Although I agree with most of your post, as this is Slashdot I need to point out that Angry Birds is also available on Symbian and Maemo too. The developers have targeted every platform with more than a few thousand users by the looks of things.
WP7 is not good. It's not even close to good. It STILL lacks features like multitasking and copy & paste in 2011.
That hardly qualifies as 'not even close to good', iOS doesn't have multitasking either (just some specific services that can run in the background). They have announced that those features are coming in the next update.
WP7 has polish and is ultra smooth and the metro UI is really innovative and good.
Absolutely, and when you go from using a WP7 phone to using an iPad, iOS feels very dated. WP7 doesn't include copy+paste, yes that is quite annoying, but at least it's coming, same as when iOS was first released. It doesn't have multi-tasking - which is apparently also on the way - and coming from an N900 this takes some getting used to, but then iOS's odd attempt at multi-tasking is far from the true system of the N900 anyway.
Sure you can. All you need is the source code, a compiler and access to the distributor.
But there is only one distributor, that distributor requires a fee for distribution and also imposes many restrictions on what can and cannot be distributed.
It is hands-down the best phone (or mobile computer as they refer to it) out there for this purpose.
A couple of things to note though:
-Email client is slow and quite buggy
-Application manager is horrendously slow (though cmd line junkies will just us that instead)
-Resistive touchscreen (though you may prefer the stylus) this does mean no 'pinch-zoom', so you need to do the silly 'circle pattern', or use the volume keys and pan, this is a real pain in things like mapping apps
-Keyboard is pretty mediocre, odd placement of keys (particularly spacebar), nowhere near as good as a blackberry keyboard
-Battery life is average (for a smartphone like this) so you'll get about a day of normal use
-General performance isn't exactly 'snappy', though through some tweaks you can make it significantly better
-Not much support from Nokia
Another plus though is that you can install and dualboot NITDroid and get access to all the Android goodness.
In all for remote administration there is nothing better. I wouldn't recommend it as a general use smartphone but as a mobile computer you won't find anything better.
but I find it merely a notch worse than a laptop. Once you get below the comfortable size, the difference seems minor. And n900 can be held in a pocket rather than a car's trunk.
You do realise we have progressed quite some way past the Osborne 1.
ooohh...card counting, yeah sorry you've gotten so good at this game that you can consistently beat us and we don't like that so we're gonna cry to the government and make it illegal for us to lose like that. But it's cool, lots of the money we win from you goes to the government so they'll support us even though they are supposed to be serving you.
But that is simply not what current and forward looking hardware developers should be thinking.
Well when we see a marked improvement in marketshare for Linux on desktop devices im sure things will change but for hardware manufacturers building desktop and laptop components the target market for linux is incredibly small. With this constant state of flux in linux distros I don't think it's reasonable to hope for mainstream adoption, choice is great in many ways but it's also confusing for the end user and complicated for the developer. Proper unified interfaces are what is needed, but it will be long time before the community can actually agree on a single solution, if ever. Im not anti-*NIX at all but I've always used nVidia hardware because their binary blobs are the closest thing to a stable, performance driver. I'm sure if X wasn't so messed up in terms of 3D hardware acceleration we'd have seen a more open model of development much sooner.
It's pretty obvious that the desktop linux market isn't worth the same amount of effort as Windows (and even OSX) so I can certainly understand why they don't devote the same amount of time but it would be nice if they released the specs to the linux community so OSS drivers can be made quickly and easily.
Sony is not a foreign company, it is an international company.
In any case it isn't a US company.
And yes, companies that do business in the US bend over for the US government at the slightest hint of pressure all the time.
Or have you forgotten about the whole WikiLeaks thing?
I think you'll find the wikileaks saga is a bit different to wanting playstations and it certainly doesn't constitute 'all the time'. You seem to have an inflated opinion of the power of the US government, if companies bent over at the slightest hint of pressure the US government would get sued by companies as much as they do.
You do realize that there is no guarantee that in 2011 a phone won't come out that never gets jailbroken, or not in any reasonable period of time, right?
There's also no guarantee that a company like synapse phone won't take off providing pre-rooted devices as well. And as far as a 'phone that never gets jailbroken' is concerned, if such a device were to ever come out it's just as likely to face competition from breakable devices, that's the beauty of android, you don't have to stick with one vendor. And given the rate at which devices are jailbroken it's seems extremely unlikely we'll see an unbreakable phone anytime in the near future. Look at how hard Apple work at it on just one device and their best efforts are knocked over in a matter of hours.
My point is that most Android phones do not get good long-term OS support - certainly not compared to Apple. I don't think that this is appropriate considering their price.
And my point is the consumers get the choice of which vendor to go with. It's becoming clearer which vendors are offering better support over time and if you want you still have the choice to go with something like a Nexus.
If you want official support then choose a vendor with a good track record or go with a Nexus, otherwise go the unofficial route.
And in terms of good long term support Apple's iOS4 hasn't been much of a success for devices more than 18months old. Sure those users can jailbreak, but they still can't do anything about improving the OS.
True. Exactly one Android vendor has not. So, people are free to obtain the benefits of the open-source android platform as long as you disregard about 98% of the android devices out there...
Well im not sure about your percentage figure but that's partially true. You can put an unofficial version of android on if you either go to the source and buy your hardware there, or take the unofficial - but perfectly legal - option of rooting the device which is not unreasonable given you are intending on using an unofficial OS then anyway.
There are obvious dangers to have phones come pre-rooted so most manufacturers wont do it out of the box and some will make it quite difficult to get root access.
In any case it's going to be an unofficial route to an unofficial result.
Being opened up like this might be the shot of "Go-go juice" that Sony has needed in its ailing console segment for the past 5 years now.
But they barely make a profit on the console as it is - and made a significant loss previously - and they won't make money off these game sales so this 'booming new market' will do little for sony.
I almost wish Sony allowed this in the first place -- there is a vast, untapped market for an all in one home server appliance, that doesn't just provide file and print serving, but authentication, caching, and many other features.
It would be too expensive. If you factor out game sales then the PS3 would need to be sold at much more than cost price, the release price would likely have been nudging $2000.
You're right, I haven't, so I'm just basing it on them being given leniency due to their 'role in protecting the nation and the insignificant nature of the crime committed'. Yes, I do think hacking a bunch of PS3s they bought so should be free to do with them as they please, is an insignificant 'crime'.
Well they don't, they have to abide by licensing just as any private corporation or citizen does. They don't get to commit crimes just because it is cost-effective (which is the point of the PS3 cluster) to do so.
As for suing the government, yes, I know it happened several times, but most of the time for breaches of human rights (the voting rights and other equality cases spring to mind), not for copyright infringement
See section 511 of the US copyright act, it's quite clear. Google even sued them for not considering their apps in a recent RFQ so you can bet a copyright infringement would attract a lawsuit.
If you want choice, you *must* give up usability and overall user experience. But you do get choice. If you favor usability and user experience, you give up choice. It's no surprise that a lot of geeks are fine with the downsides of choice, and prefer the benefits choice has to offer. And it's no surprise that the average consumer would rather give up choice for a better experience.
You're absolutely right but there is some middle ground as well, which is the strategy Microsoft has taken with WP7. They have determined a range of hardware to tune the user experience. Sure it limits choice a bit but you don't end up with devices that struggle to run the OS & apps and destroy the user experience and platform reputation.
Additionally developers know what the minimum spec is and can work with that to ensure the performance of their software is consistent across devices.
I think it's great that we have these 3 different platforms addressing effectively the same market with 3 different strategies all with different up- and downsides. It means you generally have a good option no matter which demographic you fall into.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I agree with most of your post, as this is Slashdot I need to point out that Angry Birds is also available on Symbian and Maemo too. The developers have targeted every platform with more than a few thousand users by the looks of things.
And it's been announced for WP7 too.
WP7 is not good. It's not even close to good. It STILL lacks features like multitasking and copy & paste in 2011.
That hardly qualifies as 'not even close to good', iOS doesn't have multitasking either (just some specific services that can run in the background). They have announced that those features are coming in the next update.
WP7 has polish and is ultra smooth and the metro UI is really innovative and good.
Absolutely, and when you go from using a WP7 phone to using an iPad, iOS feels very dated. WP7 doesn't include copy+paste, yes that is quite annoying, but at least it's coming, same as when iOS was first released. It doesn't have multi-tasking - which is apparently also on the way - and coming from an N900 this takes some getting used to, but then iOS's odd attempt at multi-tasking is far from the true system of the N900 anyway.
Because it's a hack on top of another hack, not an actual integrated command line?
I'm getting the impression you have no idea what a hack is. The foundation on which OSX is built was built by hackers.
It's actually barely designed at all. It's a complete mess of hacks.
How so?
Except for the fact that Mac OS is much better designed, more modern, and more sophisticated.
How is it more modern and more sophisticated?
You talk as if the hardware would exist, without the software store
Why wouldn't it?
Sure you can. All you need is the source code, a compiler and access to the distributor.
But there is only one distributor, that distributor requires a fee for distribution and also imposes many restrictions on what can and cannot be distributed.
Survivability of Android or survivability of the hardware makers?
Of Android.
How about Windows? It still survives. That's good right?
Most likely yes.
It is hands-down the best phone (or mobile computer as they refer to it) out there for this purpose.
A couple of things to note though:
-Email client is slow and quite buggy
-Application manager is horrendously slow (though cmd line junkies will just us that instead)
-Resistive touchscreen (though you may prefer the stylus) this does mean no 'pinch-zoom', so you need to do the silly 'circle pattern', or use the volume keys and pan, this is a real pain in things like mapping apps
-Keyboard is pretty mediocre, odd placement of keys (particularly spacebar), nowhere near as good as a blackberry keyboard
-Battery life is average (for a smartphone like this) so you'll get about a day of normal use
-General performance isn't exactly 'snappy', though through some tweaks you can make it significantly better
-Not much support from Nokia
Another plus though is that you can install and dualboot NITDroid and get access to all the Android goodness.
In all for remote administration there is nothing better. I wouldn't recommend it as a general use smartphone but as a mobile computer you won't find anything better.
but I find it merely a notch worse than a laptop. Once you get below the comfortable size, the difference seems minor. And n900 can be held in a pocket rather than a car's trunk.
You do realise we have progressed quite some way past the Osborne 1.
But he didn't alter anything, he just played it in such a way that a glitch occurred, the way in which he played it was perfectly legitimate.
ooohh...card counting, yeah sorry you've gotten so good at this game that you can consistently beat us and we don't like that so we're gonna cry to the government and make it illegal for us to lose like that. But it's cool, lots of the money we win from you goes to the government so they'll support us even though they are supposed to be serving you.
But that is simply not what current and forward looking hardware developers should be thinking.
Well when we see a marked improvement in marketshare for Linux on desktop devices im sure things will change but for hardware manufacturers building desktop and laptop components the target market for linux is incredibly small. With this constant state of flux in linux distros I don't think it's reasonable to hope for mainstream adoption, choice is great in many ways but it's also confusing for the end user and complicated for the developer. Proper unified interfaces are what is needed, but it will be long time before the community can actually agree on a single solution, if ever. Im not anti-*NIX at all but I've always used nVidia hardware because their binary blobs are the closest thing to a stable, performance driver. I'm sure if X wasn't so messed up in terms of 3D hardware acceleration we'd have seen a more open model of development much sooner.
It's pretty obvious that the desktop linux market isn't worth the same amount of effort as Windows (and even OSX) so I can certainly understand why they don't devote the same amount of time but it would be nice if they released the specs to the linux community so OSS drivers can be made quickly and easily.
Sony is not a foreign company, it is an international company.
In any case it isn't a US company.
And yes, companies that do business in the US bend over for the US government at the slightest hint of pressure all the time.
Or have you forgotten about the whole WikiLeaks thing?
I think you'll find the wikileaks saga is a bit different to wanting playstations and it certainly doesn't constitute 'all the time'. You seem to have an inflated opinion of the power of the US government, if companies bent over at the slightest hint of pressure the US government would get sued by companies as much as they do.
You do realize that there is no guarantee that in 2011 a phone won't come out that never gets jailbroken, or not in any reasonable period of time, right?
There's also no guarantee that a company like synapse phone won't take off providing pre-rooted devices as well. And as far as a 'phone that never gets jailbroken' is concerned, if such a device were to ever come out it's just as likely to face competition from breakable devices, that's the beauty of android, you don't have to stick with one vendor. And given the rate at which devices are jailbroken it's seems extremely unlikely we'll see an unbreakable phone anytime in the near future. Look at how hard Apple work at it on just one device and their best efforts are knocked over in a matter of hours.
My point is that most Android phones do not get good long-term OS support - certainly not compared to Apple. I don't think that this is appropriate considering their price.
And my point is the consumers get the choice of which vendor to go with. It's becoming clearer which vendors are offering better support over time and if you want you still have the choice to go with something like a Nexus.
If you want official support then choose a vendor with a good track record or go with a Nexus, otherwise go the unofficial route.
And in terms of good long term support Apple's iOS4 hasn't been much of a success for devices more than 18months old. Sure those users can jailbreak, but they still can't do anything about improving the OS.
True. Exactly one Android vendor has not. So, people are free to obtain the benefits of the open-source android platform as long as you disregard about 98% of the android devices out there...
Well im not sure about your percentage figure but that's partially true. You can put an unofficial version of android on if you either go to the source and buy your hardware there, or take the unofficial - but perfectly legal - option of rooting the device which is not unreasonable given you are intending on using an unofficial OS then anyway.
There are obvious dangers to have phones come pre-rooted so most manufacturers wont do it out of the box and some will make it quite difficult to get root access.
In any case it's going to be an unofficial route to an unofficial result.
Being opened up like this might be the shot of "Go-go juice" that Sony has needed in its ailing console segment for the past 5 years now.
But they barely make a profit on the console as it is - and made a significant loss previously - and they won't make money off these game sales so this 'booming new market' will do little for sony.
Gingerbread is already out.
And on a side note i just assumed QuantumBeep was referring to Honeycomb and not Gingerbread in his post.
I almost wish Sony allowed this in the first place -- there is a vast, untapped market for an all in one home server appliance, that doesn't just provide file and print serving, but authentication, caching, and many other features.
It would be too expensive. If you factor out game sales then the PS3 would need to be sold at much more than cost price, the release price would likely have been nudging $2000.
Not to mention the only PS3 ever bought for clustering was the one that was sold at a significant loss.
You're right, I haven't, so I'm just basing it on them being given leniency due to their 'role in protecting the nation and the insignificant nature of the crime committed'. Yes, I do think hacking a bunch of PS3s they bought so should be free to do with them as they please, is an insignificant 'crime'.
Well they don't, they have to abide by licensing just as any private corporation or citizen does. They don't get to commit crimes just because it is cost-effective (which is the point of the PS3 cluster) to do so.
As for suing the government, yes, I know it happened several times, but most of the time for breaches of human rights (the voting rights and other equality cases spring to mind), not for copyright infringement
See section 511 of the US copyright act, it's quite clear. Google even sued them for not considering their apps in a recent RFQ so you can bet a copyright infringement would attract a lawsuit.
If the military phones them up and asks for OtherOS-enabled PS3s, they'll get them.
Why? Why would they just magically get them? You think any foreign company just bows to the wishes of the US government?
I'm pretty sure the Air Force doesn't give a flying fcuk whether or not the firmware's illegal.
Right, because they do whatever they want. Obviously you've never worked for the DoD so im not sure what you're basing your assumption on.
It's not like Sony has the balls to sue them (and by extension, the US Government) for it...
Yeah...because no-one ever sued the US government did they.
If you want choice, you *must* give up usability and overall user experience. But you do get choice. If you favor usability and user experience, you give up choice. It's no surprise that a lot of geeks are fine with the downsides of choice, and prefer the benefits choice has to offer. And it's no surprise that the average consumer would rather give up choice for a better experience.
You're absolutely right but there is some middle ground as well, which is the strategy Microsoft has taken with WP7. They have determined a range of hardware to tune the user experience. Sure it limits choice a bit but you don't end up with devices that struggle to run the OS & apps and destroy the user experience and platform reputation.
Additionally developers know what the minimum spec is and can work with that to ensure the performance of their software is consistent across devices.
I think it's great that we have these 3 different platforms addressing effectively the same market with 3 different strategies all with different up- and downsides. It means you generally have a good option no matter which demographic you fall into.