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Shuttleworth: All your rights are belong to us
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Comments (46)
26 earlier comments in the full thread.
> I'll tell you why: it's vastly superior to Android tablets, ESPECIALLY the cheap ones.
First, you're ignoring that the Ipad's carried at that site are also refurbished units. And they're still $500+.
Of course it's superior to the cheap ones. But it's not superior to the expensive ones, most of which still undercut it's price by $100 or more. And not everyone can afford to throw $500 at a computing purchase. For many, the $100 Android tablets are their only option if they're going to get a tablet.
First, you're ignoring that the Ipad's carried at that site are also refurbished units. And they're still $500+.
Of course it's superior to the cheap ones. But it's not superior to the expensive ones, most of which still undercut it's price by $100 or more. And not everyone can afford to throw $500 at a computing purchase. For many, the $100 Android tablets are their only option if they're going to get a tablet.
You guys might find this interesting: https://twitter.com/#!/koush/status/99917812440633344
For those who don't know who Koush is, he's the author of ClockworkMod & ROM Manager and a core contributor to CyanogenMod7.
Here's his blog: http://www.koushikdutta.com/
This is a guy who's sole source of income is his Android software (and one of the few who has successfully made big money on the Android platform) and he's frustrated enough with Android that he's considering getting an iPhone.
Just sayin'.
For those who don't know who Koush is, he's the author of ClockworkMod & ROM Manager and a core contributor to CyanogenMod7.
Here's his blog: http://www.koushikdutta.com/
This is a guy who's sole source of income is his Android software (and one of the few who has successfully made big money on the Android platform) and he's frustrated enough with Android that he's considering getting an iPhone.
Just sayin'.
The iPhone is like getting a Porche, and having it be dealer serviced. Android is like having a Detroit muscle car and doing your own work in your garage. So, he wants to get out of the garage, no biggie. He'll be missed, but another will take his place... Just sayin'.
JaseP:
This is precisely my point. This is why so many people I know who have Android phones say they'd rather have an iPhone and why I believe so many Android tablet consumers are returning their tablets. They don't *want* to have to service their phones/tablets, they want them to Just Work(tm) and when something goes wrong, they want to bring it into the shop and have it fixed. Only a small minority of people (the hacker community, mostly) care about being able to hack their phones to install custom ROMs and to tweak things beyond the wallpaper and a few other settings that phones like the iPhone already allow them to tweak.
What they get with Android is a mish-mash of stuff which is all rough around the edges, has critical bugs that Googles doesn't seem interested in fixing (I've been tracking a bug sitting in their bug tracker for a year now about connecting to passworded APs), sending SMS's to the wrong contact, crashes in anything pre-2.3 when a contact in the addressbook has only a partial birth date. I mean, the types of bugs I constantly run into on Android scream lack of Quality Control. While I understand and sympathize not wanting to be beholden to Apple for bug fixes (iPhone isn't bug free either), the reality is that the average consumer does depend on the phone maker to fix the bugs and push software updates... which brings me to my next gripe: the iPhone 3G got continuous bug fixes and software updates for 3 years. My Samsung Galaxy S (and, according to everyone else I know with other Android phones) barely got a single update (2.1 -> 2.2) after waiting 9 months and 2.3 STILL isn't available for my phone unless I risk bricking it by installing a community ROM which also voids my warranty.
In many ways, I believe this is also why Linux hasn't yet taken over the desktop (although I think Linux offers a much better user experience than Android does).
This is precisely my point. This is why so many people I know who have Android phones say they'd rather have an iPhone and why I believe so many Android tablet consumers are returning their tablets. They don't *want* to have to service their phones/tablets, they want them to Just Work(tm) and when something goes wrong, they want to bring it into the shop and have it fixed. Only a small minority of people (the hacker community, mostly) care about being able to hack their phones to install custom ROMs and to tweak things beyond the wallpaper and a few other settings that phones like the iPhone already allow them to tweak.
What they get with Android is a mish-mash of stuff which is all rough around the edges, has critical bugs that Googles doesn't seem interested in fixing (I've been tracking a bug sitting in their bug tracker for a year now about connecting to passworded APs), sending SMS's to the wrong contact, crashes in anything pre-2.3 when a contact in the addressbook has only a partial birth date. I mean, the types of bugs I constantly run into on Android scream lack of Quality Control. While I understand and sympathize not wanting to be beholden to Apple for bug fixes (iPhone isn't bug free either), the reality is that the average consumer does depend on the phone maker to fix the bugs and push software updates... which brings me to my next gripe: the iPhone 3G got continuous bug fixes and software updates for 3 years. My Samsung Galaxy S (and, according to everyone else I know with other Android phones) barely got a single update (2.1 -> 2.2) after waiting 9 months and 2.3 STILL isn't available for my phone unless I risk bricking it by installing a community ROM which also voids my warranty.
In many ways, I believe this is also why Linux hasn't yet taken over the desktop (although I think Linux offers a much better user experience than Android does).
The grass is always greener...
I have only one friend who has owned both an iPhone and an Android phone.
She's not a techie, didn't want to mess with rooting or modding her phone (but could, and might -- she's bright enough, and not helpless, so maybe next time...).
She bought the iPhone to replace the HTC phone because she was tired of the Android phone's issues. But now that she has day-to-day familiarity with iPhone, she's vowing that it's replacement will be another Android.
I have only one friend who has owned both an iPhone and an Android phone.
She's not a techie, didn't want to mess with rooting or modding her phone (but could, and might -- she's bright enough, and not helpless, so maybe next time...).
She bought the iPhone to replace the HTC phone because she was tired of the Android phone's issues. But now that she has day-to-day familiarity with iPhone, she's vowing that it's replacement will be another Android.
Hah, just checked my mail and found a letter from Google. Opened it and apparently they are offering me a free Android tablet for my contributions. Oh, and also a $100 gas rebate voucher.
I think the gas voucher is more valuable, but maybe I can sell the Android tablet on ebay ;-)
I think the gas voucher is more valuable, but maybe I can sell the Android tablet on ebay ;-)
Bernard: I wish it was just a case of "the grass is always greener" for me, but I can honestly say I've *never* had such a horrible experience with *any* phone I've owned in the past.
This is the first phone I've ever owned where I need to reformat and reset to factory defaults every 3 months simply to receive incoming calls due to it getting unusably sluggish after ~3 months of use (thanks to Samsung's craptastic journaled version of the vfat filesystem - now, I'll grant you that this isn't *Google's* fault, it's Samsung's, but keep in mind that Samsung's Android phones are the #1 selling Android phones out there - and specifically the Galaxy S which is what I have).
So... Bernard: if she really does decide to get an Android phone, tell her to spend the $500-$600 (or whatever it is) to get a Google Nexus S phone and whatever she does, don't waste her money on a Samsung phone (maybe some of the HTC phones are better, but I doubt it). The Google phones are the only phones that seem worth getting due to the fact that they actually get anything resembling timely software updates.
Honestly, if my phone got semi-timely software updates that fixed the nastier of the bugs I'm constantly plagued with, I'd be a hell of a lot happier than I am now. *Some* of these bugs have been fixed in 2.3.4 but the odds of me ever seeing another update to my Galaxy S are nil and my phone is only a year old, still stuck on 2.2 (which I had to wait 6+ months to get updated to *that* from an even suckier 2.1 even though Adroid 2.2 had been released before I had bought my phone and Samsung+AT&T had been promising that they'd push the 2.2 update "within a month").
I got an Android because I wanted so badly to believe that Android would be even more amazing than my experience with iPhone had been. It really frustrates me that I was so wrong.
This is the first phone I've ever owned where I need to reformat and reset to factory defaults every 3 months simply to receive incoming calls due to it getting unusably sluggish after ~3 months of use (thanks to Samsung's craptastic journaled version of the vfat filesystem - now, I'll grant you that this isn't *Google's* fault, it's Samsung's, but keep in mind that Samsung's Android phones are the #1 selling Android phones out there - and specifically the Galaxy S which is what I have).
So... Bernard: if she really does decide to get an Android phone, tell her to spend the $500-$600 (or whatever it is) to get a Google Nexus S phone and whatever she does, don't waste her money on a Samsung phone (maybe some of the HTC phones are better, but I doubt it). The Google phones are the only phones that seem worth getting due to the fact that they actually get anything resembling timely software updates.
Honestly, if my phone got semi-timely software updates that fixed the nastier of the bugs I'm constantly plagued with, I'd be a hell of a lot happier than I am now. *Some* of these bugs have been fixed in 2.3.4 but the odds of me ever seeing another update to my Galaxy S are nil and my phone is only a year old, still stuck on 2.2 (which I had to wait 6+ months to get updated to *that* from an even suckier 2.1 even though Adroid 2.2 had been released before I had bought my phone and Samsung+AT&T had been promising that they'd push the 2.2 update "within a month").
I got an Android because I wanted so badly to believe that Android would be even more amazing than my experience with iPhone had been. It really frustrates me that I was so wrong.
I got an Android because I refuse to do business with Apple. Some enjoy and even find security behind the walled garden and the Mac philosophies. I do not.
I have an EVO. I use my phone for three reasons. Calendar/scheduling - email - phone calls. Every now and then I will use the GPS but through any thing I've experienced with the EVO, nothing has come close to the nightmare described here. I have not had to root my phone or alter the kernel in any way. It just works (TM). It runs smoothly with no slowdowns or freezes, it responds amazingly fast and has done so for the year I've had it and the two major updates that have come along the way.
I have an EVO. I use my phone for three reasons. Calendar/scheduling - email - phone calls. Every now and then I will use the GPS but through any thing I've experienced with the EVO, nothing has come close to the nightmare described here. I have not had to root my phone or alter the kernel in any way. It just works (TM). It runs smoothly with no slowdowns or freezes, it responds amazingly fast and has done so for the year I've had it and the two major updates that have come along the way.
Just discovered the cause of another Android bug that has been driving me crazy for the past few months.
First, a little background info: I have 2 gmail accounts (1 for work and 1 for personal), although you should be able to reproduce my bug w/ just 1 gmail account. To access these accounts, I use Google's GMail app. Since my work account gets a lot of emails and I don't like to get annoyed with a constant "bing!" audio every time I get a new email, I have selected the "Silent" notification for that account in the GMail app (while I *do* want notifications when I get personal emails which generally come from my wife - she's the boss!) and thus opted not to "Disable notifications" in the global phone settings.
So far, so good.
Taking the commuter rail to/from work for the past few months since I switched from the "My Music" player that came bundled with my phone to Google's "Music" app (from the Marketplace), randomly the Google Music player would stop playing music and I'd have to start the player again (it didn't crash, it just somehow got paused).
Weird, right?
Well, at first I thought maybe I was bumping the pause button on my phone before the screen blacked out so I started forcing the screen to turn off immediately before putting it down, just in case. No luck, the problem persisted.
Then I started noticing that this seemed to happen most frequently when I entered areas with cell reception (from a place w/o it)... but that made no sense, why would the music player stop when I went from an area with no cell reception to an area with cell reception? Could it be...?
Well, last night it happened to me again and since I'm in my home with stable cell reception, I knew that couldn't be the problem and since I happened to be looking at my phone (with the screen on) when it happened, I saw a possible (and likely) culprit:
GMail's "Silent" notification setting plays a silent audio stream when new mail for my work account arrives which takes control of the audio device from the Music player to play this "Silent.wav" (or .mp3 or whatever) and Google's Music player never gets it back until I manually press "Play" again.
This is the most likely explanation I can find for this otherwise random pausing of the media player on my Android phone.
Now, you might be saying, "KS: You're using a Linux phone, why don't you submit a patch to fix your problem and stop bitching about it? Be thankful you are using Android instead of that closed source crap like iPhone cuz you'd never be able to fix bugs in that phone!"
To that, I remind you that I can't submit a patch because I can't get access to the source code because Android isn't as Open Source as so many people like to pretend it is. Of course, even if it were, I'd argue that I shouldn't have to and that my time is worth more than the $100 I saved buying an Android over an iPhone which doesn't have this problem (or any of the other irksome problems I have with Android).
Now... that said, can anyone confirm this with their Android phones? If so, I'll be submitting a bug report to Google about this. If not, perhaps the bug is somewhere else.
First, a little background info: I have 2 gmail accounts (1 for work and 1 for personal), although you should be able to reproduce my bug w/ just 1 gmail account. To access these accounts, I use Google's GMail app. Since my work account gets a lot of emails and I don't like to get annoyed with a constant "bing!" audio every time I get a new email, I have selected the "Silent" notification for that account in the GMail app (while I *do* want notifications when I get personal emails which generally come from my wife - she's the boss!) and thus opted not to "Disable notifications" in the global phone settings.
So far, so good.
Taking the commuter rail to/from work for the past few months since I switched from the "My Music" player that came bundled with my phone to Google's "Music" app (from the Marketplace), randomly the Google Music player would stop playing music and I'd have to start the player again (it didn't crash, it just somehow got paused).
Weird, right?
Well, at first I thought maybe I was bumping the pause button on my phone before the screen blacked out so I started forcing the screen to turn off immediately before putting it down, just in case. No luck, the problem persisted.
Then I started noticing that this seemed to happen most frequently when I entered areas with cell reception (from a place w/o it)... but that made no sense, why would the music player stop when I went from an area with no cell reception to an area with cell reception? Could it be...?
Well, last night it happened to me again and since I'm in my home with stable cell reception, I knew that couldn't be the problem and since I happened to be looking at my phone (with the screen on) when it happened, I saw a possible (and likely) culprit:
GMail's "Silent" notification setting plays a silent audio stream when new mail for my work account arrives which takes control of the audio device from the Music player to play this "Silent.wav" (or .mp3 or whatever) and Google's Music player never gets it back until I manually press "Play" again.
This is the most likely explanation I can find for this otherwise random pausing of the media player on my Android phone.
Now, you might be saying, "KS: You're using a Linux phone, why don't you submit a patch to fix your problem and stop bitching about it? Be thankful you are using Android instead of that closed source crap like iPhone cuz you'd never be able to fix bugs in that phone!"
To that, I remind you that I can't submit a patch because I can't get access to the source code because Android isn't as Open Source as so many people like to pretend it is. Of course, even if it were, I'd argue that I shouldn't have to and that my time is worth more than the $100 I saved buying an Android over an iPhone which doesn't have this problem (or any of the other irksome problems I have with Android).
Now... that said, can anyone confirm this with their Android phones? If so, I'll be submitting a bug report to Google about this. If not, perhaps the bug is somewhere else.
Having someone send you an email should be easy enough that you can either confirm or rebut that deduction. Or, if you have a spare email account lying around somewhere, give it a try yourself and see what happens.
I the meantime, I'll load up some tunes and see if I can duplicate your observation.
I the meantime, I'll load up some tunes and see if I can duplicate your observation.
gus3: Nod, I've already "confirmed" it that way, but seeing as how my phone is not "vanilla" Android, who knows what Samsung may have changed/broken in, say, the notification system or the sound system.
Anyways, thanks for testing it out on your phone. Interested in hearing if you get the same results.
Anyways, thanks for testing it out on your phone. Interested in hearing if you get the same results.
My primary email service isn't GMail, but when I've gotten notifications, I've had no problems with the interruption stopping any media players.
Oh, and mine is a Samsung Gem, lowest of the low-end.
Oh, and mine is a Samsung Gem, lowest of the low-end.
Hmmm, yea, I've been trying to reproduce it again to make sure I got all the steps/settings correct in my bug report to Google but now I can't reproduce it either. I was able to reproduce it last night just fine. Wtf?
Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for it to happen again and see what else might be triggering this.
Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for it to happen again and see what else might be triggering this.
Do you know how to extract your dmesg log? It might have some info about the resource conflict.
gus3: Hmm, didn't think of that. I'll install ConnectBot and run dmesg next time it happens. Thanks for the idea.
Looks like this issue has already been submitted to Google: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Mobile/thread?tid=63b467e49a9e64b9&hl=en
Gonna read through the comments to the bug and see if that turns anything up.
Gonna read through the comments to the bug and see if that turns anything up.
I had to laugh....
I reproduced this exact phenomenon on a dual core quad 6600 about a week ago, Gmail email notification and Clementine.
I know, it has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter, I just thought it was funny. I'm really no help as I don't listen to music on my phone.
Thanks for running this down and saving others from duplicating effort.
I reproduced this exact phenomenon on a dual core quad 6600 about a week ago, Gmail email notification and Clementine.
I know, it has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter, I just thought it was funny. I'm really no help as I don't listen to music on my phone.
Thanks for running this down and saving others from duplicating effort.
> Thanks for running this down and saving others from duplicating effort
Heh, well, I haven't found it *yet* :-(
I was so sure I had finally figured it out last night and then no random pauses on my trip to work this morning even tho I knew that new email had arrived so spent another 15-20 minutes sitting here at the office emailing myself on both accounts and no pauses. Emailing my personal account did temporarily pause the player in order to play the default "bing!" wav, but then the music player immediately resumed like it should. Emailing my work account caused no interruptions at all to my podcast listening which is exactly what I was going for, so... *shrug*
It's a puzzler.
Some of the people on that Google support thread found that killing the Listen app running in the background fixed the problem but I checked and it's not running on mine (I never start that app even tho it *is* installed). Sadly most of the solutions I found in that thread seemed to be grasping at straws (which I felt my earlier conclusions were also, tho had hoped that the GMail app connection was it because at least that made *sense*).
Heh, well, I haven't found it *yet* :-(
I was so sure I had finally figured it out last night and then no random pauses on my trip to work this morning even tho I knew that new email had arrived so spent another 15-20 minutes sitting here at the office emailing myself on both accounts and no pauses. Emailing my personal account did temporarily pause the player in order to play the default "bing!" wav, but then the music player immediately resumed like it should. Emailing my work account caused no interruptions at all to my podcast listening which is exactly what I was going for, so... *shrug*
It's a puzzler.
Some of the people on that Google support thread found that killing the Listen app running in the background fixed the problem but I checked and it's not running on mine (I never start that app even tho it *is* installed). Sadly most of the solutions I found in that thread seemed to be grasping at straws (which I felt my earlier conclusions were also, tho had hoped that the GMail app connection was it because at least that made *sense*).
Quoting:It's a puzzler
It must be one of those self-healing Google therapeutic things. :-)
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Android tabs aren't streaming off the shelves because their import are being blocked, and I suspect, "aggressive" Apple marketing. The returns?!?! That's people buying a $175 device, expecting a $600 device's performance (despite the fact that the $600 device shouid be priced at $450). You can be an Atom powered tab for the price of an iPad.