I see your Android slam and raise you a truth

I have a friend that is a die hard Apple guy.  He loves their products.  He has one of everything and champions them to no end.   I never used any of their products until I got an iPhone.  I spent two years with it and liked it a lot,  I had the 3G and up until the Evo launched it was the best phone on the market (well platform since the #Gs was marginally better than the 3G).  I always had problems with the restrictions on the phone,   but more and more I began to hate their censorship of content.  He and I of course go back and forth busting balls about which is the better system,  Android and the Evo or iOS and the iPhone.

This post is about an article my friend (the mighty Iron Crow) sent me.   On the surface it really makes Android look bad,  almost evil.  But once you pick it apart,  well it becomes pure PR bullshit from the fucked up mind of a fanboy.

Source Link:  http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/08/02/piracy_problems_undermine_androids_growth_against_iphone.html

According to a report by Jay Yarow of Silicon Alley Insider, a developer of one of Android’s top ten apps is seeing 97 percent of players in Asia using an illegal copy, 70 percent in Europe, and 43 percent in North America.

These figures are very general,  so attacking them is tough.  I will say that PC piracy stats could rival this.  You know the PC (Personal Computer not just Windows) where you can go to a torrent site and download pirated apps.  Microsoft and Apple do not get blamed for piracy on their systems,  but let’s blame Google for piracy on their system.

Does Apple’s App Store system help prevent piracy?  Yes.   But like all things it comes at a cost.  To build an app for the iOS you need a Mac that meets some minimum specs,  you need to use their approved development system, and to distribute the application you have to submit it to Apple, pay them to put it in their store, and hope it sells.

To develop for Android you need a free SDK that is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.  To distribute the app you need an email address, website,  or some other method of getting a single file to an Android device.  This is very similar to the PC method of app development.  You can pay to have the app on the Android Market but that is  your decision.  If you want to attack Android for the way it does business you need to attack the PC method as well.

Piracy largely prevented mobile software from ever being viable prior to Apple’s App Store.

Tell that to the Palm, WinMo, and various Java developers.  Was it a batshit crazy 10 different fart apps world?  No.  I think plenty of people made plenty of money off mobile apps.  Don’t fucking rewrite history.  Apple made things more user friendly,  but most study’s say indy developers are barely if ever breaking even.  It is probably easier to do on Android though because you can control your costs for distribution.

In addition to its limited reach globally, Google’s Android Market has also come under assault from top Android developers for allowing widespread copyright infringement, sloppy policies regarding app approval, poor security for users’ data, and allowing developers to collect inappropriate information from users without their consent.

While the Android Market is only available in 13 countries I can distribute my app all over the world (not just 90 markets like Apple).  Sure the market is where most people get their apps,  but if I want to market the same way people market for the PC I can.  Let’s look at it a bit further though.  Most developers in the United States are making English language apps,  so having them be available in non-English speaking countries is of limited value.  Same goes for something that uses Korean or Japanese characters.  There are limiting factors that both sides choose to ignore.

Nothing on my phone can get my information without consent.  I know what areas the application can access on my phone.  It tells me.  I read what it has access to and I decide if I want to install it.  At the point I install it I give consent for it to access the areas it tells me it is going to access.  To my knowledge there is no application that has access to my contacts that does not tell me at the install stage it is going to access them.

The one thing people have pegged is the copyright infringement.  It needs to be handled.  Google needs to clean the market of anything infringing.  It is tough to do,  but start with the app names and go from there.  Chances are Kayne West did not authorize 100 apps for ringtones.  If someone wants to infringe make them do it via a different distribution method.  They are leaving them in there for use in the numbers game.

The part of the article talks about the PDF exploit in the iOS.  Accessing a single file can help you jailbreak your phone, or let someone have access your phone without your knowledge.  Same thing happens on other systems,  I hope Apple fixes it soon,  maybe they have a bumper for it.

Apple hates it when you steal their shit

Apple is pissed at HTC. I guess the HTC Android phones (maybe WinMo phones also?)  use things that Apple has patents on.  I am all for these companies suing the shit out of each other.  It keeps lawyers busy when they have no ambulances to chase.

I like this quote:

In the release, Steve Jobs says, “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it…We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

I agree with Steve on this one.  Companies should not go to design labs and copy what they see there.  It would be like Jobs going to just off the top of my head, Xerox PARC and seeing the Alto.

For those that don’t know,  the ALTO was a non production computer developed at the Xerox PARC.  It had a mouse, bitmap display,  and GUI interface.  It was basically the Apple Lisa/Mac.  He took their ideas and made a fortune off it.

Steve forgets his past,  he buys into his own bullshit.  Hell he thinks the iPad is magical and revolutionary and not just a bigger iPhone,  that should show you the depth of his problems.

The Xerox Alto

You have got to be kidding me

April Fools day has become a big thing on the web, with a lot of sites doing jokey things. Some are pranks, some subtle, some less so.

So far my top picks are:
Woot.com $3 mystery bag, $1million shipping
Kodak.com Eyeglass mounted camera
Gmail.com Autopilot for Gmail
Youtube.com just go watch a video and see for yourself

It has been a fairly stressful week and things like this are a nice distraction.

Houston, we have WordPress

I hope I didn’t forget about any configuration this time.  I am not getting any PHP errors so I think things are well permissioned and acting ok.  If you see anything wonky please email me.  This should also be the feed for Facebook,  so if you are reading this in Facebook and thinking “What is this WordPress he keeps  talking about”, it is the blog software I am using, check it out at www.zombiechuck.com.  If you are wondering why all of this goes on while I am at work, it is because I sit and look at computers all day and I work on this while the computers compute.

I hope this is the last time I switch platforms.