Re: [tlug] About to break down and get an iPhone

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Christian Horn writes:

 > I can understand your thoughts well and agree; Apple binding
 > and restricting customers in unpleasant ways - and nontheless
 > having anyone running for their products.

*shrug* If I had a product that beats GNOME and KDE the way Aqua beats
them, I doubt I'd open source it.  On the other hand, the stuff I use
day to day (darwin, X, Unix userland, TeX, XEmacs, audacity; Preview,
Safari, and iTunes are the main exceptions, and Preview and Safari are
in there only because I'm lazy) *is* open source, and (with the
exception of GDB, dammit---now, lack of a non-Apple gdb *really*
sucks, dontcha know?) Apple-packaged tools mix democratically with
local builds and Macports.

Oh, yeah, BTW, the browser in the Android is an Apple product.<wink>

 > The current Android keiteis of first generation really en-
 > courage people to get google-accounts, not sure on how well 
 > they are usable without one.  

They're not.  According to the reviews I've read, without Google, you
get no email, no calendar, no contact list (!!).  It will be
interesting to see how that stuff works itself out, since Google (not
to mention Yahoo and Hurtmail) money will all be behind webapps, not
standalone capabilities.

 > The other thing people like the iphone for is snappiness;
 > ease of use, having the applications to react fastly to users
 > commands.  Also its been more than a year since release of the
 > first iphone and thus rising the bar to a new level, the 
 > Android phones are yet nicely to use but no match for the 
 > iphone. 

Yep.  With google behind it, it could definitely go somewhere, but
catching Apple will be non-trivial.  Unfortunately, since Android is
based on compiling Java to a non-Java VM, basically it's going to
present a build-and-upload interface, with Java the only supported
language.  Can you say "Just like the Zaurus[1]", children?  I knew
you could![2]

About-to-turn-in-my-4-year-old-A1303SA-for-another-grannyphone-ly y'rs,

Footnotes: 
[1]  R.I.P.

[2]  Welcome to my neighborhood.  And if that doesn't mean anything to
you, don't worry about it.  It wasn't insulting or anything like that.