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High Expectations For Google Android
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Mar 13, 2008 06:27 PM
from the keeping-up-with-the-googses dept.
from the keeping-up-with-the-googses dept.
Several readers have pointed out recent articles discussing the development and features of Google Android. Silicon.com has what is essentially an FAQ for Android, providing the relevant basic information about it. Apcmag questions whether Google can meet the high expectations most enthusiasts have for the platform, and The Register discusses Google's claims that it will be competitive with Apple and worth the wait. We discussed a preview of Android last month. Quoting The Register:
"Google mobile platforms guru Rich Miner acknowledged that for the moment, Apple may have an advantage. After all, Steve Jobs and company have actually shipped a piece of hardware, while the first Android handset won't arrive until 'the second half of this year.' But Miner also told the crowd that Stevo hasn't treated developers as well as they deserve. 'There are certain apps you just can't build on an iPhone,' Miner said. 'Apple doesn't let you do multiprocessing. They don't let your app run in the background after you switch to another. And they don't let you have interpretive language in your iPhone apps.'"
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Mobile: First Sight of Google Android 166 comments
CorinneI writes "At the Mobile World Congress show, four mobile processor vendors demoed pre-production devices running versions of Google's Android OS — a Linux-based, open operating system for mobile phones that will sport Google applications. The biggest surprise of the demos was how well Android runs on slow devices. 'TI showed Android on a Motorola Q-like QWERTY handheld with its 200 Mhz OMAP 850 platform, where the user interface felt smooth and fast, even with little Apple-like animated transitions between screens.' HTC, Motorola, LG, and Samsung all belong to Google's Open Handset Alliance"
Submission: Google Android cheat sheet by Anonymous Coward
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Mobile: Android Phones Delayed 167 comments
CommanderData writes "PC World reports that Google's Android phone rollout is facing delays. Originally expected to have handsets on the market and in consumers' hands this summer, it appears that Q4 2008 or even sometime in 2009 is more likely. Software developers are also complaining that programming is difficult on the Android platform due to regular changes being made by Google." Update 21:14 GMT by SM: Google has (via Google Watch) refuted widespread claims that Android will be late, so I guess only time will tell.
[+]
Mobile: What Happened To Palm? 305 comments
Ian Lamont writes "Palm's fourth quarter results came out a few days ago, and they were not pretty: Palm reported losses of 40 cents per share, for a quarterly loss of $43.4 million. It's the fourth straight quarter of losses, and it's clear that the company is not faring well in the rapidly evolving smartphone market. The Treo line is lagging after seven years, and while the Centro has done well, it's not well enough to compete with the likes of the iPhone 3G and RIM's surging BlackBerry line. New competition is on the horizon, with developers and manufacturers working on the Google Android platform and the recent news that Symbian is being open-sourced. What happened to Palm? What can the company do to effectively compete in the mobile market, and turn its fortunes around?"
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They're really stretching (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting to note that iPhone doesn't allow interpreted code... while Android doesn't allow native code. Which one of these is more "open"?
Re:They're really stretching (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple wants no interpreted code so there is no way any software can get onto the iPhone that they haven't approved -- and they aren't going to approve a lot of the types of software that regular people are going to want (IM that works when they're on a phone call or surfing the net, for example).
Apple's made a huge mistake in their lockdown and with any luck Google will either beat them or force them to stop being... well... Apple. (And I say this as an iPhone and Mac user...)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They're really stretching (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want to judge Apple's practice, but I see a trend here: Reduce functionality and make sure that things work the way they are supposed to. Instead of designing the ultimate device they deliberately skipped features which would cause trouble: GPS, 3G, battery replacement. The same applies to software: Instead of implementing a feature list with many broken things which don't work too well on a mobile phone (Flash being the most prominent), they made sure that the key components work as well as they can. Mobile browse and e-mail use statistics prove them right after all. Applying the same limitations to 3rd party software just seems to be the next logical step - why would you enable them to ruin the main selling point, which still is ease of use?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fellow iPhone and Mac user here and I'd say... doubtful. How many times does this have to be proven? Apple does not care what geeks want. Ever since the "No wireless, less space than a Nomad" days, Apple has been mostly ignoring the geek community and making bales of money despite this. Or maybe even because of it--despite how
Re:They're really stretching (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe this is correct. Apple wants no interpreters other than those that they approve/install. To quote the iPhone SDK Agreement
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't even make any sense.
Apple stands to make 30% of every iPhone app that goes onto the phone.
You better damn well believe they're doing everything they can to ensure there is NO way to get any other software on their but through them.
Scripting, plug-in modules, extensions, etc all mean that there are ways to get code onto the phone after Apple has approved the software and taken money for it.
Re:They're really stretching (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've seen so far, the limitations in Android are mostly technical, whereas the limitations in the iPhone SDK are mostly business. From that perspective I'd say that Android probably has a higher ceiling.
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Re:They're really stretching (Score:4, Informative)
As written, yes, those flaws aren't going to make sense to Joe or Jane Six-Pack.
For example, "won't let you do multiprocessing/won't allow running in background", near as I can tell, means "your IM chat session goes kaput if a call comes in", as your application will be shut down, causing your sockets to close, causing the IM provider to assume you've gone bye-bye. Likewise, multiprocessing will be key for any alternative music players (vs. the built-in stuff) or anything else that needs to be at least partly running when other applications come to the foreground. Android has the same freeze-and-kill-the-app logic, but only invokes it when memory is low, and you can set up independent services (think daemons) that won't be subject to those effects.
Android, in that it allows more handset makers to adopt Android without forcing as many dependencies on the underlying hardware. Phone vendors can choose from multiple Android-ready chipsets, or assist in porting Android's Dalvik VM and APIs to yet another chipset if they so choose. To Mr. and Mrs. Six-Pack, this means more phone options and, hopefully, lower prices.
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Re:They're really stretching (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:They're really stretching (Score:5, Informative)
When you accuse others of not having their facts straight, it helps to, well, have your facts straight: [boygeniusreport.com]
I apologize for not linking directly to those guidelines mentioned, as it appears you have to be registered in some way...
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Re:They're really stretching (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that limiting the device's features to keep it usable is a reasonable thing to do. Especially since usability is the main iPhone advantage. Sure, a few hard-core AIM'ers might not buy an iPhone without a backgrounding AIM client - but if the phone remains usable as a result then it is still a plus. Perhaps Apple can come up with a scheme to make exceptions for well-behaved apps...
As for interpreted languages - Apple isn't going to stop you from using Python to make your application, so long as your application cannot run arbitrary Python code. They just don't want to have an in for malware. It should be pretty easy to attack iPhones - they will all have IP addresses falling within a narrow range - only 4 carriers. If you have a signed application that simply executes arbitrary code... that sort of blows away the whole point of signing applications, doesn't it?
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Re:They're really stretching (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which makes it all the more bizarre that they won't allow a native app to do what Safari does... but then, didn't they also dictate that you may not write a browser?
Oh, and one advantage to Android: If you really want to write native code, I don't think anything stops you getting a phone which lets you do that, and also supports the Android API.
But it seems to me, with Android, you can build any app you want, as long as it'll run in
My take. sure to be modded down (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I'm not making a prediction. Just a hunch, based on self-selected observations. My take means nothing, ultimately.
Re:My take. sure to be modded down (Score:5, Funny)
OpenMoko will put all the pretenders to rest.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My take. sure to be modded down (Score:4, Insightful)
Example 1:
"OGG is the new hotness and will rule the compressed music formats."
How's that market domination working out for you? I'm glad I didn't invest my personal collection heavily in that format. Does it have a use? Absolutely. Will it ever come anywhere near matching the ubiquitous MP3 format? Nope.
Example 2:
"This is the year of Linux on the desktop!"
Mind you, this was said in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001...and so on. Are there players? Sure. Microsoft's missteps with the delays of and eventual bad user experiences with Vista and their stopping sales of XP opens a door for companies like Ubuntu, but no one's quite gotten their foot in despite your personal experiences to the contrary. Apple's been the real winner there, doubling their market share in the last few years while Linux has remained constant.
My take on Android versus iPhone (disclaimer: I'm a very happy unjailbroken iPhone user) is that they're not meant to compete with each other, at least not directly. Google offered a platform that depends on vendors to customize. Lots of potential? Sure. Lots of potential for suckage? Absolutely. Look at some of the stark differences between different Symbian and Windows Mobile devices and then tell me that Android is going to win hands-down. Hell no. Some company might be able to make phone with an interface and functionality to match the iPhone, but saying that it's better just because it's open is ridiculous. Better for who? Better for the consumer? Or better for you?
Apple offered not just a platform, but an "experience" where everything, if you'll pardon the over-used expression, just works. 99% of iPhone users aren't going to care less that software isn't GPLv3'd and you can't do whatever you want with your phone, and the sales they've racked up so far pretty much indicate that.
By the end of 2008, Slashdotters may find that they have 10 million so-called "pretentious hipsters" to deal with while they're still bitching about how bad the iPhone is. Yeah, that's me all right, a pretentious hipster. Windows/Exchange admin posting on Slashdot.
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Time will tell. (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep in mind that the road is littered with the bloodied corpses of alleged "iPod killers", and that the iPhone is undoubtedly the chosen scion of the same clan.
However, I do welcome any competition to the space, since a competitive market benefits everyone. Right now the competition is a wee bit on the pathetic side.
iPhone is NOT iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, there is no such thing as an iPod, what you got is everything from the iPod shuffle to the latest iPod touch and what a LOT of people forget is that it is the lower end models that sell best.
This makes the iPods of which Apple sells most very simple single purpose devices. Play music.
Now ask yourselve just how many people actually use iTunes to BUY music and not justas a way to put music they already have on it on to the iPod as nothing more then a extremely bloated uploader.
By definition almo
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
All Apple has to do here is look at every decision they made when designing the Newton, then not do that.
android is running on hardware you can buy today (Score:5, Informative)
I am running the zaurus version which uses Poky linux as its base, and it looks quite cool. Admittedly, it is a bit of a hack, as it's not fully working, but it's much better than using a desk-bound virtual machine!
I strongly suspect that android will win (Score:5, Insightful)
My prediction is that the iPhone will always be more stable and have a more consistent interface and user experience. It will always be a great phone. But Apple is about giving you the core features you need and knowing what to leave out. That leaving out bit burns we basement dwelling robot building slashdotters. But Apple's brilliance is giving you a great user experience, and I don't see that ever changing. To apple the iPhone will always be a closed platform (sure you can put some apps on it, but don't try to fundamentally change it). It will always be a phone or/and ipod, not a computer.
The Android is whatever people think it should be. So it's a phone, a computer, a bottle opener. etc. It will have lots of uses in lots of arenas that apple doesn't want to play in. It will allow other countries phones to really kick ass. It will also be much less consistent as lots of people code for it. To a lot of people, this is insanely exciting, and provides the first glimpse of a unified geek tool in your pocket (are you glad to see me?).
Android being free will be super attractive to phone makers, and to consumers. It will gobble up marketshare in many markets. And I suspect that Apple is just fine with that. Apple is in a great place taking the top portion of the markets they play in.
Sheldon
Competition is good...but... (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, I don't like the Android emulator one bit. It's not an emulator. It's a marketing demo that pretends to be a phone, and tries to comfort me by adding "developer tools" as an option. An emulator is supposed to be able to run a ROM image of the OS taken from a machine. If the Google people put the OS on a piece of hardware and dump an image, THAT is what I want for testing my apps. Not some fake toy app for salespeople to be wowed by. I should be able to right click on the thing and load another ROM, save a ROM, and encapsulate a ROM for testing. Palm did that with their original emulator, and while it had lousy network support (I believe you could get a third party app called Mocha PPP that fixed that), it was easily my favorite mobile OS emulator for development that I've worked with. The Windows Mobile emulator is great for debugging and communication, but is crippled in a zillion other stupid ways. I disliked the Symbian and Brew emulators I've used as well, and most of the Java emulators out there have been equally bad. Folks always forget about how important emulation is, they just think that we can just buy a dozen phones and test on all of them. THAT is why homebrew apps don't get made, and those are the kinds of apps that build the entire economy around your OS.
The development environment needs to provide extensive command line support for automated scripting along with a system that makes it brain dead simple to debug and build apps. I don't honestly care if I'm writing an app in Java, C#, or C...I just want an IDE that lets me hit a simple, easy to remember control sequence that builds, debugs, runs, checks code into the repository, whatever. I don't want something that barks at me because it wants me to do things IT'S way, I want it to be flexible enough to do things MY way.
If Android can't deliver this, and a whole lot more, it's going to be only one of many mobile Linux OSs currently hitting the market. Everyone and their mom is releasing mobile Linux OSs. Like we saw on the desktop, it doesn't matter if the big corporations (like Novell) are backing you.
Re:First post? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:First post? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:First post? (Score:4, Informative)
And regarding revenue stream, the iPod is something like 40% with 50% going to the Mac.
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Re:First post? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:First post? (Score:5, Informative)
Units shipped for Q4 2007 were as follows: As you can see, apple are competing with Toshiba, not Dell - unless you call trailing by 80% to be competing?
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Re:Laptops (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.displaysearch.com/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0A424DE8-DDE80D6A/displaysearch/hs.xsl/6305.asp [displaysearch.com]
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Re:First post? (Score:5, Informative)
The lack of background processing in 3rd party iPhone apps will hamstring whole classes of new apps. The best summation of iPhone SDK problems I've seen is here:
Apple's iPhone SDK Prohibits Real Mobile Innovation [whydoeseve...ngsuck.com]
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FM Radio (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:First post? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:First post? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First post? (Score:5, Insightful)
So Apple has three things working in their favor:
1) Resources
2) Developers
3) Customers
Google, thus far, only has hype
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
and without carrier-specific rules you won't have the limitation on things like VoIP, although everyone seems to have really inexpensive unlimited plans nowadays that the only reason I would see VoIP being worthwile is if you want to tie your phone into your business's phone
Re:First post? (Score:5, Informative)
To save you clicking, here are the interesting bits :
"
Highlights - Full year 2007, at 31 December 2007
* 77.3 million Symbian smartphones shipped to consumers worldwide in 2007 - a 50% increase on 2006 (51.7m)
* 188 million cumulative Symbian smartphone shipments since the formation of Symbian to 31 December 2007
* 68 mobile phones based on Symbian OS commenced shipment in 2007 through 250 major network operators by 8 licensees including Fujitsu, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson, a 4.6% increase on 2006 (65 models)
* Of these models, 49 (72%) were based on Symbian OS v9, 46 (68%) for use on W-CDMA/ HSDPA (3G) and 20 (29%) were GPS enabled
* Symbian OS v9.3 is the latest version on Symbian OS to ship in devices (November 2007). Symbian OS v9.3 is optimized for convergence with performance and feature enhancements
* 8,736 third-party Symbian applications are now commercially available, a 27% increase on 31 December 2006 (6,896 applications) Source: Symbian research, see Notes to Editors
"
"
1. PSP - 23.7%
2. Nokia N95 - 20.2%
3. iPAQ HX series - 20.1%
4. Palm TX - 3.6%
5. Apple iPhone - 3.4%
"
Of course, the figures do not justify the headline (that 'N95 bests iPhone', though the headline is a question not a statement). In any case, I'd like to see where you get your figures from.
Nokia 52.9%
RIM 11.4%
Apple 6.5%
Motorola 6.5%
Others 22.7%
A paragraph from that same page gives a (IMO) balanced commentary :
"Apple, perhaps not surprisingly, made a strong entrance to the worldwide market at the end of last year. To get to 6% so quickly (and with a single product) is an impressive achievement. RIM's OS continues to improve at a rate of knots (see my Smartphones Show Blackberry slots, for example) and it continues to be a surprise how fragmented the Windows Mobile world is, in terms of manufacturer success. Plus, even in their home territory of North America, Microsoft is now down to 3rd place in terms of their mobile platform (after RIM and Apple). If Microsoft don't pull a cat out of the bag very, very soon then their in big trouble"
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I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
But as soon as you want to do something crazy like, say, run more than one program at once, you hear "Well, the iPhone is first and foremost a phone. .
So which is it? If I want to quit an application I imagine I am completely capable of doing so, and the iPhone runs OS X which these same people tell me is the most advanced OS around, and it ought to be perfectly capable of not giving a program in the background a lot of resources. Why is security on an iPhone suddenly such a huge deal, if its really a computer?
I guess I just don't get it.
*Gets ready to be modded -9999 Troll*
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Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me start off by saying, I tried out the Android api, and I loved it; its event model was designed with switching applications in mind. It was very powerful and a joy to program. It will probably run my first personal smart phone.
My guess as to why Apple won't treat their phones as computers is because people expect phones to be responsive. People grew up with phones that you can start talking into as soon as you pick up the receiver. A slow phone would look like a piece of junk. The phone market is still quite open, as the iPhone has shown - it has gotten some solid sales numbers even though it wasn't the tried and true. The carriers have been very careful about what goes on their phones, even though it is mostly to protect arpu, so in general mobile phones are still quite responsive. Apple doesn't want to be the slow one.
Personal computers have the opposite expectation; people are used to slow personal computers. Remember waiting for Windows 3.x to refresh the damn screen? Somehow, the general population has accepted bloated software that keeps our computers much less responsive than they need to be, even as hardware keeps getting faster. When Apple's main competitor's, and the market leader's, OS can't even run on a lot of modern hardware out of cripple-mode, Apple can afford to include more features.
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Re:First post? (Score:4, Informative)
As the owner of a jailbroken iPhone I can tell you that in addition to being a phone, email & web device, camera and iPod, mine is also:
- a guitar tuner
- a scientific instrument. I can ssh into my office computer and start, stop, keep track of my data analysis from wherever.
- a remote control. using a variant of VNC I use my phone as a remote touchpad to control the media PC hooked up to my television.
- an IRC client
- a musical device. The multitouch piano (iAno) is actually quite good and can be used for working out melodies if not more.
This is obviously just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible considering all this was made without the SDK.
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Re:First post? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:First post? (Score:5, Informative)
At work earlier today this happened:
Usually I bring along my iPod. At the office I plug it into the USB of my MacBook and just use iTunes to play music from the iPod. Well, today I brought along the iPone (with all my music on) and what happened? You can't play music from the iPhone! I can't do anything in iTunes, transfer movies/music from my office MacBook.
As I was about to go home, I had to bring with me some rather large files. Usually I just use Finder and drag the files over to the iPod. Does my iPhone show up in Finder? No!
Is my iPhone broken?!
It's not a small computer. It's a pretty black box, with very limited use. Yes. It has a great interface and good screen. But there the good things seem to end.
"As a computer, it can also browse the web, take notes, watch videos, listen to music, check your stocks, check the weather, take pictures, and email."
What videos? Only those you get from YouTube or the ones you transfer from the one special chosen Mac?
What if you want to transfer videos/music from another computer?
Can it watch my chosen stocks and notify me when they hit a certain limit? Can the stock-program do this in the background?
Where is MSN for iPhone?
Browse the web with which browser? Opera? Firefox? Lynx?
SSH? I often use SSH clients from my computers to log into and manage my servers. A computer should do this. Does the iPhone?
All the things you mention my previous phone could do too.
It's a rather new Sony Ericsson. Difference was the screen and the UI on the iPone, -and- the SE's ability to transfer files with IR, BlueTooth and USB, use exchangeable SD cards for storage, ability to use mp3 files as ringtones, or just play ordinary mp3 files.
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Re:First post? (Score:4, Interesting)
There isn't much difference. The major difference is that Apple understands how to market products.
I had this same argument with a few different people including one of my friends who actually worked in the cell phone industry. He too thought the iphone "is just another phone". Well yes, it is, but that's because you are a knowledgeable about the topic. Consider joe six-pack who finds fox news more useful than any other media channel. He sees an iphone commercial. So what is he going to do if he gets sold on buying a new phone? Is he going to magically buy the product he doesn't know about (Nokia) or buy what he sees on TV?
You see, when people talk about the iphone, they are not just talking about it from a technological standpoint. When I say, "what about the iphone" I am talking from a business standpoint. That is, Apple is running a successful campaign to the point where they practically get free press on every new product. You are not. How are you going to compete?
Don't get me wrong, I don't like Apple much, in fact I refuse to buy their products because I think they are overpriced. But you can't deny that Steve Jobs understands marketing to the masses. That is ultimately why the iphone will trump all.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apple's NDA Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
-Ted
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Read the post - it's still really counter to any sort of openness, even for a beta. One would think that you would want to support discussion around any sort of beta product, under any forum so as to spur enthusiasm for the platform. This continues to be a problem with Apple, HI 1990 called and it wants it's business strategy back!
Re:what the iphone should have been (Score:5, Insightful)
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