- Posts tagged iOS
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Google's lax vetting allows almost any app in the Android market. Unscrupulous developers rejoice.
It collects a user’s browsing history, text messages, your phone’s SIM card number, subscriber identification, and even your voice mail password. It sends the data to a web site […] That site is evidently owned by someone in Shenzhen, China. The app has been downloaded anywhere from 1.1 million to 4.6 million times.
Though the research comes from a maker of Android security software, they've identified what the malicious app does and where the data is sent; the issue is real.
No vetting is perfect. Apple recently approved a flashlight app that housed a tethering application (though it harmed no users). But Apple shows concern about iPhone privacy. The excellent location services in iOS 4 are a great example. I appreciate the work they do on this.
For Android, we can and should excoriate the developers of this particular app, but we should also excoriate Google for barely trying to avoid this sort of thing.
So this is Android:
- Available apps with little curation, and security issues being exploited.
- Multiple OS releases and features that may or may not be coming to your particular hardware.
- Multiple devices from multiple vendors each having vendor-specific software/services (crapware).
- A real possibility that soon running security software will not only be prudent, but a foolish thing not to do.
Do these sound familiar? It's the Windows OS model of the 1990s. Android resembles it more every day.
Thoughts On Today's Ruling About "Legal" iPhone Jailbreaking [u]
First, Jailbreaking was never really illegal. If legality is what kept anyone from doing it I think they were misinformed. It was a gray area awaiting a ruling either way; Apple wanted the court to settle the question as to whether jailbreaking violated copyright, and they did, though not in Apple's way.
There is zero evidence to support Apple would have gone after individual jailbreakers (had the ruling gone the other way), any more than they go after one-off Hackintoshers.
I believe Apple wanted the shield of illegality not to go after geeks, hobbyists, etc., but rather to stop the unscrupulous who may now crawl out of the woodwork to make a quick buck on this.
I can practically see "Jailbreak Kits" for sale already. Their marketing copy gushing about how this once forbidden activity is now available to the general public. They'll publish a link to the Library of Congress statement that few will read and fewer will understand. They sure as heck won't dwell on the practice being unsupported, or that the next iOS release will likely kill it. Money in hand, they're off to the next sucker leaving their current "customers" yelling at Apple as if it's Apple's fault.
Finally, Apple will continue to "break" jailbreaks. Not only does the statement not mean Apple must allow the activity, but I believe every jailbreak so far relies on a security exploit. Of course Apple's going to plug that hole. They better.
[UPDATE:] See this excellent post for more information what today's copyright ruling really says.
Dear Apple: Only 235,000 Apps? Only 47,000 Developers? Your "Closed" Model Sucks.
Total Active Apps (currently available for download): 234,915 […]
Number of Active Publishers in the US App Store: 47,370
I'm surprised Apple hasn't shut that site down for regularly publishing Apple's shame.
Meanwhile, I'm certain Android's freewheeling, "open" (except for the native API, or Flash), look-the-other-way, Lord of the Flies approach to app development has resulted in numbers that embarrass Apple's.
Right?
And even if the numbers aren't quite as high, I'm sure Android apps are overall of a higher quality, and will run on a higher percentage of phones than Apple's.
Right?
And even if fragmentation is a bit more of an issue, I'm sure Android developers are raking in cash from the reported 160K activations (potential new customers) per day.
Right?
For shame, Apple. Don't you know "open" always wins?
Android vs. iPhone: Is Choice Enough?
If I like Android and hate my new carrier, Sprint, I can switch to Verizon and get the Incredible. If I have an aneurysm and love AT&T, I can get the Aria. If I want a small screen, I can do that. If I want a physical keyboard, I can find a device that does that. But for iPhone, I simply would have to take whatever Apple offers and believe that their choices are right for me. I've chosen Apple many times and will again in the future, but I don't think I should buy into a system that restricts my choices when another one is out there that enables my choices.
The article is a long and honest assessment of one man's reason for switching to Android from iPhone. By "honest", I mean it doesn't appear to be a page-hit or iPhone-bashing piece, but rather a sincere opinion. Still, that doesn't mean the opinion isn't misguided, and even a little bit misleading.
A lot of the article hinges on Android's "momentum" and how it may soon be as good as the iPhone, but that makes no sense. If being "best" and having momentum matter the iPhone leads right now. By that criteria he should be using an iPhone and, in a couple years when his contract expires, he can survey the landscape for what's "best" again.
The "best" argument isn't what rankles me, however, it's the so-called choice. Proponents of this line of reasoning—and the article adheres to it strongly—tout it as the iPhone against a mythical phone with features from who-knows-how-many handsets. No matter what feature you want, the argument goes, you have that "choice" (though it seems to ignore that the iPhone is a choice as well).
But what if you want several features? Maybe the Nexus One appeals to you, but you want a hardware keyboard. Oops. Or maybe you want the Evo, but also want AT&T. Oops again. Or maybe you want the Droid but with Apple's App Store. Blasphemy! The point is, "choice" does not mean you get the phone of your dreams. There will be compromise. Period. At the end of the day, after the "choice" you still end up with just one phone for two years. Will that one phone—not a device imagined from features of others—be better than the iPhone (also a choice)? Will it be more or less of a compromise? In the end that's all that matters.
Somewhat misleading is the flippant way the author suggests that if he doesn't like a phone he can just switch. But that's hardly true. As a subsidized phone, once you buy it you're in for (on average) two years. So, no, if you hate your new carrier, you can't just switch to Verizon. Not without a hefty Early Termination Fee. Or is money supposed to be no object? Sure, you can switch after two years, maybe 18 months, but does that matter if you've made the wrong compromise to begin with?
Larry Page answers Steve Jobs by misrepresenting Google's mobile phone history [u]
We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet enabled and have good browsers and all that, because that did not exist in the market place," Page reportedly said. "I think that characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable.
I believe Larry Page is trying to shake two notions at once: that somehow Google entering the smartphone arena had nothing to do with Apple, apparently it was just a coincidence; and that Android phones aren't somehow a copy of the iPhone. So he claims they'd been working on Android "a very long time" and that Steve Jobs is rewriting history.
Unfortunately for Larry, the history of the iPhone and Google's involvement with Android do not support his representations.
iPhone
When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld in January, 2007, he said he'd been waiting 2.5 years for that day. This means we know the iPhone was in process circa July, 2004. We also know from Jobs' statement at the D8 conference this year that Apple had actually started on the touch-screen tablet first, and then set it aside to do a mobile device. From this we know the iPhone was a touch-enabled, revolutionary device from it's very inception (again, mid-2004).
There were other signs of Apple moving into mobile through various rumors of tying iTunes into a mobile phone with a hardware partner (which turned out to be true via their agreement with Motorola to use iTunes on the ROKR phone).
Obviously, Apple's mobile entry wasn't news to Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO and an Apple board member at the time. While Schmidt probably had no specific details of either device (Apple is very secretive; I doubt the board gets those kinds of details that early), he would certainly know that Apple was getting into mobile. Schmidt was elected to Apple's board in 2006, but other indications existed that Apple was flirting with mobile, and this article is not dependent on Google having specific iPhone details. Indeed, it assumes Google did not have specific details.
Android
Meanwhile, Google bought Android in August, 2005, over a year after their CEO discovered Apple moved into the mobile space. Larry Page would have us believe this is a coincidence, but no reasonable individual would buy into that.
Google having no particular ideas of their own, the phone they set about building was clearly a Blackberry copy (below). Trackball. Hardware keyboard in the "lower 40". A few icons at the bottom of the screen. It's pretty much the spitting image of a Blackberry (except it's white, copying a design cue from Apple's iPods).
The prototype is from February, 2008, eight months after the original iPhone became available. By this time, doubters since the Macworld iPhone announcement are being proven wrong. The iPhone has received great reviews and is beginning to catch on. The touch screen works, a "full" web browser on a mobile device works, and people are loving it. There are still plenty of doubters and bashers, but even at this relatively early stage there are many who can tell it's the future of mobile. Google's prototype is a joke by comparison.
Sometime during 2008, Google very clearly changed mobile strategies, dumping the Blackberry copy and proceeding to work on an iPhone copy.
The Real History
Let's sum up:
- Google was aware Apple was entering the mobile space (Not definitely, though industry rumors gave this indication.)
- Google purchased Android a year after Apple began their mobile development
- Google initially (and unoriginally) targeted a Blackberry copy (in iPod white)
- Google sometime in 2008 (again, unoriginally) changed their target to an iPhone copy
Larry Page's statement is a misrepresentation of what went down in Google's mobile development. From entering mobile in the first place after industry talk indicated Apple had, to using a white design in their prototype, to copying the iPhone once it proved to be the future, and even to later adding a "market place" of apps after Apple opened the App Store, Google's every move in mobile—except the business model—is a copy of Apple's.
I couldn't care less Google entered mobile. It's where all the action is and they feed off people on the web. Without a shot at the mobile market they may have ceded those ads to somebody else. Further, I couldn't care less they dropped the Blackberry copy and targeted the iPhone, since it's much superior (sorry, RIM fans). But it's funny to see, like Microsoft, Google fighting off the obvious fact that they follow in Apple's footsteps and hope people have short memories or won't look it up. You're following the leader, quit denying it and try to actually make something better.
Google is completely open except when they're not
Like any company, Google is open in what doesn’t make them money and proprietary as heck in what does. Android is open (under the Apache license, not GPL — which should give the philosophical FOSSies pause) but Google certainly hasn’t opened their search or AdWords platforms. Likewise Apple open sources WebKit (which Google uses for their browser) and OpenCL and Grand Central and FaceTime, but keeps their crown jewels equally closed. So enough already with the open stuff. You give me free services so you can mine my data, I sell my soul to you to use them. Deal. Just don’t insult my intelligence while doing it.
Good article. It's not the lack of "open" in Google's business I take issue with—it's just a business model, and a successful one at that. No, it's bullSchmidt statements from their CEO that bug me because he's rarely called on it.
Perhaps, albeit slowly, more and more tech writers will catch on like the one above. The open-but-not-really vs. closed-via-tiny-wall argument detracts from the actual products anyway. Offer something great, not rhetoric.
Unlike iOS, Android Users Play Upgrade Roulette: Maybe you get it, maybe you don't
Some of the cause for the updates is likely to be HTC, which only said 2010 phones would be updated. As such, the only HTC phones on Sprint to carry Android 2.2 are likely to be the Evo 4G and possibly the Legend. Samsung hasn't explained any of its plans for the Moment, but the company has developed a pattern of declining to upgrade phones beyond one revision.
Only phones from 2010? Only one revision? Wow. That's some harsh upgrade terms right there. And don't think other hardware manufacturers and carriers will think any different.
For all the good press Android 2.2 has received, little has been written about the tiny percentage of phones that are actually going to run it. The vaunted Evo doesn't have it yet. Even unreleased phones like the DroidX will debut with 2.1.
Notice that there isn't just one upgrade villain. Various manufacturers and carriers will have their own rules about what's happening. Too bad for the user who wants to upgrade but realizes the decision is not his.
Still, this is what Google wrought by design. Their goal is to get as many "Androids" out there as possible. Version consistency is not a priority because they all display Google's mobile ads, which is the entire point of Android in the first place.
Though disappointed by this, I'm not surprised. I've compared the Android distribution philosophy to Windows Mobile before, and this is more proof of it.
Sure, Android is better than WinMo, but saying you run "Android"—unless you're a geek—doesn't tell us much because of the many hardware/software iterations. Typical users will be running the original version that came on the phone two years later when they buy a new one because upgrading was too much trouble, or they didn't know they could, or it wasn't an option. The more Android devices sell, the more this will be true. The carriers and manufacturers are too busy with the latest spec sheet-based offering (10 megapixels, anyone?) to worry about the user who bought one three months ago.
Compare this to the iPhone. Much is made of Apple's yearly iOS introductions, with critics claiming it's all hype or they're just catching up. I disagree, but none of that matters. What matters is that every year iPhone owners get an upgrade that significantly improves their existing phone and it costs them nothing. They just plug into iTunes and click Install. Further, only with iOS 4 has Apple finally dropped a device. But that original iPhone is three years old, and was already "made new" twice; we're not talking about an HTC phone bought seven months ago.
The reason iPhone owners watch Apple's new iOS announcements closely is because they know their phone can upgrade to it. Meanwhile, Android users excited by 2.2 a month ago are still waiting, most likely to be disappointed.
Misguided Developers: Apple dominates mobile development now, but "open" will win in the end
The way developers see it, Apple might be dominating the game today but in the long-term, it will be Google and its open platform approach that will take the top honors.
Right. Just like Linux with its "open platform approach" took "top honors" on the desktop. Which reminds me, is this The Year Of Linux again?
Anyway, you can develop an app taking advantage of unique hardware and software with off the charts customer satisfaction scores, or you can write lowest-common-denominator code in Java or Flash on wildly fluctuating devices. The choice is yours.
I've said before that Google can have all the philosophical/political developers they want. I still believe that. I've seen no correlation between a developer's politics and ability to code.
Consumers just want a really great app. Whether the developer can also sell it on a dozen other devices doesn't mean diddly to a typical end user (you know, the ones developers should be trying to sell to). Further, whether an app is "open" is irrelevant in a tech world where the meaning of that word has been twisted by every corporate entity to mean whatever it needs to in order to fit their marketing plan.
The "open" advocates are misguided believing they don't want to buy or code for an Apple device because the six-inch high “wall” around Apple's “garden” has only allowed over 39,000 developers and 225,000 apps—way more than competitors’ alleged “open” systems have—but it’s the theory, not the practice, that matters to such people.
Oh Goody, Another iPhone vs. Android Feature List
All the article "proves" is that it's just as easy to devise a feature list favoring the iPhone as it is to favor Android. Big deal.
The inherent worth of a product is the total package, from the hardware to the software to the ecosystem. When measured on that scale I think the iPhone beats up Android and takes its lunch money. But you'll never capture that in a feature list, can't we just leave those to the marketing people?
