Some protection? Definitely. 20 years of protection? Hell no. That's an eternity in the software biz, and would absolutely stifle innovation (which is antithetical to the purpose of patents.)
Well, for various definitions of "completely open", there are some in the US. the N900, for example, gets you as open as a Jailbroken iPhone. The Nexus One and Nexus S from Google do, too. Openmoko was an attempt to build a completely open source phone (hardware and software) but I believe patents got in the way of it being a truly useful device (nonetheless, you can buy them. They don't have 3G, unfortunately.)
I don't think you can modify the baseband of the phone--the part that would be subject to the most stringent FCC requirements. But you can't do that on any of them. So comparatively, they're all as open as a jailbroken iPhone.
I think it's more about perception. Apple wants their phones to be perceived as high quality. Phones which crash won't be perceived as high quality. Running outside of the sandbox means it's more likely that an app can cause the phone to crash. It means that it's more likely that an app can destroy your data.
Look at Windows. It's got a horrible reputation for stability. However, most BSOD I've seen have been the fault of 3rd party drivers. That's the risk you take giving ring 0 access to third-parties. You risk tarnishing your own reputation, even if the crashes and problems have nothing to do with your hardware or software.
There may be some contractual obligations with the phone companies, but they align with Apple's goals. I doubt government regulations have anything to do with it, because there are completely open phones on the market.
Apple wants to control the experience of the end-user. It's that simple. They've learned that providing a great experience to most people is better than providing a good experience to everyone. There will be companies who do certain things better than you, and people who want those things to the exclusion of others. There will be people who don't want to buy your product because they don't like your style, or don't want other people to think that they've embraced your culture. Or they think that your products are too expensive. Or any number of things.
There's nothing wrong with providing a great experience to enough people to keep and grow your business. It keeps Apple rolling in the dough. It makes a bunch of people happy. The only people I see complaining are busybodies, people who want to look down on others for [insert reason], and people who realize that Apple makes excellent products but who aren't willing to give up either their sense of elitism or their ideology. Out of these groups, I can only really respect the last one. But that's okay. It's only the first group--the ones who want to tell me how I should spend my money--that bother me. The rest I just kinda feel sorry for.
The back button was a great idea that had horrible consequences, in part because of some underlying Android fundamentals, and in part because the implementation of the back button's behavior is developer-determined.
Apple's App store prominently features high-quality apps on the front page. If the app isn't on the front page, it's not much easier to find than on Android, except that there's a lot more cruft on Android. Generally, if I search for anything on Android, I'll get tons of wallpaper or other apps which have nothing to do with my search terms and are only cluttering up the results.
I think the contempt comes from a bit if elitism. Being elite is a good thing, but being elitist isn't. Historically, Linux users have been highly technical people who knew systems and code well enough to get things working on their machines. I've been on USENET groups, mailing lists, and later forums where these kinds of people berated new users when they asked for help. It's nothing new. The rage is just directed in a different direction now--instead of at the newbies who are trying to learn, it's directed at the packagers and developers who are making life too easy and letting too many people into the club.
I know so many people who used to pirate music before music became DRM-free. Then Apple got through to the studios, and people still pirated because they didn't want to deal with iTunes. Finally, when Amazon started offering mp3s and no crappy software to download, 8/11 of the people I still keep in touch with switched. There were two big changes: they'd all grown up and could now afford music, and the music was easy to buy, download, and use. No messing with bloated programs, no DRM restricting where you could play the songs, no problems.
I feel largely the same way about movies and TV. Right now, I use Netflix and Hulu with smatterings of Redbox to get my video media, as well as OTA signals. I'd buy digital downloads of movies and TV shows from Amazon in a heartbeat if I could play them anywhere, any time, without an Internet connection. I've been tempted many times to buy them anyway, however because they won't play on my iPad or offline laptop, I won't. I could buy from Apple, but those videos won't play on my laptop at all. So I won't buy there, either.
I genuinely want to give these people my money. They just don't (yet) offer a product I'm willing to pay for. So instead, I use free or cheap options that almost certainly don't help them.
Those are some valid points to consider. Here are some others.
You can carry a set of one-time use tokens with you, or leave them with someone trusted and that you will be able to contact. In this way, you won't require Google Authenticator to log in and revoke. You get 10 of these, and an emergency code can be sent to a landline or other mobile phone.
I'm not sure how or if Authenticator tries to protect its data. I would hope that it does something, as anything which slows down the thief buys you more time to revoke. It could encrypt with the PIN, store its data only on the phone's internal memory (rather than the SD card), etc. I'm not sure if the OP is worried about a targeted attack which will be harder to deal with, or just a thief finding the phone and deciding to see what's in the e-mail. Unless the OP is involved in the financial sector or intelligence, a targeted attack seems fairly unlikely. Some basic data protections should be sufficient to slow the thief down until you can take action.
Lastly, I don't think I've ever typed in a Google password into the browser of my phone. I've relied on the built-in apps, which use the phone credentials. Right now, before I've had my coffee, I can't think of any reason I'd want to log in to the web browser, either, though I'm sure there are cases. It's probably something to worry about on a case-by-case basis.
For linking your Google account to your phone, turn on two-factor authentication. You can't actually use two-factor authentication to add your Google account to the phone, so you get the option to set up an application-specific password. Though nothing stops someone from reusing this password to access your mail, you can revoke this password at any time without affecting the rest of your application-specific passwords or your main Google account password. If your phone is lost, get to the nearest computer and revoke the phone password. Then if the thief does manage to extract your password, it's useless.
For the rest... well, the advice in the other comments seems to be about the best you can do.
It's definitely better than any of the built-in clients I've seen. It's better than K-9 if for no other reason than the fact that it has threading.
I like K-9 Mail's handling of folders pretty well, but it's a heck of a lot of micromanagement. Once it's set up, it's pretty nice, but I've never had an Android upgrade go smoothly and have always had to wipe my device and restore. I've never successfully restored K-9's settings, so I eventually stopped configuring K-9 more than necessary to just get my mail. An unused feature is a useless one.
Nothing else in K-9 has struck me as amazing--though I'll grant that it's a huge step over the stock clients. It's also possible that there are features I've missed.
It's a shame that their hardware is such a social status symbol for so many people.
That is a shame. It's also a shame that the device and OS are really quite nice. Or to direct our negative emotions more appropriately, it's a shame that Apple is so heavy-handed with their App Store policies and policy against letting the user install things from outside of said store.
The iPad is the most responsive tablet device I've used. Its browser is fantastic (though there are aspects of the Android browser that I prefer.) The email client is light-years ahead of Android's (though that's a relatively recent development.)
Add me to the list of people who cancelled when they ended in-store exchange. The Blockbuster debacle was a huge boon for Netflix. BB raised prices, Netflix lowered them. BB canceled in-store exchange, Netflix added streaming for free. I knew several people who were displeased with Blockbuster for tihs.
BTW, the 17$ service includes blu-ray discs, something else that wasn't part of the original 8$ cost.
To be fair, I can't find a way to get anything out of Netflix for $17. What I see is an $8 plan for streaming and an $8 plan for 1 DVD out at a time. IIRC, Blu-ray costs $(disc+1), and has since the last price increase[1]. So previously, I suppose, it was $11/mo for 1 disc+streaming, or $13 for 1 disc+bluray+streaming. And now it's $16 for 1 disc+streaming, or $18 for 1 disc+bluray+streaming.
It's probably all irrelevant. Netflix is still a very good deal, but it's still very irritating to have the prices raised by such a large percentage with no perceived increase in service.
[1] I can't verify this without adding discs to my plan. Netflix makes it fairly hard to know how much their services are going to cost.
I enjoyed it a lot. I think that a big part of it was the setting, but I found it much more engrossing than Thor. By the time the action stopped, I barely realized that two hours had passed.
It's not a deep or intellectual movie. Like just about every superhero movie, it's a popcorn flick that's just designed to kill a few hours. But it was great at what it was aiming to do.
Most rejections are based on bugs found in the applications. When there is an issue, we try to provide the developer with helpful feedback so they can modify the application in order for us to approve it. 95% of applications are approved within 14 days of their submission.
Slashdot Mirror
For what it's worth, I still can't parse what your original post said, nor do I get the joke even after explanation.
I assumed he was referring to the emulated CPU.
Some protection? Definitely. 20 years of protection? Hell no. That's an eternity in the software biz, and would absolutely stifle innovation (which is antithetical to the purpose of patents.)
AFS and AFP are not the same thing.
AFS looks pretty complex to set up, whereas Samba is dead simple. Am I missing something?
Is Samba really more prevalant than FAT? Microsoft sued over FAT a few years ago.
Well, for various definitions of "completely open", there are some in the US. the N900, for example, gets you as open as a Jailbroken iPhone. The Nexus One and Nexus S from Google do, too. Openmoko was an attempt to build a completely open source phone (hardware and software) but I believe patents got in the way of it being a truly useful device (nonetheless, you can buy them. They don't have 3G, unfortunately.)
I don't think you can modify the baseband of the phone--the part that would be subject to the most stringent FCC requirements. But you can't do that on any of them. So comparatively, they're all as open as a jailbroken iPhone.
I think it's more about perception. Apple wants their phones to be perceived as high quality. Phones which crash won't be perceived as high quality. Running outside of the sandbox means it's more likely that an app can cause the phone to crash. It means that it's more likely that an app can destroy your data.
Look at Windows. It's got a horrible reputation for stability. However, most BSOD I've seen have been the fault of 3rd party drivers. That's the risk you take giving ring 0 access to third-parties. You risk tarnishing your own reputation, even if the crashes and problems have nothing to do with your hardware or software.
There may be some contractual obligations with the phone companies, but they align with Apple's goals. I doubt government regulations have anything to do with it, because there are completely open phones on the market.
It's almost like the population of Slashdot users isn't completely homogeneous. Weird!
Apple wants to control the experience of the end-user. It's that simple. They've learned that providing a great experience to most people is better than providing a good experience to everyone. There will be companies who do certain things better than you, and people who want those things to the exclusion of others. There will be people who don't want to buy your product because they don't like your style, or don't want other people to think that they've embraced your culture. Or they think that your products are too expensive. Or any number of things.
There's nothing wrong with providing a great experience to enough people to keep and grow your business. It keeps Apple rolling in the dough. It makes a bunch of people happy. The only people I see complaining are busybodies, people who want to look down on others for [insert reason], and people who realize that Apple makes excellent products but who aren't willing to give up either their sense of elitism or their ideology. Out of these groups, I can only really respect the last one. But that's okay. It's only the first group--the ones who want to tell me how I should spend my money--that bother me. The rest I just kinda feel sorry for.
The back button was a great idea that had horrible consequences, in part because of some underlying Android fundamentals, and in part because the implementation of the back button's behavior is developer-determined.
Apple's App store prominently features high-quality apps on the front page. If the app isn't on the front page, it's not much easier to find than on Android, except that there's a lot more cruft on Android. Generally, if I search for anything on Android, I'll get tons of wallpaper or other apps which have nothing to do with my search terms and are only cluttering up the results.
I think the contempt comes from a bit if elitism. Being elite is a good thing, but being elitist isn't. Historically, Linux users have been highly technical people who knew systems and code well enough to get things working on their machines. I've been on USENET groups, mailing lists, and later forums where these kinds of people berated new users when they asked for help. It's nothing new. The rage is just directed in a different direction now--instead of at the newbies who are trying to learn, it's directed at the packagers and developers who are making life too easy and letting too many people into the club.
They proposed it at one point, and the fact that they thought it was a good idea is terrifying.
I know so many people who used to pirate music before music became DRM-free. Then Apple got through to the studios, and people still pirated because they didn't want to deal with iTunes. Finally, when Amazon started offering mp3s and no crappy software to download, 8/11 of the people I still keep in touch with switched. There were two big changes: they'd all grown up and could now afford music, and the music was easy to buy, download, and use. No messing with bloated programs, no DRM restricting where you could play the songs, no problems.
I feel largely the same way about movies and TV. Right now, I use Netflix and Hulu with smatterings of Redbox to get my video media, as well as OTA signals. I'd buy digital downloads of movies and TV shows from Amazon in a heartbeat if I could play them anywhere, any time, without an Internet connection. I've been tempted many times to buy them anyway, however because they won't play on my iPad or offline laptop, I won't. I could buy from Apple, but those videos won't play on my laptop at all. So I won't buy there, either.
I genuinely want to give these people my money. They just don't (yet) offer a product I'm willing to pay for. So instead, I use free or cheap options that almost certainly don't help them.
Those are some valid points to consider. Here are some others.
You can carry a set of one-time use tokens with you, or leave them with someone trusted and that you will be able to contact. In this way, you won't require Google Authenticator to log in and revoke. You get 10 of these, and an emergency code can be sent to a landline or other mobile phone.
I'm not sure how or if Authenticator tries to protect its data. I would hope that it does something, as anything which slows down the thief buys you more time to revoke. It could encrypt with the PIN, store its data only on the phone's internal memory (rather than the SD card), etc. I'm not sure if the OP is worried about a targeted attack which will be harder to deal with, or just a thief finding the phone and deciding to see what's in the e-mail. Unless the OP is involved in the financial sector or intelligence, a targeted attack seems fairly unlikely. Some basic data protections should be sufficient to slow the thief down until you can take action.
Lastly, I don't think I've ever typed in a Google password into the browser of my phone. I've relied on the built-in apps, which use the phone credentials. Right now, before I've had my coffee, I can't think of any reason I'd want to log in to the web browser, either, though I'm sure there are cases. It's probably something to worry about on a case-by-case basis.
For linking your Google account to your phone, turn on two-factor authentication. You can't actually use two-factor authentication to add your Google account to the phone, so you get the option to set up an application-specific password. Though nothing stops someone from reusing this password to access your mail, you can revoke this password at any time without affecting the rest of your application-specific passwords or your main Google account password. If your phone is lost, get to the nearest computer and revoke the phone password. Then if the thief does manage to extract your password, it's useless.
For the rest... well, the advice in the other comments seems to be about the best you can do.
I wish there was a -1 Horrible Analogy mod.
It's definitely better than any of the built-in clients I've seen. It's better than K-9 if for no other reason than the fact that it has threading.
I like K-9 Mail's handling of folders pretty well, but it's a heck of a lot of micromanagement. Once it's set up, it's pretty nice, but I've never had an Android upgrade go smoothly and have always had to wipe my device and restore. I've never successfully restored K-9's settings, so I eventually stopped configuring K-9 more than necessary to just get my mail. An unused feature is a useless one.
Nothing else in K-9 has struck me as amazing--though I'll grant that it's a huge step over the stock clients. It's also possible that there are features I've missed.
It's a shame that their hardware is such a social status symbol for so many people.
That is a shame. It's also a shame that the device and OS are really quite nice. Or to direct our negative emotions more appropriately, it's a shame that Apple is so heavy-handed with their App Store policies and policy against letting the user install things from outside of said store.
The iPad is the most responsive tablet device I've used. Its browser is fantastic (though there are aspects of the Android browser that I prefer.) The email client is light-years ahead of Android's (though that's a relatively recent development.)
Like Apple would ever allow that.
Add me to the list of people who cancelled when they ended in-store exchange. The Blockbuster debacle was a huge boon for Netflix. BB raised prices, Netflix lowered them. BB canceled in-store exchange, Netflix added streaming for free. I knew several people who were displeased with Blockbuster for tihs.
BTW, the 17$ service includes blu-ray discs, something else that wasn't part of the original 8$ cost.
To be fair, I can't find a way to get anything out of Netflix for $17. What I see is an $8 plan for streaming and an $8 plan for 1 DVD out at a time. IIRC, Blu-ray costs $(disc+1), and has since the last price increase[1]. So previously, I suppose, it was $11/mo for 1 disc+streaming, or $13 for 1 disc+bluray+streaming. And now it's $16 for 1 disc+streaming, or $18 for 1 disc+bluray+streaming.
It's probably all irrelevant. Netflix is still a very good deal, but it's still very irritating to have the prices raised by such a large percentage with no perceived increase in service.
[1] I can't verify this without adding discs to my plan. Netflix makes it fairly hard to know how much their services are going to cost.
I enjoyed it a lot. I think that a big part of it was the setting, but I found it much more engrossing than Thor. By the time the action stopped, I barely realized that two hours had passed.
It's not a deep or intellectual movie. Like just about every superhero movie, it's a popcorn flick that's just designed to kill a few hours. But it was great at what it was aiming to do.
After the 1984 debacle, they promised not to do it again. Then they did it again. http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/12/amazons-latest-kindle-deletion-erotic-incest-themed-fiction.ars
Apple have rejected low quality apps for almost two years.
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/information-technology/20090807-apple-cleans-up-app-store-rejects-low-quality-apps.html
And they openly admit to rejecting buggy apps:
Most rejections are based on bugs found in the applications. When there is an issue, we try to provide the developer with helpful feedback so they can modify the application in order for us to approve it. 95% of applications are approved within 14 days of their submission.
From http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/