Rubénerd!

It's as inevitable as the WiFi failing at UTS: I go to an anime club screening or to one of my classes, and someone jeers at me for having a Mac laptop and/or an iPhone. When I ask why, they say I'm a tool of advertising, and that I should be using an Android device with three words in its name, or something.

I use Apple products

There are practical and personal reasons why I use Apple devices. Having tried the rest, Apple have the best after sales support and student discounts, absolutely no competition. The iOS platform runs the best of breed software for my needs. OmniFocus is the best GTD organiser, NetBot and TweetBot are the best ADN and Twitter clients, Sleep Cycle is the best health application. If I gamed, I'm pretty sure they'd be on iOS too.

Then there are reasons I don't use the competition. Android's anaemic and patchy font offerings don't please a typography nerd like me, and the platform is made by an advertising company whom I've increasingly lost trust in. I don't like the UI direction Windows Phone and Windows 8 are taking. Tizen could be appealing, but it's not mature enough yet. Blackberry has nice hardware, but not the software I need. My beloved Palm has all but died.

Foam foam foam!

Reading Marco Arment's Magazine article on the issue, I can relate to his experience. You shouldn't ever read blog comments anyway, but if you unfortunately do by accident, the web is saturated with angry Android fans.

As I said in the intro, this isn't just limited to the web, I get this iRL too. I have a hoodie with an Apple logo on it, and have even been accosted by Android users while waiting for a train, telling me with colourful language that I brainwash people and that their phones are better. The irony of their mob mentality was seemingly lost on them.

I'm not a sociologist, and am not aware what it is about the Android platform that breeds this vitriolic, knee jerk mindset in a larger subset of their users. I think it goes deeper than simple logical reasoning.

Whatever the case, it's a sad state of affairs when people like @TypeDom have to specifically say they're platform agnostic, then explain why. I should be able to just say I use Apple products without having to say I also run Linux and BSD to take some of the heat off. Having Tux on the lid of my MacBook Air seems to have helped a lot. Because yes, shock horror, I also use Linux. I must be pretty brainwashed by advertising.

Ultimately, people will use the devices that suit their needs and budget. For a large percentage of people, that's an Apple device.

That has to be the worst graphic I've ever thrown together. It was lots of fun! :D

Gingerbreadedness

From the review of the Orange San Diego by Mat Smith on Engadget:

The first generation of Intel-powered Android phones has arrived, and while the chip maker doesn't appear to be claiming that its initial efforts are world-beaters, we've been promised a chipset that prioritizes what people want most: capable web browsing, strong camera performance and robust battery life.

Contrary to what Eric Schmidt promised us, and in line with most handsets, it doesn't currently run the latest version of Android. Don't worry, the carrier will provide an update though! Uh huh ;).

The San Diego runs on Android Gingerbread. We've been told that Ice Cream Sandwich can already run on this hardware, but it still won't be seen on these devices until Q4.

And if I may make one more friendly dig at Android, since when have you read a review about an iOS device that also includes this?

It's difficult to describe what's been done to stock Android. For every change Orange made, some parts were left completely unaffected -- like an increasingly rare stock version of the app drawer. We were able to scrape back most of what Orange had wrought -- aside from the dated orange app icons.

So why is a fairly generic, outdated Android device with carrier cruft interesting?

I like chips

The chip dominating the mobile world at the moment is ARM. Compared to the infinitely more complex x86 platform, ARM chips are smaller, draw less power, and have the added benefit of sounding like a limb.

Intel has been trying to make inroads into the mobile market, first with their Atom CPUs to keep ARM off netbooks. They've largely been successful, or at least as successful as one can be in the limited, bottom-of-the-barrel notebook market.

Phones are another story entirely though; every day we read articles about how more and more people are eschewing their computers for phones to browse the net, and an increasing number are being introduced to the net with phones. There's every reason to believe phones will be the number 1 platform for accessing the net in the coming years, if it isn't already.

Intel wants a piece of the action, and this may be their first, low key demonstration of that intention.

To me though, they face two challenges:

1. The architecture itself has so much more baggage attached to it than ARM, they'll always have a competitive disadvantage. Intel have the benefit of extraordinary R&D facilities and funds, but they're ultimately competing with an architecture that's fundamentally simpler and more energy efficient.

2. Whereas Windows on x86 ensured a constant demand for their chips, mobile OSs like Android have largely been built to be platform agnostic. In this way, Intel don't have the guaranteed market in the mobile space they had on the desktop. To be fair though, this cross-platform nature could also work in their favour if the Intel platform is able to surpass ARM.

What's fascinating to me is the news that AMD has licenced certain ARM components, which suggests their lead competitors are going in the opposite direction.

Was intrigued by this graphic from the Windows Live login screen. Arguably all three phones are displaying the same information for each message, and (barring the names) even the text is a similar size. Yet iOS and Android manage six to seven full previews, and WP only does four.

I'm not arguing message counts and more efficient layouts automatically correlate with increased productivity or usability, but it'd certainly cut down on time spent scrolling!

Lead story on the magazine cover:

New Super Tablets: Gunning for the iPad 3
The thinnest, most powerful Android tablets ever, Apple can't stop them!

As Gruber would say, filing this for future "claim chowder" ;).

John Gruber on the lack of Flash in Chrome for Android:

Remember when Android’s (and the BlackBerry Playbook’s, and WebOS’s) support for Flash was supposed to be a competitive advantage against iOS?

I was called out by multiple people when I defended Apple's move to not include Flash, and made the case that mobile Flash made no sense. I'm sure it was the same for John; after all, we're just fanboys!

Still, while it's tempting to engage in a little schadenfreude, the pertitent detail is Adobe ceased support for the mobile version of Flash, it wasn't Google's decision. They don't deserve ire, or praise, as a result.

That Topolsky has no major gripes like this about the Galaxy Nexus makes me think Android 4.0 might really be the first good version of Android. Which in turn makes me think Steve Jobs wasn’t far off at the 2007 iPhone introduction when he claimed the iPhone was five years ahead of the competition. ~ Daring Fireball

Makes sense then why it's taking Microsoft an age to formulate a response with Windows Phone. Eric Schmidt was on Apple's board during the iPhone's development and had access to all that inside information, and it still took Google this long to develop a polished competitor.

Still, if all the reviews of Android 4 are as positive, I might give it a look again. My beloved WebOS seems to be sinking fast, and as much as I'd love to have a MeeGo/Tizen phone or tablet, I don't hold out much hope for that either.

It's just hearsay in the press for now, so let's not celebrate prematurely!

Ah why not? *throws confetti, then vacuums it up*

From a report in Wired:

In an abrupt about-face in its mobile software strategy, Adobe will soon cease developing its Flash Player plug-in for mobile browsers, according to an e-mail sent to Adobe partners on Tuesday evening.

I'll be waiting for official confirmation from Adobe on this before getting too excited. If a journalist receiving the email misinterpreted it or jumped the gun in a desperate attempt for a scoop, it wouldn't be the first time.

Still, if its true Adobe really is ceasing development of Flash plugins for mobile devices, it's absolutely fantastic news and hopefully signals the end of this whole sordid debate that has been raging for years.

"Sordid" sounds like a "soggy sword", which makes no sense. Unless they were made of cardboard, which makes even less sense. Why would you have a cardboard sword?

We're being open by facilitating closed plugins!

Apple of course famously didn't include Flash in its iDevices, and copped more heat for it even than folks like me who defended their decision on our blogs. Never mind that Adobe didn't have a working prototype for mobile Flash for years after the iPhone's release, or that half the user interactions weren't possible on capacitive touch screens, or that when it was finally released it worked poorly. As far as the tech press was concerned, this was just Apple being all control-freaky.

Control freaky. Super freak. Super freak. She's super freaky!

Still, that didn't stop the competition advertising their support for it in an attempt to differentiate their iClones, even when they predictably failed to deliver (surprise, surprise!). Google even went as far as to advertise their platform as being more free by including Flash, presumably employing the same reality distortion field that allowed them to claim Android was open source. Hey, they're not Apple, so it's okay!

If this story is true and Adobe are ending mobile Flash plugins, I have new found respect for them. I can haz Flash removed on the desktop too now? :D

Madoka Flashica

As an addendum, I started putting Kyubey in all my posts about Flash; not entirely sure why, he just seemed to fit XD. Anyway, with the end of mobile Flash, we can presume it will cease to be included in Android soon, which means I may need to revert my Kyubey/Android icon too. Darn, more work to do!

Android may overwhelmingly be the target for malware in the mobile space, but as usual the media have got the details wrong!

Kyubey has the Android logo's eyes and ears!

McAfee's Threat Report for the second quarter of 2011 (PDF link) listed iOS as having no malware, and Android as having an order of magnitude more malware than any other platform. Understandably, the media have pounced on the latter... well, not as much as they would have if it were iOS, but still.

While I'm not an Android fan, the problem here isn't the OS but the OEMs that distribute it. It can be an unclear distinction for most consumers who just see "phones" (which is why the whole iOS versus Android debate is silly) but it's important.

While tech savvy folk would presumably prefer an unmodified copy of Android installed on their phones (the Microsoft Signature Experience, but for Google), their third party PlaysForSure hardware manufacturers have a vested interest in differentiating their products from the competition. This may come in the form of alternative user interfaces, additional applications, and/or modified defaults and branding... all of which would need to be thoroughly tested for compatibility with any Android updates.

They say Branding, she's a fine girl...

Unlike vertically integrated manufacturers like Apple and RIM that can push updates to all compatible devices as soon as they're made available, official Android updates have to be made available by these manufacturers, some of which are better Android citizens than others.

This middle man approach unavoidably introduces a delay, which is why a startling percentage of Android devices are still running older versions of the OS. It's not Google's fault, or the fault of consumers.

This potentially may have been one of the reasons why Google bought Motorola: by being the manufacturer they could ensure the latest software updates are always made available for their devices, and in a quick and timely fashion. They have experience with pushing regular updates with Google Chrome, this would allow them to do this on mobile hardware as well.

Given the closed direction of Android they've started with Honeycomb, it could be another reason for OEMs to worry.

So we all know Android isn't as open as claimed, but could it even be in violation of the GPL? Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents sides with the SFC and the SFLC and thinks it is; I defer to his expertise.

I'm continuously baffled by just how readily so many F/OSS advocates line up to defend Android, even as Google develops it in a cathedral, flips on their definition of open, closes the code to all but select hardware partners, the sues Microsoft for disclosure of this open code. To me, an OS being misrepresented as free and/or open source is far more damaging to the F/OSS community cause than one that isn't.

If Apple used GPL code in the iOS kernel then did this, it'd cause more than a few heart attacks. As I asked back in the days of Antennagate, why the double standard?

In any event, Google owes the F/OSS community an apology and some action. They're a good company and I'm confident they can correct these problems, if they want to.

“Our vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android as an open platform and a vibrant open source community,” Android head honcho Andy Rubin said in a statement. ~ Wired

Not content with just copying the iPhone UI, now Google is trying their hand at generating their own reality distortion field. It's open, darn it!

Fortunately there are still enough people willing to rush to their defence. ;)