Personally, I make extensive use of Friend Lists. I have a list for friends from High School (10+ yrs ago), a list for people from my church... one for my family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc)... on for my wife's family... one for immediate family.... one for close friends and people I have some basic trust in... and one for people I don't know at all but added to gain some advantage in a FB game. My default postings are only visible to immediate family and close friends only. This includes anything from Gowalla and Foursquare. When I'm posting something, I have to make a conscious decision about if I want to share that information with more than just that small group. It has resulted in instances where I posted something to the small group and had to delete it and repost so I could expand the visibility, but it has never resulted in my accidentally posting something that I'd rather not have seen by high school acquaintances I haven't seen in more than 10 years or the more questionable members of my extended family.
Of course very few people actually go through that much trouble. Most think they're doing pretty good if they set their default post privacy to "friends only"... which is better than "Everybody", for sure, but still assumes you can trust everybody on your friend list.
What people don't realize is that their life worked perfectly fine before this service, and it will go on afterwards as well. These services don't really add anything useful.
I tried convincing my wife that the human race survived before the invention of air conditioning, but that argument didn't go very far. I'd also like to point out that life worked "perfectly fine" before/., yet here we both are.
Do you really believe that? I'm sure your apartment complex/trailer park/whatever really pays as much as you would as an individual ($70/mo, in this case), but I'm sure they also don't pay a tiny, tiny fraction. And, of course, whatever they do pay is marked up a bit and then passed on to you inside your rent. Just like the trash removal and water/sewer (if they're provided for "free"). The only real difference is that if you get sick of the cable company, you really can't even cancel it! Even if you refuse to hook up your TV, you're still paying them every month.
Most complexes do this to discourage people from installing satellite dishes (note: they can't actually mandate that you not install a dish). Why would you pay for a dish when you already pay for cable and can't stop!
For the most part I like your list... but I'd swap out Android's IM support and keep webOS's client (with a couple more providers supported).
Also, the rumor is that the PDK will enable very easy porting of iPhone apps to webOS, so I'd imagine that will help bolster their app catalog.
I recently switched from the Palm Pre to the HTC Evo. The only things I really like about the Evo better are: the hardware (though I miss my real keyboard) and the number of apps. Android itself just isn't all its cracked up to be IMHO.
I ran like this quite some time. Then one day out of nowhere, it just stopped working. Comcast started encrypting the channels I had been receiving for months in clear QAM. No the only stations I can get w/out those external boxes are ones I could get if I put up an antenna and stopped paying Comcast. Guess what I'm doing after I move.
The Pre, using MyTether on Sprint (a $15 "donation") and presumably the Mobile Hotspot app on Verizon (additional monthly fee applies) create a Wifi Access point and then shares the EVDO connection with any device that connects to it. No adhoc support required.
I don't own an iPhone. I've never used an iPhone. I have used an iPod Touch briefly (I've spent maybe 20 minutes using one). Not everything about it was instantly apparent. I had the owner over my shoulder pointing out which buttons did what (I was connecting it to our corporate WiFi network).
Every time you use a platform you've never used before it's helpful to have somebody explain some of the basics. There are no exceptions. Not even the beloved Apple can pull off having a "platform virgin" sit down with one of their devices and instantly be an expert.
BlackBerry had a similar "hold a button and press another one to get an alt-tab type interface"... trouble was, I could never remember which button combo it was. On the original Pre, it's the only button on the face of the phone to bring up the multi-tasking interface. Truth be told, I never use that button, though, and it's gone on newer revisions. Swiping up from the gesture area into the screen area accomplishes the same thing.
2. UI. Simply, that they've not come up with a completely idiot-proof user interface, such that knuckle-draggers understand the difference between closing an app and backgrounding it.
Palm did. You can easily go into card view and see what apps are running*... wanna close, "throw" it toward the top of the screen. It may not be instantly intuitive, but once it's explained to you (what you see here are running apps... here's how you close one) it's really easy to remember and do.
It's possible for an app to run completely hidden in the background w/no UI exposure at all... there's no task manager for those.
Have you tried Google Voice for its transcribed voice mail? It's one thing to use voice recognition on short commands with a relatively few choices (even your address book is a limited number of possible results). It's another thing entirely to use it on a normal spoken sentence.
I don't think Verizon is even in a place where they could do that. I think Verizon wants Apple much more than Apple wants Verizon. While AT&T's network is sub-par, it is the best GSM network in the States. So by going with AT&T initially, Apple ensured they only had to build one device with one radio for it to work worldwide. It's become a very popular device and Verizon is left out in the cold.
Verizon is in the weaker role in these negotiations. There's only one iPhone, but there's more than one carrier. And Sprint, I'm sure, would be more than willing to let Apple release the iPhone on their network without dictating anything to them other than requiring a data plan (which only makes sense anyway). Sprint's network, while not being quite as large as Verizon's, is quite extensive. Even their 3G coverage is better than AT&T's.
This is true with all of their smartphones and is similar in pricing to what ATT & Sprint charge.
I can't say anything about Verizon's smartphones or AT&T, but I can say that the statement is not true about Sprint. I have a Palm Pre and get no extra charge to sync with my work email over Sprint's network.
Now, when I had a BlackBerry I had to pay an extra $20/mo for the BES buy-up, but that's another story.
Yep, it is. And it's pathetic. Both Verizon and Sprint have more 3G coverage than AT&T does. The only national network AT&T can beat in that arena is T-Mobile.
Instead of spending money to fix their network AT&T decided to spend money suing Verizon for pointing out the truth. How typical.
The problem is that Verizon's Red Map is thier 2.5G (CDMA) network, not their 3G (EVDO) network. The Blue Map is AT&T's actual 3G (W-CDMA) map.
Um.... how not try can a single post be?
1. You call their older data CDMA... It's actually 1xRTT. Sure, it's transmitted over CDMA, but then again, so is their voice 2. And the EVDO data which is their 3G network (hey, you got that part right!!) is also over CDMA 3. The red map is Verizon's 3G coverage. It just happens that most of Verizon's network is 3G... which is kinda the WHOLE POINT OF THE ADS. 4. The blue map is, in fact, AT&T's 3G coverage. I initially thought the term used here, W-CDMA, was incorrect and the correct term was UTMS. Turns out their the same thing, so I'll take my lump on this part.
I'm looking forward to getting a pre, but not sure about the reliability of Sprint's network vs. ATT.
Seriously? I've never had a problem with using my phone's data on Sprint's network as long as I had coverage. This is purely anecdotal, but I have coverage everywhere I go... home, work, camping in the boondocks, etc. And I've had high speed EVDO (3G) coverage in all those places for the last couple years. Virtually every Sprint phone (over 90%, I'd estimate... including all their smart phones) operate over 3G.
AT&T, on the other hand, has a network crumbling under the iPhone's weight. AT&T has very few 3G capable phones (the Bold was the first 3G BlackBerry ever).
And you worry about the reliability of Sprint's network?
Ya. Except it's nothing like jailbreaking. You put your phone into "developer mode" (a function provided by Palm... just slightly hidden) and run this simple little program from your computer to install an app. The only app you even need to install from this method to use Precentral's homebrew is something called fileCoaster (which is basically their "storefront").
That part might be similar to jailbreaking, but what's completely and 100% different is that updates from Palm don't disable it. I've done no less than 3 updates on my wifes phone since I enabled homebrew and it still works like champ.
So I'm still unsure how this doesn't fit the bill of allowing developers and more sophisticated users to be able to leave the walled garden.
Let us more sophisticated users & developers out of that garden completely. Let us skin our knees, pee on the electric fence, and shoot ourselves in the tootsies. That's what we want, we're taking the risk, so why not?
Or are you saying that "more sophisticated users & developers" can't do the simple tricks required to install from homebrew. And for what it's worth, precentral.net has no special blessing from Palm so you could do the exact same thing if you so desired.
It may have been a disaster for the Netscape company, but a big part of that was timing. They didn't start the rewrite right after they released 4, they first did a lot of work on 5. The time spent on that plus Microsoft's use of IE to bully them killed the company. By the time 6 was even remotely ready (and that's all it was) it was too late.
Of course from that rose the Mozilla corporation which is now raking in the dough. So while AOL couldn't capitalize on that codebase, somebody sure did.
Palm re-write? Disaster
Not sure what gives you that idea? The Pre may not be wildly successful, but it is selling. The treo wasn't ever wildly successful, either. The Palm OS was showing some serious signs of age. The biggest change from when it was first released (what was that, in the 90's) seemed to be adding color. I'd argue that webOS has one of the best (if not the best) frameworks to build around. There's some of the high level applications that still need some work, but the core framework is there.
RIM is gonna have this problem soon as the BlackBerry OS (even the up and coming 5.0) is starting to show its age. Their server side framework is outstanding, but they need some major work device side.
Oh, and has already been mentioned, there's also a lot of cases where a rewrite has been properly managed. As seen above, I'd argue that webOS was one of them. I'd agree that Netscape 6 wasn't, but when Phoenix rose from the ashes (later to be renamed Firefox) good came of it nonetheless. OS X comes to mind and, while not a complete rewrite, Windows XP. The took all the consumer stuff and added it to their NT framework (which was a rewrite for v3... XP is v5.1). While they made some blunders along the way (being unable to complete it as planned for Windows 2000 and releasing Windows ME instead) it hardly cost them their market share. (Think maybe Windows Mobile 6.5 has a similar purpose to Windows ME?)
In fact, there wasn't even supposed to be 6.5, but 7 kept getting delayed for long enough that they felt an interim release was needed so as to not fall behind hopelessly.
Wow, if that doesn't bring back memories of Windows ME I don't know what will....
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DroidX is locked down
Says who? You can root it, remove the bloatware and generally do whatever the hell you want with it if you are inclined to do so.
You can also jailbreak an iPhone, yet we* complain constantly about how locked down the iPhone is.
*The collective /. we
Don't even have to do that... just paste it instead of click on it. Or click on it and then go up to the address bar and hit enter.
Personally, I make extensive use of Friend Lists. I have a list for friends from High School (10+ yrs ago), a list for people from my church... one for my family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc)... on for my wife's family... one for immediate family.... one for close friends and people I have some basic trust in... and one for people I don't know at all but added to gain some advantage in a FB game. My default postings are only visible to immediate family and close friends only. This includes anything from Gowalla and Foursquare. When I'm posting something, I have to make a conscious decision about if I want to share that information with more than just that small group. It has resulted in instances where I posted something to the small group and had to delete it and repost so I could expand the visibility, but it has never resulted in my accidentally posting something that I'd rather not have seen by high school acquaintances I haven't seen in more than 10 years or the more questionable members of my extended family.
Of course very few people actually go through that much trouble. Most think they're doing pretty good if they set their default post privacy to "friends only"... which is better than "Everybody", for sure, but still assumes you can trust everybody on your friend list.
What people don't realize is that their life worked perfectly fine before this service, and it will go on afterwards as well. These services don't really add anything useful.
I tried convincing my wife that the human race survived before the invention of air conditioning, but that argument didn't go very far. I'd also like to point out that life worked "perfectly fine" before /., yet here we both are.
Do you really believe that? I'm sure your apartment complex/trailer park/whatever really pays as much as you would as an individual ($70/mo, in this case), but I'm sure they also don't pay a tiny, tiny fraction. And, of course, whatever they do pay is marked up a bit and then passed on to you inside your rent. Just like the trash removal and water/sewer (if they're provided for "free"). The only real difference is that if you get sick of the cable company, you really can't even cancel it! Even if you refuse to hook up your TV, you're still paying them every month.
Most complexes do this to discourage people from installing satellite dishes (note: they can't actually mandate that you not install a dish). Why would you pay for a dish when you already pay for cable and can't stop!
HP already won. The deal is closed. The ink is on the paper. Anybody looking to buy Palm now would have to buy it from HP.
For the most part I like your list... but I'd swap out Android's IM support and keep webOS's client (with a couple more providers supported).
Also, the rumor is that the PDK will enable very easy porting of iPhone apps to webOS, so I'd imagine that will help bolster their app catalog.
I recently switched from the Palm Pre to the HTC Evo. The only things I really like about the Evo better are: the hardware (though I miss my real keyboard) and the number of apps. Android itself just isn't all its cracked up to be IMHO.
I ran like this quite some time. Then one day out of nowhere, it just stopped working. Comcast started encrypting the channels I had been receiving for months in clear QAM. No the only stations I can get w/out those external boxes are ones I could get if I put up an antenna and stopped paying Comcast. Guess what I'm doing after I move.
Or even better, sit in the lobby of a competing dealership and make it look like corporate espionage :).
The Pre, using MyTether on Sprint (a $15 "donation") and presumably the Mobile Hotspot app on Verizon (additional monthly fee applies) create a Wifi Access point and then shares the EVDO connection with any device that connects to it. No adhoc support required.
Oh, and BTW: I bet it will tether to my G1.
And to my Palm Pre
http://www.precentral.net/dear-steve-jobs-tethering-ipad-easy-palm-pre-plus
I don't own an iPhone. I've never used an iPhone. I have used an iPod Touch briefly (I've spent maybe 20 minutes using one). Not everything about it was instantly apparent. I had the owner over my shoulder pointing out which buttons did what (I was connecting it to our corporate WiFi network).
Every time you use a platform you've never used before it's helpful to have somebody explain some of the basics. There are no exceptions. Not even the beloved Apple can pull off having a "platform virgin" sit down with one of their devices and instantly be an expert.
BlackBerry had a similar "hold a button and press another one to get an alt-tab type interface"... trouble was, I could never remember which button combo it was. On the original Pre, it's the only button on the face of the phone to bring up the multi-tasking interface. Truth be told, I never use that button, though, and it's gone on newer revisions. Swiping up from the gesture area into the screen area accomplishes the same thing.
2. UI. Simply, that they've not come up with a completely idiot-proof user interface, such that knuckle-draggers understand the difference between closing an app and backgrounding it.
Palm did. You can easily go into card view and see what apps are running*... wanna close, "throw" it toward the top of the screen. It may not be instantly intuitive, but once it's explained to you (what you see here are running apps... here's how you close one) it's really easy to remember and do.
It's possible for an app to run completely hidden in the background w/no UI exposure at all... there's no task manager for those.
The couple believe it should be possible to save the lives of 7.6 million children under five between 2010 and 2019 in poorer countries."
What happens when they turn 6?
They get to celebrate their 6th birthday? Something they may not to have otherwise been able to do.
Have you tried Google Voice for its transcribed voice mail? It's one thing to use voice recognition on short commands with a relatively few choices (even your address book is a limited number of possible results). It's another thing entirely to use it on a normal spoken sentence.
I don't think Verizon is even in a place where they could do that. I think Verizon wants Apple much more than Apple wants Verizon. While AT&T's network is sub-par, it is the best GSM network in the States. So by going with AT&T initially, Apple ensured they only had to build one device with one radio for it to work worldwide. It's become a very popular device and Verizon is left out in the cold.
Verizon is in the weaker role in these negotiations. There's only one iPhone, but there's more than one carrier. And Sprint, I'm sure, would be more than willing to let Apple release the iPhone on their network without dictating anything to them other than requiring a data plan (which only makes sense anyway). Sprint's network, while not being quite as large as Verizon's, is quite extensive. Even their 3G coverage is better than AT&T's.
I can't say anything about Verizon's smartphones or AT&T, but I can say that the statement is not true about Sprint. I have a Palm Pre and get no extra charge to sync with my work email over Sprint's network.
Now, when I had a BlackBerry I had to pay an extra $20/mo for the BES buy-up, but that's another story.
Yep, it is. And it's pathetic. Both Verizon and Sprint have more 3G coverage than AT&T does. The only national network AT&T can beat in that arena is T-Mobile.
Instead of spending money to fix their network AT&T decided to spend money suing Verizon for pointing out the truth. How typical.
The problem is that Verizon's Red Map is thier 2.5G (CDMA) network, not their 3G (EVDO) network.
The Blue Map is AT&T's actual 3G (W-CDMA) map.
Um.... how not try can a single post be?
1. You call their older data CDMA... It's actually 1xRTT. Sure, it's transmitted over CDMA, but then again, so is their voice
2. And the EVDO data which is their 3G network (hey, you got that part right!!) is also over CDMA
3. The red map is Verizon's 3G coverage. It just happens that most of Verizon's network is 3G... which is kinda the WHOLE POINT OF THE ADS.
4. The blue map is, in fact, AT&T's 3G coverage. I initially thought the term used here, W-CDMA, was incorrect and the correct term was UTMS. Turns out their the same thing, so I'll take my lump on this part.
I'm looking forward to getting a pre, but not sure about the reliability of Sprint's network vs. ATT.
Seriously? I've never had a problem with using my phone's data on Sprint's network as long as I had coverage. This is purely anecdotal, but I have coverage everywhere I go... home, work, camping in the boondocks, etc. And I've had high speed EVDO (3G) coverage in all those places for the last couple years. Virtually every Sprint phone (over 90%, I'd estimate... including all their smart phones) operate over 3G.
AT&T, on the other hand, has a network crumbling under the iPhone's weight. AT&T has very few 3G capable phones (the Bold was the first 3G BlackBerry ever).
And you worry about the reliability of Sprint's network?
Ya. Except it's nothing like jailbreaking. You put your phone into "developer mode" (a function provided by Palm... just slightly hidden) and run this simple little program from your computer to install an app. The only app you even need to install from this method to use Precentral's homebrew is something called fileCoaster (which is basically their "storefront").
That part might be similar to jailbreaking, but what's completely and 100% different is that updates from Palm don't disable it. I've done no less than 3 updates on my wifes phone since I enabled homebrew and it still works like champ.
So I'm still unsure how this doesn't fit the bill of allowing developers and more sophisticated users to be able to leave the walled garden.
Let us more sophisticated users & developers out of that garden completely. Let us skin our knees, pee on the electric fence, and shoot ourselves in the tootsies. That's what we want, we're taking the risk, so why not?
OK, if that's what you want....
Or are you saying that "more sophisticated users & developers" can't do the simple tricks required to install from homebrew. And for what it's worth, precentral.net has no special blessing from Palm so you could do the exact same thing if you so desired.
Netscape re-write? disaster (in a business sense)
It may have been a disaster for the Netscape company, but a big part of that was timing. They didn't start the rewrite right after they released 4, they first did a lot of work on 5. The time spent on that plus Microsoft's use of IE to bully them killed the company. By the time 6 was even remotely ready (and that's all it was) it was too late.
Of course from that rose the Mozilla corporation which is now raking in the dough. So while AOL couldn't capitalize on that codebase, somebody sure did.
Palm re-write? Disaster
Not sure what gives you that idea? The Pre may not be wildly successful, but it is selling. The treo wasn't ever wildly successful, either. The Palm OS was showing some serious signs of age. The biggest change from when it was first released (what was that, in the 90's) seemed to be adding color. I'd argue that webOS has one of the best (if not the best) frameworks to build around. There's some of the high level applications that still need some work, but the core framework is there.
RIM is gonna have this problem soon as the BlackBerry OS (even the up and coming 5.0) is starting to show its age. Their server side framework is outstanding, but they need some major work device side.
Oh, and has already been mentioned, there's also a lot of cases where a rewrite has been properly managed. As seen above, I'd argue that webOS was one of them. I'd agree that Netscape 6 wasn't, but when Phoenix rose from the ashes (later to be renamed Firefox) good came of it nonetheless. OS X comes to mind and, while not a complete rewrite, Windows XP. The took all the consumer stuff and added it to their NT framework (which was a rewrite for v3 ... XP is v5.1). While they made some blunders along the way (being unable to complete it as planned for Windows 2000 and releasing Windows ME instead) it hardly cost them their market share. (Think maybe Windows Mobile 6.5 has a similar purpose to Windows ME?)
In fact, there wasn't even supposed to be 6.5, but 7 kept getting delayed for long enough that they felt an interim release was needed so as to not fall behind hopelessly.
Wow, if that doesn't bring back memories of Windows ME I don't know what will....