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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

If Speak for Yourself had developed an app for Android they would have had none of these problems. None. Zilch. There are several markets. There are several stores. You can install standalone APKs if you like.

The nature of the platform protects you from the likes of Apple.

That there are options doesn't make Apple any more right here. I'm not saying that. But there are other platforms than Apple's closed circus. And people should consider them.

With time I hope people will see that value in an open platform. That these people, those who have their daughter threatened to be re-muted by Apple, that they still insist on using Apple's hardware is a mystery to me.

You would at least think that they saw why choosing Apple is fundamentally wrong for any person who considers himself free. If you're not free to do with your own property as you please, how much of a free being are you really?

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"Threatened to be re-muted?" Let's try to avoid the hyperbole. Apple doesn't uninstall applications from your iPad.

"If you're not free to do with your own property as you please, how much of a free being are you really?"

Freedom is an illusion. Name one piece of property you can use as you please without restriction?

> Name one piece of property you can use as you please without restriction?

That depends entirely on how large your private security force is and how willing you are to bribe certain officials.

Those two factors are essentially restrictions.

sorry, you're missing a word there. you should be asking "name one piece of property you can use undetectably as you please without restriction", and the answer is "nearly all of them". what i do in the privacy of my own home, without affecting other people and with stuff i legally own should be unrestricted; pretty much every case in which it isn't involves a conceptual failing on the part of either the law, the entity i obtained that piece of property from, or both.

My guess is that the developers chose the IPad, the closest you can get to a "standard tablet" these days. If you watch the video of how the application works you will see that it needs a large screen so an Android phone was probably out of the question. I know that there are several Android tablets but the IPad is a better choice for a small shop with limited resources (less fragmentation and a simpler message for the customer).

>If Speak for Yourself had developed an app for Android they would have had none of these problems.

No, they would still have the same problem. Google has the killswitch ability. Amazon and Google do remove applications from the store on a regular basis for copyright violations.

EDIT: And the ability to install an APK from anywhere still doesn't mean that they'll be able to keep selling it while the court proceedings are going on. This problem isn't a technical issue. It's a legal one.

But you can still install any APK you can download. You don't even need a store. You, as a user, are protected from this modern-day corporate censorship.

And that makes the platform infinitely more attractive to anyone who values freedom.

But on Android one can install a secondary application downloading service, or even download an application from a web site and easily install it.

     And the ability to install an APK from anywhere 
     still doesn't mean that they'll be able to keep 
     selling it while the court proceedings are going on.

That's bullshit. Sure they can send you a DMCA take-down notice, but if it's your domain you can use it as toilet paper.

And btw, I haven't seen Google pulling Android from the market in the eve of Oracle's lawsuit. That's because you are still free to sell your products until infringement is actually proved !

Google didn't pull Android from the market during the lawsuit because the judge stopped that motion from Oracle.

If PRC made that motion, and the judge allowed it, Speak for Yourself WOULD have to pull the APK.

Yes, but actually making that motion and convincing a judge is a lot more work than just sending a letter (to any or all of Apple/Google/Amazon/etc). That's one of the important checks and balances in the legal process that PRC was able to work around (with Apple's help).

Better yet, had it been developed as a web app they would be beholden to nobody, and it would have been cross platform. From the demonstration video, I see nothing in the app that wouldn't be easy to duplicate using web technologies. Perhaps cases like these will encourage more people to use the web as their main mobile development platform.

Yeah, that's just what I want: my ability to FUCKING SPEAK being dependent on the quality of my cellphone or Comcrap connection.

You know what? No. The web is not a computer, it is not a computing platform, it's not magical app juice that makes things native application developers have to worry about just go away. It's great at some things and remarkably, profoundly shitty at others. Quit trying to sell the snake oil that the cloud is the future of computing, and we can bin our CPUs, storage, and native code. It's not happening.

Google HTML5 cache manifests and then delete this silly rant.

HTML5 caching has a very limited file size

Cache manifests are not guaranteed to provide much storage space and are not guaranteed to provide even permanent storage. They are not adequate to provide a full-fledged application in the absence of a network connection. Now delete this silly retort.

So you want your ability to FUCKING SPEAK to be dependent on whether or not Apple will randomly yank your app from the store?

I never said that. You're providing a false dichotomy. What I want is an open source version of Speak for Yourself and the people who assert patent rights over this sort of software to go fuck themselves. That would be the best thing for kids like Maya.

Well we're in agreement about wanting it to be open source and wanting the patent holders to fuck themselves, but you're wrong about this not being possible as an HTML5 app with offline access.

Its clear that Speak for Yourself need to do one thing now: build a new version of the software, as quickly as possible.

Seems to me, on the basis of the videos of the software I've casually viewed, they could do it in MOAI in a few weeks. (http://getmoai.com/)

Most of the work for a 'port' is done: the content and design of the app. If the content is well organized, they could do a cross-platform version of SfY Next-Generation (runs everywhere: win/osx/linux/ios/android/&etc.) that prevails beyond falsely imposed boundaries.

They should open-source the app. That would be the ultimate freedom.

Yeah, that too.

>That these people, those who have their daughter threatened to be re-muted by Apple, that they still insist on using Apple's hardware is a mystery to me.

Well off the top of my head, going on stories I've read in the past two months: The Apple app store is about 2-3x more profitable than the Android marketplace. The fragmentation of Android makes developing cool apps using new features a nightmare, as about 4% of all phones are using the most recent version of Android. The Android Marketplace has had problems with piracy and illegal app copying that aren't as bad on the Apple app store. Stories of people more willing to pay money for iOS apps.

If you really can't understand why someone would prefer one development environment over another for reasons other than "freedom" (the irony of calling developing for the whims of a fickle, fast moving market supported by a corporation you like more than another corporation's market 'free' seems to be lost on you) then I don't think you can be reasoned with.

So you say there is more money to be had on iOS. I'm sure that is nice, as long as the one ruler decides that you are permitted to operate there.

I wonder how safe it feels doing working on a platform where you know that someone else, without any justification what so ever, can pull the rug under your business and say "so be it". You know, like we read about all the time with regard to iOS. Businesses dead because Apple declared them so.

Nice.

You seem to think that when I value Android over iOS, I do so because I prefer one corporate entity over another. That would be a false assumption. I value Android because the platform is open and will never own me.

I know this because I have cloned the Android git-repo, built it and deployed the build on my phone. From open source code to a working platform which I can use.

You will have to work very hard to convince me that this isn't open, that this isn't free and that somehow my preference for this platform is entirely corporate fanboying. If you somehow see that as "cannot be reasoned with", I think you may be in need of a mirror.

Even if you were unable to fetch Android's source code, as long as Android phones allow third-party sources for software packages (including straight download from a link), then Android as a platform remains a lot more open.

The Apple app store is about 2-3x more profitable

Just to drive that point home:

But amongst all of the oohs and ahhs of the new products and updates, there was one particular announcement that sort of flew under the radar. According to Apple, it now has more than 400 million active credit card-linked iTunes accounts…

At first glance, this may not seem like a very big deal. But let’s put this into some context. Paypal, arguably the most well-known digital payment provider, had somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 million accounts as of 2011. And only around 100 million of those were active.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/06/14/most-overlooked-anno...

The factor you cite of 2-3x more profitable is enormous. Most of the "Tell HN" posts I have seen had a factor of about 30-40% more.

>If Speak for Yourself had developed an app for Android they would have had none of these problems. None. Zilch. There are several markets. There are several stores. You can install standalone APKs if you like. The nature of the platform protects you from the likes of Apple.

Yes, but it also protects you from the likes of customers and profits. Last time I checked that was still the case with Android vs iOS marketplaces.

Do you think developers are idiots that develop for iOS BECAUSE of the restrictions? They develop for iOS DESPITE the restrictions, because a) that's where the money is, b) more high-end devices and latest versions of the respective OS at more end user hands with less fragmentation headaches. Plus, as a API, Cocoa Touch is pretty hard to beat, not for easy of use but for sheer _comprehensiveness_.

That said, going with Android could have worked well financially for an app such as this though, where the customers have a real need for it that is more important than their preference in smartphone.

>You would at least think that they saw why choosing Apple is fundamentally wrong for any person who considers himself free. If you're not free to do with your own property as you please, how much of a free being are you really?

The concept of freedom, as developed in Greece and Rome, is all about influencing policy and not being under the will of another man. So, a better question would be: if you are not free NOT to work as an employee, i.e not to spend 8+ hours a day under the commands of another, then how much of a free being are you really? Or, if you are not free to have an equal influence in public affairs with Joe Billionaire and Jack Lobbyist, how much of a free being are you really? Furthermore, if half of your life is regulated, from non-smoking laws, to anti-abortion, to whatever, how much of a free being are you?

The "installing whatever on my smartphone" is really really low in the freedom list...

> The "installing whatever on my smartphone" is really really low in the freedom list...

Given how important computers are in our society (and they're only getting more important) and given how many people use a smartphone as a primary computing device (and that's only increasing), I think "installing whatever on my smartphone" is higher on the freedom list than you think - and it is only moving higher.

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