You're right, of course. It'd be really great if we lived in some sort of democratic society where the people have a say in what the govenrment does, and the officials are responsible to the will of the people.
But they are doing the "will of the people." The problem is, this is exactly why we are a democratic republic, rather than a simple democracy, which is intended to stop the idiotic and uneducated masses from driving the country off a cliff. Sadly, fear mongering and cliff driving is beneficial for entertainment news (almost all news in the US) and a representative's pockets so sanity is not prevailing - only corruption and stupidity.
if you target the the wii, ps3, android, and iphone platforms with opengl it's not going to work because you have to target (afaik) opengl es
OpenGL ES is basically a subset of OpenGL. The distance between an OpenGL OpenGL is miniscule compared to OpenGL DX. Meaning, you can leverage large chunks of your render when supporting OpenGL/OpenGL ES.
and if you say they're the same thing then you can't say dx9 vs dx10/11 are different
That's not my argument. I'm saying with a tiny difference (relatively) on OpenGL you get every platform. With DX, you have those same differences on intra-platforms plus you must still write an entirely new OpenGL renderer. That's a big difference. Especially since in the DX case, the OpenGL renderer is likely to be the poor supported step child which is far more likely to provide a negative user experience.
in the desktop space at least, using a less developer friendly set of libraries to get pick 10% more market share, of which the uptake rate is less than 1% does not make good business practice
You're numbers are completely fictitious and should be regarded as such. If you can pick up 10% more market share, which provides for 15-20% more profit at 2-3% more support overhead, that's an easy win. And contrary to your silly hand having, pursuing emerging markets is one of the most common ways business grow.
It doesn't change the fact that if companies want to go after the largest market segments, they absolutely will have an OpenGL render; else they are saying one thing and doing another. Which brings us full circle, stop developing DX and put your energy into OpenGL. If people are experiencing compatibility issues, all that wasted energy developing DX support could have easily provided additional render configuration preferences to work around them. In the end, you're still way ahead.
Really the last place OpenGL stands strong is in AutoCAD and even they have indicated that the platform will not last longer, so we may see AutoCAD be using DirectX in the next few 5-10 years.
I find that hard to believe. Right now there is a new renaissance in game development and game platforms. Mobile platforms are just now grabbing noteworthy market share and it looks like its only continuing to grow as more mobile devices increase in capability - especially 3d capabilities. Thus far that segment has clearly spoken. Thus far this segment is OpenGL and/or OpenGL ES. And that's entirely his point. You want to chase an emerging market plus cover all other platforms, you have exactly one option - OpenGL.
If you develop via OpenGL you can address XP+Vista, Mac, Linux, iPhone, and Android, plus all the major consoles. Its one stop shopping. With DX and comparable graphics with OpenGL, you can only target Vista. If you want Vista + XP + Consoles, you're looking at DX9 which is a subpar graphics experience compared to that which is provided by OpenGL. Simply put, OpenGL provides you more platforms more easily.
We most certainly have not reached any critical point which can not be reversed. As the author clearly points out, OpenGL vs MS is much the same today as it was in the past. At this point, its strictly about mind share and that needs to change.
Much is said that OpenGL is less than DX, and that's true. But people seem in a hurry to ignore the fact that there is a standardize solution which is OpenGL/OpenAL/OpenSL/SDL. When game developers talk about OpenGL as a solution, they really mean all four. OpenGL has a complete solution which addresses both CAD and gamers alike. The only questions is, are companies smart enough to realize this - far too often, its seems not because of the MS marketing. And as I've said many times before here, MS is not so much a technology company as they are a marketing company. Generally speaking their technology is second rate, but their marketing and business prowess is world renowned. All too often people confuse the facts.
Ultimately, the problem is that the PHB making the technology decision is simply unaware of the poor MS-centric decision they are making, which is then costing them additional dollars to later turn around and target the platforms they specifically excluded themselves from by picking DX in the first place. OpenGL needs to be championed by someone that understands how to speak PHB so that OpenGL can be fairly evaluated. Right now the only contender who is whispering into the PHB's ear is MS, and as a result, everyone is losing.
All of the 3d games he had on his laptop are now completely unplayable; measured in fractions of frames per second.
Bullpucky. Any/all cards that are not supported by the binary drivers do have 3D support from the OSS drivers.
That's simply not even close to being true. Does my original quote sound like the open source drivers are providing 3D acceleration. Proprietary driver 20-70 fps depending on the game. Open source driver, unchanged settings, 0.008 fps. I rounded down the time in the provided fps for the open source driver, which make that number even larger than it actually is. In one of the games it took over two minutes to render one frame. No joke either. Does the later of the two numbers hint to you that the driver is not accelerating 3D? To me, it smacks of being completely unaccelerated.
Just upgraded my brother's laptop over the holiday. Seems ATI dropped support for his GPU in their proprietary driver so now he has a choice. Option one, use the open source drivers which provide no 3d acceleration. Basically 3D is completely unusable. Option two, use an older distribution which has the required version of X, kernel support, and all dependent software. And with the second option comes all the associated security issues of running an old and unsupported distro. He chose to run a current distro and be stuck with 2d-only acceleration. All of the 3d games he had on his laptop are now completely unplayable; measured in fractions of frames per second.
It turns out ATI decided they would simply stop supporting his GPU and AFAIK, they have not released any 3D documentation on it. This is exactly the reason I've gone out of my way to never buy ATI. They drop support of cards like crazy leaving users completely stuck. And in something like laptops, which is exactly what this article is about, that means your entire laptop is now obsolete.
I don't care how many ATI fanboys there are that want to bash NVIDIA for providing binary blobs - the fact is, their stuff works and works well and best of all, they don't leave their users high and dry. The only problems I've had with NVIDIA was years ago when their first started providing 64-bit Linux drivers. So say what you will to support ATI, at the end of the day, they are still doing the same old thing and hurting their customers. Case in point, I have an nvidia video card which is older than my brothers laptop which is still supported by NVIDIA's drivers.
So what do you want as a user? Stuff that works year after year or a company (ATI) telling you when your equipment is obsolete and that you need to replace the entire computer?
For Linux there is still only one 3D option - NVIDIA. Period.
You are right. There's no accounting for user experience, evidently.
Nice backhanded stab.
There is a reason why Droid has been stealing lots of users from all of the popular smart phones, including the iPhone. There's a reason why Droid is Time's #1 mobile gadget and the iPhone 3Gs is #4. And there's yet another reason why Android has clearly stolen serious mind share from the iPhone. Obviously user experience does count and many are choosing to leave the iPhone, among others.
So to quote you,
You are right. There's no accounting for user experience, evidently.
Since you clearly can have an equal or superior user experience with an Android device, and the fact you can do that cheaper than the iPhone with your choice of carriers and plans, is nothing but goodness.
Let's ignore for a moment that the N1 just came out which is significantly better than the Droid, which is on par (true competition) with the iPhone 3Gs. Let's also ignore that Android 2.1 is just over the horizon which is likely to sport 2+x performance increase for Dalvik apps. Let's also forget that Droid/Milestone are both highly visible targets for Android 2.1. Lastly, let's not forget that even AT&T will be putting out no less than five Android handsets in the first half of this year.
Even AT&T sees the writing on the walls... perhaps you should too.
The bottom line is that competition is good for everyone. Android has already modestly influenced the iPhone 3Gs and it will significantly influence every iPhone to come. If fact, if you see a new model of iPhone come out sooner than the next year and a half, you can directly thank Android. Likely every significant new feature coming to new iPhones and/or OS updates will have some influence from Android. In turn, as new iPhones are made available, I'm sure the influence will positively affect Android. Without a doubt, everyone wins here.
Stop pouting. You'll ultimately still be a winner because of Android's success.
We'll just have to see how well flash is sandboxed but the mental exercise is fun.
You seem to entirely miss the point. It doesn't matter one bit how well the application is sand-boxed. If there is a flash exploit to be found, they can install some native code and fork a process which will not be reclaimed during normal Android process life cycle. That fork'd process can then run until the phone is rebooted, which can be days, weeks, or even months. And, once actually on the phone, if there is a local root exploit to be found, the entire system is easily abused, including post-reboot abuse. Sure that last part isn't nearly as likely but then again, kernels don't get updated very frequently on these devices either and local root exploits are not terribly rare.
When the difference is enough to turn around and buy another high end smart phone at the end of your contract, I consider that huge. Or, another way of looking at it is, its enough to out strip the competition's storage by roughly 20-30 times; which after all, was one of your points of contention. Or add roughly 480 songs to your music collection, for "free".
Come on, we're not talking about a difference of a couple dozen bucks here.
WTF? You say, "not quite" and the provide a well known link that says EXACTLY what I just said. Holy shit slash dot has gone to the dogs.
And as an Android user, I've experienced exactly zero app compatibility issues. Maybe you think Android development is some kind of major headache but having done it myself, I strongly disagree.
Exactly as I said, you don't have your ears to the ground. Its very possible to write Android applications which do not have compatibility issues and I never said anything contrary to that. Then again, many do have compatibility issues, especially those in the tools category as those tend to be closest to the hardware and push the limits of the provided interfaces.
Please, if you want to argue, the least you could do is actually know what you're talking about. Thus far you've disagreed with by validating everything I've said and then provided a narrow view based on you're own application experience to discount well known (in developer circles) facts. I strongly urge you to visit developer web sites, talk to other developers, read the Google groups, and generally become more informed. At this point, you sound terribly naive as to the true state of Android.
Heck, half of everything I've stated is a recurring complaint by developers for over a year now. In short, everything I've stated is well known in developer circles; if only you bother to pull your head out of the sand.
There are currently three or four Exchange clients for Android. You really need to check all of them before you so quickly dismiss Android in the Enterprise.
And from what I understand, HTC has made their Exchange client a high priority so as to allow for their devices to get better corporate penetration. Its reasonably to expect the state of Android + Exchange is only going to rapidly improve in the near term; regardless of what the current state of things may be.
The ONLY android permissions that flash needs are media related and MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE geolocation information.
Not likely to be true. Internet access is likely a given. Also, camera and mic access may also be within the realm of reason. Factually, the Internet access permission is all someone needs to make nasty with your device. Who cares if a spam bot is running at the flash user id - its still ripe for abuse.
Wasn't trying to take away from anything you said. I was just making it known that the N1 doesn't require exploiting a bug to root it. Its rootable on day one. The N1 comes ready to be rooted. Of course, as you rightly pointed out, that may well violate your TOS, depending on how you obtained your phone.
Why is parent modded flamebait? Nothing stated is false. Hell, he even provided a link to a video showing Flash on the N1 and raises a legitimate, topical point of contention.
Also I'd question what the article means by Android being "in its infancy".
Android right now means Linux + Framework. Sure the framework can be made to run on other OSs, but for now they use Linux.
No bones about it, the Android framework is definitely in its infancy. Google breaks applications left and right with just about every release. In some cases they even deprecate interfaces without providing an alternative interface; leaving developers and users boned.
And because of Android's infancy, Verizon's Droid has known Android incompatibilities between the emulator and the GSM variant (Milestone). In fact, that's what was behind Droid's update from 2.0 to 2.01; even requiring an SDK update and new SDK version (5 to 6) for developer's to support. Despite the 2.01 update, Droid still has some broken interfaces because Verizon was forced to write their own Android-CDMA framework hooks - as Android's native CDMA interface wasn't ready at the time.
While I think Android is excellent and I even own an Android phone, to be absolutely clear, both users and developers are very much feeling both the pains and absolute indifference Google has for them. For example, the Android market application and interfaces available to developers is still third world crap and a far cry from acceptable. Right now developers have to support Android 1.1 (large deprecated now), 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 (obsoleted), 2.01, and soon 2.1. Each has their own quirks, incompatibilities, broken interfaces, new and improved interfaces, screen sizes, etc. Contrary to the recent stream of FUD being spread, with the possible exception of Verizon's breakages, none of this means Android is fracturing and/or forking, but it does make for a huge headache for users and especially developers.
As for the market, Google can't even properly count the number of actively installed applications for developers. The numbers provided are known to be completely useless and inaccurate. They still don't provide tools to developers. You still can't browse the market from your computer. Application descriptions are laughably terse. The user comment system exists solely to abuse developers and harm sells. Developers can't event reply to criticism - only the most recent. About the only positive thing the Android market has going now is that its easy to remove spam and abusive comments - but that makes one wonder how often legitimate comments are now removed as anyone can mark comments as spam.
In short, Google still has a very long way to make Android grown up. Sure its continuously getting better, and more stable with each release, but anyone who believes Android is stable and full grown simply doesn't have their ear to the ground to hear the real state of things.
The iPhone 3Gs came out last June. That's roughly six months ago. That's not that long ago. Sure, if you want to place an arbitrary divider into the discussion (2009 vs 2010) to make it sound like its been longer, feel free, but it doesn't change the fact that the iPhone 3Gs hasn't been out long and Apple is working hard to chase Android. Android's impact was already observed with the release of the iPhone 3Gs. There's not an iPhone 3Gs user that doesn't owe a thanks to Android. That's the nature of true competition. Everyone wins.
by the time you add more storage to the N1 it's more expensive.
Hate to burst your bubble, but storage is cheap these days. Plus, over the term of a two year contract, there is a huge difference in cost. You can add 32GB plus a card reader for your computer and still be way ahead of the iPhone 3Gs over two years, with twice the removable storage.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, of course. It'd be really great if we lived in some sort of democratic society where the people have a say in what the govenrment does, and the officials are responsible to the will of the people.
But they are doing the "will of the people." The problem is, this is exactly why we are a democratic republic, rather than a simple democracy, which is intended to stop the idiotic and uneducated masses from driving the country off a cliff. Sadly, fear mongering and cliff driving is beneficial for entertainment news (almost all news in the US) and a representative's pockets so sanity is not prevailing - only corruption and stupidity.
I have, myself, reconsidered, after reading this summary, what good writing is.
William Shatner?! Is that you?!
OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...
Please place my comment back into original context - which was, "...next time..."
The vendors will just be a bit more clever.
Like refusing maid service. Its not that hard to place a "Do not disturb" sign on the door.
if you target the the wii, ps3, android, and iphone platforms with opengl it's not going to work because you have to target (afaik) opengl es
OpenGL ES is basically a subset of OpenGL. The distance between an OpenGL OpenGL is miniscule compared to OpenGL DX. Meaning, you can leverage large chunks of your render when supporting OpenGL/OpenGL ES.
and if you say they're the same thing then you can't say dx9 vs dx10/11 are different
That's not my argument. I'm saying with a tiny difference (relatively) on OpenGL you get every platform. With DX, you have those same differences on intra-platforms plus you must still write an entirely new OpenGL renderer. That's a big difference. Especially since in the DX case, the OpenGL renderer is likely to be the poor supported step child which is far more likely to provide a negative user experience.
in the desktop space at least, using a less developer friendly set of libraries to get pick 10% more market share, of which the uptake rate is less than 1% does not make good business practice
You're numbers are completely fictitious and should be regarded as such. If you can pick up 10% more market share, which provides for 15-20% more profit at 2-3% more support overhead, that's an easy win. And contrary to your silly hand having, pursuing emerging markets is one of the most common ways business grow.
It doesn't change the fact that if companies want to go after the largest market segments, they absolutely will have an OpenGL render; else they are saying one thing and doing another. Which brings us full circle, stop developing DX and put your energy into OpenGL. If people are experiencing compatibility issues, all that wasted energy developing DX support could have easily provided additional render configuration preferences to work around them. In the end, you're still way ahead.
Really the last place OpenGL stands strong is in AutoCAD and even they have indicated that the platform will not last longer, so we may see AutoCAD be using DirectX in the next few 5-10 years.
I find that hard to believe. Right now there is a new renaissance in game development and game platforms. Mobile platforms are just now grabbing noteworthy market share and it looks like its only continuing to grow as more mobile devices increase in capability - especially 3d capabilities. Thus far that segment has clearly spoken. Thus far this segment is OpenGL and/or OpenGL ES. And that's entirely his point. You want to chase an emerging market plus cover all other platforms, you have exactly one option - OpenGL.
If you develop via OpenGL you can address XP+Vista, Mac, Linux, iPhone, and Android, plus all the major consoles. Its one stop shopping. With DX and comparable graphics with OpenGL, you can only target Vista. If you want Vista + XP + Consoles, you're looking at DX9 which is a subpar graphics experience compared to that which is provided by OpenGL. Simply put, OpenGL provides you more platforms more easily.
We most certainly have not reached any critical point which can not be reversed. As the author clearly points out, OpenGL vs MS is much the same today as it was in the past. At this point, its strictly about mind share and that needs to change.
Much is said that OpenGL is less than DX, and that's true. But people seem in a hurry to ignore the fact that there is a standardize solution which is OpenGL/OpenAL/OpenSL/SDL. When game developers talk about OpenGL as a solution, they really mean all four. OpenGL has a complete solution which addresses both CAD and gamers alike. The only questions is, are companies smart enough to realize this - far too often, its seems not because of the MS marketing. And as I've said many times before here, MS is not so much a technology company as they are a marketing company. Generally speaking their technology is second rate, but their marketing and business prowess is world renowned. All too often people confuse the facts.
Ultimately, the problem is that the PHB making the technology decision is simply unaware of the poor MS-centric decision they are making, which is then costing them additional dollars to later turn around and target the platforms they specifically excluded themselves from by picking DX in the first place. OpenGL needs to be championed by someone that understands how to speak PHB so that OpenGL can be fairly evaluated. Right now the only contender who is whispering into the PHB's ear is MS, and as a result, everyone is losing.
This isn't ideal: wifi uses more power than GSM or 3G.
Not true. A poor 3G connection can use considerably more power than your typical WIFI.
All of the 3d games he had on his laptop are now completely unplayable; measured in fractions of frames per second.
Bullpucky. Any/all cards that are not supported by the binary drivers do have 3D support from the OSS drivers.
That's simply not even close to being true. Does my original quote sound like the open source drivers are providing 3D acceleration. Proprietary driver 20-70 fps depending on the game. Open source driver, unchanged settings, 0.008 fps. I rounded down the time in the provided fps for the open source driver, which make that number even larger than it actually is. In one of the games it took over two minutes to render one frame. No joke either. Does the later of the two numbers hint to you that the driver is not accelerating 3D? To me, it smacks of being completely unaccelerated.
So brain tumors keep you safe from Alzheimer's disease??
Just upgraded my brother's laptop over the holiday. Seems ATI dropped support for his GPU in their proprietary driver so now he has a choice. Option one, use the open source drivers which provide no 3d acceleration. Basically 3D is completely unusable. Option two, use an older distribution which has the required version of X, kernel support, and all dependent software. And with the second option comes all the associated security issues of running an old and unsupported distro. He chose to run a current distro and be stuck with 2d-only acceleration. All of the 3d games he had on his laptop are now completely unplayable; measured in fractions of frames per second.
It turns out ATI decided they would simply stop supporting his GPU and AFAIK, they have not released any 3D documentation on it. This is exactly the reason I've gone out of my way to never buy ATI. They drop support of cards like crazy leaving users completely stuck. And in something like laptops, which is exactly what this article is about, that means your entire laptop is now obsolete.
I don't care how many ATI fanboys there are that want to bash NVIDIA for providing binary blobs - the fact is, their stuff works and works well and best of all, they don't leave their users high and dry. The only problems I've had with NVIDIA was years ago when their first started providing 64-bit Linux drivers. So say what you will to support ATI, at the end of the day, they are still doing the same old thing and hurting their customers. Case in point, I have an nvidia video card which is older than my brothers laptop which is still supported by NVIDIA's drivers.
So what do you want as a user? Stuff that works year after year or a company (ATI) telling you when your equipment is obsolete and that you need to replace the entire computer?
For Linux there is still only one 3D option - NVIDIA. Period.
You are right. There's no accounting for user experience, evidently.
Nice backhanded stab.
There is a reason why Droid has been stealing lots of users from all of the popular smart phones, including the iPhone. There's a reason why Droid is Time's #1 mobile gadget and the iPhone 3Gs is #4. And there's yet another reason why Android has clearly stolen serious mind share from the iPhone. Obviously user experience does count and many are choosing to leave the iPhone, among others.
So to quote you,
You are right. There's no accounting for user experience, evidently.
Since you clearly can have an equal or superior user experience with an Android device, and the fact you can do that cheaper than the iPhone with your choice of carriers and plans, is nothing but goodness.
Let's ignore for a moment that the N1 just came out which is significantly better than the Droid, which is on par (true competition) with the iPhone 3Gs. Let's also ignore that Android 2.1 is just over the horizon which is likely to sport 2+x performance increase for Dalvik apps. Let's also forget that Droid/Milestone are both highly visible targets for Android 2.1. Lastly, let's not forget that even AT&T will be putting out no less than five Android handsets in the first half of this year.
Even AT&T sees the writing on the walls... perhaps you should too.
The bottom line is that competition is good for everyone. Android has already modestly influenced the iPhone 3Gs and it will significantly influence every iPhone to come. If fact, if you see a new model of iPhone come out sooner than the next year and a half, you can directly thank Android. Likely every significant new feature coming to new iPhones and/or OS updates will have some influence from Android. In turn, as new iPhones are made available, I'm sure the influence will positively affect Android. Without a doubt, everyone wins here.
Stop pouting. You'll ultimately still be a winner because of Android's success.
We'll just have to see how well flash is sandboxed but the mental exercise is fun.
You seem to entirely miss the point. It doesn't matter one bit how well the application is sand-boxed. If there is a flash exploit to be found, they can install some native code and fork a process which will not be reclaimed during normal Android process life cycle. That fork'd process can then run until the phone is rebooted, which can be days, weeks, or even months. And, once actually on the phone, if there is a local root exploit to be found, the entire system is easily abused, including post-reboot abuse. Sure that last part isn't nearly as likely but then again, kernels don't get updated very frequently on these devices either and local root exploits are not terribly rare.
When the difference is enough to turn around and buy another high end smart phone at the end of your contract, I consider that huge. Or, another way of looking at it is, its enough to out strip the competition's storage by roughly 20-30 times; which after all, was one of your points of contention. Or add roughly 480 songs to your music collection, for "free".
Come on, we're not talking about a difference of a couple dozen bucks here.
No, that's not quite accurate.
WTF? You say, "not quite" and the provide a well known link that says EXACTLY what I just said. Holy shit slash dot has gone to the dogs.
And as an Android user, I've experienced exactly zero app compatibility issues. Maybe you think Android development is some kind of major headache but having done it myself, I strongly disagree.
Exactly as I said, you don't have your ears to the ground. Its very possible to write Android applications which do not have compatibility issues and I never said anything contrary to that. Then again, many do have compatibility issues, especially those in the tools category as those tend to be closest to the hardware and push the limits of the provided interfaces.
Please, if you want to argue, the least you could do is actually know what you're talking about. Thus far you've disagreed with by validating everything I've said and then provided a narrow view based on you're own application experience to discount well known (in developer circles) facts. I strongly urge you to visit developer web sites, talk to other developers, read the Google groups, and generally become more informed. At this point, you sound terribly naive as to the true state of Android.
Heck, half of everything I've stated is a recurring complaint by developers for over a year now. In short, everything I've stated is well known in developer circles; if only you bother to pull your head out of the sand.
There are currently three or four Exchange clients for Android. You really need to check all of them before you so quickly dismiss Android in the Enterprise.
And from what I understand, HTC has made their Exchange client a high priority so as to allow for their devices to get better corporate penetration. Its reasonably to expect the state of Android + Exchange is only going to rapidly improve in the near term; regardless of what the current state of things may be.
The ONLY android permissions that flash needs are media related and MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE geolocation information.
Not likely to be true. Internet access is likely a given. Also, camera and mic access may also be within the realm of reason. Factually, the Internet access permission is all someone needs to make nasty with your device. Who cares if a spam bot is running at the flash user id - its still ripe for abuse.
Wasn't trying to take away from anything you said. I was just making it known that the N1 doesn't require exploiting a bug to root it. Its rootable on day one. The N1 comes ready to be rooted. Of course, as you rightly pointed out, that may well violate your TOS, depending on how you obtained your phone.
Why is parent modded flamebait? Nothing stated is false. Hell, he even provided a link to a video showing Flash on the N1 and raises a legitimate, topical point of contention.
BTW, my "stable" comments are directed at APIs, not OS/framework stability.
And my "Tools" comments are directed at tools available for developer+market access, not development tools.
Also I'd question what the article means by Android being "in its infancy".
Android right now means Linux + Framework. Sure the framework can be made to run on other OSs, but for now they use Linux.
No bones about it, the Android framework is definitely in its infancy. Google breaks applications left and right with just about every release. In some cases they even deprecate interfaces without providing an alternative interface; leaving developers and users boned.
And because of Android's infancy, Verizon's Droid has known Android incompatibilities between the emulator and the GSM variant (Milestone). In fact, that's what was behind Droid's update from 2.0 to 2.01; even requiring an SDK update and new SDK version (5 to 6) for developer's to support. Despite the 2.01 update, Droid still has some broken interfaces because Verizon was forced to write their own Android-CDMA framework hooks - as Android's native CDMA interface wasn't ready at the time.
While I think Android is excellent and I even own an Android phone, to be absolutely clear, both users and developers are very much feeling both the pains and absolute indifference Google has for them. For example, the Android market application and interfaces available to developers is still third world crap and a far cry from acceptable. Right now developers have to support Android 1.1 (large deprecated now), 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 (obsoleted), 2.01, and soon 2.1. Each has their own quirks, incompatibilities, broken interfaces, new and improved interfaces, screen sizes, etc. Contrary to the recent stream of FUD being spread, with the possible exception of Verizon's breakages, none of this means Android is fracturing and/or forking, but it does make for a huge headache for users and especially developers.
As for the market, Google can't even properly count the number of actively installed applications for developers. The numbers provided are known to be completely useless and inaccurate. They still don't provide tools to developers. You still can't browse the market from your computer. Application descriptions are laughably terse. The user comment system exists solely to abuse developers and harm sells. Developers can't event reply to criticism - only the most recent. About the only positive thing the Android market has going now is that its easy to remove spam and abusive comments - but that makes one wonder how often legitimate comments are now removed as anyone can mark comments as spam.
In short, Google still has a very long way to make Android grown up. Sure its continuously getting better, and more stable with each release, but anyone who believes Android is stable and full grown simply doesn't have their ear to the ground to hear the real state of things.
Ability to do a remote data wipe is key for the enterprise market.
There have been applications on the market to do this for a long time now.
Nexu One (rooted) app space = size of SD/SDHC card (~32gb)
The N1 comes with a boot loader which allows EVERYONE to root the device.
The iPhone 3Gs came out last June. That's roughly six months ago. That's not that long ago. Sure, if you want to place an arbitrary divider into the discussion (2009 vs 2010) to make it sound like its been longer, feel free, but it doesn't change the fact that the iPhone 3Gs hasn't been out long and Apple is working hard to chase Android. Android's impact was already observed with the release of the iPhone 3Gs. There's not an iPhone 3Gs user that doesn't owe a thanks to Android. That's the nature of true competition. Everyone wins.
4GB vs 16GB or 32GB storage
by the time you add more storage to the N1 it's more expensive.
Hate to burst your bubble, but storage is cheap these days. Plus, over the term of a two year contract, there is a huge difference in cost. You can add 32GB plus a card reader for your computer and still be way ahead of the iPhone 3Gs over two years, with twice the removable storage.