It's for the OS image, not the apps. Some Android devices will only load a signed OS boot image via their bootloader. So you can side-load apps all you like, but you can't load up the latest Cyanogen(mod) ROM for your device.
And in fact, some Android devices (phones from AT&T, and I believe the Color Nook from Barnes and Noble... probably some others) ship without the ability to side-load apps -- hacks are needed to enable this capability.
In fact, HTC's marking their unlocked bootloaders, and starting to distribute tools that unlock their older devices.
And this is all fairly moot, anyway. Linus Torvalds has repeatedly stated that he believes the software license should cover only the software. The anti-tivoization provisions in the GPLV3 attempt to control the hardware as well. Linus disagrees with that, and thus, Linux itself will never be GPLV3. All mobile OSs under discussion, MeeGo, Android, WebOS, they're all using some variation of the Linux kernel. So GPLV3 is never, ever going to be an issue with these devices, whether companies wanted it or not.
The GPLV2 covers the original intent of the GPL: changes made to software can't be kept. Forcing the freedom of devices themselves, I believe, is beyond the scope of any software license, and the reason the GPLV3 hasn't caught on, and never will. And as the HTC thing demonstrates, there are other, more effective ways to ensure your device is hackable. Making this a marketing issue, and rewarding the hardware and telco companies that keep things open, is the more practical means of achieving this end result.
The other big reason companies use Android now: APPS. Google has successfully built a vibrant and prolific applications development community. Not to say it's perfect by any means (and in any discussion, you'll get complains that it's both not open enough and not secure enough... sometimes from the same person), but it does very much help to create the market for Android devices.
And they've largely handled it right: if you want to develop, go to http://www.android.com/ download tools, develop. You get big company support there too, if you need it.
Apple understood the app thing, even if it took them a year to really get it. Microsoft seems to, even as they try to make a smartphone for people who don't actually want smartphones, a possibly dubious thing. Nokia and RIM never really got the whole application thing... Nokia didn't even launch an appstore until 2009, and even then, didn't install it on most SymbianOS phones.
And in other things, the phone guys largely get what they want with Android. No licensing costs, an OS that can actually compete against Apple, the freedom to change pieces they want to change but no requirement to write anything but drivers. And really, we don't need MS taking over, or a different proprietary OS per cell phone maker, either. Those were pretty much the long-term choices, without Android. Just as practically no one trusted SymbianOS with Nokia at the helm, I doubt any of the other HW companies would have been trusting of Nokia and MeeGo, or Nokia now an equal partner with Microsoft in Windows Phone 7.
I think MeeGo and WebOS failed just fine on their own, without Android's help.
MeeGo was a harsh move anyway... Moblin and Maemo pushed together into one project, basically in order to get Nokia and Intel to work as buddies. No one else of significance was using either anyway. But at least Nokia put Maemo or MeeGo on their top phones... but only those phones.
The big problem, though, is the big problem of most open source: consumer want actual applications. Not things they have to hack themselves, but finished, polished applications. Nokia screwed this up on MeeGo just as much as they did on SymbianOS, only SymbianOS once held 60% of the smartphone market.. so there were some apps. And much like is was with SymbianOS, no other big hardware company cared about MeeGo.
Maybe Intel could have helped, but they really weren't ready, anyway. The original idea of Moblin and MeeGo, from Intel's perspective, was to enable low-end netbooks that weren't ready for Windows.. but that problem pretty much ironed itself out. Intel wasn't ready for the real move, x86-powered phones, and so they did nothing in particular to help out MeeGo. After all, that would have only benefited the ARM people... as if they needed the help.
And this wasn't the first time Intel sponsored a computing initiative, only to basically do so little, they had no effect. Anyone remember Native Signal Processing? Or when Intel was firmly behind the BeOS? Intel provides technical know-how in these deals, but they have virtually no effect on the marketability of the product. Without at least one big hardware champion, OS projects at worst fail, at beast remain little niche things. And in particular on devices without a common hardware platform.
I don't think Android will be closed source in the long run. I think Google rushed Honeycomb with some much ugly cruft in it (the race was to get the Xoom out by the first anniversary of the iPad, and I don't think Google was even fully on-board the tablet idea until halfway through 2010, after the iPad proved itself), it's probably in the long run a service to the Android community that these things won't be propagating around for the next few years. That's pretty much what the Google folks have said, in different words. If the sources for Ice Cream Sandwich don't show up a month or two after the first device releases, THEN I'd start to worry.
As for WebOS, some open source pieces, but large fundamental parts of the OS are closed source. That's a non-starter, unless you're looking for another Apple or Microsoft. Only, HP's dumping it, sure looks like. And they don't have a likely buyer, or they would have held off the "we're killing WebOS" announcement for a little while longer, so as not to cut the selling price into tiny pieces. And you have to wonder about the execution of it, too. The whole thing's written in JavaScript (yuk), and yet, the TouchPad had probably the worse JS performance of any yet-released tablet. Apple actually might have a good argument for running slower JavaScript (the one programming API they don't really control on iOS devices), and yet, they're doing better than twice the speed, on identical code. Palm was just too late and too closed to go anywhere with WebOS, and HP clearly had no intent to fix this.
It's much easier to break something than to fix it. George W. Bush's tax cuts helped to destroy the great economy from the Clinton era. Clinton and Bush both enacted policies that nearly destroyed the US banking system.
Under Obama, things go "less bad" than they would have under McCain. But not as good if Obama and the Democrats hadn't been so quick to pre-compromise on nearly everything they did to deal with the many, many problems left by Mr. Bush.
Face it -- taxation in the USA is the lowest it's been in 60 years. If there was some magical economic miracle just waiting to happen from low taxes, it would have happened already. But economies are never supply-side.. the right doesn't understand cause and effect. No big surprise, given that they pretty much reject scientific thought in all areas of human endeavor. But you can't wish customers with money to spend into existence.
And in fact, the historical record shows that higher taxation in the USA has generally lead to prosperity.
Cricket and MetroPCS have their own networks, but they're very small, and you will pay roaming charges when you're off the network. Cricket's "unlimited" plan has a 1GB data cap. MetroPCS's top tier data plan claims to be unlimited, but they block quite a bit of the multimedia web (yeah, they've been called out on net neutrality).
If they try to change the contract out from under you, quit. You can do this without paying a penalty, at least in the USA. It is, after all, a contract -- AT&T is as much a party to that's contract's terms as you are.
When you change, whether because of this or otherwise, let both AT&T and your new wireless company know precisely why you changed. It doesn't, of course, matter if you're the only one who does that. And if I do it too, they'll just think we're weird. But when hundreds, when thousands do it, when they go into that AT&T office, sing a few bars of "Alice's Restaurant", and... er, what was I taking about?
There is currently a fairly big migration to Sprint, simply because they still have an real unlimited data plan for new customers. Sprint needs the customers, sure, and WiMax at 2500MHz has some issues as a 4G protocol. But basically, they offer a much better deal than AT&T and Verizon. That's become the center of their ad campaign, and their CEO says that "for now" unlimited plans are staying.
I don't actually have a problem with limited plans, either, just unfair limited plans. The all-you-can-eat plan makes perfect sense: I'm paying for everything I use this month, plain and simple. But the capped plans... in effect, I'm paying for 2GB or whatever. If I go over, I pay big fine rates... if I go under, AT&T or Verizon kill that extra data... data capacity I've already paid for. In short, the deals are designed to frighten me into always buying more data time than I'll use.
An honest capped plan would carry over all unused data, indefinitely. Or simply charge me a flat rate per MB. But none of the telcos actually want fair pricing.
And don't get me started on messages. The limit on an SMS message is 160 characters. So if I'm paying $10 for 1,000 messages, that's $10 for a maximum of 160K of data, or what, $62.50 per megabyte? Text ought to just be another kind of data... if Google can offer it free, the telcos can make unlimited messages a basic part of every package. They don't, because people are stupid and will pay big for what's essentially next to nothing.
Curiously, AT&T's lowest tier data plan costs $15, and ought to deliver all the SMS messages anyone would you need, and a little internet access. It's even fully integrated, if you're on a smart phone with Google Voice.
No, Google is in the technology business, much the same way that NBC is in the television news and entertainment business, and the National Football League is in the football business. All three use advertising as their primary revenue model, but none of them are themselves advertising companies.
While Google certainly built their various advertising engines, most of their work is designed web-based services that attract users, so that the advertising (which is, of course, placed and paid for by other companies) will generate revenue.
I used to believe it really didn't make a difference with Vodka. Until a Russian friend brought by two bottles of Stolichnaya Gold. Or maybe it was just because we finished one of them. These days, Penn 1681 is another great Vodka... and made in Pennsylvania.
No one's mastering audio to either CD or analog media with levels over 0dB. Just not going to be done.
And in fact, when you're making an LP, the mastering engineer has to apply the RIAA equalization curve. This boosts highs by about 20dB, so they don't vanish, and cuts lows by about 20dB, so the tracks don't get so wide they send your tone arm into your 8-track player. LPs are just plain evil... even the trendy ones they sell today.
The recording process is where digital and analog have to be treated differently. Unless you're recording though a compressor/limiter, go past 0dB VU on your digital recorder and you will in fact clip. On analog tape, you get a natural compression effect which is fairly pleasing to the ear. Some of that's simply that most of grew up on music recorded with the occasional bit of tape compression, so we have a bit of nostalgia for it. Digital recording engineers can get plug-ins that use analog modeling to replicate that sound, but with more control. And of course, the analog guys didn't necessarily run into tape compression accidently.. it was often done in the studio, intentionally, as an effect. Just like overdriving your tube amp, guitar feedback and distortion, etc.
It is not correct to use "Behringer" and "Pro" in the same sentence. Well, other than one like this. They're part of the problem -- the cheapest of the cheap.
Still bothers me, occasionally, to see something like one of the uber-expensive Nakamichi cassette decks I lusted after as a teenager, at a yard sale for $20 (ok, sure, these days I have a dual drive rack mount Tascam, and don't exactly recall the last time I needed to make a cassette for any purpose). But it's pretty certain that the Wal-Mart special audio gear will get chucked much sooner, probably not even lasting into a yard-sale-afterlife. So much of the current stuff is designed to be cheap and disposable. Some of the music, too...
But really, I can't see playing a 30 year old LP of "Dark Side of the Moon" on 30 year old gear, when you can play the (30th Anniversary?) SACD edition on modern gear. I wore at least two album versions out before upgrading to the CD and eventually the SACD.
It's actually worse than that -- the raw mix is probably fine. The mastering engineer has the dial cranked on the compressor -- that's how you turn a 24-bit master into a 16-bit CD or MP3 with, if you're lucky, 8-bits of actual dynamic range.
Of course, if that were true of all music, it might put upward pressure on ensuring a low THD on the amplifiers, even if dynamic range weren't important.
Some places, like HD Tracks, sell music with much better mastering... sometimes even no audio compression at all. I have a copy of Paul McCartney's "Band on the Run" mastered without compression, for example. And I guess I probably did play my original LP on my Dad's stereo... which probably did sound better. With his stereo, though, it might have had something to do with the actual stereo -- he built the tube amplifier himself (my Dad was an EE and manager in the test and measuring department at Bell Labs back in the day), and the speaker cabinets, based on 24"-or-so-inch woofers and some plans from Altec-Lansing for "Voice of the Theater" cabinet designs.
Of course, he only needed two speakers. I have seven, including the powered subwoofer. And my old man's TV was a huge 25" console... not comparable to my 71" DLP. Simple fact is that, back in the 60s and 70s, when you spent money on "home entertainment", it was probably music related: LPs, stereo gear, etc. Today, there's a wide variety of audio and video gear all vying for that same buck. And when I want the best sound, I unplug everything and play my Martin D15...
The iPod market itself is shrinking very rapidly. Apple will certainly try to reboot the whole line this fall, but this is not likely the best place to worry about Android devices. And Archos does seem to have this niche well covered, anyway.
As for "extremely small"... Android is now just over 30% of the tablet market, as of last quarter. That's hardly what I'd call "extremely small". Apple did 66% of the market... very good for Apple, but given they essentially owned the market last year (95%), a smaller percentage of a rapidly growing market (9.25 million iPads, more than twice this time last year).
And most of the business is actually on the name brand tablets, not the Chinese ripoffs. That's Asus, LG, Motorola, and particularly Samsung. HTC, Lenovo, and Sony are joining the party soon, on Android. And of course, you have Microsoft (Win7 tablets today), HP (WebOS), and RIM (PlayBook) each trying to suck less to establish a foothold at third place. Last quarter, it was Microsoft, even given that Window 7, and particularly Windows 7 applications, are not well suited as a tablet.
The patent being granted IS certification of validity, legally and everything. Sure, it doesn't mean it even remotely ought to be valid, but that's how the patent law works...once granted, it's someone else's job to prove invalidity.
The reason many patents were granted... well, there are so many. A good number of software patents were granted because the examiners at the PTO in these cases didn't know squat about software development, and so had no basis for rejecting them (well, or understanding them..). By all rights, given that part of the original basis for a patent is that the invention can't be "obvious to one skilled in the art", than it ought to hold that, if the patent is granted without being examined by one skilled in the specific art(s) applicable, it has to be invalidated, or at least suspended pending examination.
Another reason is prior art -- the patent applicant is supposed to include all known prior art, but they don't often do this. The PTO's search for prior art generally begins and ends with a search of existing patents... unless the specific examiner happens to "just know" about something else.
Public peer review is the real answer, but until there's a mechanism in the USA to force this, there are only a few programs around that work based on voluntary submissions of patent applications. The IEEE has such a peer review group... but you can't expect anyone with known dodgy patents will be submitting them. The PTO did launch the "Peer to Patent" program (http://www.peertopatent.org) a few years back, but it's fairly small scale. And working with universities only will limit the quality of the review, just as review by examiners often does.
I think lots of companies initially begin building their patent portfolios for defense. That was IBM's approach long ago... they were so big, they worried about anyone dropping a couple patents, say, on the IBM PC for example. So they negotiated cross licensing agreements with everyone. Problem was, you can't license in-kind against companies with just a handful of patents, just wouldn't be fair. When I dealt with them, they weren't all that bad on the costs.. you'd pay a percentage for one, two, or three-or-more. So 1,000 IBM patents in a product wouldn't run you any more money than three.
However, by then (late 80s) their patent department had become a very successful profit center. It has started gaming the system... their lawyers knew just what the PTO would approve, how to get things through, and this was not long after the US PTO had started allowing software patents. So IBM was patenting thousands of things that had existed for years, maybe decades... but of course, were not covered by existing patents. Because, of course, patents couldn't contain software, previously.
And when IBM came after your company or product, they'd hit you with a stack of 20-40 or so patents. Many didn't apply, many could trivially be invalidated in court (but, at least then, you very much DID have to go to court... so it could get crazy expensive). And there was a very good chance that, if you made it though that stack, there's be another. And another. And another. So pretty much everyone paid.
And that was then. One patent IBM was granted, in 1984 (!) was "cut and paste between text buffers"... exactly as used in Emacs back in the 70s, and probably a bunch of other wordprocessors and text editors. Under today's mentality, they'd be suing Apple, Microsoft, Google... pretty much the entire computer industry.... for allowing cut and paste. Regardless of the fact that, if my cut and paste algorithm functions differently than theirs, their patent doesn't apply (a patent is for a very specific implementation of something, not a concept or idea... it only gets treated as covering that idea, according to the patent holder, once granted). Not to mention that such a thing is "obvious to anyone skilled in the art".
Maybe. Probably the A5 processor, but it could be a different one... Apple's widely rumored to be in talks with other chip fab companies, to decouple themselves from Samsung. Currently, Samsung makes the A5, though unlike the A4, the A5 is supposedly an Apple-designed/integrated chip, rather than just the scaled-down Samsung SOC that was the A4.
New screen... unlikely. Apple has always used their screens in multiple models. Maybe a tweak to the backlight or something, but I expect it'll be fundamentally the same as the iPhone 4.
Camera's possible but difficult. The iPhone 4 has a very excellent 5 megapixel camera.... most 5 Mpixel cameras in other phones were not as good. But 5 Mpixel is already just about at the diffraction limit for a 1/4" sensor. You could go to 8Mpixel, but get less sharpness AND less low-light performance very easily. Sure, they could go to a better lens (wider than f2.0) or a larger sensor.. but then you're too large for the iPhone. And, while they also haven't changed the casework each time, when they do, it gets thinner. Which goes against any actual improvements to the camera beyond a pixel count bump.
The real big question I have: 4G or no 4G. For AT&T, they can get away with fake HPSA+ "4G", since that's probably just a tweak to the existing radio chip. But for Verizon, if they don't have LTE, they'll be way behind... particularly given Verizon's rapid expansion, and the fact that even regular HSPA is much faster than EvDO, unless you're in one of AT&T's overload zones. Of course, most consumers (and even more Apple buyers) don't know the technical details, but even they're aware of "4G" vs. "3G". Ok... not super aware... some 35% think the iPhone 4 is already 4G. And of course, if they do put in 4G, they can always call it "iPhone 4GS" and save the "iPhone 5" name for another time.
Apple's never going to keep up with every feature on every Android phone. But even for the moment, we're having to make trade-offs between Androids: this one has a great physical keyboard, that one's 4G but only single processor, the next one's dual core but only 3G, this one has a much higher resolution screen, but that one has a mindblowing AM-OLED display, etc. But do I want a 3.1", 3.5", 4", or 4.3" screen? Lots of choices, but I haven't quite found my Droid-replacement yet.
Apple's been competitive on features, but rarely leading on more than one or two lately, and usually not for long. If nothing else, the success of Android demonstrates that you can never be all things to all customers in a single model, much as Apple tries.
I do know of a Kernel called Linux.. but an OS? Where do I find this... and when did Linus get so busy and toss out all the GNU and other GPL/FOSS code?
Yup.. as low as 10,000 cycles for multi-level flash, and 100,000 cycles for single-level flash. Some are expected to last longer, but you pay for those, and of course, wear-leveling algorithms ensure that you don't see many failures, until it's all ready to fail.
Plus, flash isn't a replacement for DRAM. Sure, they are one of two things you can spend money on, but DRAM is a couple of thousands of times faster than flash, flash is of course non-volatile. Maybe some day, we can dump them both and use crazy amounts of MRAM or FeRAM or something of that ilk.
What they're really talking about in the article isn't flash vs. DRAM, it's the idea of adding flash as a read cache to an HDD. In this way, your most often read stuff will read at SDD speeds, without the cost of making the entire device SDD, and/or living with a tiny SDD (well, for some... my laptop has two 640GB HDDS). Again, nothing directly to do with RAM.
In fact, they work nicely together. Flash replaces a hard disc drive -- you put an SDD in as your system drive, sure. That will speed up loads at least, maybe saves. But it's all pointless if the drive wears out in a month or two. Thus, to go along with this, you want enough DRAM so that you're not actually using much virtual data memory, and thus, not thrashing that SDD into oblivion.
It's certainly true that it's pretty easy to buy enough DRAM for DRAM like things. It'll be cheaper to build an HDD cache in flash, and pretty efficient too, versus doing that in DRAM... largely because you're at the mercy of the SATA bus, which isn't remotely fast enough to justify DRAM. On the other hand, for about $50 or so, you get 8GB of DRAM these days, which is enough internal for nearly everyone not concerned with building large servers. I know this because it recently became not quite enough for me, so I ordered another 8GB. Sure, you can get 8GB of SDHC flash for $15, but the speed isn't comparable to a good SDD. And the only reason I needed more memory: editing panoramic photos, sets of 10-30, shot on a Canon 60D, converted from RAW to 48-bit TIFF. I use the same PC for electronics CAD, audio and video editing, programming, all the "regular" stuff, and this is the first time I came close to being short of DRAM.
What actually happens is that the world keeps ending. Most of those "end of the world" senarios actually do happen. It's just that, every time the world ends, it's immediately replaced by something nearly identical, only slightly weirder. But the weirdness stacks up over time... like the fact Congress seems to be at least half full of kindergartners, there might not be any football next fall, Budweiser bought Rolling Rock, and the highest rated TV show is a ten minute tape loop of the day's news about Casey Anthony. It's gettin' about time to turn pro...
Hold on... just because the more highly probably universes are being destroyed, those remaining must still be possible universes, no matter how improbable. Even when OJ and Casey Anthony's son becomes a first round draft pick for the Cubs, and sets all kinds of team and league records, they're still not going to actually win the Playoffs, much less the Series. At least, not without years of illegal experiments with exotic matter over there at the LHC, bending the very laws of physics in new and interesting ways.
Apple does use entirely off-the-shelf technology... they just buy so much, they can sometimes get their own shelf. They're not going to make their own Wifi chip, for example, but if they want some changes make, Broadcom will happily do a custom spin. Same with Samsung, on the A4 processor.
Apple's certainly now doing their own chip designs... these are still essentially off the shelf, but based on off-the-shelf designs (ARM Cortex A9, etc) just like most of the other chip makers in the mobile space. They don't actually make the chips.. but then again, neither does nVidia. And I'd expect Apple to move in that direction over time, doing more in custom, but only when they find an advantage to it. The big advantage of going to their own design in the A5 is that they don't have to let Samsung (an emerging rival who, unlike Apple, actually makes nearly every part in a smartphone or tablet) benefit from Apple's huge volumes.
You do realize that virtually all of the "innovation" by PC systems companies (eg, Apple, HP, Dell, etc) in the last 15-20 years has been casework, right? Pretty much all the actual innovation has been done by the chipsters: AMD/ATi, nVidia, Intel, etc.
So to say Apple doesn't innovate... have you seen their casework? They're right up there with Sony and the others who actually do make cool casework. I mean, given that each PC has essentially the same things inside, there's no much else to see here, folks. In fact, Apple's made the largest innovation in recent PC history: cases with fixed, non-replaceable batteries. Not necessarily a good thing, unless you're Apple (only they can sell you a replacement, and they can get full MSRP for it since you need to return the PC), but no one else thought of it.
There are definitely people just as passionate in their dislike of Apple as there are in their love of Apple. I know several.
The PC, on the other hand, is the market default. In some mature markets, there are probably one or more fairly commodified products that comprise the bulk of the market. In fact, when there's a strong leader, chance are they fit this mold. That rarely if ever generates the kind of fanaticism that a niche product can.
As an alternate, you can get that kind of fanaticism in a balance market with obvious rivalries. So you have Coke vs. Pepsi, Canon vs. Nikon (still cameras), Sony vs. Panasonic vs. Canon (video cameras), Ford vs. Chevy (trucks), etc. It's the choice between rivals as much as anything that ingenders this passion -- the fact you had to make that choice says something about you, it becomes part of your self-image. And it doesn't have to be about important differences, either... just like people get completely nuts over their favorite sports teams.
When you're the lack-luster default, which is the PC in the world of computing, there's no particular reason to be passionate about it. You may find some people crazy about a particular PC brand, but most, not so much. There are actually Windows fans, but they're kind of a sorry lot.. most Windows users are simply taking the path of least resistance: I need to run Altium Designer or Sony Vegas, I have to run Windows. Naturally, there are Linux fanatics, but they're nutso over the OS, or over Open Source, not folks to make a big deal about the platform.
This isn't always the way when building the market. Right now, the mobile sector remains fairly interesting, with Android in the lead, but Apple much more competitive than they've been in the PC market since the 70s, and both RIM and HP/Palm at least not yet down for the count. This could degenerate to a boring world of Android and a fanatic slice of Apple users, but it's not there yet... Android stuff is still pretty interesting, Apple's still actually in the volume game, and the others aren't gone.
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It's for the OS image, not the apps. Some Android devices will only load a signed OS boot image via their bootloader. So you can side-load apps all you like, but you can't load up the latest Cyanogen(mod) ROM for your device.
And in fact, some Android devices (phones from AT&T, and I believe the Color Nook from Barnes and Noble... probably some others) ship without the ability to side-load apps -- hacks are needed to enable this capability.
In fact, HTC's marking their unlocked bootloaders, and starting to distribute tools that unlock their older devices.
And this is all fairly moot, anyway. Linus Torvalds has repeatedly stated that he believes the software license should cover only the software. The anti-tivoization provisions in the GPLV3 attempt to control the hardware as well. Linus disagrees with that, and thus, Linux itself will never be GPLV3. All mobile OSs under discussion, MeeGo, Android, WebOS, they're all using some variation of the Linux kernel. So GPLV3 is never, ever going to be an issue with these devices, whether companies wanted it or not.
The GPLV2 covers the original intent of the GPL: changes made to software can't be kept. Forcing the freedom of devices themselves, I believe, is beyond the scope of any software license, and the reason the GPLV3 hasn't caught on, and never will. And as the HTC thing demonstrates, there are other, more effective ways to ensure your device is hackable. Making this a marketing issue, and rewarding the hardware and telco companies that keep things open, is the more practical means of achieving this end result.
The other big reason companies use Android now: APPS. Google has successfully built a vibrant and prolific applications development community. Not to say it's perfect by any means (and in any discussion, you'll get complains that it's both not open enough and not secure enough... sometimes from the same person), but it does very much help to create the market for Android devices.
And they've largely handled it right: if you want to develop, go to http://www.android.com/ download tools, develop. You get big company support there too, if you need it.
Apple understood the app thing, even if it took them a year to really get it. Microsoft seems to, even as they try to make a smartphone for people who don't actually want smartphones, a possibly dubious thing. Nokia and RIM never really got the whole application thing... Nokia didn't even launch an appstore until 2009, and even then, didn't install it on most SymbianOS phones.
And in other things, the phone guys largely get what they want with Android. No licensing costs, an OS that can actually compete against Apple, the freedom to change pieces they want to change but no requirement to write anything but drivers. And really, we don't need MS taking over, or a different proprietary OS per cell phone maker, either. Those were pretty much the long-term choices, without Android. Just as practically no one trusted SymbianOS with Nokia at the helm, I doubt any of the other HW companies would have been trusting of Nokia and MeeGo, or Nokia now an equal partner with Microsoft in Windows Phone 7.
I think MeeGo and WebOS failed just fine on their own, without Android's help.
MeeGo was a harsh move anyway... Moblin and Maemo pushed together into one project, basically in order to get Nokia and Intel to work as buddies. No one else of significance was using either anyway. But at least Nokia put Maemo or MeeGo on their top phones... but only those phones.
The big problem, though, is the big problem of most open source: consumer want actual applications. Not things they have to hack themselves, but finished, polished applications. Nokia screwed this up on MeeGo just as much as they did on SymbianOS, only SymbianOS once held 60% of the smartphone market.. so there were some apps. And much like is was with SymbianOS, no other big hardware company cared about MeeGo.
Maybe Intel could have helped, but they really weren't ready, anyway. The original idea of Moblin and MeeGo, from Intel's perspective, was to enable low-end netbooks that weren't ready for Windows.. but that problem pretty much ironed itself out. Intel wasn't ready for the real move, x86-powered phones, and so they did nothing in particular to help out MeeGo. After all, that would have only benefited the ARM people... as if they needed the help.
And this wasn't the first time Intel sponsored a computing initiative, only to basically do so little, they had no effect. Anyone remember Native Signal Processing? Or when Intel was firmly behind the BeOS? Intel provides technical know-how in these deals, but they have virtually no effect on the marketability of the product. Without at least one big hardware champion, OS projects at worst fail, at beast remain little niche things. And in particular on devices without a common hardware platform.
I don't think Android will be closed source in the long run. I think Google rushed Honeycomb with some much ugly cruft in it (the race was to get the Xoom out by the first anniversary of the iPad, and I don't think Google was even fully on-board the tablet idea until halfway through 2010, after the iPad proved itself), it's probably in the long run a service to the Android community that these things won't be propagating around for the next few years. That's pretty much what the Google folks have said, in different words. If the sources for Ice Cream Sandwich don't show up a month or two after the first device releases, THEN I'd start to worry.
As for WebOS, some open source pieces, but large fundamental parts of the OS are closed source. That's a non-starter, unless you're looking for another Apple or Microsoft. Only, HP's dumping it, sure looks like. And they don't have a likely buyer, or they would have held off the "we're killing WebOS" announcement for a little while longer, so as not to cut the selling price into tiny pieces. And you have to wonder about the execution of it, too. The whole thing's written in JavaScript (yuk), and yet, the TouchPad had probably the worse JS performance of any yet-released tablet. Apple actually might have a good argument for running slower JavaScript (the one programming API they don't really control on iOS devices), and yet, they're doing better than twice the speed, on identical code. Palm was just too late and too closed to go anywhere with WebOS, and HP clearly had no intent to fix this.
It's much easier to break something than to fix it. George W. Bush's tax cuts helped to destroy the great economy from the Clinton era. Clinton and Bush both enacted policies that nearly destroyed the US banking system.
Under Obama, things go "less bad" than they would have under McCain. But not as good if Obama and the Democrats hadn't been so quick to pre-compromise on nearly everything they did to deal with the many, many problems left by Mr. Bush.
Face it -- taxation in the USA is the lowest it's been in 60 years. If there was some magical economic miracle just waiting to happen from low taxes, it would have happened already. But economies are never supply-side.. the right doesn't understand cause and effect. No big surprise, given that they pretty much reject scientific thought in all areas of human endeavor. But you can't wish customers with money to spend into existence.
And in fact, the historical record shows that higher taxation in the USA has generally lead to prosperity.
Boost is Sprint. So is Virgin Mobile.
Cricket and MetroPCS have their own networks, but they're very small, and you will pay roaming charges when you're off the network. Cricket's "unlimited" plan has a 1GB data cap. MetroPCS's top tier data plan claims to be unlimited, but they block quite a bit of the multimedia web (yeah, they've been called out on net neutrality).
If they try to change the contract out from under you, quit. You can do this without paying a penalty, at least in the USA. It is, after all, a contract -- AT&T is as much a party to that's contract's terms as you are.
When you change, whether because of this or otherwise, let both AT&T and your new wireless company know precisely why you changed. It doesn't, of course, matter if you're the only one who does that. And if I do it too, they'll just think we're weird. But when hundreds, when thousands do it, when they go into that AT&T office, sing a few bars of "Alice's Restaurant", and... er, what was I taking about?
There is currently a fairly big migration to Sprint, simply because they still have an real unlimited data plan for new customers. Sprint needs the customers, sure, and WiMax at 2500MHz has some issues as a 4G protocol. But basically, they offer a much better deal than AT&T and Verizon. That's become the center of their ad campaign, and their CEO says that "for now" unlimited plans are staying.
I don't actually have a problem with limited plans, either, just unfair limited plans. The all-you-can-eat plan makes perfect sense: I'm paying for everything I use this month, plain and simple. But the capped plans... in effect, I'm paying for 2GB or whatever. If I go over, I pay big fine rates... if I go under, AT&T or Verizon kill that extra data... data capacity I've already paid for. In short, the deals are designed to frighten me into always buying more data time than I'll use.
An honest capped plan would carry over all unused data, indefinitely. Or simply charge me a flat rate per MB. But none of the telcos actually want fair pricing.
And don't get me started on messages. The limit on an SMS message is 160 characters. So if I'm paying $10 for 1,000 messages, that's $10 for a maximum of 160K of data, or what, $62.50 per megabyte? Text ought to just be another kind of data... if Google can offer it free, the telcos can make unlimited messages a basic part of every package. They don't, because people are stupid and will pay big for what's essentially next to nothing.
Curiously, AT&T's lowest tier data plan costs $15, and ought to deliver all the SMS messages anyone would you need, and a little internet access. It's even fully integrated, if you're on a smart phone with Google Voice.
No, Google is in the technology business, much the same way that NBC is in the television news and entertainment business, and the National Football League is in the football business. All three use advertising as their primary revenue model, but none of them are themselves advertising companies.
While Google certainly built their various advertising engines, most of their work is designed web-based services that attract users, so that the advertising (which is, of course, placed and paid for by other companies) will generate revenue.
I used to believe it really didn't make a difference with Vodka. Until a Russian friend brought by two bottles of Stolichnaya Gold. Or maybe it was just because we finished one of them. These days, Penn 1681 is another great Vodka... and made in Pennsylvania.
No one's mastering audio to either CD or analog media with levels over 0dB. Just not going to be done.
And in fact, when you're making an LP, the mastering engineer has to apply the RIAA equalization curve. This boosts highs by about 20dB, so they don't vanish, and cuts lows by about 20dB, so the tracks don't get so wide they send your tone arm into your 8-track player. LPs are just plain evil... even the trendy ones they sell today.
The recording process is where digital and analog have to be treated differently. Unless you're recording though a compressor/limiter, go past 0dB VU on your digital recorder and you will in fact clip. On analog tape, you get a natural compression effect which is fairly pleasing to the ear. Some of that's simply that most of grew up on music recorded with the occasional bit of tape compression, so we have a bit of nostalgia for it. Digital recording engineers can get plug-ins that use analog modeling to replicate that sound, but with more control. And of course, the analog guys didn't necessarily run into tape compression accidently.. it was often done in the studio, intentionally, as an effect. Just like overdriving your tube amp, guitar feedback and distortion, etc.
It is not correct to use "Behringer" and "Pro" in the same sentence. Well, other than one like this. They're part of the problem -- the cheapest of the cheap.
Still bothers me, occasionally, to see something like one of the uber-expensive Nakamichi cassette decks I lusted after as a teenager, at a yard sale for $20 (ok, sure, these days I have a dual drive rack mount Tascam, and don't exactly recall the last time I needed to make a cassette for any purpose). But it's pretty certain that the Wal-Mart special audio gear will get chucked much sooner, probably not even lasting into a yard-sale-afterlife. So much of the current stuff is designed to be cheap and disposable. Some of the music, too...
But really, I can't see playing a 30 year old LP of "Dark Side of the Moon" on 30 year old gear, when you can play the (30th Anniversary?) SACD edition on modern gear. I wore at least two album versions out before upgrading to the CD and eventually the SACD.
The 30 year old whiskey, on the other hand...
It's actually worse than that -- the raw mix is probably fine. The mastering engineer has the dial cranked on the compressor -- that's how you turn a 24-bit master into a 16-bit CD or MP3 with, if you're lucky, 8-bits of actual dynamic range.
Of course, if that were true of all music, it might put upward pressure on ensuring a low THD on the amplifiers, even if dynamic range weren't important.
Some places, like HD Tracks, sell music with much better mastering... sometimes even no audio compression at all. I have a copy of Paul McCartney's "Band on the Run" mastered without compression, for example. And I guess I probably did play my original LP on my Dad's stereo... which probably did sound better. With his stereo, though, it might have had something to do with the actual stereo -- he built the tube amplifier himself (my Dad was an EE and manager in the test and measuring department at Bell Labs back in the day), and the speaker cabinets, based on 24"-or-so-inch woofers and some plans from Altec-Lansing for "Voice of the Theater" cabinet designs.
Of course, he only needed two speakers. I have seven, including the powered subwoofer. And my old man's TV was a huge 25" console... not comparable to my 71" DLP. Simple fact is that, back in the 60s and 70s, when you spent money on "home entertainment", it was probably music related: LPs, stereo gear, etc. Today, there's a wide variety of audio and video gear all vying for that same buck. And when I want the best sound, I unplug everything and play my Martin D15...
The Galaxy Tab 7 also comes with Android Market, Wi-fi only, and that's Android 2.2.
The iPod market itself is shrinking very rapidly. Apple will certainly try to reboot the whole line this fall, but this is not likely the best place to worry about Android devices. And Archos does seem to have this niche well covered, anyway.
As for "extremely small"... Android is now just over 30% of the tablet market, as of last quarter. That's hardly what I'd call "extremely small". Apple did 66% of the market... very good for Apple, but given they essentially owned the market last year (95%), a smaller percentage of a rapidly growing market (9.25 million iPads, more than twice this time last year).
And most of the business is actually on the name brand tablets, not the Chinese ripoffs. That's Asus, LG, Motorola, and particularly Samsung. HTC, Lenovo, and Sony are joining the party soon, on Android. And of course, you have Microsoft (Win7 tablets today), HP (WebOS), and RIM (PlayBook) each trying to suck less to establish a foothold at third place. Last quarter, it was Microsoft, even given that Window 7, and particularly Windows 7 applications, are not well suited as a tablet.
The patent being granted IS certification of validity, legally and everything. Sure, it doesn't mean it even remotely ought to be valid, but that's how the patent law works...once granted, it's someone else's job to prove invalidity.
The reason many patents were granted... well, there are so many. A good number of software patents were granted because the examiners at the PTO in these cases didn't know squat about software development, and so had no basis for rejecting them (well, or understanding them..). By all rights, given that part of the original basis for a patent is that the invention can't be "obvious to one skilled in the art", than it ought to hold that, if the patent is granted without being examined by one skilled in the specific art(s) applicable, it has to be invalidated, or at least suspended pending examination.
Another reason is prior art -- the patent applicant is supposed to include all known prior art, but they don't often do this. The PTO's search for prior art generally begins and ends with a search of existing patents... unless the specific examiner happens to "just know" about something else.
Public peer review is the real answer, but until there's a mechanism in the USA to force this, there are only a few programs around that work based on voluntary submissions of patent applications. The IEEE has such a peer review group... but you can't expect anyone with known dodgy patents will be submitting them. The PTO did launch the "Peer to Patent" program (http://www.peertopatent.org) a few years back, but it's fairly small scale. And working with universities only will limit the quality of the review, just as review by examiners often does.
I think lots of companies initially begin building their patent portfolios for defense. That was IBM's approach long ago... they were so big, they worried about anyone dropping a couple patents, say, on the IBM PC for example. So they negotiated cross licensing agreements with everyone. Problem was, you can't license in-kind against companies with just a handful of patents, just wouldn't be fair. When I dealt with them, they weren't all that bad on the costs.. you'd pay a percentage for one, two, or three-or-more. So 1,000 IBM patents in a product wouldn't run you any more money than three.
However, by then (late 80s) their patent department had become a very successful profit center. It has started gaming the system... their lawyers knew just what the PTO would approve, how to get things through, and this was not long after the US PTO had started allowing software patents. So IBM was patenting thousands of things that had existed for years, maybe decades... but of course, were not covered by existing patents. Because, of course, patents couldn't contain software, previously.
And when IBM came after your company or product, they'd hit you with a stack of 20-40 or so patents. Many didn't apply, many could trivially be invalidated in court (but, at least then, you very much DID have to go to court... so it could get crazy expensive). And there was a very good chance that, if you made it though that stack, there's be another. And another. And another. So pretty much everyone paid.
And that was then. One patent IBM was granted, in 1984 (!) was "cut and paste between text buffers"... exactly as used in Emacs back in the 70s, and probably a bunch of other wordprocessors and text editors. Under today's mentality, they'd be suing Apple, Microsoft, Google... pretty much the entire computer industry.... for allowing cut and paste. Regardless of the fact that, if my cut and paste algorithm functions differently than theirs, their patent doesn't apply (a patent is for a very specific implementation of something, not a concept or idea... it only gets treated as covering that idea, according to the patent holder, once granted). Not to mention that such a thing is "obvious to anyone skilled in the art".
Maybe. Probably the A5 processor, but it could be a different one... Apple's widely rumored to be in talks with other chip fab companies, to decouple themselves from Samsung. Currently, Samsung makes the A5, though unlike the A4, the A5 is supposedly an Apple-designed/integrated chip, rather than just the scaled-down Samsung SOC that was the A4.
New screen... unlikely. Apple has always used their screens in multiple models. Maybe a tweak to the backlight or something, but I expect it'll be fundamentally the same as the iPhone 4.
Camera's possible but difficult. The iPhone 4 has a very excellent 5 megapixel camera.... most 5 Mpixel cameras in other phones were not as good. But 5 Mpixel is already just about at the diffraction limit for a 1/4" sensor. You could go to 8Mpixel, but get less sharpness AND less low-light performance very easily. Sure, they could go to a better lens (wider than f2.0) or a larger sensor.. but then you're too large for the iPhone. And, while they also haven't changed the casework each time, when they do, it gets thinner. Which goes against any actual improvements to the camera beyond a pixel count bump.
The real big question I have: 4G or no 4G. For AT&T, they can get away with fake HPSA+ "4G", since that's probably just a tweak to the existing radio chip. But for Verizon, if they don't have LTE, they'll be way behind... particularly given Verizon's rapid expansion, and the fact that even regular HSPA is much faster than EvDO, unless you're in one of AT&T's overload zones. Of course, most consumers (and even more Apple buyers) don't know the technical details, but even they're aware of "4G" vs. "3G". Ok... not super aware... some 35% think the iPhone 4 is already 4G. And of course, if they do put in 4G, they can always call it "iPhone 4GS" and save the "iPhone 5" name for another time.
Apple's never going to keep up with every feature on every Android phone. But even for the moment, we're having to make trade-offs between Androids: this one has a great physical keyboard, that one's 4G but only single processor, the next one's dual core but only 3G, this one has a much higher resolution screen, but that one has a mindblowing AM-OLED display, etc. But do I want a 3.1", 3.5", 4", or 4.3" screen? Lots of choices, but I haven't quite found my Droid-replacement yet.
Apple's been competitive on features, but rarely leading on more than one or two lately, and usually not for long. If nothing else, the success of Android demonstrates that you can never be all things to all customers in a single model, much as Apple tries.
I do know of a Kernel called Linux.. but an OS? Where do I find this... and when did Linus get so busy and toss out all the GNU and other GPL/FOSS code?
Yup.. as low as 10,000 cycles for multi-level flash, and 100,000 cycles for single-level flash. Some are expected to last longer, but you pay for those, and of course, wear-leveling algorithms ensure that you don't see many failures, until it's all ready to fail.
Plus, flash isn't a replacement for DRAM. Sure, they are one of two things you can spend money on, but DRAM is a couple of thousands of times faster than flash, flash is of course non-volatile. Maybe some day, we can dump them both and use crazy amounts of MRAM or FeRAM or something of that ilk.
What they're really talking about in the article isn't flash vs. DRAM, it's the idea of adding flash as a read cache to an HDD. In this way, your most often read stuff will read at SDD speeds, without the cost of making the entire device SDD, and/or living with a tiny SDD (well, for some... my laptop has two 640GB HDDS). Again, nothing directly to do with RAM.
In fact, they work nicely together. Flash replaces a hard disc drive -- you put an SDD in as your system drive, sure. That will speed up loads at least, maybe saves. But it's all pointless if the drive wears out in a month or two. Thus, to go along with this, you want enough DRAM so that you're not actually using much virtual data memory, and thus, not thrashing that SDD into oblivion.
It's certainly true that it's pretty easy to buy enough DRAM for DRAM like things. It'll be cheaper to build an HDD cache in flash, and pretty efficient too, versus doing that in DRAM... largely because you're at the mercy of the SATA bus, which isn't remotely fast enough to justify DRAM. On the other hand, for about $50 or so, you get 8GB of DRAM these days, which is enough internal for nearly everyone not concerned with building large servers. I know this because it recently became not quite enough for me, so I ordered another 8GB. Sure, you can get 8GB of SDHC flash for $15, but the speed isn't comparable to a good SDD. And the only reason I needed more memory: editing panoramic photos, sets of 10-30, shot on a Canon 60D, converted from RAW to 48-bit TIFF. I use the same PC for electronics CAD, audio and video editing, programming, all the "regular" stuff, and this is the first time I came close to being short of DRAM.
What actually happens is that the world keeps ending. Most of those "end of the world" senarios actually do happen. It's just that, every time the world ends, it's immediately replaced by something nearly identical, only slightly weirder. But the weirdness stacks up over time... like the fact Congress seems to be at least half full of kindergartners, there might not be any football next fall, Budweiser bought Rolling Rock, and the highest rated TV show is a ten minute tape loop of the day's news about Casey Anthony. It's gettin' about time to turn pro...
Hold on... just because the more highly probably universes are being destroyed, those remaining must still be possible universes, no matter how improbable. Even when OJ and Casey Anthony's son becomes a first round draft pick for the Cubs, and sets all kinds of team and league records, they're still not going to actually win the Playoffs, much less the Series. At least, not without years of illegal experiments with exotic matter over there at the LHC, bending the very laws of physics in new and interesting ways.
Apple does use entirely off-the-shelf technology... they just buy so much, they can sometimes get their own shelf. They're not going to make their own Wifi chip, for example, but if they want some changes make, Broadcom will happily do a custom spin. Same with Samsung, on the A4 processor.
Apple's certainly now doing their own chip designs... these are still essentially off the shelf, but based on off-the-shelf designs (ARM Cortex A9, etc) just like most of the other chip makers in the mobile space. They don't actually make the chips.. but then again, neither does nVidia. And I'd expect Apple to move in that direction over time, doing more in custom, but only when they find an advantage to it. The big advantage of going to their own design in the A5 is that they don't have to let Samsung (an emerging rival who, unlike Apple, actually makes nearly every part in a smartphone or tablet) benefit from Apple's huge volumes.
You do realize that virtually all of the "innovation" by PC systems companies (eg, Apple, HP, Dell, etc) in the last 15-20 years has been casework, right? Pretty much all the actual innovation has been done by the chipsters: AMD/ATi, nVidia, Intel, etc.
So to say Apple doesn't innovate... have you seen their casework? They're right up there with Sony and the others who actually do make cool casework. I mean, given that each PC has essentially the same things inside, there's no much else to see here, folks. In fact, Apple's made the largest innovation in recent PC history: cases with fixed, non-replaceable batteries. Not necessarily a good thing, unless you're Apple (only they can sell you a replacement, and they can get full MSRP for it since you need to return the PC), but no one else thought of it.
There are definitely people just as passionate in their dislike of Apple as there are in their love of Apple. I know several.
The PC, on the other hand, is the market default. In some mature markets, there are probably one or more fairly commodified products that comprise the bulk of the market. In fact, when there's a strong leader, chance are they fit this mold. That rarely if ever generates the kind of fanaticism that a niche product can.
As an alternate, you can get that kind of fanaticism in a balance market with obvious rivalries. So you have Coke vs. Pepsi, Canon vs. Nikon (still cameras), Sony vs. Panasonic vs. Canon (video cameras), Ford vs. Chevy (trucks), etc. It's the choice between rivals as much as anything that ingenders this passion -- the fact you had to make that choice says something about you, it becomes part of your self-image. And it doesn't have to be about important differences, either... just like people get completely nuts over their favorite sports teams.
When you're the lack-luster default, which is the PC in the world of computing, there's no particular reason to be passionate about it. You may find some people crazy about a particular PC brand, but most, not so much. There are actually Windows fans, but they're kind of a sorry lot .. most Windows users are simply taking the path of least resistance: I need to run Altium Designer or Sony Vegas, I have to run Windows. Naturally, there are Linux fanatics, but they're nutso over the OS, or over Open Source, not folks to make a big deal about the platform.
This isn't always the way when building the market. Right now, the mobile sector remains fairly interesting, with Android in the lead, but Apple much more competitive than they've been in the PC market since the 70s, and both RIM and HP/Palm at least not yet down for the count. This could degenerate to a boring world of Android and a fanatic slice of Apple users, but it's not there yet... Android stuff is still pretty interesting, Apple's still actually in the volume game, and the others aren't gone.