[GRLUG] Android PDA

Adam Tauno Williams awilliam at whitemice.org
Tue May 4 12:06:17 EDT 2010


On Tue, 2010-05-04 at 11:24 -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> (This isn't pointed directly at Ron; it's just a growing trend I've
> only noticed in the last few days.)
> Wow...I'm getting a little worried; the Android fan base is beginning
> to sound like Apple's. 

"fan" bases always sound the same.  They make a loud senseless whirring
sound.  And when connected to the Internet they create floods of
reference-free banal BLOG posts some of which masquerade as articles in
trade rags.  [Witness: Ubuntu,  an awesome distro where according to one
article you can color code the output of ls!  Oh my!  Take that Redhat
and SuSE users!].

> Yes, I'll very specifically acknowledge that
> Android isn't walled off the way the iPhone is, it's open source, and
> you've got a lot of control over it.  I'll note, though, that the
> Google devs didn't do a very good job adapting the Linux kernel to
> their hardware in a way that allows the changes to be integrated back
> to mainline,

One could level the same charge at Xen developers, and others.  This
causes me little to no concern [I use both Android and Xen (via
Linnode)].   I've little to no doubt these issues will be resolved, or
simple become irrelevant.

<aside>This is my position even though I put Google on the same page as
Apple and Microsoft when it comes to advocating very-closed
absolutely-vendor-lockedin solutions.</aside>

>  *and* I've only been hearing about apps that "run on
> Android", not apps that "also run on Android."

Of course, the cross-platform mobile application is a persistent
delusion.  No such things have existed or do exist or are likely to
exist.  Between the phone (resource-constrained [screen size]) and the
desktop the interface model are too vastly different.  And between
mobile apps you'd need to *precisely* match the UI elements of the
device.  Even apps sold for *both* Palm OS and WinCE [Agendus, etc...]
where [are?] entirely different apps with the same name and *similar*
functionality.  Just run a WinForms app in GNOME to know whey nobody
wants WebOS apps on their Android of vice versa; it'd be the same issue
on 10x worse.

> It's almost as though
> the Android fan base is effectively duplicating some of the software
> ecology they hate about the iPhone.

How so?  

If you mean the concept of a "repository" [call it a "marketplace" or
whatever] then they are duplicating the software ecology the iPhone
duplication from yum/apt/zypper which yum/apt/zypper duplication from
Red Carpet.

Otherwise I fail to see it.

Note that I can merrily install apps on the Android without going
through the marketplace - no rooting or anything required - just toggle
a check box.

> Here we are talking about and enjoying open source and
> interoperability, and I'm repeatedly amazed that nobody notices the
> lack (or lauds the presence) of app portability between Android, other
> Linux phones and Linux+netbook+phone radio.

Because , I believe, app portability makes no sense in this context.
What I want from Evolution is different than what I want from Contacts
on my phone - but I want them to share *data*.  And how I expect Address
book to behave on Palm OS is very different than how I expect it to
behave on iPhone or Android.   I don't think that multiple mobile
devices use the same kernel (Linux) means much of anything to app
developers who are using exposed APIs that are very device specific.




More information about the grlug mailing list