WWDC10: The Conference
Wahey! No surprise that all content for WWDC is under NDA save for the keynote. That being said, some information is okay to reveal. So here goes.
The dirty little secret about Google Android
(Via Daring Fireball)
Here’s the dirty little secret about Android: After all the work Apple did to get AT&T to relinquish device control for the iPhone and all the great efforts Google made to get the FCC and the U.S. telecoms to agree to open access rules as part of the 700 MHz auction, Android is taking all of those gains and handing the power back to the telecoms.
When Apple convinced AT&T not to plaster its logo on the iPhone or preload it with a bunch of AT&T bloatware, it was an important first step for smartphones to emerge as independent computers that were no longer crippled by the limitations put on them by the selfish interests of the telecom carriers, who typically wanted to upsell and nickle-dime customers for every extra app and feature on the phone.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said, “iPhone is the first phone where we separated the carrier from the hardware. They worry about the network, while we worry about the phone.”We now have a situation where the U.S. telecoms are reconsolidating their power and putting customers at a disadvantage. And, their empowering factor is Android. The carriers and handset makers can do anything they want with it. Unfortunately, that now includes loading lots of their own crapware onto these Android devices, using marketing schemes that confuse buyers (see the Samsung Galaxy S), and nickle-and-diming customers with added fees to run certain apps such as tethering, GPS navigation, and mobile video.
… the consequence of not putting any walls around your product is that both the good guys and the bad guys can do anything they want with it. And for Android, that means that it’s being manipulated, modified, and maimed by companies that care more about preserving their old business models than empowering people with the next great wave of computing devices.
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I know that this is how I make money, but I don’t like it. This is why I started open sourcing as much as I can so I, and the entire community, can benefit from my hard work.
WWDC10: Pre conference
This took a while longer to finish than expected thanks largely to the fact that I was on a 40 day holiday in Australia after WWDC as well the MacBook Pro’s logic board dying on me. But I digress…
Another year, another great developer conference.
Almost couldn’t make it this year thanks to the late announcement by Apple that made booking flight and accommodations a very expensive proposition. But I am damn glad I decided to push ahead and just go (and burn up my allowance for next semester in the process). Still, am pretty proud this is an entirely self funded trip.
Marco.org: A smartphone retrospective
This is what high-end smartphones looked like in 2007:
Smartphones were an established consumer-electronics market with devices that people thought were pretty cool, but often frustrating and with serious shortcomings and design flaws.
Then this happened:
Other manufacturers had…
Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Beta testing
I’m probably not a great software beta tester. Most people aren’t.
We love the idea of beta testing, though. It’s a backstage pass to a movie set, a first draft of an upcoming novel, a rough sketch of a song. But, you know, unless you are prepared for them in a very specific way, those are all…
