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Android's Uncurated App Marketplace Draws Criticism, Google Activates 'Kill Switch' on Two Apps
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Apple's kill switch is to stop a grown adult from accidentally seeing a pair of tits missed during the approval process. Google's kill switch is to stop malware. That's the difference
"Tits" you say...?
New slogan: "Droid does, for those who cant use an iPhone. Were the smartphone for stupid people.
Next new slogan: "Droid App Marketplace: App chaos at its finest. We have no idea whats in here, but whats life without risks."
Next new slogan: "Droid App Marketplace: App chaos at its finest. We have no idea whats in here, but whats life without risks."
7 iPhones in the office. Somebody gets a text message.
Guess what happens next...
Absolutely awesome customization. So technologically advanced.
I own both systems and sorry but iPhone still falls behind.
True. I did the whole widget craze with my G1 and Nexus One. It was neat having facebook updates, twitter updates, etc all on there but at the same time it was pointless. It just ran down my battery checking for updates and all that stuff on my home screen. Widgets are neat, but I never really liked them long-term. Just me though.
No worries, I was just throwing that out there. The beauty of android is that not ALL android devices looks the same or act the same. You can model it to your taste. Some people like that, some dont. But it is a difference.
Also I am happy that Google has the ablity to kill malicious apps remotely, not everything they can catch in the review process. 2/3/4 layer security protocols are a good thing for any OS.
Agreed -- Android is a mess the lack of scrutiny on the apps may be why friend's Moto Droid crashes so much. As far as "Quality of the Apps" there are clearly two points of view....
1) If you mean quality in the sense of "QA" and "bug free", then yes a curated store adds at least one more testing step before it goes live, but still some apps are released on App Store that have bugs and require immediate updates after released.
2) If you mean quality as in the sense of "Good stuff you actually want on your phone" then it is going to be a matter of taste and needs. Some users may find everything they need on the Android marketplace. But my friend says she can never find any good apps for her Moto Droid and my brother-in-law showed me his Moto Droid and I was not impressed with the apps he downloaded. When "YouTube" and some app about 10,000 different drinks you can mix are two of what he considers his best apps, I am not impressed. Google navigation is kinda cool because it is free, but it is still not better than Navigon in my opinion.
Personally, I'll stick with my iPhone since it has not crashed on me for 11 months now. I can't even say that about my iMac or my Linux laptop. My old Palm Treo crashed 3 times per day on a bad day and once per day on a good day. The only thing that will get my iPhone 3Gs out of my hand is an iPhone-4 upgrade which I may be doing soon.
No. That is not what the common usage of killswitch refers to. I Am Rich and Podcaster are examples of apps that were pulled from the store by Apple due to rule violations (yes, Apple's rules for inclusion in the app store can be capricious but that is not a killswitch).
And I think there are multiple types of killswitches for the iOS apps. I could be wrong about that, but I thought I remember reading something about that when the whole killswitch thing hit the news. Anyway, killswitch is when an app is removed or otherwise disabled on all devices. Not when an app is removed from the app store. If you bought the app when it was available and Apple then decided to remove it from the app store you still have it (the tethering app is a good example, pulled from the store but it still exists on phones).
The only companies that I remember using their killswitch are Amazon and Google. Apple hasn't.
I'm definitely in the anti-widget camp. I think I am neat freak and like things nice and tidy and Android home screens always look messy to me. Even with iOS4I I kept my home screen background fairly simple. But I do get that widgets and customization are selling factors for some folks. If that's what you are looking for in a phone, then iPhone is not for you. Personally, its not what I'm looking for in a phone.
You can have a home screen on android without ANY icons on it. Just wallpaper.
Cant get more clean than that
first of all, what difference does it make if there are variations in hardware? what's wrong with choice? Should all macbooks have the same exact hardware?
Also how does someone using a 1.6 handset affect a user running 2.1 or 2.2? sure it sucks for the person using older hardware stuck on 1.6, but guess what older hardware gets left behind. its no different than what apple is doing to 2g and 3g iphones.
Curated store is good. Only one store is bad.
I still think there is too much confusion between having *a* carefully curated app store, and having one and only one app store. It's difficult to see how anyone could complain about having a safe, even an overly safe ultra-sanatized, app store. All platforms should have that. Google is making a big mistake not to offer a very sanitized app store. What's really bad about Apple's app store isn't that they reject a lot of things for vague or capacious reasons, or that you can't get whole categories of functionality you might want from the App store. That's just an irritation. What's bad is Apple's insistence that it's the ONLY way you can get software on your iDevice. A lot of people say, "If you want to install widgets, say, just jailbreak". That'd be an OK solution if Apple didn't insist that it was illegal and so, implicitly hang the threat of suing all the jailbreakers at some random point in the future. Sure, it doesn't look like they plan to sue them, but they might. The mere threat is enough to keep me from investing any time into developing software for jailbroken devices. It's bound to deter other developers too. So the jailbroken marketplace will be an impoverished place and the slick devices Apple makes will still be unable to live up to their potential.
A lot of people ask why anyone cares so much. Don't like the iPad, just don't buy one. Fair enough. There are a couple of reasons for caring and complaining, though. Myself, I like Apple products generally. I'm a big fan of their attention to little UI details and style. I want to buy Apple products. The iPad is clearly beautiful. There's a lot to like about it. To look at it, I really want one. But Apple's crippling control of the platform keeps it from living up to it's potential. I can't speak for others, but I complain about it as an Apple fan. I think Apple is taking a bad direction. I hope they change that direction. I don't hate Apple, I feel about Apple the way one feels about an alcoholic relative. My ability to influence Apple is infinitesimal, but I feel moved to try. I'm going to buy an Android phone this summer (my wife already has an iPhone). So there's one tiny way I'm giving my feedback. And by talking to other Apple fans, I hope to persuade a few to see Apple's course as a bad direction like I do. Maybe those can influence others. The dim hope is that maybe enough people will be unhappy with the direction Apple is trying to take computing to get Apple to change that direction. I don't want Apple to fail. I want them to succeed with a better model. It's a slim hope, but it's my purpose in going on about what I don't like about Apple's direction.
More here: http://ipadmakesmesad.blogspot.com
I still think there is too much confusion between having *a* carefully curated app store, and having one and only one app store. It's difficult to see how anyone could complain about having a safe, even an overly safe ultra-sanatized, app store. All platforms should have that. Google is making a big mistake not to offer a very sanitized app store. What's really bad about Apple's app store isn't that they reject a lot of things for vague or capacious reasons, or that you can't get whole categories of functionality you might want from the App store. That's just an irritation. What's bad is Apple's insistence that it's the ONLY way you can get software on your iDevice. A lot of people say, "If you want to install widgets, say, just jailbreak". That'd be an OK solution if Apple didn't insist that it was illegal and so, implicitly hang the threat of suing all the jailbreakers at some random point in the future. Sure, it doesn't look like they plan to sue them, but they might. The mere threat is enough to keep me from investing any time into developing software for jailbroken devices. It's bound to deter other developers too. So the jailbroken marketplace will be an impoverished place and the slick devices Apple makes will still be unable to live up to their potential.
A lot of people ask why anyone cares so much. Don't like the iPad, just don't buy one. Fair enough. There are a couple of reasons for caring and complaining, though. Myself, I like Apple products generally. I'm a big fan of their attention to little UI details and style. I want to buy Apple products. The iPad is clearly beautiful. There's a lot to like about it. To look at it, I really want one. But Apple's crippling control of the platform keeps it from living up to it's potential. I can't speak for others, but I complain about it as an Apple fan. I think Apple is taking a bad direction. I hope they change that direction. I don't hate Apple, I feel about Apple the way one feels about an alcoholic relative. My ability to influence Apple is infinitesimal, but I feel moved to try. I'm going to buy an Android phone this summer (my wife already has an iPhone). So there's one tiny way I'm giving my feedback. And by talking to other Apple fans, I hope to persuade a few to see Apple's course as a bad direction like I do. Maybe those can influence others. The dim hope is that maybe enough people will be unhappy with the direction Apple is trying to take computing to get Apple to change that direction. I don't want Apple to fail. I want them to succeed with a better model. It's a slim hope, but it's my purpose in going on about what I don't like about Apple's direction.
More here: http://ipadmakesmesad.blogspot.com
Except you've just proven my point. Thank you.
the point that ur analogy is stupid? u cant just turn a car into a skateboard. that is impossible. U can cutomize an iphone by jailbreaking it. The reason u cant is because of an arbitrary restriction by apple.
Ummmm nice try but the common view is that iPhone is the choice device for the technology "challenged" and the android is the choice phone for "nerds". Sorry, but your just not going to cut it in marketing .
Do you complain when you can't turn your car into a skateboard, your toaster into a fridge or your television into a magic blanket?
If you don't then why do you come here to decry a device we like which doesn't easily allow *you* to do something unimportant to us? What is the purpose of that?
Go tell Ford they have failed because your Ka doesn't easily allow you to customise it so it can fly.
I see the Ipad "magical device" slogan is confusing people, sadly magic does not exist... contrary to what apple is advertising.
Software and hardware, two very different things.
Like others you have posted, a Simple Jailbreak of the Iphone and you have a device then suddenly is open to a whole new potential. Shocking as it maybe, multitasking has existed in the jailbreaking community for a long time.
Also to help with your Analogy, its more like Calling up Nissan cause you bought a New Sports car (GTR V-spec) that is limited (top speed 110) through software restrictions, Cause nissan does not want you going over 110 miles per hour casue that would be unsafe.
Wow. What a poor bit of reporting.
AT&T sells android devices, so I am confused about the connection to former AT&T employees being an issue.
Also the bigger issue here is that the android store is full if copyright violations and stolen material.
Google is not going to be able to safeharbor or DMCA their way out of this, especially when apple demonstrates that it is something that can be managed and controlled.
Google's future of being a major media player is going to be squashed when all the content producers refuse to do business with them because they are purveyors of most of the copyright infringement in the world. First youtube and now the android platform it is a big mess, and Google is going to have to do something about it.
Heh. Next up, Android phones with neon lighting and spiders and ninjas and stuff. W00T!
actually is quite the contrary: Google already demonstrated they are a company without ethics, mining a lot of user data ...
How can someone trust Google is well beyond my understanding ...
What a double standard! Google does it and people seem to be okay with it but if Apple did this this thread would be about 1000 pages and people would be threatening class action law suits
What a double standard! Google does it and people seem to be okay with it but if Apple did this this thread would be about 1000 pages and people would be threatening class action law suits
Indeed. And it would have been front page news on every tech news site and blog. Congress would be forming an investigative committee. The Fandroid Army would be loading up the torches and pitchforks. The uproar would have been deafening.
But all Google seemed to get was a muffled grumble or shrug of indifference from the Netizen horde.
Google PR is definitely doing a fine job these days.