14 ms·

ESR: The Smartphone Wars: CyanogenMOD Rising

44 points by srl 15y ago

AndrewDucker 15y ago
I wish that more phone companies would produce plain Google phones, and not feel the need to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market by plastering their own designs over the top. Heck, I'd settle for _one_ company doing that.
- Daniel14 15y ago
  Motorola?
  - AndrewDucker 15y ago
    I thought they had their own overlay. Have they switched to providing pure Android?
    - arebop 15y ago
      They had Motoblur on some devices, and they had "pure" Android on others. Pure is scare-quoted because of course Motorola still had proprietary drivers and carriers who distributed Droids still added their bundled apps and disabled objectionable features such as wifi hotspot.
    - bryanlarsen 15y ago
      Hopefully getting purchased by Google will have that effect...
- martey 15y ago
  The CEO of Motorola recently suggested that phone companies pursue this strategy because of wireless phone carriers: http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-jha-verizon-and-at-t-dont-want-seven-stock-android http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-j...
sylvanaar 15y ago
Sensationalist article.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  I don't see why, if CyanogenMOD use is in fact rising. The rest of the title is about as sensational as the rest of the article, which is to be expected of an editorial.
  - batista 15y ago
    Well, the article says: "CyanogenMOD, the third-party, fully-open, bloatware-free port of Android, has recently passed a million installs." I don't see it going that much further, and the number (which is obviously worldwide) is almost insignificant. Hell, there are hardcore geek-oriented programming tools / frameworks etc that have had that many downloads or even more. For example, Eclipse Europa, a single release of the Eclipse Java IDE, had announced 2.8 million downloads. So I see it more as a curiosity for hackers and tinkerers that is near its peak, than an actual platform that is on the rise and will have any impact on the market. Even Linux never conquered the desktops of the great masses, and Linux has had even more benefits to it, especially being totally free as in beer to use, while with CyanogenMOD you still need to pay for your contract.
casca 15y ago
It's true that a small number of people are installing the excellent CyanogenMOD (1 million out of 170 million), there are believed to be far more people who have jailbroken their iphones. Just like CyanogenMOD, this will always be a niche product for a tiny group of enthusiasts, as most people can't rely on their local friendly hacker to perform upgrades and maintain their phones. I suspect the bloatware that networks routinely install on the phones is one reason that the iphone will continue to be so successful, despite the significant cost premium. Networks have been doing this for many years and for some reason believe that it gives them a competitive advantage. Perhaps they know something we don't.
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  You don't need a hacker to upgrade and maintain CyanogenMOD. You might need one to install it, but once it's on there it's simple to upgrade & maintain.
saturdaysaint 15y ago
Meanwhile, a new iPhone jailbreak was downloaded over a million times in three days - http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/23/a5-jailbreak-absinthe-installed-almost-1-million-times-over-the-last-3-days/ http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/23/a5-jailbreak-absinthe-installe.... But really, infering the intentions of the users d/l-ing Cyanogen is ridiculous. A million downloads is exactly the tiny fraction of the population that you would expect to tinker and modify.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  I've never had an iPhone, so I could be wrong here, but... Isn't an iPhone jailbreak just a hack to let you install arbitrary apps? If I'm right, than your comparison is silly. Cyanogenmod is a complete replacement operating system...
  - batista 15y ago
    His comparison is apt. When "just a hack" has more downloads in much less time that a "complete replacement operating system", the numbers are not in your favor.
    - mike-cardwell 15y ago
      No, it's about as "apt" as comparing Cyanogenmod installations to Angry Bird downloads.
      - batista 15y ago
        This also sounds totally apt. If just a game on one OS platform has orders of magnitudes more downloads that your OS, then your OS is nowhere near as popular as the other OS. Are people unfamiliar with the notion of subsets? Two sets doesn't have to contain the same type of items. If the type of set A is a subset of the type of B, and the number of items on A is bigger, then A is bigger than B for every supertype too.
- pavelkaroukin 15y ago
BrainInAJar 15y ago
Why on earth does anyone pay any attention to esr? He wrote some Perl scripts 15 years ago and a bad essay 10 years ago and now for some reason he's lauded as a champion of open source rather than the self-aggrandizing blowhard that he is

44 points by srl 15y ago

I wish that more phone companies would produce plain Google phones, and not feel the need to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market by plastering their own designs over the top. Heck, I'd settle for _one_ company doing that.

Daniel14 15y ago
Motorola?
- AndrewDucker 15y ago
  I thought they had their own overlay. Have they switched to providing pure Android?
  - arebop 15y ago
    They had Motoblur on some devices, and they had "pure" Android on others. Pure is scare-quoted because of course Motorola still had proprietary drivers and carriers who distributed Droids still added their bundled apps and disabled objectionable features such as wifi hotspot.
  - bryanlarsen 15y ago
    Hopefully getting purchased by Google will have that effect...
martey 15y ago
The CEO of Motorola recently suggested that phone companies pursue this strategy because of wireless phone carriers: http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-jha-verizon-and-at-t-dont-want-seven-stock-android http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-j...

sylvanaar 15y ago

Sensationalist article.

burgerbrain 15y ago
I don't see why, if CyanogenMOD use is in fact rising. The rest of the title is about as sensational as the rest of the article, which is to be expected of an editorial.
- batista 15y ago
  Well, the article says: "CyanogenMOD, the third-party, fully-open, bloatware-free port of Android, has recently passed a million installs." I don't see it going that much further, and the number (which is obviously worldwide) is almost insignificant. Hell, there are hardcore geek-oriented programming tools / frameworks etc that have had that many downloads or even more. For example, Eclipse Europa, a single release of the Eclipse Java IDE, had announced 2.8 million downloads. So I see it more as a curiosity for hackers and tinkerers that is near its peak, than an actual platform that is on the rise and will have any impact on the market. Even Linux never conquered the desktops of the great masses, and Linux has had even more benefits to it, especially being totally free as in beer to use, while with CyanogenMOD you still need to pay for your contract.

casca 15y ago

It's true that a small number of people are installing the excellent CyanogenMOD (1 million out of 170 million), there are believed to be far more people who have jailbroken their iphones. Just like CyanogenMOD, this will always be a niche product for a tiny group of enthusiasts, as most people can't rely on their local friendly hacker to perform upgrades and maintain their phones. I suspect the bloatware that networks routinely install on the phones is one reason that the iphone will continue to be so successful, despite the significant cost premium. Networks have been doing this for many years and for some reason believe that it gives them a competitive advantage. Perhaps they know something we don't.

bryanlarsen 15y ago
You don't need a hacker to upgrade and maintain CyanogenMOD. You might need one to install it, but once it's on there it's simple to upgrade & maintain.

saturdaysaint 15y ago

Meanwhile, a new iPhone jailbreak was downloaded over a million times in three days - http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/23/a5-jailbreak-absinthe-installed-almost-1-million-times-over-the-last-3-days/ http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/23/a5-jailbreak-absinthe-installe.... But really, infering the intentions of the users d/l-ing Cyanogen is ridiculous. A million downloads is exactly the tiny fraction of the population that you would expect to tinker and modify.

mike-cardwell 15y ago
I've never had an iPhone, so I could be wrong here, but... Isn't an iPhone jailbreak just a hack to let you install arbitrary apps? If I'm right, than your comparison is silly. Cyanogenmod is a complete replacement operating system...
- batista 15y ago
  His comparison is apt. When "just a hack" has more downloads in much less time that a "complete replacement operating system", the numbers are not in your favor.
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    No, it's about as "apt" as comparing Cyanogenmod installations to Angry Bird downloads.
    - batista 15y ago
      This also sounds totally apt. If just a game on one OS platform has orders of magnitudes more downloads that your OS, then your OS is nowhere near as popular as the other OS. Are people unfamiliar with the notion of subsets? Two sets doesn't have to contain the same type of items. If the type of set A is a subset of the type of B, and the number of items on A is bigger, then A is bigger than B for every supertype too.
pavelkaroukin 15y ago

BrainInAJar 15y ago

Why on earth does anyone pay any attention to esr? He wrote some Perl scripts 15 years ago and a bad essay 10 years ago and now for some reason he's lauded as a champion of open source rather than the self-aggrandizing blowhard that he is