The Gloves Are Officially Off: Google Vs. Apple | Hacker News Reader

The Gloves Are Officially Off: Google Vs. Apple

techcrunch.com

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“We discovered something really cool, it’s called the Internet.”

Ouch. Also, bad form for injecting "READ MORE! http://techcrunch.com? into my copy paste, techcrunch.

That link injection is Tynt's product. Can't stand it myself, although the company's growing like a weed.

Opt-out link for Tynt's link injection is here: http://www.tynt.com/support/opt-inout/

Nice of them to offer an opt-out, I suppose, although they don't exactly highlight that it exists.

This is why I am beginning to consider NoScript essential for web-browsing.

You know Google Chrome has noscript functionality built in right?

"This is why I am beginning to consider heated outside mirrors essential for driving in cold weather"

"You know the Toyota Prius II has heated outside mirrors built in right?"

(Edit: Oh, I think I somewhat see your point: noscript is the Firefox-specific name for this function. Still, Chrome isn't the only browser to have this.)

Right, I didn't mean to imply that no other browsers have some kind of noscript functionality built in.

Uhmm...seriously?

Yes. I don't understand your question. It's under content settings.

It's interesting how Apple's real, live products constantly have to compete against demos.

It's also interesting how I can "git clone git://android.git.kernel.org/whatever", edit the code, and install it on my phone. Without any permission from anyone.

Which is interesting (much less understandable) for about 0.0001% of the people that have a phone. But yes, you have point. That is nice.

You're right, most end users don't hack Android. Or their computer, or their car, or their washing machine, or anything.

But, these people can pay others to do so. Anyone can make their own Android-based device, just like anyone can fix your computer or your car or your washing machine.

Compare this to the competition, like iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. You simply can't sell a device with one of those OSes without permission from the vendor. And the vendor is not going to give you permission, except maybe Microsoft for Windows.

That's the power of Android - anyone can improve it and profit from their improvements, without permission from anyone else.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/108/1088942p1.html

It is my understanding that very few of those devices are developer devices, where the user is allowed to install their own OS. Otherwise you have to root the phone, which is a violation of the increasingly international DMCA-style anti-circumvention law.

I haven't checked this info in a little while though, if most Android devices are sold with root I'm very happy to be corrected.

Rooting your phone is not a DMCA violation. sudo simply is not pre-installed, it's an app you have to add yourself, just like anything else. Reverse engineering for interoperability is a DMCA exception, and there are plans to make the language in the law specifically refer to "jailbreaking" phones.

Also, at least with Android devices I've worked with, there is no trickery involved to flash a new firmware. You just do it.

First (to your other, downvoted comment), if Google were to go down, then my savings would take a huge hit, close family members would be out of a job and my professional life would be take a turn towards crappiness.

Second, to my original comment, it's been discussed here how pre-announcing stuff (like your new startup to your friends) actually reduces motivation to complete the task itself. It's interesting because Apple never pre-announces stuff, but their competitors all seem to do it continuously. Sorry, can't find the link.

So...perhaps the snark you see in my comment is just a projection of what you personally feel against Apple.

Which phones / providers is this possible with? And also, how close to the metal can you get? Baseband?

You don't get that close to baseband. Radio stack runs on separate core (as is the case for every smartphone) and you communicate via shared memory.

You get complete control of the applications core, but not close enough to PPL or SPL, so it will be difficult to flash custom radio without having the right keys.

For an example lookup CyanogenMod, he's got it working on at least the HTC Dream/Magic/Nexus One and the Motorola DROID.

Baseband code would not part of Android.

Wasn't it not too long ago Steve Jobs did the same thing on a stage for Snow Leopard (or just Leopard, can't remember), comparing it to Vista? This was months before it shipped.

"This was months before it shipped."

But it actually shipped. And in months, not years. Plus what they demo tends to match what they ship.

Whereas designers like me drooled over the demo videos of the Microsoft Courier dual screen tablet for what, a year? And it ended up never getting made. Drooled over the Crunchpad too and we all know how that went.

"But it actually shipped."

And so will Android. I'm not sure what you're arguing here.

Their constant battle with vaporware of various stripes isn't with only one company - some of the competitors ship but slip way behind on dates and/or release hurried crappy releases, some don't ship at all and make true vaporware demos, but Apple tends to rarely pre-announce things and therefore doesn't ever slip behind publicly committed ship dates. Or ship stuff that's clearly beta because of a publicly committed ship date.

Check out how Google hedged their bets by fudging the UI of Google TV. Who knows how this thing will actually work like because the interface in the video was drawn with frigging crayons.

> Drooled over the Crunchpad too and we all know how that went.

I know, it's awesome how it turned into an iPad!

The keynote was a mix of real stuff that's just being released and forthcoming stuff, just like every Apple keynote. Not sure what you're talking about.

Yeah, Apple never demos products several months before availability. They're so awesome!

It goes both ways. Apple has to compete against demos. People have to compete against Apple demos. Apple goes up on stage, shows off something that isn't yet release, still, and yet people keep talking about it as if it's here.

Perhaps Apple TV debuted at the wrong timing. Google simply waited.

They both still have to wait for the content providers to play ball.

The moment flash was announced for the Android I realized that my next phone won't be an iPhone, but a nexus one.

Sad. History is repeating itself.

Really? You miss flash that badly?

Other than the occasional restaurant website, what are you missing? Most flash apps are very awkward on a phone, having been designed for a mouse. And most flash games apparently don't perform remotely acceptably on Android (not enough horsepower in the phone).

The remaining reason would be Hulu - but they won't stream to your phone, even with flash - since they don't have mobile distribution rights to the content.

I wouldn't be able to live without flash and here's why.

If I visit 100 sites a day maybe 5 of them will be dependent on flash in some way. Menus, slideshows, etc. Without flash the site is worthless. I won't remember the 95 sites that work, but each and every one of the sites that don't will annoy me endlessly. Maybe I needed that quote on a new Dewalt powerdrill from the local website programmed in flash. Maybe I really wanted to see the funny link someone posted on twitter. But I can't. Not without flash.

The problem is a lot like spam: False positives are a serious problem. If 5 e-mails a day were mistakenly labeled as spam my spamfilter would basically be useless. This is exactly the same.

I don't endorse flash, and think it's annoying as hell but until 99.5% of the sites I visit work without flash not having it simply isn't an option.

5% would be a conservative estimate of the sites I find completely unusable on my phone for reasons that have nothing to do with Flash: text too wide and tiny to bother, centered popups that are bigger than the screen (so I can't close them), essential functionality based on mouseovers, random failures of over complicated JS/CSS, neglected mobile sites that mangle content or don't show it at all, mobile sites that break hotlinking and just take you to the home page, and so much more.

The point is, Flash is just a small part of a big problem. Web design still has whiplash from the mobile explosion. But it's going to recover real quick, and when everyone starts making mobile friendly sites, they won't be using Flash. It's on death row and Google is just dragging it out for a cheap shot at Apple.

Just grit your teeth and bear it for a little while longer. You'll have to do that anyway, with or without Flash.

Have you actually tried Flash Player 10.1 on an Android phone? I have, today, on Google I/O. It works very well and it's not how you say at all. There are lots of videos showing it as well.

Please, try before you judge.

"Very well" is apparently relative. The Engadget review was less stellar: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/20/android-2-2-froyo-beta-ha... The videos they have of the device playing Flash videos also seem to confirm that the performance is rather poor. Also note the 'significant dent' to the battery charge from playing Flash videos mentioned in the review.

That is simply a lack of hardware acceleration. Something that HTML5/JS apps do not have either. At least for flash, you can expect it to have hardware acceleration eventually.

The bottom line is that you have the option to use flash, or not. On the iphone, you have no option. There is no losing here.

"Something that HTML5/JS apps do not have either."

Actually, HTML5 video playback on mobile devices is hardware-accelerated. That's the reason it works well, as opposed to this, which does not.

Flash is not only video.

Canvas+JS is not accelerated on mobile devices.

The same thing can be said about HTML4. If the website was designed for mouse-hover and not rewritten... guess what?

The bottom line is that the end user should be able to choose. Arguing against that is just silly. Shouldn't Apple block HTML5 since it will waste more CPU than normal sites? Other than the occasional restaurant website, what are you missing?

> Most flash apps are very awkward on a phone, having been designed for a mouse.

Have you actually used a legacy flash app on a touchscreen or are you just repeating the non-facts that Jobs has seeded on the internet?

"The remaining reason would be Hulu..." except, most people can't get Hulu anyways.

But what are you missing? Flash apps and games that do work just fine. Kongregate has a mobile game site: http://m.kongregate.com/ where apparently the games run really well.

Then you have a LOT of streaming content you can view in flash (and not restricted to just the US).

Let me ask you this? Why wouldn't you want the above?

Why wouldn't you want the above?

If you never really used it anyway? As you showed there are plenty of valid reasons for wanting Flash on your phone, it's just that those might not be important reasons for everyone.

Would would agree though that even though you don't really use it, it would be nice to have there? Sure it's valid to say you find enough iphone positives that you are willing to live with the lack of flash.

I’m not actually so sure about that. There are definitely people who are like that but I don’t think I’m one of them. I don’t really like to buy stuff with features I know I won’t be using.

I'll tell you what flash-based site is missing. It's grooveshark. Without doubt it would be an awesome site to be able to access from a mobile device.

They better put in a way to switch it off, similar to noflash plugin for safari, or I may never get an Android device.

One of the huge advantages for Apple, is that the iPhone OS does not run flash. I, and a lot of other people, do not want flash. I understand a lot of people do, but let me switch it off in the OS, and we can have the best of both worlds.

Agreed. I'd like to have it for some of the video sites I use (like giantbomb.com), but I'd rather avoid the bullshit flash sound enabled banner ads if I can help it.

You could have been using a Nokia phone during all this time.

Ok, I think I missed the genesis of whole rainbows and ponies meme. Someone mind clueing me in?

I seem to recall first hearing it connected with Django somehow, but I figured it was a reference to something I didn't get...

There are various pony memes, including a Django one, but in this case I believe they're just trying to exemplify openness by using a picture of a toy that lets you complete the design yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Decorate-Figure/dp/B001...

Also, I don't think it's rainbows, just colorful hair.

I think this is big for online video advertising. The price (I believe) is substantially less than regular TV now. But put in online video advertising being on a TV in front of the average user and you gain a ton of potential dollars. I'd actually be surprised if the only thing that Google TV doesn't ask from you is your zip code for giving localized ads.

I'd like to clarify I was talking about the price of online video advertising, not the cost of google TV - I think that may have been confusing.

With the acquisition of SimplifyMedia, it seems like Google's aiming straight at Apple's "Digital Hub" strategy. (Which I doubt Apple is still really following.)

OH: Why would thet need all these people on stage? One Jobs does a better job.

I give Google some slack for trying to be different than Apple in this respect but man, you're so right. Maybe it's the democratic way of Google having each manager demo the feature they're responsible for.

But it felt like at one point the techno music wouldn't stop as people shuffled in and out of the stage. Did we really need the music bringing all the CEOs out? It just got silly at that point.

And was it me or did Vic come off like a douchebag during this second keynote?

Vic ended up pretty badly too with Conan O' Brien

I actually thought Conan gave him too hard a time. Vic came out looking like an affable, though slightly stiff, nerd.

"On Android’s upcoming over-the-air music download capabilities versus Apple’s tethered syncing: “We discovered something really cool, it’s called the Internet.”

huh? did this guy even say that with a straight face? itunes (i.e. music, movies, tv, podcasts, audiobooks and iTunes U) is available on the device.

Do this fun experiment: Go buy an iPad and try to figure out how to use it WITHOUT another computer to sync it against.

That's what they're talking about.

Yet…people keep forgetting that Apple can enable a lot of this stuff. They currently choose not to, but they can. Given their history, they certainly will when they feel that it's an appropriate time to do so (technology, usability, user experience, and necessary competitive advantage).

Apple is experimenting with its closed model, and there's a lot of people who don't like it, but it's always easier to open a closed model than to close an excessively opened one (see also "Windows viruses").

True, but I'd rather have features I like enabled now rather than when the company I just forked over money to decides it's good for their bottom line.

many people have used ipods, iphones, and I presume ipads without syncing with a computer.

You must sync a new iPad (on a computer with iTunes) before first use. I don't know if that still applies for the iPhone (though it probably does, for activation). The iPod is worthless if you don't have a computer, for how would you get music on there otherwise?

You are right, this is stupid.

Apple will do this for you at the store, but I imagine for updates you still need a computer. You do for the iPhone.

From what I understand they'll sync it to one of the computers in the Apple store before you leave if you would like so that you don't need a computer to use it.

He meant that you can sync your music library to an Android device without physically connecting the phone to a computer.

so they're going via the internet to sync your music library with a computer? why not just using the local network?

because sometimes, with my android smartphone, I find myself out of range of my local network

so you can sync your music library between your android smartphone and your computer as long as you have an internet connection?

I think he was using the term internet loosely.

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