If you have to cap it, then cap it, but not at 2GB.
To continue the electricity analogy, what if the price of your unlimited monthly electricity dropped by 15% and you got only a couple of week's worth, and had to stop using your TV and computer in order to have lights at the end of the month? What if you stopped buying electric devices altogether and the whole economy suffered?
If you change 2GB to 5GB and make tethering free that is much more reasonable.
If you can hold the whole thing in one hand and fit it in a shirt pocket and it has a speaker at top and mic at bottom that is a phone. Sheesh.
The stupidest part of them calling it a tablet is at $500 it costs more than an iPad, which has a bigger screen, more storage, glass and aluminum instead of plastic, twice or more bettery life, and much more sophisticated software, including native C apps. Why invite that comparison? If you just call it a phone you see its reason for being is for those who want a big nerdy phone.
They have their heads so far up their asses that they may actually believe this. They think this is about the number of fixes or some particular technology they have just come up with, or some statistic about number of fixes. It's not. It's about the actual real world. The fact is, if you replace a Windows system with a Mac system, you are safer, more secure, and have increased reliability. That is just a plain fact. The Mac has zero worms, zero viruses, and only 2 Trojans that don't even run on the current Snow Leopard version. How can that even be compared to the ongoing tire fire that is Windows? Even iPhone is more robust than Windows.
Why would Jobs dislike this or even care? Apple is not anti-Flash, they just don't want the FlashPlayer running on their devices. This actually proves Jobs to be right. You can do Flash-like things with open standards, and no plug-in on the device. Doesn't matter what tool you use. The time and energy it would take to deploy FlashPlayer to all mobiles and update 4 times a year for security is like Appolo project level. And we see from this demo it's not fucking needed just as Jobs has said.
This is an Adobe story, not an Apple story, as it has been all along. FlashPlayer is supposed to be "cross-platform" yet Adobe has managed to put FlashPlayer v10.1 on Mac, PC, and in a beta that runs on a small minority of Android phones with outrageously bad performance. A JavaScript FlashPlayer that is truly cross-platform is like a gift for Adobe. It rescues the Flash developer tool and all the people who have Flash skills and makes them relevant to this decade.
Still, I think this would be more practical if it were a developer tool that converted Flash binaries to JavaScript and SVG and then you deployed the JS and SVG. Converting on the fly each time seems like the wrong approach, especially on tiny mobiles.
An HTML5 export from Flash is what is really needed. The fact that Adobe hasn't done that yet is incredible. But then, they shipped Dreamweaver CS5 in spring 2010 with no HTML5 support! Fucking madness. Don't tell me it's not ratified, the fucking spec describes the past and present, not the future.
There is an open API on iPhone OS. You have to collect your own money, but this app, whoosh displays Twitter feeds and photos, can easily be done there.
Windows 7 runs 80% of XP viruses. So no, Windows 7 is not that different from XP. It needed to be different enough that it ran 0% of XP viruses.
We don't even have to look at Mac OS 9 versus Mac OS X. The current Mac OS "Snow Leopard" out-of-the-box can't run a single Mac app built before 2006. You have to install the optional emulator to run apps that old. That kind of progress is what keeps a commercial malware platform from developing on the Mac.
Windows 7 should have been a new OS core with an XP emulator on it that imports an old XP the same way that VMWare Fusion does on a Mac. You can take a Mac out of the box, install Fusion, connect to your XP machine and run the importer, and then all your XP apps run on the Mac, in their own windows and with Dock icons and even file associations. Then you can, for example, replace Photoshop CS4 for Windows with Photoshop CS5 for Mac and that turns the app native. Repeat with other apps as the updates ship and in 2 years you can throw XP away and your virus exposure goes to zero. This is an easier upgrade than XP to Windows 7. There's no reason Microsoft couldn't have done that to migrate their users from botnet paradise to a stable, functional OS.
Some Web test beds just don't count as usage. And today you can write backwards-compatible HTML5 and do minimal IE testing if you don't care about IE having full fidelity. Google already doesn't support IE6. IE9 is essentially Safari/Chrome compatible. IE is less important than ever. Any time spent on the dead IE6-IE8 browsers is wasted.
Even out-of-the-box a Mac or Linux is more secure than Windows. Windows is a tire fire. It can't be fixed. You just have to switch away. It's just unprofessional to use it in 2010.
You can easily make too much of the supposed Apple/Google rift. It's actually an Apple/Android rift and many people inside Google hate Android, which is a very small and unprofitable division of Google. Google makes much, much more money from iPhone than Android.
Sergey and Larry both identify Steve Jobs as their main inspiration to do what they are doing. About half the PC's at Google are Macs, although some run Linux.
In Silicon Valley, we don't fall for all the Redmond brainwashing and we know what Apple has accomplished and how useful and productive their tools are. It will be quite some time before Chrome OS or Android can replace a Mac, if ever. There is no reason at all for Google to force that. A Google employee with a Mac and iPhone who works on Search or Ads or Maps or HTML5 development is already dogfooding.
No, he's talking about Microsoft users who use iPhones and Macs as their business tools on the Microsoft campus. Something like 1 in 10 Microsoft employees uses an iPhone.
Besides, all technology is a personal accessory now. Some companies have started giving each employee their own I-T budget and a wide list of approved devices including Mac and Windows and iPhone and Blackberry and they buy what they are most productive with. There is no point hiring someone who has used a Mac for 10 years and giving them Windows Vista.
No, the C API on Chrome OS and Android is closed. It's Google only. HTML5 and Flash only on Chrome OS, and HTML5 and Flash and Java applets only on Android. They don't run what Ubuntu runs any more than iPad runs what a Mac runs. In Chrome OS, my understanding is the core system is in ROM and you boot every time to the original ROM-based system. However, the main issue with Chrome OS is the vapor it's made out of.
If you are doing any kind of coding, you need a Mac or Linux, both of which come with emacs and vi and bash and Apache and PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, and X-Windows and C API's. With the Mac you also have a content creation platform with QuickTime and AppleScript and CoreAudio, CoreMIDI, CoreVideo, and so on. iPad works for users who don't code, because it has a C API that is open to 3rd party developers and 200,000 powerful apps including a lot of business tools. I've already seen users go XP to iPad and love it. But if you need more than iPad that is a Mac or Ubuntu or BSD or similar traditional Unix.
> Remember, the only serious thing an iPad is good > for is serious content consumption
Bullshit. You add an accessory Bluetooth keyboard and it turns into a PC replacement that easily replaces XP for most users.
For office workers and business people there is a WebEx app, Keynote/Pages/Numbers office suite, Salesforce, and many other business-focused apps. Exchange is built-in. These users can easily switch from a 10 year old XP that they still haven't mastered to a new iPad they can easily become expert in without training. I've already seen users do this at an office where I consult. Just switching them from Outlook to iPad is like setting them free from jail. For many of them, half their computer use is email and Outlook is a FUCKING JOKE. The mobility is also very liberating, because they go to a lot of meetings and they can take iPad and show a presentation to a group very easily, or refer to email while they meet without the barrier of a notebook.
Even for creative workers, iPad has sketching-level tools where you can start art or music or photography projects that you later take to a Mac. But for office workers, it is a self-contained total PC replacement. For many writers also. Even with the Apple Wireless Keyboard iPad is half the weight and size of a netbook and has double the battery for long uninterrupted writing sessions wherever you are.
An iPad is not typically going to replace a Mac or Linux system, where users are often writing code of some kind (e.g. an AppleScript workflow or HTML or a shell script or PHP development) and have some mastery of the system. But Windows? Fuck yeah. Most Windows is antique XP, and most of the users fight with it all day, they work around it, not with it. They use it as a typewriter, which with an accessory Bluetooth keyboard, iPad can easily replace.
You can't make assumptions about iPad based on previous tablets. The reason iPad has already outsold all previous tablets put together is iPad is different from them in every way.
Anyone who is using Windows would be better with something else. For some it is a Mac, for some Linux, and some iPad. In all 3 cases, almost no training is required if you give them to the right users. Certainly much less than XP to Windows 7. In every case you will get lower maintenance costs and higher reliability and security and productivity. In all 3 cases you're on a modern, open source Unix core with a modern, open source HTML5 browser.
Only a minority of their systems were running Windows anyway. They were half Mac and had significant Linux use also. With how Unix-based they are, I was surprised they had any Windows at all.
It is simply unprofessional to use Windows in 2010. There is no excuse. The switching costs on Mac or Linux are tiny compared to what you save in maintenance and training costs later and gain in enhanced productivity. The key is you have to let the user choose which one they want and then you can leave them be to work. A Mac is better than Windows for some users, and Linux is better for the others. Neither needs any significant training if they choose the right one. For some users, an iPad is all they need. I know a couple of business people who switched from XP to iPad and won't go back. They add WebEx and iWork and a Bluetooth keyboard and they're good to go. Ten iPad users can share a single Mac mini with 10 accounts on it for backup and OS updates.
I think we need a kind of certification that says "Windows free" so consumers can avoid companies that use Windows. If you give your personal data to a company that uses Windows you have basically given it to a botnet. Even in the Fortune 500 who have I-T staff and security add-ons they all have botnet infestations. They shouldn't be waiting until they get a class action lawsuit to switch to professional technology.
Obviously, Apple's competitors have their large number of lobbyists out full force. The amount of whining at Apple's success lately is fucking incredible.
If only they put as much energy into making stuff users want they might be able to compete.
The idea that there is censorship on iPhone is ridiculous. It has an HTML5 browser. It has about 25 different bookstores. You can load any media from any source into iTunes. There are apps with streaming movies, audio, radio.
There are HTML5 iPhone apps from major pornography vendors. Pornography websites even call standard ISO MPEG-4 movies the "iPod/iPhone version".
If the C API on iPhone is censored, what about Android? There are no native C apps on Android. The C API is closed. That's 100% censorship by Google! Call the government! There is absolutely no content on Android!
The Web is the alternative to app store. HTML5 is the original API for iPhone. Your HTML5 app can install locally with a home screen icon very easily. App Store is totally optional.
The desire for oil has nothing to do with it. In other countries they would have had to drill a reserve well just in case. Now it will take 3 months to drill one, all the while the oil shooting out. Oil companies make huge profits and this proves they have to be regulated to do the right thing. The lack of regulation in the US is a fucking joke.
Google absolutely knows that WebM is not going to replace ISO MPEG. Apple, Sony, Panasonic, and other consumer electronics companies are not going to use it. Hollywood is not going to use it, the entire toolchain is MPEG. You might as well offer a Linux server admin a free copy of MS-DOS 3.3. Consumers are not going to use it, they have ISO MPEG cameras and camcorders and smartphones and set-tops and can freely make and share video already. MPEG has been working for 20 years. You only pay if you sell it (not use it) and you pay a small fraction of what you would tip a waitress.
Further, even best-case scenario, by the time WebM could be standardized and deployed as widely as MPEG, the H.264 patents will have expired. And the H.264 patent pool is actually desirable compared to WebM's submarine patents. MPEG protects you from patent trolls, WebM doesn't.
So why is Google doing this?
1) WebM gives Mozilla more rope to hang Firefox with. Ogg is just not up to the technical job. Mozilla's suicide needed a clone of H.264 to continue. Chrome will get most of their users as the Web becomes more consumer-oriented and more like interactive TV instead of interactive magazine. Mozilla trained these users on how to install a non-native browser on their system. Google wants them using Chrome on Windows and Mac. But IE9 and Safari will get some of them, too.
2) Confusion around video drives people to YouTube, who have the infrastructure to be format-agnostic. In other words, the lack of standards makes YouTube the de facto standard. If users can't just publish their camcorder movies, or the output of their video editor, or the movies from their smartphone or iPod, then they will go to YouTube and let them handle the extra complexity.
In short, Google can't be hurt by WebM (they are an MPEG licensee and own a massive transcoding video platform) but it can hurt their competitors.
This kind of shit is why we have open, vendor-neutral standards like MPEG in the first place. A big fish like Google or Microsoft is not supposed to piss in the pool like this. WebM is just Google's VC-1, which Microsoft used to kill the high-def DVD market. Yes, MPEG's Blu-Ray won but only a pyrrhic victory.
A closed C API is not suitable for a full-size computer (or even a phone since 2007). Apps need to be ported from iPad, Mac, Windows, Linux, PlayStation, XBox, Wii, and the arcade. Google should not be the only one making C apps for Android.
People continue to use IE6 because it runs IE6 apps best. There is a ton of code out there written to the "IE6 API" instead of the Web API, so it's not portable. And IE6 was the latest version for over 5 years, or more than 25% of the life of the Web. XP was the latest Windows version for 6 years. It's a pit they crashed their whole platform plus the Web into. They should be giving all XP users a free upgrade to Windows 7, but instead, you cannot even pay to upgrade in-place. Just terrible platform management all around.
IE9 is so late. It looks like they're finally trying the unusual (for them) strategy of making an upgrade that is more desirable than the previous version. If it doesn't render the same content as Safari and Chrome, users will switch.
The C API on Android is totally closed anyway, so you can't even port your app. You have to write a baby Java app from scratch like you would for Blackberry. That is even a bigger flaw than fragmentation.
The best way to support Android is to make an HTML5 Web app version of your app for all the phones and make your native iPhone app an upsell.
C API totally closed
only 27% of Android handsets run v2.1
no easy path to port iPhone apps, desktop apps, or console games
whole missing categories of apps
malware
piracy
When iPhone had this many handsets, it had 4 times the apps, and they were a much broader selection, including many 3D games and content creation apps, and was drawing developers in from other platforms like flies because it was another full computer platform with native C apps and Apple made it easy to monetize your app. With Android, you have phone-style baby Java apps, it's not at all the same thing.
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No, it wouldn't be simultaneous. Nor will it be in black and white or feature ads for cigarettes.
If you have to cap it, then cap it, but not at 2GB.
To continue the electricity analogy, what if the price of your unlimited monthly electricity dropped by 15% and you got only a couple of week's worth, and had to stop using your TV and computer in order to have lights at the end of the month? What if you stopped buying electric devices altogether and the whole economy suffered?
If you change 2GB to 5GB and make tethering free that is much more reasonable.
If you can hold the whole thing in one hand and fit it in a shirt pocket and it has a speaker at top and mic at bottom that is a phone. Sheesh.
The stupidest part of them calling it a tablet is at $500 it costs more than an iPad, which has a bigger screen, more storage, glass and aluminum instead of plastic, twice or more bettery life, and much more sophisticated software, including native C apps. Why invite that comparison? If you just call it a phone you see its reason for being is for those who want a big nerdy phone.
Android v1.6 ... classic!
They have their heads so far up their asses that they may actually believe this. They think this is about the number of fixes or some particular technology they have just come up with, or some statistic about number of fixes. It's not. It's about the actual real world. The fact is, if you replace a Windows system with a Mac system, you are safer, more secure, and have increased reliability. That is just a plain fact. The Mac has zero worms, zero viruses, and only 2 Trojans that don't even run on the current Snow Leopard version. How can that even be compared to the ongoing tire fire that is Windows? Even iPhone is more robust than Windows.
Why would Jobs dislike this or even care? Apple is not anti-Flash, they just don't want the FlashPlayer running on their devices. This actually proves Jobs to be right. You can do Flash-like things with open standards, and no plug-in on the device. Doesn't matter what tool you use. The time and energy it would take to deploy FlashPlayer to all mobiles and update 4 times a year for security is like Appolo project level. And we see from this demo it's not fucking needed just as Jobs has said.
This is an Adobe story, not an Apple story, as it has been all along. FlashPlayer is supposed to be "cross-platform" yet Adobe has managed to put FlashPlayer v10.1 on Mac, PC, and in a beta that runs on a small minority of Android phones with outrageously bad performance. A JavaScript FlashPlayer that is truly cross-platform is like a gift for Adobe. It rescues the Flash developer tool and all the people who have Flash skills and makes them relevant to this decade.
Still, I think this would be more practical if it were a developer tool that converted Flash binaries to JavaScript and SVG and then you deployed the JS and SVG. Converting on the fly each time seems like the wrong approach, especially on tiny mobiles.
An HTML5 export from Flash is what is really needed. The fact that Adobe hasn't done that yet is incredible. But then, they shipped Dreamweaver CS5 in spring 2010 with no HTML5 support! Fucking madness. Don't tell me it's not ratified, the fucking spec describes the past and present, not the future.
There is an open API on iPhone OS. You have to collect your own money, but this app, whoosh displays Twitter feeds and photos, can easily be done there.
If you want open, use open.
16-bit was before the botnet.
Windows 7 runs 80% of XP viruses. The most important feature was not to run the viruses.
The problem lately is not so much terminating legacy support as just continuing to ship the same old virus-prone garbage.
The 2010 Windows should have been 64-bit only with no viruses and an XP emulator for legacy apps that is an optional install.
The fucking iPhone has gone 3 years always-on with no viruses! Are you telling me a full PC can't do that?
There's no excuse for Windows 7, or for using it.
Bullshit. That is excusifying.
Windows 7 runs 80% of XP viruses. So no, Windows 7 is not that different from XP. It needed to be different enough that it ran 0% of XP viruses.
We don't even have to look at Mac OS 9 versus Mac OS X. The current Mac OS "Snow Leopard" out-of-the-box can't run a single Mac app built before 2006. You have to install the optional emulator to run apps that old. That kind of progress is what keeps a commercial malware platform from developing on the Mac.
Windows 7 should have been a new OS core with an XP emulator on it that imports an old XP the same way that VMWare Fusion does on a Mac. You can take a Mac out of the box, install Fusion, connect to your XP machine and run the importer, and then all your XP apps run on the Mac, in their own windows and with Dock icons and even file associations. Then you can, for example, replace Photoshop CS4 for Windows with Photoshop CS5 for Mac and that turns the app native. Repeat with other apps as the updates ship and in 2 years you can throw XP away and your virus exposure goes to zero. This is an easier upgrade than XP to Windows 7. There's no reason Microsoft couldn't have done that to migrate their users from botnet paradise to a stable, functional OS.
Some Web test beds just don't count as usage. And today you can write backwards-compatible HTML5 and do minimal IE testing if you don't care about IE having full fidelity. Google already doesn't support IE6. IE9 is essentially Safari/Chrome compatible. IE is less important than ever. Any time spent on the dead IE6-IE8 browsers is wasted.
Even out-of-the-box a Mac or Linux is more secure than Windows. Windows is a tire fire. It can't be fixed. You just have to switch away. It's just unprofessional to use it in 2010.
You can easily make too much of the supposed Apple/Google rift. It's actually an Apple/Android rift and many people inside Google hate Android, which is a very small and unprofitable division of Google. Google makes much, much more money from iPhone than Android.
Sergey and Larry both identify Steve Jobs as their main inspiration to do what they are doing. About half the PC's at Google are Macs, although some run Linux.
In Silicon Valley, we don't fall for all the Redmond brainwashing and we know what Apple has accomplished and how useful and productive their tools are. It will be quite some time before Chrome OS or Android can replace a Mac, if ever. There is no reason at all for Google to force that. A Google employee with a Mac and iPhone who works on Search or Ads or Maps or HTML5 development is already dogfooding.
No, he's talking about Microsoft users who use iPhones and Macs as their business tools on the Microsoft campus. Something like 1 in 10 Microsoft employees uses an iPhone.
Besides, all technology is a personal accessory now. Some companies have started giving each employee their own I-T budget and a wide list of approved devices including Mac and Windows and iPhone and Blackberry and they buy what they are most productive with. There is no point hiring someone who has used a Mac for 10 years and giving them Windows Vista.
No, the C API on Chrome OS and Android is closed. It's Google only. HTML5 and Flash only on Chrome OS, and HTML5 and Flash and Java applets only on Android. They don't run what Ubuntu runs any more than iPad runs what a Mac runs. In Chrome OS, my understanding is the core system is in ROM and you boot every time to the original ROM-based system. However, the main issue with Chrome OS is the vapor it's made out of.
If you are doing any kind of coding, you need a Mac or Linux, both of which come with emacs and vi and bash and Apache and PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, and X-Windows and C API's. With the Mac you also have a content creation platform with QuickTime and AppleScript and CoreAudio, CoreMIDI, CoreVideo, and so on. iPad works for users who don't code, because it has a C API that is open to 3rd party developers and 200,000 powerful apps including a lot of business tools. I've already seen users go XP to iPad and love it. But if you need more than iPad that is a Mac or Ubuntu or BSD or similar traditional Unix.
> Remember, the only serious thing an iPad is good
> for is serious content consumption
Bullshit. You add an accessory Bluetooth keyboard and it turns into a PC replacement that easily replaces XP for most users.
For office workers and business people there is a WebEx app, Keynote/Pages/Numbers office suite, Salesforce, and many other business-focused apps. Exchange is built-in. These users can easily switch from a 10 year old XP that they still haven't mastered to a new iPad they can easily become expert in without training. I've already seen users do this at an office where I consult. Just switching them from Outlook to iPad is like setting them free from jail. For many of them, half their computer use is email and Outlook is a FUCKING JOKE. The mobility is also very liberating, because they go to a lot of meetings and they can take iPad and show a presentation to a group very easily, or refer to email while they meet without the barrier of a notebook.
Even for creative workers, iPad has sketching-level tools where you can start art or music or photography projects that you later take to a Mac. But for office workers, it is a self-contained total PC replacement. For many writers also. Even with the Apple Wireless Keyboard iPad is half the weight and size of a netbook and has double the battery for long uninterrupted writing sessions wherever you are.
An iPad is not typically going to replace a Mac or Linux system, where users are often writing code of some kind (e.g. an AppleScript workflow or HTML or a shell script or PHP development) and have some mastery of the system. But Windows? Fuck yeah. Most Windows is antique XP, and most of the users fight with it all day, they work around it, not with it. They use it as a typewriter, which with an accessory Bluetooth keyboard, iPad can easily replace.
You can't make assumptions about iPad based on previous tablets. The reason iPad has already outsold all previous tablets put together is iPad is different from them in every way.
Anyone who is using Windows would be better with something else. For some it is a Mac, for some Linux, and some iPad. In all 3 cases, almost no training is required if you give them to the right users. Certainly much less than XP to Windows 7. In every case you will get lower maintenance costs and higher reliability and security and productivity. In all 3 cases you're on a modern, open source Unix core with a modern, open source HTML5 browser.
Only a minority of their systems were running Windows anyway. They were half Mac and had significant Linux use also. With how Unix-based they are, I was surprised they had any Windows at all.
It is simply unprofessional to use Windows in 2010. There is no excuse. The switching costs on Mac or Linux are tiny compared to what you save in maintenance and training costs later and gain in enhanced productivity. The key is you have to let the user choose which one they want and then you can leave them be to work. A Mac is better than Windows for some users, and Linux is better for the others. Neither needs any significant training if they choose the right one. For some users, an iPad is all they need. I know a couple of business people who switched from XP to iPad and won't go back. They add WebEx and iWork and a Bluetooth keyboard and they're good to go. Ten iPad users can share a single Mac mini with 10 accounts on it for backup and OS updates.
I think we need a kind of certification that says "Windows free" so consumers can avoid companies that use Windows. If you give your personal data to a company that uses Windows you have basically given it to a botnet. Even in the Fortune 500 who have I-T staff and security add-ons they all have botnet infestations. They shouldn't be waiting until they get a class action lawsuit to switch to professional technology.
Obviously, Apple's competitors have their large number of lobbyists out full force. The amount of whining at Apple's success lately is fucking incredible.
If only they put as much energy into making stuff users want they might be able to compete.
The idea that there is censorship on iPhone is ridiculous. It has an HTML5 browser. It has about 25 different bookstores. You can load any media from any source into iTunes. There are apps with streaming movies, audio, radio.
There are HTML5 iPhone apps from major pornography vendors. Pornography websites even call standard ISO MPEG-4 movies the "iPod/iPhone version".
If the C API on iPhone is censored, what about Android? There are no native C apps on Android. The C API is closed. That's 100% censorship by Google! Call the government! There is absolutely no content on Android!
The Web is the alternative to app store. HTML5 is the original API for iPhone. Your HTML5 app can install locally with a home screen icon very easily. App Store is totally optional.
Sprint is not 4G, it's just Sprint's 4th generation. They are not going to be able to run the 4G phones like Verizon and AT&T.
The desire for oil has nothing to do with it. In other countries they would have had to drill a reserve well just in case. Now it will take 3 months to drill one, all the while the oil shooting out. Oil companies make huge profits and this proves they have to be regulated to do the right thing. The lack of regulation in the US is a fucking joke.
Google absolutely knows that WebM is not going to replace ISO MPEG. Apple, Sony, Panasonic, and other consumer electronics companies are not going to use it. Hollywood is not going to use it, the entire toolchain is MPEG. You might as well offer a Linux server admin a free copy of MS-DOS 3.3. Consumers are not going to use it, they have ISO MPEG cameras and camcorders and smartphones and set-tops and can freely make and share video already. MPEG has been working for 20 years. You only pay if you sell it (not use it) and you pay a small fraction of what you would tip a waitress.
Further, even best-case scenario, by the time WebM could be standardized and deployed as widely as MPEG, the H.264 patents will have expired. And the H.264 patent pool is actually desirable compared to WebM's submarine patents. MPEG protects you from patent trolls, WebM doesn't.
So why is Google doing this?
1) WebM gives Mozilla more rope to hang Firefox with. Ogg is just not up to the technical job. Mozilla's suicide needed a clone of H.264 to continue. Chrome will get most of their users as the Web becomes more consumer-oriented and more like interactive TV instead of interactive magazine. Mozilla trained these users on how to install a non-native browser on their system. Google wants them using Chrome on Windows and Mac. But IE9 and Safari will get some of them, too.
2) Confusion around video drives people to YouTube, who have the infrastructure to be format-agnostic. In other words, the lack of standards makes YouTube the de facto standard. If users can't just publish their camcorder movies, or the output of their video editor, or the movies from their smartphone or iPod, then they will go to YouTube and let them handle the extra complexity.
In short, Google can't be hurt by WebM (they are an MPEG licensee and own a massive transcoding video platform) but it can hurt their competitors.
This kind of shit is why we have open, vendor-neutral standards like MPEG in the first place. A big fish like Google or Microsoft is not supposed to piss in the pool like this. WebM is just Google's VC-1, which Microsoft used to kill the high-def DVD market. Yes, MPEG's Blu-Ray won but only a pyrrhic victory.
Dell sells so few high end models your point is moot.
A closed C API is not suitable for a full-size computer (or even a phone since 2007). Apps need to be ported from iPad, Mac, Windows, Linux, PlayStation, XBox, Wii, and the arcade. Google should not be the only one making C apps for Android.
People continue to use IE6 because it runs IE6 apps best. There is a ton of code out there written to the "IE6 API" instead of the Web API, so it's not portable. And IE6 was the latest version for over 5 years, or more than 25% of the life of the Web. XP was the latest Windows version for 6 years. It's a pit they crashed their whole platform plus the Web into. They should be giving all XP users a free upgrade to Windows 7, but instead, you cannot even pay to upgrade in-place. Just terrible platform management all around.
IE9 is so late. It looks like they're finally trying the unusual (for them) strategy of making an upgrade that is more desirable than the previous version. If it doesn't render the same content as Safari and Chrome, users will switch.
The C API on Android is totally closed anyway, so you can't even port your app. You have to write a baby Java app from scratch like you would for Blackberry. That is even a bigger flaw than fragmentation.
The best way to support Android is to make an HTML5 Web app version of your app for all the phones and make your native iPhone app an upsell.
C API totally closed
only 27% of Android handsets run v2.1
no easy path to port iPhone apps, desktop apps, or console games
whole missing categories of apps
malware
piracy
When iPhone had this many handsets, it had 4 times the apps, and they were a much broader selection, including many 3D games and content creation apps, and was drawing developers in from other platforms like flies because it was another full computer platform with native C apps and Apple made it easy to monetize your app. With Android, you have phone-style baby Java apps, it's not at all the same thing.