[clug] Android in the Business Press

[Alex Satrapa]

On 14/05/2010, at 13:35 , Hal wrote:

> Farmers do not have to re-do >50% of their efforts to switch sales channels.  (More than 50% of any mobile app is the UI.) The same vegies can be sold to coles and woolworths and the local green grocer.

I'm pretty sure most contracts between woolworths and the producers will involve committment to certain levels of supply, with the farmer paying penalties if they cannot supply (to give woolies the money to buy the stock from elsewhere).

But at this stage the analogy is wearing far too thin.

> Iphone tethering, iphone mobile wireless hotspot. Is that working out in the interests of Apple's customers or in the interests of Apple's revenue with deals they're doing with carriers for their profit at their cusomers' additional expense?

iPhone tethering works just fine - it's up to the carrier to allow tethering on your phone.

You can get tethering for free with at least one of Virgin's or Vodafone's plans. Optus charges you $10/month, and then you have to buy data on top of that at three times the going rate for 3G wireless (which troubles me, I was under the impression that the phone and 3G wireless use exactly the same technology, why do we have to pay 3x the amount for the same service? it's not Apple's fault, I'm sure, otherwise the premium rate for data on a phone plan would only apply to iPhones).

> *I* do my editorial control, thank you very much. It's a bullsh**t excuse for apple to abuse platform control worse than microsoft. Qt & Maemo (gtk) or WX on the ipad, is it going to happen? Same reason. If a flash (or qt or whatever) app is better for the money given similar marketing, than an iphone native app it will sell better.

One of the main reasons I can't stand using Linux GUIs of any flavour for long is the total lack of coherent interface standards.

> That decision should be a cusomer's choice not a platform vendor's. I can write apps for microsoft without microsoft's permission or them taxing my revenue. I don't need to explain to this list how far Microsoft are from the ideal ;) Some people seem to have missed that Apple are worse from this perspective. (This gets lost because they're better technically because you get a bash prompt and something unix like and maybe some other reasons too.)

When Microsoft Windows Phone 7 comes to market (probably the same day Duke Nukem Forever arrives), you can bring Microsoft into the argument.

For the moment, compare desktop to desktop. Apple doesn't exercise editorial control on desktop apps, or Web apps for that matter. Web apps are cross platform, they run just as well on Safari as they do on Firefox, Internet Explorer 9 (in theory), or Chrome. The sky's the limit when it comes to innovating in the user experience space, with web apps. Knock yourself out. Alternately you can jailbreak your iPhone (just remember to change the password for the SSH shell).

Web apps based on HTML 5 and associated technologies are here already. You can write them now, and use them on any iPhone, Android, WebOS or even desktop client without paying anyone for the right to have your application available to your customers.

> I don't care for flash, but this is my choice.

Which is a good thing since a functional Flash player is not available for any smartphone platform yet.  Flash 10.1 is supposedly coming out Real Soon Now™.

> Real competition to please customers is good. Competition to control them not so much.

Pleasing customers can also be done by presenting applications that are consistent in look & feel with other applications on that platform. Competition based on consistent presentation of new features to customers is where this game is going.

If you want absolute freedom to innovate in the "Free Software on mobile platforms" space, get into web apps. There are no restrictions on any platform on what you're allowed to do with web apps.

Alex