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The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

groklaw.net

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Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#61

Post by kalleboo »

da_n wrote: post #52
esolyt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung isn't the only Android manufacturer. It also isn't the only one being sued by Apple. One of the benefits of Android being open source and free software is that it encourages small players to start competing with giants by giving them a nice OS and the ability to tweak it. This is why we can have smartphones, tablets, netbooks, smartwatches, ski goggles, cameras running Android. All designed and produced by ma…

If you don't like Apple Open WebOS and MeeGo are interesting open options, I hope these will gain traction. I have never been a fan of the whole Dalvik/JVM architecture on Android. The update mechanism has always been especially shitty as well, every single device seems to need massive amounts of driver tweaking and customisation making the whole point of Java and its high portability rather pointless.

> If you don't like Apple Open WebOS and MeeGo are interesting open options, I hope these will gain traction

And if they gain traction, they will be sued by Apple.

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#62

Post by kalleboo »

ender7 wrote: post #55
spaghetti wrote: post #48

I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is here to stay. If it wasn't then companies like apple and google wouldn't be fighting so hard for control. Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropri…

The huge, HUGE advantage that the App Store brings to the average consumer is a feeling of safety. An app installed from the App store: - Can be uninstalled easily, and leave no trace behind (remember "Register cleaners"?) - Cannot interfere with other apps - Cannot run in the background and spy on your surfing habits - Cannot steal your credit card information and upload it to Russian mafia servers For a long time,…

> The response appears to be "fuck you, I don't want to waste my time worrying about whether this purple monkey screen saver will secretly empty my retirement account."

With the amount of non-techies I know with jailbroken phones with all kinds of super-tacky OS hacks installed, that is definitely not the only response.

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#63

Post by fpgeek »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #53
spaghetti wrote: post #48

I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is here to stay. If it wasn't then companies like apple and google wouldn't be fighting so hard for control. Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropri…

> Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropriate. So far, "freedom of App Store speech" and money don't seem to be correlated at all. (Or all the millionaires on OpenMoko and Cydia are being quiet to prevent a gold rush on their turf.) I think the only instance where Apple's guidelines are prohibitive to mak…

> Is it possible to use this as an advantage against established app stores? Or is Google already established as the platform to be on for mobile porn?

Google has similar guidelines to Apple on this front (see Zinio's comments about why they don't have Android/iOS versions of adult magazines, for example). The only notable difference I can think of is that there's probably more post-filtering than pre-filtering of apps.

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#64

Post by esolyt »

ender7 wrote: post #55
spaghetti wrote: post #48

I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is here to stay. If it wasn't then companies like apple and google wouldn't be fighting so hard for control. Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropri…

The huge, HUGE advantage that the App Store brings to the average consumer is a feeling of safety. An app installed from the App store: - Can be uninstalled easily, and leave no trace behind (remember "Register cleaners"?) - Cannot interfere with other apps - Cannot run in the background and spy on your surfing habits - Cannot steal your credit card information and upload it to Russian mafia servers For a long time,…

All of them are solved by sandboxing and permission mechanism.

"Fuck you, I don't want to waste my time" is actually the response developers should be giving to Apple when they are made to wait more than a month for their app to be reviewed and finally it gets rejected for a political, ideological, arbitrary, or personal (competes with an Apple service) reason.

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#65

Post by biafra »

ender7 wrote: post #55
spaghetti wrote: post #48

I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is here to stay. If it wasn't then companies like apple and google wouldn't be fighting so hard for control. Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropri…

The huge, HUGE advantage that the App Store brings to the average consumer is a feeling of safety. An app installed from the App store: - Can be uninstalled easily, and leave no trace behind (remember "Register cleaners"?) - Cannot interfere with other apps - Cannot run in the background and spy on your surfing habits - Cannot steal your credit card information and upload it to Russian mafia servers For a long time,…

Point 1 and 2 have nothing to do with the App Store. Android does the same.

3 & 4 are not prohibited by the App Store review process.

Of course, the iphone app can steal all kinds of information on your phone and send it to russian servers.

Do you really believe the App Store review can prevent malware?

Or are you really only talking about the _perception_ of the App Store review process?

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#66

Post by azakai »

spaghetti wrote: post #48

I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is here to stay. If it wasn't then companies like apple and google wouldn't be fighting so hard for control. Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropri…

> Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropriate.

The closest thing we have to that is the web. You can run stores on it completely decentralized, and you can access it from all mobile devices.

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#67

Post by fpgeek »

kalleboo wrote: post #61
da_n wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like Apple Open WebOS and MeeGo are interesting open options, I hope these will gain traction. I have never been a fan of the whole Dalvik/JVM architecture on Android. The update mechanism has always been especially shitty as well, every single device seems to need massive amounts of driver tweaking and customisation making the whole point of Java and its high portability rather pointless.

> If you don't like Apple Open WebOS and MeeGo are interesting open options, I hope these will gain traction And if they gain traction, they will be sued by Apple.

And, unlike Android, neither Open WebOS nor MeeGo have a sponsor that would even consider trying to protect them.

If you wanted to see either Open WebOS or MeeGo in the US (rather than China), Apple's lawsuits have effectively closed that door for the foreseeable future. No smartphone startup would be crazy enough to wade into this legal minefield.

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#68

Post by spaghetti »

ender7 wrote: post #55
spaghetti wrote: post #48

I'd love to see control of the "mobile space" be in the hands of individuals instead of large, for-profit and often evil companies. Clearly mobile computing is here to stay. If it wasn't then companies like apple and google wouldn't be fighting so hard for control. Imagine a decentralized app store where people can make a living without having to deal with apple's ridiculous review process or ideas of what's appropri…

The huge, HUGE advantage that the App Store brings to the average consumer is a feeling of safety. An app installed from the App store: - Can be uninstalled easily, and leave no trace behind (remember "Register cleaners"?) - Cannot interfere with other apps - Cannot run in the background and spy on your surfing habits - Cannot steal your credit card information and upload it to Russian mafia servers For a long time,…

Indeed the feeling of safety from the app store is important. However I'd rephrase your last sentence as "If you can find a way to make the "free and open" system seem safe enough that average users believe it's safe then you have a winner".

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#69

Post by fpgeek »

esolyt wrote: post #64
ender7 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The huge, HUGE advantage that the App Store brings to the average consumer is a feeling of safety. An app installed from the App store: - Can be uninstalled easily, and leave no trace behind (remember "Register cleaners"?) - Cannot interfere with other apps - Cannot run in the background and spy on your surfing habits - Cannot steal your credit card information and upload it to Russian mafia servers For a long time,…

All of them are solved by sandboxing and permission mechanism. "Fuck you, I don't want to waste my time" is actually the response developers should be giving to Apple when they are made to wait more than a month for their app to be reviewed and finally it gets rejected for a political, ideological, arbitrary, or personal (competes with an Apple service) reason.

Much as I love Android, and much as the Android team has done yeoman's work on this front...

Sadly, today, the more accurate statement is all of them are theoretically solvable by sandboxing and permissions mechanisms. Getting those sandboxes and permissions where they need to be at a technical level, explaining those permissions to users in a way they can understand and make decisions based on and making the overall framework as transparent and usable enough is very much an unsolved problem.

Re: The Next Step in Apple's Thermonuclear War Against Android

#70

Post by fpgeek »

001sky wrote: post #58
othermaciej wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her apparent point was that there is no way to design around it, which is false. The claim was not about obviousness or validity of the design patent, but rather that it's really dangerous because there is no way to design around it. Which is clearly false. You may well have a valid point, but it's not what the Groklaw post said.

How do you code around it? A tablet in the shape of a parallelogram? - She got you | Rhetorical questions != Not False Statements. [Edit: Agree she could have been more informative.]

It's worth noting that Apple won on "rounded rectangles" as they applied to the iPhone (instead of the iPad). That certainly complicates any attempted workarounds.
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