I've been an Android user for over a year now. I kind of agree. Most of this isn't gaming specific though. Here's the problems as I see it.
The search functionality in the android market stinks. This is Google "king of search", but if you don't have the exact app name, good luck finding anything.
There's only 1 level deep categorization. Big hierarchies are a pain to manage, and some apps fit multiple categories. And it's hard to display a tree on a small screen. But only having 1 level deep makes it very hard to browse. If you don't know the name of the app, have a QR code, the app isn't a top 20, or if it's not updated almost constantly, it's almost impossible to find.
A desktop client for browsing, searching, purchasing, and installing apps, and perhaps other content (movies, music) would be helpful. Basically iTunes for android. DoubleTwist addresses some of this, but the market integration is in it's infancy (and I don't know that purchasing will ever work, unless google buys doubleTwist - hey, there's an idea!)
Not having any kind of review process in the market, there's a lot of shovelware, and a lot of ip infringing crapware. There's even been some malware. It's kind of like the wild wild west. Or the internet. Sometimes, being an "open" system isn't such a good thing from a user perspective.
Outside of the market, I think that divergent hardware is an achilles heel, not a strength. There's what, 3 or 4 iphone versions to deal with? Android runs on what, dozens of models (or will). With so many phones with varying capabilities, and os versions - not to mention bugs and quirks like the nexus one multi-touch swapping, some applications, especially games that like to get as close to the hardware as possible are going to be difficult to make portable.
Chrome is coming to the mac soon. I'm running a nightly snapshot of Chromium (http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/), from a couple of days ago. They've got a bit of work to do on it, but it's good enough I'm using it as my every-day browser now. Only major problem I've run into is that the java plugin on snow leopard doesn't seem to work yet.
Haven't you read the news lately? Bank bailouts/stimulus? If the government now owns a portion of the bank, then it could be argued that it is a government facility.
OpenFire, as many others have noted, is an open source jabber server, that's highly extensible, and already has support for the logging you require (via the monitoring plugin).
The same group also has a web based client, SparkWeb, that you can lock down to your OpenFire installation. You can also lock down OpenFire, so that it only supports your official client. One of the nice things about a web client is you don't have to deploy to 100 desktops. You just send out a link.:)
The paid apps setup in the market is a serious mistake.
I think andappstore.com has gotten the security model right. It requires some work on the developer's part, but it provides for strong copy protection, and works on the dev phone.
Battery Life: The battery life isn't too bad. I get about 3 hours constant use, with gps and screen on (brightness up for daytime use), on 3g, running turn by turn gps (telenav). Standby lasts a long time -- if you're not logged into IM, twitter, and facebook, and exchange mail client, all checking constantly for updates (which I do). My wife has a very light use profile (just voice, email, and calendar), and gets 3-4 days of standby. So I have to plug in at night, and depending on what I'm doing, plug in during the day. BFD.
GUI: I've had no GUI issues. The real downside here compared to say the iPhone, is there's no UI standards. There's conventions to be sure, but no rules. RC33 did introduce an issue with incoming calls (rings for too long before you can actually answer), but I wouldn't classify it as a UI issue.
Notifications: I don't have an issue here, outside of some apps (non-stock ones) not performing notifications as advertised. As much as you don't like it works, there is a logic behind it. You get notified, hear the sound, but don't check your phone. You check your mail and read your message. You remember you have a notification on your phone. You go to check it, but WTF, there's not notification! In my opinion disappearing notifications would be a much worse user experience.
Visual Voicemail: Don't use it, so I can't really say. I have a Grand Central account, and there's an app for that, so I've been thinking about using it. If you have issues with PF Voicemail, you could always write your own (You have a "dev" phone, you must be a developer right?). Or send the developer a friendly email with your suggestions.
Market: I have to admin, Google has REALLY screwed the pooch with the market. I mean, a hidden folder for copy protection? I think andappstore.com has gotten it right, and it will work with dev phones.
Google Apps integration: They're very well integrated, assuming you're a *NORMAL* user, and have only one account. You're not the only person "suffering" from this problem, but you're probably less than 1/10th of 1%. There's a fairly simple solution. Create a meta account. Have that account pull your mails from all your other accounts, and share all your calendars with that account.
SD Card: Music & Photos. Pictorial (by the authors of Maverick & Hello AIM!) is good if you use picasaweb (google's picasa app has some limitations pictorial doesn't). Video's work too, but lack of good encoding instructions is a problem. TuneWiki (also on the iPhone) is a very capable alternative to the built in media player.
Mini USB: The adapter isn't that bad. My phone shipped with one. It has a button to let you answer calls (and a microphone). The "standard" though is just for charging.
Potential: I can see your point. It is by no means a perfect platform. But I also don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be -- the iPhone isn't perfect either. "Cupcake" features have been a long time coming -- I want bluetooth stereo support (bye-bye adapter), and better video support.
They took the 7200 RPM 100GB hdd away as an option on the 15"!!! That sucks!
Other than the screen size, the 15" has a 6x dual layer superdrive while the 17" has an 8x (big deal), and you can only get the 7200 rpm drive on the 17".
I guess they have to give some reason for people to buy a 17" over a 15".
"Similarly, it's illegal to record a telephone conversation without telling all parties on the line that it's being recorded. I think that's federal law."
It's not federal law. Wiretapping statutes vary on a state-by-state basis. If the taping occurs in Virginia, for example, only one party needs to know and consent. However if the taping occurs in Maryland, all parties must give consent.
It works great, is easy to set up and customize, and has lots of different kinds of reports available. Along with definitions for the different stat types (great for management to be able to understand what they're looking at).
I'm in too. Actually got the invitation on the 23rd, although I didn't set it up until today.
I only got 15 accounts, but that's more than enough for my small pool of users (family and friends), especially since aliases (Nickname's in gmail parlance) don't count against your total.
I haven't tried out the mailing list feature. The site customization doesn't quite work yet (attempting to change the login box color gives a blank results page when saving).
Everybody's missing the obvious here. Yes, body builders, steroids, baseball, side-effects, etc., but what I'm more interested in is.... how does it make them tase?
Oh man, that's the first thing I thought too. I've got a 21 month old that just loves Zaboo. I think I've seen just about every episode... pants or no pants, I'm going swimming!
It's pretty much the only TV he gets to see regularly. Just wish PBS Kids Sprout would update the guide data for it. They used to do a good job before they changed to the "sprout" format, but now we can't tell which episode is which on our tivo.
Oh, I don't mean that "stealing" windows is a good thing, just that microsoft will be spending the money on themselves most likely, but are spinning it as a "donation".
I can see a gmoney app - bye-bye quicken and ms-money. I could also see google starting a "virtual" bank -- no storefront, but you can still have an account (probably as a wholly owned subsidiary due to banking regs)..
But, what I really hope their new system might be... something to compete with paytrust (gpay?). I used to love paytrust, but through a series of aquisitions the website/app -- as well as customer service -- has gone downhill. Don't get me wrong, I still like and use them, but they've lost my loyalty as a customer.
For anyone who doesn't know -- paytrust is an online bill payment service, kinda like what your bank probably already provides. Except you can have all your paper bills sent to them, and they capture most of your electronic bills too, so that you can then send payments all from one place, schedule them to be paid automatically, etc.
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I've been an Android user for over a year now. I kind of agree. Most of this isn't gaming specific though. Here's the problems as I see it.
The search functionality in the android market stinks. This is Google "king of search", but if you don't have the exact app name, good luck finding anything.
There's only 1 level deep categorization. Big hierarchies are a pain to manage, and some apps fit multiple categories. And it's hard to display a tree on a small screen. But only having 1 level deep makes it very hard to browse. If you don't know the name of the app, have a QR code, the app isn't a top 20, or if it's not updated almost constantly, it's almost impossible to find.
A desktop client for browsing, searching, purchasing, and installing apps, and perhaps other content (movies, music) would be helpful. Basically iTunes for android. DoubleTwist addresses some of this, but the market integration is in it's infancy (and I don't know that purchasing will ever work, unless google buys doubleTwist - hey, there's an idea!)
Not having any kind of review process in the market, there's a lot of shovelware, and a lot of ip infringing crapware. There's even been some malware. It's kind of like the wild wild west. Or the internet. Sometimes, being an "open" system isn't such a good thing from a user perspective.
Outside of the market, I think that divergent hardware is an achilles heel, not a strength. There's what, 3 or 4 iphone versions to deal with? Android runs on what, dozens of models (or will). With so many phones with varying capabilities, and os versions - not to mention bugs and quirks like the nexus one multi-touch swapping, some applications, especially games that like to get as close to the hardware as possible are going to be difficult to make portable.
How'd they know we all have beards?
yeah, who spilled the beans on that one?
Time flies way too fast when you're having fun.
Chrome is coming to the mac soon. I'm running a nightly snapshot of Chromium (http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/), from a couple of days ago. They've got a bit of work to do on it, but it's good enough I'm using it as my every-day browser now. Only major problem I've run into is that the java plugin on snow leopard doesn't seem to work yet.
An ATM is not a military or government facility.
Haven't you read the news lately? Bank bailouts/stimulus? If the government now owns a portion of the bank, then it could be argued that it is a government facility.
OpenFire, as many others have noted, is an open source jabber server, that's highly extensible, and already has support for the logging you require (via the monitoring plugin).
The same group also has a web based client, SparkWeb, that you can lock down to your OpenFire installation. You can also lock down OpenFire, so that it only supports your official client. One of the nice things about a web client is you don't have to deploy to 100 desktops. You just send out a link. :)
The paid apps setup in the market is a serious mistake.
I think andappstore.com has gotten the security model right. It requires some work on the developer's part, but it provides for strong copy protection, and works on the dev phone.
Actually, there is a video recording app out (in the market), and it works.
Tethering is something that will probably never be permitted without a hack.
Battery Life: The battery life isn't too bad. I get about 3 hours constant use, with gps and screen on (brightness up for daytime use), on 3g, running turn by turn gps (telenav). Standby lasts a long time -- if you're not logged into IM, twitter, and facebook, and exchange mail client, all checking constantly for updates (which I do). My wife has a very light use profile (just voice, email, and calendar), and gets 3-4 days of standby. So I have to plug in at night, and depending on what I'm doing, plug in during the day. BFD.
GUI: I've had no GUI issues. The real downside here compared to say the iPhone, is there's no UI standards. There's conventions to be sure, but no rules. RC33 did introduce an issue with incoming calls (rings for too long before you can actually answer), but I wouldn't classify it as a UI issue.
Notifications: I don't have an issue here, outside of some apps (non-stock ones) not performing notifications as advertised. As much as you don't like it works, there is a logic behind it. You get notified, hear the sound, but don't check your phone. You check your mail and read your message. You remember you have a notification on your phone. You go to check it, but WTF, there's not notification! In my opinion disappearing notifications would be a much worse user experience.
Visual Voicemail: Don't use it, so I can't really say. I have a Grand Central account, and there's an app for that, so I've been thinking about using it. If you have issues with PF Voicemail, you could always write your own (You have a "dev" phone, you must be a developer right?). Or send the developer a friendly email with your suggestions.
Market: I have to admin, Google has REALLY screwed the pooch with the market. I mean, a hidden folder for copy protection? I think andappstore.com has gotten it right, and it will work with dev phones.
Google Apps integration: They're very well integrated, assuming you're a *NORMAL* user, and have only one account. You're not the only person "suffering" from this problem, but you're probably less than 1/10th of 1%. There's a fairly simple solution. Create a meta account. Have that account pull your mails from all your other accounts, and share all your calendars with that account.
SD Card: Music & Photos. Pictorial (by the authors of Maverick & Hello AIM!) is good if you use picasaweb (google's picasa app has some limitations pictorial doesn't). Video's work too, but lack of good encoding instructions is a problem. TuneWiki (also on the iPhone) is a very capable alternative to the built in media player.
Mini USB: The adapter isn't that bad. My phone shipped with one. It has a button to let you answer calls (and a microphone). The "standard" though is just for charging.
Potential: I can see your point. It is by no means a perfect platform. But I also don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be -- the iPhone isn't perfect either. "Cupcake" features have been a long time coming -- I want bluetooth stereo support (bye-bye adapter), and better video support.
They took the 7200 RPM 100GB hdd away as an option on the 15"!!! That sucks!
Other than the screen size, the 15" has a 6x dual layer superdrive while the 17" has an 8x (big deal), and you can only get the 7200 rpm drive on the 17".
I guess they have to give some reason for people to buy a 17" over a 15".
Damn skippy.
FileVault rocks. OSX even includes secure virtual memory (pretty big performance hit, but a real good idea on multi-user machines).
"Similarly, it's illegal to record a telephone conversation without telling all parties on the line that it's being recorded. I think that's federal law."
It's not federal law. Wiretapping statutes vary on a state-by-state basis. If the taping occurs in Virginia, for example, only one party needs to know and consent. However if the taping occurs in Maryland, all parties must give consent.
I have to recommend summary.net
It works great, is easy to set up and customize, and has lots of different kinds of reports available. Along with definitions for the different stat types (great for management to be able to understand what they're looking at).
Plus the developer is very responsive.
I'm in too. Actually got the invitation on the 23rd, although I didn't set it up until today.
I only got 15 accounts, but that's more than enough for my small pool of users (family and friends), especially since aliases (Nickname's in gmail parlance) don't count against your total.
I haven't tried out the mailing list feature. The site customization doesn't quite work yet (attempting to change the login box color gives a blank results page when saving).
And for all the complainers... you can get a firewire 800 card for that ExpressCard slot.
Everybody's missing the obvious here. Yes, body builders, steroids, baseball, side-effects, etc., but what I'm more interested in is.... how does it make them tase?
Cows. Chicken (maybe). Buffalo. Not mouse.
Tasty critters, now with 60% more meat! Yeah!
Oh man, that's the first thing I thought too. I've got a 21 month old that just loves Zaboo. I think I've seen just about every episode... pants or no pants, I'm going swimming!
It's pretty much the only TV he gets to see regularly. Just wish PBS Kids Sprout would update the guide data for it. They used to do a good job before they changed to the "sprout" format, but now we can't tell which episode is which on our tivo.
Oh, uh, yeah, how about cake? It's a rails knockoff for php.
Oh, I don't mean that "stealing" windows is a good thing, just that microsoft will be spending the money on themselves most likely, but are spinning it as a "donation".
How much you wanna bet this $5 mil gets donated to help law enforcement agencies curb piracy?
Perhaps "donation" will go straight into the coffers of the Business Software Alliance?
damn skippy.
*sigh*, I'm such a google fanboy it's not funny.
I can see a gmoney app - bye-bye quicken and ms-money. I could also see google starting a "virtual" bank -- no storefront, but you can still have an account (probably as a wholly owned subsidiary due to banking regs)..
But, what I really hope their new system might be... something to compete with paytrust (gpay?). I used to love paytrust, but through a series of aquisitions the website/app -- as well as customer service -- has gone downhill. Don't get me wrong, I still like and use them, but they've lost my loyalty as a customer.
For anyone who doesn't know -- paytrust is an online bill payment service, kinda like what your bank probably already provides. Except you can have all your paper bills sent to them, and they capture most of your electronic bills too, so that you can then send payments all from one place, schedule them to be paid automatically, etc.
This is exactly what Vonage does.
Don't you know that's why Adobe bought macromedia?
Not to mention his one-liners were straight rip-offs of Bruce Campbell's role of ash in the Evil Dead series.
Perhaps Mountain Dew code-red? heh.