3 ms·

Two points: 1. I've seen OS's come and go since CP/M. I don't get all fanboy-ish over them if I can help it. 2. I'm more interested in utility than ideology.

by cstross 14y ago

Two points: 1. I've seen OS's come and go since CP/M. I don't get all fanboy-ish over them if I can help it. 2. I'm more interested in utility than ideology. 3. (There is always one more point than you expect when you begin a list.) I was trying to call out the less common items I use, not the stuff everyone knows about and sees in every "ten vital utilities for your Android" article on the web.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cageface 14y ago
1. I've seen OS's come and go since CP/M. I don't get all fanboy-ish over them if I can help it. Likewise, but doesn't this seem like a kind of a crucial fork in the road for consumer electronics technology? The struggle between Apple (and Microsoft's) walled garden approach vs the Android bazaar seems to me to carry implications larger than previous rounds of this game, particularly when huge numbers of people are about to come online for the first time.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  It is just a replay of a well established cycle. For example, the Apple bazaar of the early 80s versus the entrenched minicomputer vendors.
- saurik 14y ago
  As one of the people users often come to asking "how do I root my XYZ", I must point out that while Android-the-platform sometimes feels like a bazaar, Android-the-product is a set of walled gardens that are slowly being organized under centralized management. The device you purchase may be able to install apps from third-party sources, but you are still limited to "apps" (not the kinds of hacks and features you find in Cydia for jailbroken iOS devices, except for a few carefully-chosen extensibility points such as "custom input manager"). The device itself is often still locked down, which is why people cheer on companies like Motorola saying they will allow people to unlock the bootloaders on their devices (and then immediately must jeer at them when they find out their device isn't actually on the supported list). Even at the OS level, the code is only open to a degree: getting patches in (and, to be clear: I succeeded early enough that some of my code is certainly on your device, so I'm not whining because I had code rejected) is painful because so much of the development is behind closed doors with releases to normal developers only happening right before actual product releases. The result is that if you find regressions in new versions, such as 4.1 (as I recently did: an issue with how bionic's linker handles constructors) the chance that it will be able to be fixed before the release (and subsequent stagnation) is really small (which also burned 4.0: there were issues where multi-CPU APKs extracted the wrong files). Meanwhile, Google is slowly replacing things that used to be open-source components of the base platform with closed-source "Google experience" apps (which vendors must license and then can't modify): the one that has seemed to cause the biggest stir (based on negative feedback from large hardware partners I talked to at I/O) being how Browser (which some vendors had tweaked to better take advantage of their video drivers) was replaced by Chrome (which, as many people don't realize this, I will point out is closed source on mobile: you can check out the test cases, but not the actual codebase to run on a device). The result is that this "crucial fork", to some, certainly to myself, feels more like choosing "the lesser of two evils" when faced with a two-party political system: where both candidates are saying 95% of the same things you disagree with, but you have to vote within the 5% they differ where you hope your opinion matters. Finally, even with all of that aside, even if you largely agree with one side of a debate, once you become a "fanboy" you lose your objectivity: everyone has some things they do poorly or that you disagree with, and to defend a position you have to admit those things to be trusted. (Thereby, I am somewhat saddened by the idea by the idea this thread started with: that if someone has purchased a product--a far cry from buying into a vision--and then "put a bunch of time into it", possibly even carefully comparing it to alternatives over a long decision period, that they then must like it.)
  - cageface 14y ago
    Android is certainly far from ideal, but in life we very rarely get the ideal. At least with Android I can take my business to another vendor if I disagree with a policy. And it may not be as open as I might like but there is still a world of difference between AOSP and what it enables and what is possible on iOS only through illegal hacks.
    - saurik 14y ago
      (I feel like I should take offense at you calling what I do "illegal": while nothing is easily proven "legal"--one can always just sue and see if it sticks--jailbreaking iPhones does not break any obvious laws and even managed to get an explicit exemption from the strongest candidate, the DCMA.)
      - cageface 14y ago
        I actually think jail breaking is a bad thing because it enables piracy and diminishes the appeal of less controlling alternatives. But I also think that it should be legal to do the kind of hacking you do so I support the method if not the results.

by cstross 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

cageface 14y ago

1. I've seen OS's come and go since CP/M. I don't get all fanboy-ish over them if I can help it. Likewise, but doesn't this seem like a kind of a crucial fork in the road for consumer electronics technology? The struggle between Apple (and Microsoft's) walled garden approach vs the Android bazaar seems to me to carry implications larger than previous rounds of this game, particularly when huge numbers of people are about to come online for the first time.

Daniel_Newby 14y ago
It is just a replay of a well established cycle. For example, the Apple bazaar of the early 80s versus the entrenched minicomputer vendors.
saurik 14y ago
As one of the people users often come to asking "how do I root my XYZ", I must point out that while Android-the-platform sometimes feels like a bazaar, Android-the-product is a set of walled gardens that are slowly being organized under centralized management. The device you purchase may be able to install apps from third-party sources, but you are still limited to "apps" (not the kinds of hacks and features you find in Cydia for jailbroken iOS devices, except for a few carefully-chosen extensibility points such as "custom input manager"). The device itself is often still locked down, which is why people cheer on companies like Motorola saying they will allow people to unlock the bootloaders on their devices (and then immediately must jeer at them when they find out their device isn't actually on the supported list). Even at the OS level, the code is only open to a degree: getting patches in (and, to be clear: I succeeded early enough that some of my code is certainly on your device, so I'm not whining because I had code rejected) is painful because so much of the development is behind closed doors with releases to normal developers only happening right before actual product releases. The result is that if you find regressions in new versions, such as 4.1 (as I recently did: an issue with how bionic's linker handles constructors) the chance that it will be able to be fixed before the release (and subsequent stagnation) is really small (which also burned 4.0: there were issues where multi-CPU APKs extracted the wrong files). Meanwhile, Google is slowly replacing things that used to be open-source components of the base platform with closed-source "Google experience" apps (which vendors must license and then can't modify): the one that has seemed to cause the biggest stir (based on negative feedback from large hardware partners I talked to at I/O) being how Browser (which some vendors had tweaked to better take advantage of their video drivers) was replaced by Chrome (which, as many people don't realize this, I will point out is closed source on mobile: you can check out the test cases, but not the actual codebase to run on a device). The result is that this "crucial fork", to some, certainly to myself, feels more like choosing "the lesser of two evils" when faced with a two-party political system: where both candidates are saying 95% of the same things you disagree with, but you have to vote within the 5% they differ where you hope your opinion matters. Finally, even with all of that aside, even if you largely agree with one side of a debate, once you become a "fanboy" you lose your objectivity: everyone has some things they do poorly or that you disagree with, and to defend a position you have to admit those things to be trusted. (Thereby, I am somewhat saddened by the idea by the idea this thread started with: that if someone has purchased a product--a far cry from buying into a vision--and then "put a bunch of time into it", possibly even carefully comparing it to alternatives over a long decision period, that they then must like it.)
- cageface 14y ago
  Android is certainly far from ideal, but in life we very rarely get the ideal. At least with Android I can take my business to another vendor if I disagree with a policy. And it may not be as open as I might like but there is still a world of difference between AOSP and what it enables and what is possible on iOS only through illegal hacks.
  - saurik 14y ago
    (I feel like I should take offense at you calling what I do "illegal": while nothing is easily proven "legal"--one can always just sue and see if it sticks--jailbreaking iPhones does not break any obvious laws and even managed to get an explicit exemption from the strongest candidate, the DCMA.)
    - cageface 14y ago
      I actually think jail breaking is a bad thing because it enables piracy and diminishes the appeal of less controlling alternatives. But I also think that it should be legal to do the kind of hacking you do so I support the method if not the results.