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We Need to Talk About Android

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Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#121

Post by ugh »

ktizo wrote: post #95
ugh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand you. What should schools deploy other than consumer level devices? That’s what schools have been doing for years, they usually bought consumer level PCs. It’s just normal.

Things being normal does not mean they are a good idea. How will teaching a class of 30 be improved with the addition of 30 tablets or smartphones, apart from in the rare occasions that you are teaching how to program the things?

It’s a tool like any other, like pen and paper. Why shouldn’t students be able to use up-to-date tools?! I certainly would have loved to have been able to do just that.

It’s funny how you seem to imply that the only useful thing you can do with a computer is to learn how to program things.

It’s not going to be a revolution or a huge improvement (better teachers are the most important thing above all else), but being able to use modern tools seems kinda important to me.

(Do you have any idea how much Grapher† helped me understand math when doing my homework? I wasn’t programming, I was using a modern UI – no stupid graphing calculator that’s a pain to use – to fool around with equations. That was tremendously helpful. Having that kind of power always with you, instant on, with a battery that lasts forever, man, that’s living the dream.)

—

† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapher

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#122

Post by recoiledsnake »

batista wrote: post #113
shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. And people don't understand that wining a market means nothing and it can even be a ra…

>And people don't understand that wining a market means nothing and it can even be a race to the bottom, it's wining the profitable part of the market that matters.

By that metric IIS is whomping Apache and Nginx. But you don't see that discussed around here. Only the metric that suits people's affiliations and biases seem to really matter here.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#123

Post by mikeash »

nextparadigms wrote: post #90
mark_integerdsv wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fans of the platform seem to hammer on about market share an awful lot. Stockholm Syndrome? I really cannot fathom why a consumer, assuming they have no stock in the platform outside their own purchase should be so concerned about something as trivial as market share. Were the platform in danger of disappearing due to low market share (WebOS) I'd understand that but puffing up your chest because the OS on your smartp…

Nor do I understand why fans of Apple products tout Apple's high profit? Isn't that a form of Stockholm syndrom, too? Being happy that the company you buy from makes a lot of money from you?

I wouldn't call it Stockholm Syndrome, but it's something weird. Seems to me that it's the same basic phenomenon as hardcore sports fans. They tie up their identity with this external entity so hard that they almost treat it as an extension of their own ego.

One important difference, of course, is that most local sports teams care about their fans.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#124

Post by pmarsh »

After doing some research on security it seems that Android's problem is overblown. The malware I've come across mostly stems from people downloading random apps from the web and then granting full privileges to that app. Which in turn does things with the permissions the person granted it.

That doesn't really seem to be a security hole as much as it is a user problem.

I guess it's simple to say Android is insecure, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Any more so than a rootable iOS device.

Am I mistaken? Are there reports of apps gaining root access?

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#125

Post by tvon »

djhworld wrote: post #85
bunderbunder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only goal were market share then yes, Android is virtually guaranteed to dominate the market for the same reason Windows has been, and that would be a trump card in this conversation. However, I don't really think the criticisms about Android fragmentation amount to nothing but beating around the "market share" bush. I think that, believe it or not, folks who are criticizing Android mean what they're saying. W…

It's irritating that people blame Android, Google have been steadily releasing new editions of the OS. Surely the actual problem is the carriers/manufacturers?

On a technical level, yes, but when discussing Android "the product" (aka "the experience") it's the correct way to refer to it.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#126

Post by funkah »

siglesias wrote: post #28
shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

Except that the refresh cycle for a mobile device is around two years, and word spreads more quickly than ever that you can't run the latest stuff. If that Android phone can't run the latest apps, lags, or can't do all the things that your friend's iPhone [1] can do, easily, and reliably, you're a lost customer. On the flip side, if you're a developer with limited resources and your app can't run on a vast majority o…

> Neither of these things is good for a computing platform. Never was, never will be. These are first principles.

Right, I don't understand why this is so hard to understand.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#127

Post by papalalu »

huggyface wrote: post #98
thought_alarm wrote: post #21

You are not Samsung's customer. Phone manufactures sell phones to carriers, not consumers. Success in the phone industry depends entirely how well you meet the demands of the carriers. RIM knows it (or knew it), Nokia knows it, Samsung knows it. Android is merely a platform that allows Samsung to tailor their devices to the carrier's requirements, in a way they couldn't do when they were selling Windows Mobile device…

You are not Samsung's customer. I bought my i9100 full retail. I am most certainly their customer. Just got a major Kies update yesterday. Even for those people who get their device carrier subsidized -- which is the vast majority, including for Apple devices (where Apple sells the device to the carrier and not to the end user) -- Samsung is very interested in making their customer, the end-user, happy. The end resul…

you mean.. you got kies to work!?

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#128

Post by huggyface »

beloch wrote: post #19

Google needs to do one thing before anything else: Build a reference phone chipset. Every Android phone consists of a patchwork of vendor specific hardware. The chips in Samsung's phones are not the same as the chips in HTC's or LG's, etc.. It gets even worse, since the same model of phone made by the same manufacturer may have different chips for different cell carriers. This is a big reason why the second most rece…

Build a reference phone chipset.

That is the antithesis of the Android spirit. In fact, they made this mistake with Honeycomb and the Tegra 2, and it was a general disaster. Android is all about variation and competition at every level.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#129

Post by epo »

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

"The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing..." All this proves is what an irrational fanboy you are. What does "winning a market" mean? Money made or numbers sold? Customer satisfaction? Ongoing revenue? As with all fanboys you concentrate on the figure you think is in your favour: market share (no mentions of which of which seem to include returns). Apple have the numbers that matter, revenue, profit, customer visibility (show me the queues of people waiting to get the latest - soon to be out-of-date - Android handset). As of right now to claim that Android is winning a market (remember markets exist to make money) is almost pathetically deluded.

I would suggest that for the most part people buy an iDevice because that is specifically what they want, and for the most part most people buy Android devices because the handsets are cheap or are being pushed by the salesman.

You also ignored the rest of his post which detailed other problems with Android and the Android ecosystem.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#130

Post by [deleted] »

qxcv wrote: post #92

There seems to be a lot of discussion here about Android v. iOS, but I feel like people are neglecting to discuss a key part of the article: > what's wrong with Android from the perspective of someone planning a long-term 1:1 deployment in a school There's nothing wrong with Android. The problem is that you're trying to throw expensive toys at school students in the hope that you'll win the award for "Digital Curricu…

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