First, RIM is irrelevant. Having a large chunk of the market share is irrelevant when it is all business related. RIM is dead in the consumer market. The same goes for Windows. It is all business with just a smattering of quickly dying consumer phones. Symbian is a waste to develop for. It is in the process of being rapidly murdered and it has no real history of heavy app usage. I actually agree that it was silly not to release both the iPhone app and Android app at the same time. I really can't think of any good reason why you wouldn't do both at the same time. If anything, it steals some of your thunder for the Android users who go to look for the feature when it is announced and can't find it.
I am not saying that suing rail to death is the answer, but if you are going to blast a high speed train through someone's back yard, you SHOULD have to compensate them for the damage you are doing to their property values. If you are not willing to pay for the destruction of someone's assets, than you might have to take alternative measures like reducing the damage done (like by slowing down the train or putting it underground). You really don't want to live in the world where the government can steam roll the rights of citizens with no compensation because it is for the collective good.
Put another way, how would you feel if the government took your most expensive and valuable asset and knocked 20% off of its value through some action and offered no compensation? I know a lot of people where that sort of action would financially bury them, especially in these economic times.
I agree that people who give up liberty for little (general immeasurable amount of) safety need to fuck off and die. That isn't the issue here. If you get hit with a DUI, you committed a criminal act. It wasn't your own life you were endangering. This isn't a victim less drug law. You were doing something horribly dangerous to the people around you. You should damn well be punished, and punished harshly enough so that you don't do it again. A DUI isn't a victim less crime. I am all for drunkenness, just not while you are plowing around with enough kinetic energy to tear a family surrounded by a steel cage apart.
So now we come to punishment. We could toss a DUI's ass in jail, and I am all for that for repeat offenders or people who were grossly negligent. A lesser punishment than having your liberty completely stripped with jail time is to have to get one of these things put into your car. Eh, this isn't a liberty thing. Your liberty is already fucked once you get nailed with a DUI. The question is just how much liberty is going to be stripped. An annoying breathalyser is a much lesser punishment than sitting in a jail cell. I am a no holds bar, drugs for everyone, fuck worrying about terrorist, screw the children, smok'em if you get 'em, have sex often, drink and be merry sort of guy, but I am still all for these things for convicted DUIs.
You might not need a patent for your keyboard, but in any complex technology, you do. The Apple Vs HTC is a great example. HTC is building off of the 'no shit' next steps in cell phone technology. What is patented by Apple is stuff that, even if they did "invent" first (which is a dubious claim to even begin with), would have been invented in the very near future by others who were running down the same path. So, Apple sues HTC claiming infringement on a pile of obvious next step technologies that are absurdly broadly defined to begin with. HTCs only defense is to turn around and do the same. So, HTC has some stupid and obvious patents that they then claim Apple is infringing upon. The defensive pattens are not there to protect your technology, they are there to be used against a company trying to sue you.
Patents are like nuclear weapons. Even if you don't want to use the damned things offensively against others, you still want them so that you can threaten to use them on anyone who uses them on you.
Sadly, what this leads to is a stifling of creativity and innovation. The point of a patent is to encourage people to invent. As soon as a patent fails at that, it fails at its purpose. So, in the case of cellphone makers, it isn't like the lack of the ability to patent some overly broad technology would have prevented Apple from using and developing it. It is being used now ONLY to prevent creativity and innovation. It basically means that no one who doesn't already have an arsenal of patents can't jump into the market. The thought of a small time specialized cell phone maker jumping into the market is laughable because you can't enter the market unless you are armed to the teeth with your own defensive patents. Hell, the very reason why HTC is getting attacked by Apple is because they have the smallest patent portfolio.
So basically, you know better and you want to impose your opinion... fill in some some whiny stuff that ends with me being the reason for World War II here.
Let's not get confused here. I am not doing it because I want to lead iPhone users to happiness. If I wanted to make an iPhone user happy, I would point them to the nearest kill-me-now gated 'burbclave with its endless sterile rows of uniform houses... or give them a gift card to that oh-so "edgy" multinational corporate chain of coffee shops.
Believe me, rooting iPhones at an Apple store isn't being done to be nice. It is done to be a jerk and revel in someone else's unhappiness.
What's the difference between you and Steve Jobs then?
The difference between me and Steve Jobs is that Jobs is an uptight asshole who wouldn't know a good quality debauched drunken merriment even if a band of whore gypsies gate crashed his emasculate (emasculate was typo, but I think I will leave it because it works) palace and force fed him wine and sex all night long.... and he has a few hundred million dollars and vastly more black turtle necks than me.
I wouldn't be even a little shocked to find that Android tablets are rooted with an open menu option. Cell phone have a pretty good reason to make at least a half assed attempt to keep phones from being rooted. An Android tablet though? Why would Dell or Toshiba care if you root your tablet? If anything, for a tablet, it is probably a selling point. There is absolutely no reason for Dell to be all ADD about people messing with their hardware like Apple is.
I bet tablets are where you see the full power of Android. Hardware companies are likely to be far more interested in giving you the latest updates than smearing the phone with the manufactures UI and the cell phones providers crapware. I mean fucking Sprint NASCAR... fuck you Sprint for defiling my Evo.
It almost makes me wish Google would go all Godwin's Law on carriers, break out the beating clubs, and and shut that shit down. I would rather have some random Sprint crapapps than get a POS iPhone where it isn't until the 4th fucking version of the OS when they finally bless you with the ability to change your background and browse the web while listening to Panadora (and those poor fuckers still can't even change their notification sounds to non-Apple Corp approved ones), but I would rather have just vanilla Android than either of those things.
Take your pick. Walled in suburbs that make you want to blow your brains out just to get away from the dull uniform mediocracy of Apple, or head to the city with Android and have to ignore the blazing billboards of Sprint sponsered NASCAR crap apps to get to all the good drinking and fighting. Oh well, it is like they say, you can't make an omelet without murdering a few people.
I have been a pretty big hater of flash in the past. Its ability to bring a modern computer to its knees with a fucking little flash game is pretty god damn annoying. That said, Apple bitch slapping the shit out of Flash has knocked a little sense into their heads. They have recently discovered mortality and found that they kind of fear it. Flash has started to clean up its act and stopped assuming that the user has more cores than fingers and enough memory to run a dozen instances Windows Vista at once. In fact, EVERYONE has started to do this from website designers to chip makers. I think the smart phone mobile revolution has been great for design in general. For too long everyone used Moore's law as crutch. Why use good design when you can throw 8 gig, handful of cores, and enough power to run a small movie theater at the problem?
What makes the mobile revolution really interesting is that it is really just reclaiming a lot of old tech. Everyone from chip designers to programmers know exactly where to go next because we have already been there with the PC. The challenge now is to take that old tech and optimizing to do more with less. The programing piece is interesting, but I think the real advances will be in hardware design. What smartphones are doing to hardware (chips, memory, sensors, etc) is breathtaking. They have covered ground that it took PCs a decade to cover in a couple of years. By the time my HTC Evo is ready for replacement in less than two years, I don't doubt for a second that my next phone is going to be rocking specs to put my last computer to shame.
That is hilarious. In fact, I need to hit a mall today for other reasons. I think I will make a stop by the Apple store and "fix" a few of their phones. From the videos I have seen of it, you can basically do it in 30 seconds. Go to website, slide the button, phone reboots, and you are done. Jailbreaking an iPhone is like reorganizing the desk of a control freak... it is only fun because they are some uptight. No one would ever bother to go to a Verizon store and root some Droids because no one would care.
Um, they held back 15,000 documents. I think their actions speak for themselves. Clearly, they didn't release everything.
What are you, a politician and think words speak louder than actions? I know Assange has been asked as much in interviews. If you want to Google it, knock yourself out.
WikiLeaks isn't for complete 100% open government. They are pretty clear in that they recognize that there are some secrets worth keeping, they just have a very high standard for what secrets are worth keeping. They error drastically on the side of openness. It is pretty safe to assume that WikiLeaks has info that even they balk at publishing. In fact, we know for certain that they have at least 15,000 pages of such stuff and are rumored to have much more sensitive material. Take that info that you normally wouldn't publish, throw some sick encryption on it, post it without the key, and now you have a tidy dead mans switch. If a nice man from the US government from a three letter agency throws a black bag over your head and drags you off to a secret prison, the key is released within XX hours of you not checking in.
It is a pretty interesting ultimatum to governments. You can't stop the US government from stomping on some hippies if they really want to, but it is clear that the consequence of hippie stomping is a massive amount of secret documents that everyone, even WikiLeaks, thinks shouldn't be released. That seems like a pretty sane precaution. Nation states take their absolute authority pretty seriously and some times do very nasty things when non-state actors challenge it.
Threatening to release sensitive information if you get nabbed and sent to the third world nation of the US's choice for a few years of torture is hardly blackmail. The US has dragged off completely innocent people before and sent them to third world countries to be tortured before. It doesn't take a paranoid to think that they might do it again. Do you really think threatening a government to release their secrets if they try and nab you outside of their jurisdiction and send you away to a secret prison is "blackmail"?
I think your points are completely valid and that Black Berry is going to hang onto its core business IT department crowd for a while yet. If you need a device that is for both work and play, an Android or an iPhone are clearly the way to go. I use my Android for work and play. It receives calls, gets work (and home) email. I can't speak for other devices, and Android does have a lot of freaking devices with varied levels of quality, but my Evo has crashed exactly once in the month or two I have had it, and that was while using software specifically marked as beta. Your millage my vary.
If you need a phone for Business with a capital B, iPhones and Androids are either unproven or not capable. Android for instance doesn't push yet (I don't think... don't quote me on it). Multi-task lets you get the same functionality, but at a power cost. I think the core IT driven Black Berry crowd is safe for now. IT departments are conservative and error on the side of caution. Only rapidly dropping prices from Android or failing quality from BB are going to push them away.
That said, the business market, while of a healthy size, is small change next to the potential consumer market. Hence, while Black Berry might continue to do fine business, as a smart phone vendor they are going to find their market share shrink to pittance overnight, even if they save their core IT based business customers.
This is really a silly complaint. Multiple versions is not doom. Android actually makes it very easy to develop for the lowest possible version that makes your app work. If an app can be made to work with 1.6, it will work with 1.6. If it needs 2.2, you won't see it. Yes, there will be better phone than yours out there. If this really gives your heart ache, maybe you should get an iPhone.
With an iPhone, you can upgrade on the regular upgrade cycle and never be more than a generation behind when your contract runs out. With Android, you can buy the latest and greatest thing and, seriously, someone is going to have something better within 3 months. If it bothers you that someone out there has something shinier than what you have, don't buy Android. You will live your life in misery. This is what happens when you have half a dozen companies engaging in an economic blood bath to make the best phone. They get better, fast. Much faster than you can upgrade.
Android itself is also in violent expansion. The hardware that 1.6 was made for is night and day different from what they built 2.2 for. Seriously, an Android phone from just a year ago is an order of magnitude worse than what we see today. Again, if rapid improvement far faster than you can upgrade causes your heart ache, stay away from Android. Give it a couple of years and things will level off a little. What makes this phone market unique is that the designers know EXACTLY how to get to the next performance level from the PC experience, it is just a matter of reducing size and power consumption. This means that what it took the PC market a decade or two to achieve, cell phones are going to do in a couple of years. In the phone market we have gone from glorified graphing calculators to computers pushing the power levels of early 2000 in a couple of years. Now that there is an interest in this market, it is going to get better, faster.
Personally, I'll stick to Android. Yes, my fucking Evo that ran off the life force of ground babies is already starting to look dated next to all of those shinny new devices that are coming out that I now drool over. It doesn't change the fact that my phone rocks just as much as it did when I first got it; it just can't rock as hard as what is going to come out in a couple of months. I am pretty sure that when my 18 months are up my Evo is going to look like a relic compared to the latest and greatest Android devices of the day. That won't make my phone any less capable, but it sure as hell will make that day when my contract is up all the more sweeter.
"Fragmentation" isn't a bad thing. It just means that hardware and software are advancing too fucking fast for your sad little 2 year contract to keep up with. Personally, I consider that a good thing. I can live with a little penis envy now if it means an even more bad ass device later.
I don't see how this is hard. Apple owns an OS called iOS. It has different versions. Google has tossed out into the world Android. It also has different versions. Figuring out how many out there are each is just a matter of comparing the numbers. Granted, the numbers are a little tougher to get for Android because you have to do some adding, but it isn't like Apple's announces their numbers; they are generally inferred through one method or another. I'll agree that there is a margin error for Android that is probably a little bigger than for Apple, but it was the same for Windows vs Mac. It is pretty safe to say that at this point, Android is growing very fast and steady, Apple is bursting in waves with their releases and then flattening out, and Black Berry, Palm, and Windows are being eaten alive.
I don't think that there is any serious question in anyone's mind where things are going to be in a couple of years. Black Berry is going to be a smoldering wreckage relegated to a slowly shrinking business client base, Windows 7 Mobile Series (or whatever stupid name they gave it) and Palm will be gimped in the single digits, and Apple and Android will be within 10% of each other with the leader being anyone's guess (fight amongst yourselves fanbois).
If there is anything to throw a wrench into these numbers, it will be tablet uptake. Tablet uptake could screw these numbers all to hell. The phone business is a tough business to get into. The tablet business is much easier. If tablets don't turn out to be a fad like netbooks, I could see the mobile OS wars get crazy. A smart phone is expensive, hard to make, and cost a lot to keep. Tablets on the other hand are a one time cost. Right now Apple is doing pretty dandy being the only real player in town. Hard to say now, but I could envision a price war when Everyone (using Android) shows up to the game. We are a year away from every computer marker and their dog pushing an Android tablet. Prices will drops. The only question is whether or not consumers will bite, or if tablets are going to go the way of netbooks. Frankly, I am a little skeptical on tablets exploding, but if prices drop enough the market uptake might be violent and quick.
If the delete option works, great. Personally, the split second another comparable service comes out that catches maybe 5 or so of my closets friends... I am gone. I probably won't delete my account, but I will purge the ever living crap out of it and leave it as a glorified address book page.
The issue with Facebook is that it has lost my trust. Facebook doesn't do what I want it to do anymore. Facebook started as a thing for college students to connect and share college studentie stuff. Now, my freaking grandmother is one Facebook. Yeah, I can sit around and fiddle with my privacy settings and make a special grandma list that I have to remember to use every time I wont to post something that she might hurt her 70 year old sensibilities, but it is a pain in the ass.
It is going to be pretty easy to get me to jump ship. Just give me a social networking site that lets me have a split personality. We naturally have split personalities. The face you present in a meeting at work is different from the one you present to your mom and different from the one you present to your friends on Friday night. Facebook absolutely sucks at making this distinction. Not only does Facebook suck at making this decision, they keep desperately trying to get you to post ALL your information to the world. The first social networking site with a clean interface and that understands that we all have split personalities is going to stand over Facebook's bloated corpse. They don't even need to destroy Facebook, just offer up something convincing enough that I will use the alternative and Facebook. A social networking site that lets me cleanly and smoothly deal with my co-workers and grandmother wanting to be 'friends' in addition to my real friends is going to have Facebooks head on a pike.
I agree a lot of the Android Phones are getting really good... However Apple has been the company that has been really raising the bar... Not Android. What Android does is raises their bar to Apples Level for Apple to raise it again.
That is non-sense. Apple does get credit for creating the consumer smart phone market, and they certainly set a high bar when they started out. That said, they have been struggling over the past year when it has been Android that has been blasting by in terms of technical prowess. I mean seriously... the iPhone didn't have freaking copy and paste up until a year ago. Copy and paste...
Beyond that, Apple finally implemented a gimped form of multi tasking with the iPhone 4 update so that it can do boring things that Android users have taken for granted, like listening to Pandora while browsing the web, are now possible. They just recently let you actually change your freaking background. iPhone users still can't have widgets on their desktop, live wall paper, or even change the freaking notification sounds to something other than stock Apple Corp approved ones.
If you like iPhones more then Androids, eh, more power to you. That said, don't sit around pretending that Apple has some great technical superiority when boring stuff that Android has been doing for well over year or longer finally gets added (or doesn't). Apple's iPhone 4 was a lunging grasp to get to the level of Android, and they are still behind in many things.
I am always baffled by this. I am running Android 2.1. I turned the thing on and it works. It is brain dead easy to run anything. Installing stuff is obvious. Running things is obvious. Customizing almost anything that tickles my fancy is brain dead obvious. What exactly is it about Android that makes people shrink in terror that their phone is going to overwhelm them and eat their brains? You can go rooting around into the guts of the thing and set it up just so, but the fact that the device has the capacity let you control it on a deeper level doesn't demand you go out and do it. It isn't like the fact that my car hood can be opened means that I have to know shit about what goes on inside. Seriously, exactly what function is it that you are trying to do on an Android that is causing brain to leak out your ears with too much thought?
Google is actually splitting the Android OS. Android 3 is going to be the Android version that is going to keep on blasting forward with higher hardware requirements. Android 2 on the other hand is going to keep on being maintained, but they are going to leave the hardware requirements where they are. In the short term, this doesn't mean much. In the long term, it means that once hardware gets cheaper (and it WILL get cheaper, fast), you are going to have "low end" smart phones running Android 2, and high end phones running Android 3.
You might not see Android on the lowest level dumb phone, but we are about a year or two away from a cheap 2nd tier smartphone market that, at least in developed nations, is going to start eating into dumb phone market in a serious way. If you have to choose between a dumb phone or tossing in an extra $30 for a touch screen smart phone from the last generation, which would you pick?
You are pretty confused. The difference between Android and Apple is that if I want a big ass screen, I go get an Evo. If I want a more manageable sized phone, I get an N1 or something. If I want a phone with a slide out keyboard, I get one of those. If I want to be on Verizon, I get a Droid. If I prefer Sprint, I get an Evo. If I want an unlocked phone with no subside but a cheaper plan, I get a T-mobile Android. If I want a cheap Android, I get a cheap Android. If I want a demon of a phone summoned from the pits of hell, I get one of those. If I want an app that Lord Job's doesn't approve of (like Google Voice), I get it. When I want to download a non-approved app, I don't "hack" my phone, I just check a check box in the settings page saying I am okay with that. When I want to change my freaking notification sound to a non-corporation approved one... I just change it.
With Apple... you get an iPhone. Want something a little different to meet your needs? Too fucking bad. Now cough up the credit card and get ready to be bent over and violated by AT&T's awesome service.
If you really like the idea of one company controlling the hardware, software, app store, and taking a pile of money from you for the privilege, eh, stick with Apple. You apparently like the "walled suburb" approach. More power to you. I hear the iPhone 4 is totally awesome. I heard that with the upgrade Lord Jobs lets you change your background to anything you want, not just Apple Corp approved ones! Wow! I bet with iPhone 5 you will get an 'upgrade' that lets you change your notification sounds to non-Apple Corp approved ones! The upgrades never cease! First, copy and paste, then gimped multi tasking! It looks totally awesome over there. What features will Apple think up next! Man, the 'burbs are totally awesome and exciting.
Thanks. I'll stick with Android. What can I say, I am a city boy.
That is a nice noble fantasy you have. The deal was not settled on who offered more or less bloatware. The deal was based purely upon who would share the most profit. Verizon and AT&T bid. AT&T offered to cut Apple into vastly more profit than Verizon was. Verizon looked at the numbers and told Apple to go take a hike. Comparing AT&T and Verizon's stock price changes, it is pretty clear that Verizon didn't make a mistake. AT&T got exactly nothing when they got the iPhone. That is also the reason why Verizon is completely uninterested in the iPhone. They are not willing to pay the Apple tax and are pretty content to build their Droid line and keep all the profit.
Um... then don't buy an Incredible. If you buy an Android phone, you might have to spend a few seconds thinking about your purchase. Some Android phones are good, some are bad. Some have it so that rooting is easy and built in, some have it so it is very hard or not yet possible. Some have massive screens, some are tiny and portable. Some are on good carriers, some are on shit carriers. Seriously, if this is too much for you, just buy an iPhone. It is one brand and they offer a one phone-fits-all policy. Watch TV and the marketing blitz will inform you when you need to upgrade to their next gen.
If on the other hand you want a little flexibility and don't want to be locked into Apple's walled suburb model now and in the future, buy an Android phone. Fine one that fits you. They are all different. You might need to spend a few moments doing some minimal thinking and research.
Open sourced or no, the real difference is that there was then (and is now on Android) a separation of OS and hardware. In the PC market Apple just never stood a chance gaining a large portion of market while the hardware wars were in full swing. Apple defined the teams as Apple vs Everyone. Everyone won. It wasn't until recently when the hardware wars pretty much ended on PCs (how many cores do you really need?) that Apple began to nibble at the dominance of the PC using their strengths, marketing and form.
The same thing is happening with smart phones. This is very quickly accelerating from software war where Apple had an early lead but Google rapidly caught up (and arguably surpassed them), to a hardware war again. Apple is doing the Everyone vs Apple thing again, and they are going to get creamed again. Cheaper, faster, better is not Apple's motto, but it sure as hell is the motto of the non-early adopter market. On into the mix the fact that Google is no Microsoft, and I think Apple will be lucky to keep their head above the water in terms of software too.
There is a pretty large difference between the a power surge over a few seconds, and slowly, over the course of months, building up a supply of water in a reservoir. Dealing with a power surge over a few seconds is very hard. Dealing with a reservoir that builds up near to full is pretty freaking easy... just turn off some other power sources and slowly and predictably drain the reservoir. Unpredictability isn't the issue, rapid unpredictability is.
The problem of course is that the more you buffer something like wind energy, the less efficient (and thus more costly) it becomes. Dumping water into a reservoir will pretty much solve your energy surge problems, but it will make your output and cost crap. I bet the solution is probably more technological. Cleaning up a signal that fluctuates wildly is pretty old hat for signal folks, it just needs some scale up.
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First, RIM is irrelevant. Having a large chunk of the market share is irrelevant when it is all business related. RIM is dead in the consumer market. The same goes for Windows. It is all business with just a smattering of quickly dying consumer phones. Symbian is a waste to develop for. It is in the process of being rapidly murdered and it has no real history of heavy app usage. I actually agree that it was silly not to release both the iPhone app and Android app at the same time. I really can't think of any good reason why you wouldn't do both at the same time. If anything, it steals some of your thunder for the Android users who go to look for the feature when it is announced and can't find it.
I am not saying that suing rail to death is the answer, but if you are going to blast a high speed train through someone's back yard, you SHOULD have to compensate them for the damage you are doing to their property values. If you are not willing to pay for the destruction of someone's assets, than you might have to take alternative measures like reducing the damage done (like by slowing down the train or putting it underground). You really don't want to live in the world where the government can steam roll the rights of citizens with no compensation because it is for the collective good.
Put another way, how would you feel if the government took your most expensive and valuable asset and knocked 20% off of its value through some action and offered no compensation? I know a lot of people where that sort of action would financially bury them, especially in these economic times.
I agree that people who give up liberty for little (general immeasurable amount of) safety need to fuck off and die. That isn't the issue here. If you get hit with a DUI, you committed a criminal act. It wasn't your own life you were endangering. This isn't a victim less drug law. You were doing something horribly dangerous to the people around you. You should damn well be punished, and punished harshly enough so that you don't do it again. A DUI isn't a victim less crime. I am all for drunkenness, just not while you are plowing around with enough kinetic energy to tear a family surrounded by a steel cage apart.
So now we come to punishment. We could toss a DUI's ass in jail, and I am all for that for repeat offenders or people who were grossly negligent. A lesser punishment than having your liberty completely stripped with jail time is to have to get one of these things put into your car. Eh, this isn't a liberty thing. Your liberty is already fucked once you get nailed with a DUI. The question is just how much liberty is going to be stripped. An annoying breathalyser is a much lesser punishment than sitting in a jail cell. I am a no holds bar, drugs for everyone, fuck worrying about terrorist, screw the children, smok'em if you get 'em, have sex often, drink and be merry sort of guy, but I am still all for these things for convicted DUIs.
You might not need a patent for your keyboard, but in any complex technology, you do. The Apple Vs HTC is a great example. HTC is building off of the 'no shit' next steps in cell phone technology. What is patented by Apple is stuff that, even if they did "invent" first (which is a dubious claim to even begin with), would have been invented in the very near future by others who were running down the same path. So, Apple sues HTC claiming infringement on a pile of obvious next step technologies that are absurdly broadly defined to begin with. HTCs only defense is to turn around and do the same. So, HTC has some stupid and obvious patents that they then claim Apple is infringing upon. The defensive pattens are not there to protect your technology, they are there to be used against a company trying to sue you.
Patents are like nuclear weapons. Even if you don't want to use the damned things offensively against others, you still want them so that you can threaten to use them on anyone who uses them on you.
Sadly, what this leads to is a stifling of creativity and innovation. The point of a patent is to encourage people to invent. As soon as a patent fails at that, it fails at its purpose. So, in the case of cellphone makers, it isn't like the lack of the ability to patent some overly broad technology would have prevented Apple from using and developing it. It is being used now ONLY to prevent creativity and innovation. It basically means that no one who doesn't already have an arsenal of patents can't jump into the market. The thought of a small time specialized cell phone maker jumping into the market is laughable because you can't enter the market unless you are armed to the teeth with your own defensive patents. Hell, the very reason why HTC is getting attacked by Apple is because they have the smallest patent portfolio.
So basically, you know better and you want to impose your opinion... fill in some some whiny stuff that ends with me being the reason for World War II here.
Let's not get confused here. I am not doing it because I want to lead iPhone users to happiness. If I wanted to make an iPhone user happy, I would point them to the nearest kill-me-now gated 'burbclave with its endless sterile rows of uniform houses... or give them a gift card to that oh-so "edgy" multinational corporate chain of coffee shops.
Believe me, rooting iPhones at an Apple store isn't being done to be nice. It is done to be a jerk and revel in someone else's unhappiness.
What's the difference between you and Steve Jobs then?
The difference between me and Steve Jobs is that Jobs is an uptight asshole who wouldn't know a good quality debauched drunken merriment even if a band of whore gypsies gate crashed his emasculate (emasculate was typo, but I think I will leave it because it works) palace and force fed him wine and sex all night long.... and he has a few hundred million dollars and vastly more black turtle necks than me.
I wouldn't be even a little shocked to find that Android tablets are rooted with an open menu option. Cell phone have a pretty good reason to make at least a half assed attempt to keep phones from being rooted. An Android tablet though? Why would Dell or Toshiba care if you root your tablet? If anything, for a tablet, it is probably a selling point. There is absolutely no reason for Dell to be all ADD about people messing with their hardware like Apple is.
I bet tablets are where you see the full power of Android. Hardware companies are likely to be far more interested in giving you the latest updates than smearing the phone with the manufactures UI and the cell phones providers crapware. I mean fucking Sprint NASCAR... fuck you Sprint for defiling my Evo.
It almost makes me wish Google would go all Godwin's Law on carriers, break out the beating clubs, and and shut that shit down. I would rather have some random Sprint crapapps than get a POS iPhone where it isn't until the 4th fucking version of the OS when they finally bless you with the ability to change your background and browse the web while listening to Panadora (and those poor fuckers still can't even change their notification sounds to non-Apple Corp approved ones), but I would rather have just vanilla Android than either of those things.
Take your pick. Walled in suburbs that make you want to blow your brains out just to get away from the dull uniform mediocracy of Apple, or head to the city with Android and have to ignore the blazing billboards of Sprint sponsered NASCAR crap apps to get to all the good drinking and fighting. Oh well, it is like they say, you can't make an omelet without murdering a few people.
I have been a pretty big hater of flash in the past. Its ability to bring a modern computer to its knees with a fucking little flash game is pretty god damn annoying. That said, Apple bitch slapping the shit out of Flash has knocked a little sense into their heads. They have recently discovered mortality and found that they kind of fear it. Flash has started to clean up its act and stopped assuming that the user has more cores than fingers and enough memory to run a dozen instances Windows Vista at once. In fact, EVERYONE has started to do this from website designers to chip makers. I think the smart phone mobile revolution has been great for design in general. For too long everyone used Moore's law as crutch. Why use good design when you can throw 8 gig, handful of cores, and enough power to run a small movie theater at the problem?
What makes the mobile revolution really interesting is that it is really just reclaiming a lot of old tech. Everyone from chip designers to programmers know exactly where to go next because we have already been there with the PC. The challenge now is to take that old tech and optimizing to do more with less. The programing piece is interesting, but I think the real advances will be in hardware design. What smartphones are doing to hardware (chips, memory, sensors, etc) is breathtaking. They have covered ground that it took PCs a decade to cover in a couple of years. By the time my HTC Evo is ready for replacement in less than two years, I don't doubt for a second that my next phone is going to be rocking specs to put my last computer to shame.
That is hilarious. In fact, I need to hit a mall today for other reasons. I think I will make a stop by the Apple store and "fix" a few of their phones. From the videos I have seen of it, you can basically do it in 30 seconds. Go to website, slide the button, phone reboots, and you are done. Jailbreaking an iPhone is like reorganizing the desk of a control freak... it is only fun because they are some uptight. No one would ever bother to go to a Verizon store and root some Droids because no one would care.
Um, they held back 15,000 documents. I think their actions speak for themselves. Clearly, they didn't release everything.
What are you, a politician and think words speak louder than actions? I know Assange has been asked as much in interviews. If you want to Google it, knock yourself out.
WikiLeaks isn't for complete 100% open government. They are pretty clear in that they recognize that there are some secrets worth keeping, they just have a very high standard for what secrets are worth keeping. They error drastically on the side of openness. It is pretty safe to assume that WikiLeaks has info that even they balk at publishing. In fact, we know for certain that they have at least 15,000 pages of such stuff and are rumored to have much more sensitive material. Take that info that you normally wouldn't publish, throw some sick encryption on it, post it without the key, and now you have a tidy dead mans switch. If a nice man from the US government from a three letter agency throws a black bag over your head and drags you off to a secret prison, the key is released within XX hours of you not checking in.
It is a pretty interesting ultimatum to governments. You can't stop the US government from stomping on some hippies if they really want to, but it is clear that the consequence of hippie stomping is a massive amount of secret documents that everyone, even WikiLeaks, thinks shouldn't be released. That seems like a pretty sane precaution. Nation states take their absolute authority pretty seriously and some times do very nasty things when non-state actors challenge it.
Threatening to release sensitive information if you get nabbed and sent to the third world nation of the US's choice for a few years of torture is hardly blackmail. The US has dragged off completely innocent people before and sent them to third world countries to be tortured before. It doesn't take a paranoid to think that they might do it again. Do you really think threatening a government to release their secrets if they try and nab you outside of their jurisdiction and send you away to a secret prison is "blackmail"?
I think your points are completely valid and that Black Berry is going to hang onto its core business IT department crowd for a while yet. If you need a device that is for both work and play, an Android or an iPhone are clearly the way to go. I use my Android for work and play. It receives calls, gets work (and home) email. I can't speak for other devices, and Android does have a lot of freaking devices with varied levels of quality, but my Evo has crashed exactly once in the month or two I have had it, and that was while using software specifically marked as beta. Your millage my vary.
If you need a phone for Business with a capital B, iPhones and Androids are either unproven or not capable. Android for instance doesn't push yet (I don't think... don't quote me on it). Multi-task lets you get the same functionality, but at a power cost. I think the core IT driven Black Berry crowd is safe for now. IT departments are conservative and error on the side of caution. Only rapidly dropping prices from Android or failing quality from BB are going to push them away.
That said, the business market, while of a healthy size, is small change next to the potential consumer market. Hence, while Black Berry might continue to do fine business, as a smart phone vendor they are going to find their market share shrink to pittance overnight, even if they save their core IT based business customers.
This is really a silly complaint. Multiple versions is not doom. Android actually makes it very easy to develop for the lowest possible version that makes your app work. If an app can be made to work with 1.6, it will work with 1.6. If it needs 2.2, you won't see it. Yes, there will be better phone than yours out there. If this really gives your heart ache, maybe you should get an iPhone.
With an iPhone, you can upgrade on the regular upgrade cycle and never be more than a generation behind when your contract runs out. With Android, you can buy the latest and greatest thing and, seriously, someone is going to have something better within 3 months. If it bothers you that someone out there has something shinier than what you have, don't buy Android. You will live your life in misery. This is what happens when you have half a dozen companies engaging in an economic blood bath to make the best phone. They get better, fast. Much faster than you can upgrade.
Android itself is also in violent expansion. The hardware that 1.6 was made for is night and day different from what they built 2.2 for. Seriously, an Android phone from just a year ago is an order of magnitude worse than what we see today. Again, if rapid improvement far faster than you can upgrade causes your heart ache, stay away from Android. Give it a couple of years and things will level off a little. What makes this phone market unique is that the designers know EXACTLY how to get to the next performance level from the PC experience, it is just a matter of reducing size and power consumption. This means that what it took the PC market a decade or two to achieve, cell phones are going to do in a couple of years. In the phone market we have gone from glorified graphing calculators to computers pushing the power levels of early 2000 in a couple of years. Now that there is an interest in this market, it is going to get better, faster.
Personally, I'll stick to Android. Yes, my fucking Evo that ran off the life force of ground babies is already starting to look dated next to all of those shinny new devices that are coming out that I now drool over. It doesn't change the fact that my phone rocks just as much as it did when I first got it; it just can't rock as hard as what is going to come out in a couple of months. I am pretty sure that when my 18 months are up my Evo is going to look like a relic compared to the latest and greatest Android devices of the day. That won't make my phone any less capable, but it sure as hell will make that day when my contract is up all the more sweeter.
"Fragmentation" isn't a bad thing. It just means that hardware and software are advancing too fucking fast for your sad little 2 year contract to keep up with. Personally, I consider that a good thing. I can live with a little penis envy now if it means an even more bad ass device later.
I don't see how this is hard. Apple owns an OS called iOS. It has different versions. Google has tossed out into the world Android. It also has different versions. Figuring out how many out there are each is just a matter of comparing the numbers. Granted, the numbers are a little tougher to get for Android because you have to do some adding, but it isn't like Apple's announces their numbers; they are generally inferred through one method or another. I'll agree that there is a margin error for Android that is probably a little bigger than for Apple, but it was the same for Windows vs Mac. It is pretty safe to say that at this point, Android is growing very fast and steady, Apple is bursting in waves with their releases and then flattening out, and Black Berry, Palm, and Windows are being eaten alive.
I don't think that there is any serious question in anyone's mind where things are going to be in a couple of years. Black Berry is going to be a smoldering wreckage relegated to a slowly shrinking business client base, Windows 7 Mobile Series (or whatever stupid name they gave it) and Palm will be gimped in the single digits, and Apple and Android will be within 10% of each other with the leader being anyone's guess (fight amongst yourselves fanbois).
If there is anything to throw a wrench into these numbers, it will be tablet uptake. Tablet uptake could screw these numbers all to hell. The phone business is a tough business to get into. The tablet business is much easier. If tablets don't turn out to be a fad like netbooks, I could see the mobile OS wars get crazy. A smart phone is expensive, hard to make, and cost a lot to keep. Tablets on the other hand are a one time cost. Right now Apple is doing pretty dandy being the only real player in town. Hard to say now, but I could envision a price war when Everyone (using Android) shows up to the game. We are a year away from every computer marker and their dog pushing an Android tablet. Prices will drops. The only question is whether or not consumers will bite, or if tablets are going to go the way of netbooks. Frankly, I am a little skeptical on tablets exploding, but if prices drop enough the market uptake might be violent and quick.
If the delete option works, great. Personally, the split second another comparable service comes out that catches maybe 5 or so of my closets friends... I am gone. I probably won't delete my account, but I will purge the ever living crap out of it and leave it as a glorified address book page.
The issue with Facebook is that it has lost my trust. Facebook doesn't do what I want it to do anymore. Facebook started as a thing for college students to connect and share college studentie stuff. Now, my freaking grandmother is one Facebook. Yeah, I can sit around and fiddle with my privacy settings and make a special grandma list that I have to remember to use every time I wont to post something that she might hurt her 70 year old sensibilities, but it is a pain in the ass.
It is going to be pretty easy to get me to jump ship. Just give me a social networking site that lets me have a split personality. We naturally have split personalities. The face you present in a meeting at work is different from the one you present to your mom and different from the one you present to your friends on Friday night. Facebook absolutely sucks at making this distinction. Not only does Facebook suck at making this decision, they keep desperately trying to get you to post ALL your information to the world. The first social networking site with a clean interface and that understands that we all have split personalities is going to stand over Facebook's bloated corpse. They don't even need to destroy Facebook, just offer up something convincing enough that I will use the alternative and Facebook. A social networking site that lets me cleanly and smoothly deal with my co-workers and grandmother wanting to be 'friends' in addition to my real friends is going to have Facebooks head on a pike.
I agree a lot of the Android Phones are getting really good... However Apple has been the company that has been really raising the bar... Not Android. What Android does is raises their bar to Apples Level for Apple to raise it again.
That is non-sense. Apple does get credit for creating the consumer smart phone market, and they certainly set a high bar when they started out. That said, they have been struggling over the past year when it has been Android that has been blasting by in terms of technical prowess. I mean seriously... the iPhone didn't have freaking copy and paste up until a year ago. Copy and paste...
Beyond that, Apple finally implemented a gimped form of multi tasking with the iPhone 4 update so that it can do boring things that Android users have taken for granted, like listening to Pandora while browsing the web, are now possible. They just recently let you actually change your freaking background. iPhone users still can't have widgets on their desktop, live wall paper, or even change the freaking notification sounds to something other than stock Apple Corp approved ones.
If you like iPhones more then Androids, eh, more power to you. That said, don't sit around pretending that Apple has some great technical superiority when boring stuff that Android has been doing for well over year or longer finally gets added (or doesn't). Apple's iPhone 4 was a lunging grasp to get to the level of Android, and they are still behind in many things.
I am always baffled by this. I am running Android 2.1. I turned the thing on and it works. It is brain dead easy to run anything. Installing stuff is obvious. Running things is obvious. Customizing almost anything that tickles my fancy is brain dead obvious. What exactly is it about Android that makes people shrink in terror that their phone is going to overwhelm them and eat their brains? You can go rooting around into the guts of the thing and set it up just so, but the fact that the device has the capacity let you control it on a deeper level doesn't demand you go out and do it. It isn't like the fact that my car hood can be opened means that I have to know shit about what goes on inside. Seriously, exactly what function is it that you are trying to do on an Android that is causing brain to leak out your ears with too much thought?
If I reprogram a few special purpose keys... pretty sure I can clean the floor of a console player without even having to bother to learn the game.
Google is actually splitting the Android OS. Android 3 is going to be the Android version that is going to keep on blasting forward with higher hardware requirements. Android 2 on the other hand is going to keep on being maintained, but they are going to leave the hardware requirements where they are. In the short term, this doesn't mean much. In the long term, it means that once hardware gets cheaper (and it WILL get cheaper, fast), you are going to have "low end" smart phones running Android 2, and high end phones running Android 3.
You might not see Android on the lowest level dumb phone, but we are about a year or two away from a cheap 2nd tier smartphone market that, at least in developed nations, is going to start eating into dumb phone market in a serious way. If you have to choose between a dumb phone or tossing in an extra $30 for a touch screen smart phone from the last generation, which would you pick?
You are pretty confused. The difference between Android and Apple is that if I want a big ass screen, I go get an Evo. If I want a more manageable sized phone, I get an N1 or something. If I want a phone with a slide out keyboard, I get one of those. If I want to be on Verizon, I get a Droid. If I prefer Sprint, I get an Evo. If I want an unlocked phone with no subside but a cheaper plan, I get a T-mobile Android. If I want a cheap Android, I get a cheap Android. If I want a demon of a phone summoned from the pits of hell, I get one of those. If I want an app that Lord Job's doesn't approve of (like Google Voice), I get it. When I want to download a non-approved app, I don't "hack" my phone, I just check a check box in the settings page saying I am okay with that. When I want to change my freaking notification sound to a non-corporation approved one... I just change it.
With Apple... you get an iPhone. Want something a little different to meet your needs? Too fucking bad. Now cough up the credit card and get ready to be bent over and violated by AT&T's awesome service.
If you really like the idea of one company controlling the hardware, software, app store, and taking a pile of money from you for the privilege, eh, stick with Apple. You apparently like the "walled suburb" approach. More power to you. I hear the iPhone 4 is totally awesome. I heard that with the upgrade Lord Jobs lets you change your background to anything you want, not just Apple Corp approved ones! Wow! I bet with iPhone 5 you will get an 'upgrade' that lets you change your notification sounds to non-Apple Corp approved ones! The upgrades never cease! First, copy and paste, then gimped multi tasking! It looks totally awesome over there. What features will Apple think up next! Man, the 'burbs are totally awesome and exciting.
Thanks. I'll stick with Android. What can I say, I am a city boy.
Yeah, it was totally Apple's idea to put in band width caps and prevent tethering.
That is a nice noble fantasy you have. The deal was not settled on who offered more or less bloatware. The deal was based purely upon who would share the most profit. Verizon and AT&T bid. AT&T offered to cut Apple into vastly more profit than Verizon was. Verizon looked at the numbers and told Apple to go take a hike. Comparing AT&T and Verizon's stock price changes, it is pretty clear that Verizon didn't make a mistake. AT&T got exactly nothing when they got the iPhone. That is also the reason why Verizon is completely uninterested in the iPhone. They are not willing to pay the Apple tax and are pretty content to build their Droid line and keep all the profit.
Um... then don't buy an Incredible. If you buy an Android phone, you might have to spend a few seconds thinking about your purchase. Some Android phones are good, some are bad. Some have it so that rooting is easy and built in, some have it so it is very hard or not yet possible. Some have massive screens, some are tiny and portable. Some are on good carriers, some are on shit carriers. Seriously, if this is too much for you, just buy an iPhone. It is one brand and they offer a one phone-fits-all policy. Watch TV and the marketing blitz will inform you when you need to upgrade to their next gen.
If on the other hand you want a little flexibility and don't want to be locked into Apple's walled suburb model now and in the future, buy an Android phone. Fine one that fits you. They are all different. You might need to spend a few moments doing some minimal thinking and research.
Different folks, different strokes.
Open sourced or no, the real difference is that there was then (and is now on Android) a separation of OS and hardware. In the PC market Apple just never stood a chance gaining a large portion of market while the hardware wars were in full swing. Apple defined the teams as Apple vs Everyone. Everyone won. It wasn't until recently when the hardware wars pretty much ended on PCs (how many cores do you really need?) that Apple began to nibble at the dominance of the PC using their strengths, marketing and form.
The same thing is happening with smart phones. This is very quickly accelerating from software war where Apple had an early lead but Google rapidly caught up (and arguably surpassed them), to a hardware war again. Apple is doing the Everyone vs Apple thing again, and they are going to get creamed again. Cheaper, faster, better is not Apple's motto, but it sure as hell is the motto of the non-early adopter market. On into the mix the fact that Google is no Microsoft, and I think Apple will be lucky to keep their head above the water in terms of software too.
There is a pretty large difference between the a power surge over a few seconds, and slowly, over the course of months, building up a supply of water in a reservoir. Dealing with a power surge over a few seconds is very hard. Dealing with a reservoir that builds up near to full is pretty freaking easy... just turn off some other power sources and slowly and predictably drain the reservoir. Unpredictability isn't the issue, rapid unpredictability is.
The problem of course is that the more you buffer something like wind energy, the less efficient (and thus more costly) it becomes. Dumping water into a reservoir will pretty much solve your energy surge problems, but it will make your output and cost crap. I bet the solution is probably more technological. Cleaning up a signal that fluctuates wildly is pretty old hat for signal folks, it just needs some scale up.