http://the-anti-google-baloney.blogspot.com/2008/09/enough-said-innovation-developer.html

-Andy
http://www.cordless-phones.uk.com/blog/

Behold its aspect of perfection, SEE the miracle of its intertwined functionality, FEEL the ephemeral quality of the finest materials humanity has ever brought together to craft nothing short of a technological miracle. Your children will talk in hushed tones of you, you will go down the legends of the ages as stories are told of you, happy consumer, who were so lucky to live in times that allowed for such marvels to exist. Your name will be spoken in awe, your reputation as a herald of the new age will be cemented in the myriads of messages that will travel the vast chasms of time and space as testimony to your sheer greatness.

Applaud yourself and everybody who was so fortunate to buy a sku of this production run for ne’er will there be another one like it.

“It’s not only about the end user experience, it’s about our freedom. And us Linux geeks understood this many years ago. Let’s hope the rest of the world wakes up.”

That last sentence indicates that you realize you’re in the minority here. It has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with user experience. I care about technical freedom only insofar as it impacts my user experience. No more, no less. DRM is a restriction of freedom that also hampers my user experience. Verizon forcing me to pay $5 a month for a small number of poorly designed apps ruins the user experience. Microsoft building a monopoly and locking people in to a single file format leads to a negative user experience. These restrictions of freedom aren’t inherently bad, they’re bad because they make our lives and computing experiences worse.

My Linux server at home (MythTV) gives me the freedom to run anything I can figure out how to install and configure, but the user experience is in many ways, to put it bluntly, quite terrible. Unless I spend an average of a half-hour a day reading forum postings (some weeks more, some weeks less) and keeping up on my technical skills I can’t exercise my wonderful freedom. You’re “free” to do what you want if you happen to have a technical mindset and can afford the expense of figuring it out. That’s like saying you’re free to speak your mind as long as you’re speaking in Klingon. You’ve technically given everyone freedom even though only a handful of people will be able to realize.

But back on topic: My phone needs to make calls, not political statements.

P.S. I’m assuming you’re being facetious when you give the specific example of Apple erasing the app that reminds your grandmother to take her pills. As you might know Apple has removed apps from the store, but to my knowledge they have not removed the existing apps from phones. And while I’ve been surprised and saddened by their choices of what to remove from the app store, Apple is still a public company and I doubt potentially life-saving applications would be among the ones removed.

A developer ON A MAC with a great idea for an app, might go with the iPhone. Don’t forget the Android SDK is not only cross-platform, but Java-based. Meaning a Windows Dev who doesn’t know “Objective C” now has an option beyond buying a new computer and learning a new programming language language to code for a next-gen mobile device:D

Porn apps? Please tell me you’re joking. You do realize that these devices (G1 & iPhone) are able to browse the internet (i.e. browse the land of porn), right? And another shocker: teens view porn.

But you have fair points on the validity of Apple’s success. There’s a market for people who don’t mind greater top-down control and are willing to pay out the ass for the same hardware capabilities. Fair enough. However, it’s quite short-sighted to think that Android won’t be user-friendly. I’d bet, within a couple years — given Google’s support and a growing mass of developers behind it — it’ll turn into something extremely smart and something with much broader appeal, even for the technically-challenged. :)

No. The main difference between Apple and Google is that if your grandma has an application that reminds her to take her pills on time, Apple could erase her app and kill her just because someone at Apple thought it “could confuse users” or was “replicating Apple’s funcionality”. It’s not only about the end user experience, it’s about our freedom. And us Linux geeks understood this many years ago. Let’s hope the rest of the world wakes up.

great. porn apps o’plenty for the g1!! just wait until under-age teens start downloading that stuff from the android store.

the rest of the world are not all geeks who give 2 craps about what freedom they have to buy apps. if it’s functional, worthwhile, fun or just plain silly, but quality made, people will buy it. you can certainly develop a worthwhile program under apple’s conditions can’t you?

listen, i’m all for the “freedom” to do what you want & am happy YOU can make something worthwhile. i am not a developer nor do i care about learning to do so. i just want something that works for me. apple makes those products. if they feel that they have to be the overlord over their own product to keep the crap out, so be it. some people aren’t happy with them in the gray area of what is acceptable, but by & large most people are happy. android, without careful oversight has the possibility of turning into 95% crap, which apple will not let happen to their mobile platform. so until you linux geeks can build a consumer-friendly GUI have fun being nothing but the rebels of the unix world.

The Big List: 30 critical issues with Google G1 phone
http://counternotions.com/2008/09/24/g1/

http://gizmodo.com/5053734/how-many-google-phone-engineers-does-it-take-to-tell-the-time