winner" and the "best product" (in terms of being the superior product, ignoring things like price) are the same (iPad 2), and sometimes they aren't (high end SLR camera vs point and shoot model).
No, but they'd be the "clear winners", which is what was claimed.
No, I think it's clear that you're the one not giving consumers enough credit. They are choosing, in overwhelming numbers, the tablet that they actually want. You're the condescending prick who is saying they are just mindless drones buying iPads for social status, right down to explaining why iPads are so visible everywhere as some sort of "conspicuous consumption" type display.
Specs are absolutely meaningless except in as much as they effect your experience with the product.
Then there are those that actually do pay attention to specs and features. Cause if that weren't the case every laptop sold would be an atom-based netbook.
How so? Nobody goes, "oh an Atom processor? That's an in-order, dual core 32-bit CPU, presently topping out at 1.X GHz..." They just know (or are advised) that netbooks are dumpy notebooks and buy accordingly. And if they buy poorly, their *experience* is affected. Which is what I pointed out in my first post. It's not the specs themselves that matter, it's the user experience those specs lead to.
So a dual core Android tablet doesn't mean experience parity with the iPad. All it means is that the Android tablet has a dual core processor, and is *probably* better than a single core Android tablet.
And, like I said, few people ever walk up and ask if a specific tablet is dual core or not. All they care about is how well it works. And for that, the iPad is head and shoulders above the "competition".
And if you gave consumers as much credit as you say you do, you'd understand that.
What the hell are you talking about? DeviceGuru is a Mac magazine?
Why not take your own advice, and broaden your horizons? Android is getting its ass handed to it in the tablet space.
But here on slashdot, apparently it's easier to just say things like "Cult of Apple" or "fanboy", than to actually make arguments based on reality.
What's going on?
What's going on is that almost all of the assumptions you've made prior to your question are ass-backwards. I'll address one of the ones you would least expect to be false:
stop paying the Windows tax and run FOSS Android instead
No major manufacturer uses the actual open source Android distribution. In fact, the only version of Android that officially supports Android is not open source. It's very much closed, and tablet makers pay Google for access to it.
It also leaves unclear what "new technologies and standards" they are referring to. This is really just a vague claim meant to provide some sort of "balance" in the review.
You keep saying "dual core" like that's all that matters. Do you think anyone ever walks into a Best Buy and asks, "is this tablet dual core"? Not very often.
Dual core (and other tech specs) on matter in as much as they impact the overall user experience. Even a quad-core Android tablet can't match the iPad. It's interesting that reviews have begun to give up trying to act like Android and iPads are comparable consumer options (market numbers for over a year now have disproven that), the lack of Flash has proven to be a non-issue, and only a handful of nerds care about the "lock-in" of the App Store.
So now it's down to price. It's an admission of defeat on the part of supporting Android. "Well, no one would actually choose an Android tablet over an iPad 2 at the same price, but some people will make do if the high-end Android tablets manage to drop the prices". Which is another assumption that is contradicted by reality and won't be able to hold up for long. Do you think that if Samsung and the rest could sell more tablets by lowering prices far below the iPad, that they wouldn't have done so already?
The Android tablet market is DOA. It's going to take more than making an iPad clone, even at $100 less than current iPad prices, for Android to make a dent in this market. The conclusion is hard to ignore, people just don't really want Android itself. Not in significant numbers.
Here's my comparison:
Supports Entire Web: Galaxy Tab
Supports Custom Applications: Galaxy Tab
Allows User Customization: Galaxy Tab
So, based on those three metrics, the only three that are important, we have a clear winner: the only tablet that meets those three essentials.
End of story.
How adorable. You have found a "clear winner". Too bad for your theory that the iPad 2 sells more units in 2 weeks than the Tab sells in an entire year.
Every Android vs iPad review, summed up:
"The iPad is the best product, hands down, but if you don't mind dealing with a bunch of issues, the Android tablet is a strong contender."
It's like all reviewers need a horse race, and will bend over backwards to try to say nice things about the Android tablets. Do you think they'd do the same if the tables were reversed?
Companies are against software patents when they start up, because they use innovation instead.
When they run out of steam to innovate, they begin to consolidate.
Is this Google running out of steam and buying into the big company software patent detente?
No! It's Google protecting themselves from companies like Apple.
The Apple that only sues people who copy Apple's designs or inventions, and only has two lawsuits they've initiated on this topic? So what you're saying is that Google is defending themselves from actual innovators by buying up the innovations of others? Because if your stated reason is correct, that's exactly what's happening.
However, I'm not really convinced your reason is correct.
Besides, the best defense here is to innovate themselves. What innovation has Google brought with Android? They bought an OS that was a Blackberry clone, turned it into an iPhone clone after the iPhone was announced, an OS that was built upon a modified Linux kernel and based on the Java programming language.
Maybe, had Google had the talent to design their own OS, like Apple, MS, and Palm had done, they would have had some patentable ideas of their own, which would have protected them. Instead, they just copied everyone else, and are crying, "hey, don't sue us, we're *innovating*!" (which is someone interesting, given that none of these major suits, other than Oracle's, is targeting Google directly)
Are you serious? Have you seen the new products from the past year? iPhone 4, iOS 5, Lion, the new MacBook Airs from October, the upcoming iPhone 5, iPad 2, iCloud...
(hint: innovation does not mean coming out with completely new products every year.)
Apple is on an innovation streak. And they've *always* held the position that they have their own look, feel, and inventions, and that they think others should come up with their own.
Is Apple really suing over lost sales or brand dilution because of "near-exact replicas"? Or do they just not have anything else to fall back on? Do they have a next idea to move on to? These should be last years, out-of-style designs, if they're really innovating.
There are certain design features that are iconic to Apple. The Apple's current iPod classic is still very much recognizable as based on the original classic iPod from 2001. Even the iPod nano, until a year ago, fit this description. All of the unibody aluminum MacBooks have a shared design, the iMacs have a shared design since the G5 iMac and before with the Cinema Display.
And the lawsuit in question, the front of the iPhone has remained mostly unchanged since 2007. Samsung's phones (the ones in question) and their tablets, bear a striking resemblance to the iPhone and iPad. There are countless ways to design a phone and a tablet, which is readily apparent by simply looking at all the diverse models out there. *ALL* that Apple ever has asked is that Samsung come up with their own, and not so closely ape Apple's design.
Possibly they think that Apple (who's making lots of chips these days) may be infringing those patents, so it would be something to countersue with if Apple attacks Android.
Just to clarify some context here, because of how Slashdot feels towards software patents, patent trolls, Google, and Apple:
- Apple has only ever initiated suits against companies infringing on patents that Apple actually invented and uses. They aren't patent trolls.
- Earlier this month, Google criticized Apple for buying the Nortel patents, saying they would litigate instead of innovate. Ignored in this is the fact that Google also bid on the patents, and now Google has purchased some other patents.
I don't think Google is going to use these patents offensively, but they damned well may use them defensively.
If iOS doesn't store passwords as plaintext, it's really dumb.
In order for your phone to authenticate with an online service, it has to send the password. In order to be able to do that, it has to retrieve the plaintext.
You could hash the plaintext to obscure it in some manner, but whatever process you use has to be easily reversable in order to get the plaintext back so you can send it off to the server (hopefully over a secure connection!).
You can only access the plaintext from that database if you've rooted your phone. Even then, you have to be using an application that you've allowed to run as root.
Given all of the above, there's no point in obscuring passwords. If the password database is compromised, the phone is compromised and whatever mechanism there is for retrieving the passwords is also compromised.
I don't think you understand. iOS has a keychain (just like OS X, upon which it's based). The keychain is an encrypted file that contains things likes passwords.
The iPhone is just as insecure: http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-password-broken-in-6-minutes-10132627/
Note that process also requires the iPhone to be rooted.
That's the very definition of being more secure.
Where did you get that stupid idea from (that they are more secure)? You do understand that they have to store their passwords in plain-text aswell?
iOS doesn't. So clearly this isn't required.
Um, that's what I said. My post wasn't very long. Just two sentences, and one of them was just one word long.
Then you replied to the wrong post.
Either way, adding "+Chase App" is redundant. "Android PMP+No cellular" is already a micro-niche. Hell, you can even remove "+No cellular" and this will hold true.
The only market where Android is not extremely small is in the phone handset market. Interestingly, this is the only potential Android market where there is a high amount of artificial influence, raising significant doubt that people are actually choosing Android specifically.
Not if your discussion is being done via bullhorn.
Bullhorns imply you want your words heard by many people. The WiFi equivalent of a bullhorn would be either a signal booster or a publicly advertised network (like at a coffee shop).
It's possible to eavesdrop on conversations in your house from miles away, no bullhorn required. But people reasonably don't expect this to happen. The same is true for their WiFi signals. People reasonably don't expect a company going around and logging their information like this.
I'm not terribly outraged by this, although I do think Google knowingly went well beyond what is reasonable. I mostly find the nerd hypocrisy here to be ridiculous.
Apple gets called "evil" and thoroughly trashed here for *not* recording people's, or even any particular device's, locations, but Google gets a pass for *actually* treading on this territory (definitely logging the location of devices), and even logging actual network traffic!
C'mon, how do you write a program to log all MAC addresses, and not realize that it's going to collect all MAC addresses? Do you think they just talk to their vans and there was some sort of ambiguity? Like they said, "Google Van, please record MAC addresses and GPS coordinates", and it just interpreted it wrong because they were unclear?
You don't write your own software. You use a common off-the-shelf app that provides a data dump with everything you need. It's called Kismet. You should take a look at it.
Either way, it's impossible to argue the data collection was accidental. You don't send a van out running software without having RTFM and testing it out in some trial runs.
It's pretty obvious that they left debugging features in place in the production code. No conspiracy necessary.
What "conspiracy"? I'm just calling the defense (that *YOU* are stating, not Google) that they simply left some debugging features in place.
Right, they left it in place in their vans all over the world. And they somehow never noticed this?
The most obvious answer is that Google simply chose to log everything, and sift through it later. That way an *actual* bug would be less likely to omit important data.
Really? What malware is there in the official market?
Oh, really? Unfortunately, the story doesn't state whether the apps are from the Android Market, but I'm not exactly sure where they would have found 10,000 apps outside of it. But if you have reason to believe this is from outside the Market, I'm all ears.
The problem is that Google has a very hands off approach to their store. This is something that is treated as a virtue around here, but the downside of this cannot be ignored. Almost by definition it means that the Android Market is going to have apps of lower quality, including malware.
It may simply be the case that the micro-niche that you occupy lacks any alternative to the iPod touch.
The market for the iPod touch is not a 'micro-niche'. On the other hand, the market for iPod touch alternatives is. It's even smaller than the market for iPad alternatives, which is already extremely small as it is.
So if Google doesn't want this market, then what's the viable alternative to iPod touch?
Google doesn't want that market, because it doesn't make them very much money. What good are ads without an ever-present internet connection?
It does seem shortsighted to me, though. Even though an Android Touch would give Google less revenue, it's still *some* revenue. And it would help Android's market share, even if only by a little. Which might be a reason for this. If Android went head-to-head with the iPod touch, it would lose, hands down, similar to how it's losing against the iPad.
Sure, it would be talked about very nicely here on Slashdot, and perhaps even 5% or so of the people who actively post here might even buy such a media player, but in proper market numbers, it would be a complete failure. That's something that perhaps Google would, reasonably, like to avoid.