[GRLUG] Android PDA

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Adam Tauno Williams
<awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> 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!].

What causes me worry is that the fan base is seeping into groups of
people I thought knew better. :)

[snip]

>>  *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.

What I'd love to see is some standardized GUI extension of the
consumer-producer model; taking structured inputs and outputs and
allowing a window-manager analog to manage it. I think block terminals
were *almost* there, but got lost in the competition for "looking
pretty". Remove the GUI distraction from the programmer's job, and
allow him to write a tight, efficient program on the same budget, or
allow him to write the same level quality for a lot cheaper.

>
>> 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.

I don't have a good way to word what I'm seeing. The best I can
describe it is the odd continuation of the non-portable-app tolerance.
(No, I don't see Apple's tight control over *what* apps may be run as
being a pattern copied over.)

>
> 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*.

You want to get and receive your email, and have access to your vCard
collection, right? Nothing stops those core features from being
present in the phone software, and nothing stops those simplified
forms of apps from running on a netbook or full desktop. Heck, I'd
*jump* at that, and I'd think that any organization that spends a lot
of money on GUI terminal servers would want to find the lightest
applications that met their feature requirements.

I also don't know anyone who runs Mozilla (or Seamonkey), preferring
the lighter, faster Firefox in its place. (Don't laugh; that's why
Firefox was created in the first place, way back when as Phoenix.)

>  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.

Again, a UI issue. I just mentioned above that I'd love to see UI
abstracted out. I'm a functional and utilitarian guy, and as a
programmer, there's nothing I hate more than having to deal with
prettying-up a UI at $X/hour out of a limited number of billable hours
because people can't adapt to something that's not an artistically
perfect metaphor to some physical object or interface.
*coughMicrosftBobcough*

>  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.

The obvious difference is the libc, if you're writing your apps in a
low-level language. Amazingly enough, Windows users can download a
machine-code binary and run it directly, so long as they grabbed the
version for the right architecture. (x86 vs x64, obviously, but there
are some irritants between different ARM versions.)

As for differentiated APIs, well, that'll get sorted out eventually as
devices and interfaces get standardized. I just hope we don't get
locked into something incredibly restrictive.

-- 
:wq