I am a big Obama fan. I believe he, while being humble of his own ability, sees no end to the ability of the human spirit. I believe that the world will be a better place if Obama becomes president of America.
[This post includes a video. Those people reading this in a aggregated form might have to click through to my site if they want to see the it]
The latest in a long line of awesomeness and yet another brilliant example of Open Source kicking proprietary ass, Firefox 3 is coming out later today (at 7pm for those in the plus 2 timezone). In an attempt to get more rah rah, whizbang, Mozilla has put together a little Guinness book of records attempt to set the world record for the biggest number of software downloads in a day. I have no idea what the previous record was for, especially since Britney’s Limo Flash pictures can’t be considered “software”.
Anyways, hop along here and get it later on tonight. I will also be drinking that last Guinness in the fridge as part of my own personal celebration. Lynnae, you can have some too as long as you promise to upgrade at work tomorrow.
We spent the long weekend at a place in Stanford.
A list of things we did while there:
1. Braai
2. Watch BBC Food
3. Go for walks
4,5,6 etc. Braai
7. Drink.
8. Visit Birkenhead. (Overrated)
Some photos are here.
So yesterday my article on Android vs iPhone got picked up by macsurfer.com, something I generally would be rather happy with but my poor little server (and it is rather puny) didn’t seem to like what was happening and crashed a few times… Eventually I figured the safest thing to do (considering the threat of Polsmore style bandwidth charges) was to shut down apache and see how it felt in the morning.
I also think it’s important to say that I own a lovely shiny macbook. I do not hate Apple or their products and if you gave me an iPhone I would probably use it until something better came along.
Anyways, the funny thing about the crew over at macsurfer is that they tend to be a bit fanboyish.
Needless to say, here is my rebuttal to the 8 or so comments that made it through. A warning: what follows will be juvenile at best.
Quoth: “It’s impossible to predict far into the future of technology.”
Yes. you are quite correct. Should I not ‘ave a go then?
Quoth: It’s speculation
Yes, Again rather astute. Since it’s mostly written in the future tense and is not pretending to be a news site your observation is correct.
Quoth: Open source appeals to people for who the advancement of technology is their prime motivation.
And Tivo, and my mom, and a host of Fortune 500 businesses.
Quoth: Open source is a noble project, but it will only succeed where someone else sees how they can use it to make money.
Fare thee well my good knight.
Quoth: Can you imagine habitat for humanity toppling the major urban contractors? Doctors without borders displacing private practice medicine in North America?
Nope. Do I think it’s possible that one day more laptops will be sold running OSS than proprietary operating systems? Yes.
Quoth: As a consumer, you hope you have enough options that if one company is overcharging you can go elsewhere. The idea that things should just be ‘free’ is impossible…
Do you have a comprehension issue? Firstly, yes, you are right. When one company overcharges people will go somewhere else. Secondly, who suggested to you that Android phones will be free?
Quoth: Android will take off once someone figures out how to make money from it.
You mean these people?
Quoth: Of course, there is always the possibility that the world’s economic structure will fundamentally change and that human behaviour will suddenly NOT follow the path of least resistance.
How is buying a $750 phone the path of least resistance? I’d think that should be the Litmus Test for fanboy.
Quoth: So where are all of those open source desktops and laptops?
Look closely at numbers 3,6,12,13,15,16 and 20
Quoth: Your entire article is nothing by a wild guess and FUD.
Did it scare you?
Quoth: Bullshit in EVERY way! I won’t even go into it, it’s just not worth my time to comment on such overrated bullshit speculation you have offered up…
Which is why I didn’t read the next 248 words you wrote.
Quoth: There is no advantage a truly open OS would bring to the iPhone.
Besides being open. Of course.
Quoth: If Apple wanted to make an iPhone with fixed buttons, they could do it today; they don’t need Android to do that.
Yes, but they won’t. Some other manufacturer will make a phone with a qwerty keyboard and together with Android will make that phone a viable iPhone competitor for the market segment that I fit squarely in the middle of.
Quoth: BTW, are you referring to the same “sheer innovative power of the masses†that managed to topple the iPod as the world’s best-selling DAP?
No, I am referring to the “sheer innovative power of the masses” that is responsible for Linux.
Quoth: Again, what does this have to do with Android? You’re talking about subsidized hardware, the economics of which apply equally to phones carrying Android.
I’m not talking about subsidised hardware at all. If Asus can sell an entire friggen laptop for $299 why should an iPhone cost $750. When you bought your macbook (that I totally know you own because you such a raging fanboy), was it subsidised by someone? Phones are only subsidised because when mobile phones first came to market they were ludicrously expensive and people couldn’t yet justify the huge expense for the “new fangled technology”. We need to break that trend. Do you like it when your carrier fools you into spending $750 and thinking you’re spending $199?
Quoth: What makes you think handset manufacturers will not intentionally cripple their own implementations of Android in order to push their own services or their carrier’s services?
Firstly, draw the line. There is a difference between handset manufactures and networks. In the US you guys have let yourselves get duped by your networks who “only bring in” and “only support” certain phones. The rest of the world has the freedom to use whatever (for the most part) phones we want on the networks WE PAY MONEY TO BE ON.
Secondly, an open platform is easily reflashed.
Quoth: You assume people even know what open source is. 99% of the general population do not know, or care about open source.
I make no such assumption. People do not care, but if my mom sees she can get a cool phone that does all kinds of cool stuff, she will buy it, whether it’s powered by fairy dust or anything else.
Quoth: They want simplicity, function, and a coolness factor, all of which Apple offers for $199 now.
You mean $750, but yes, I agree… People want simple, functional cool phones… They don’t necessarily want to pay $750 though. Remember, Apple can make an awesome Android phone and make it shiny and stuff… and charge $999 if they want… but they’ll be competing with other people and their shiny $250 phones.
Quoth: Googles efforts will be in vain due to the same business model PC’s face.
Shit, I forgot about that struggling PC market. Shit… maybe we should hold a telethon or get Bono to do a fund-raising concert.
Quoth: They are at the mercy of Microcrap, so their products are influenced by Microcrap’s crap.
Dude, Microsoft are so out of this picture it’s not even funny… They are irrelevant in the mobile phone market.
Quoth: The business model is flawed, since it does not give profit incentive to programers.
Except of course if those developers work for the phone manufacturers… Or, except of course if those developers happen to be the same freaks of nature who make things like Ubuntu. So, except for those two exceptions I totally agree with you.
Firstly let me just say that it’s pretty clear that Apple will sell about a gajillion iPhones in the next few years. I’m not debating that. What I am debating though is whether Apple’s stranglehold on the “actually practical and cool smart phone” market will live forever more.
Quite to the contrary, I predict that one day, Apple will switch to using Android… like they switched to using Intel when the realised that the Intel chips were unquestionably better than the PowerPC chips and they were bound to lose market share if they didn’t jump ship… and JUST like they switched to a unix kernel when they realised how crappy their own one was.
That’s right, I said it.
1. Open Source
Open Source will win any programming battle, eventually. Open Source doesn’t mean a bunch of long haired, unwashed hippies sitting in their basements coding up the next version of sendmail… These days it’s some of the worlds finest developers working at Google and a plethora of the rest of the world’s finest developers working at the various handset manufacturers. All of them with a single goal in life. To make the best mobile platform ever.
2. Innovation.
Android brings the promise of a truly open platform. Apple doesn’t think this way. They like to limit, enclose, encapsulate and encase anything they possibly can. While Apple’s approach has historically worked for them, the sheer innovative power of the masses will mean that Android phones will be doing things that will make Steve Jobs simultaneously cringe and salivate with jealousy.
Innovation doesn’t just mean software innovation. Personally I like the idea of a querty keyboard on my phone. I find it easier to work with than the iPhone interface, but if there’s one thing we know about Steve Jobs it’s that he hates buttons. For the most part (ipod etc) Steve’s button hating ways are correct, but there are 6 billion different ways people will be wanting to use their phones. Steve wants the world to be all be like him… Not all of us are.
3. Open Markets
Probably the most powerful force in the upcoming battle for smartphone supremacy is who can knock out good quality, powerful phones at affordable prices. The iPhone does not cost $199 dollars. It costs a hell of a lot more, they’re just letting you pay it off over 2 years. In Europe an unsubsidised iPhone 3G is going to start selling at 499 Euros… that’s $769 when you convert it back to dollars. That’s almost 4 times the subsedised price, which means that even if you factor in the fact that Apple products cost more in Europe than they do in the US, the real cost of the iPhone is still nowhere near $199. This is the era of EEE PCs
4. Greed.
Android is not greedy. Apple is. Apple specifically excludes functionality on the iPhone in order to increase the amount of money you spend with your carrier. For example, there is not SIP (or VOIP) client on the iPhone so you’re “forced” to pay your carrier’s voice rates rather than being able to make the call via SIP over a wifi link.
Android will have no vested interests and will be available to all manufacturers for free. This will mean that Android phones will have all kinds of cool functionality built into them that Apple, for sheer economic reasons, will resist putting in the iPhone.
The other interesting greed factor is what I like to call the “Windows Vista” shuffle. The idea is that everyone upgrades because there are all these cool new features you just *have to have*. The more we learn about Windows Vista the more we realise how blatantly it was an attempt from Microsoft to convert all those millions of 8 year old Windows XP owners into fresh revenue. Open Source’s approach has always been to squeeze every last ounce of performance out hardware and to support that hardware for as long as possible. This means you only need to upgrade when you really want or need to… not when someone else decides they want your money.
Greed is also the reason that Steve Job’s version of “worldwide” is actually only 30 countries… Every time Apple wants to start selling the iPhone in a particular country they have to go through a process of trying to find a mobile carrier in that country willing to sell their souls and rip off it’s customers. (Aapprently this isn’t hard but it does take time)
5. Google
Google has a lot of money and they’re on a mission to change the world. From search engines to Solar Panels, they’re trying their best to make the world a better place for as long as they have the power to do so. Whether you love them or hate them they have a track record of rocking the boat and Android might just be the depth charge that roundhouse kicks the iPhone into a brick wall.
As for the assimilation… lets just say that I wont be suprised if I one day in the not too distant future get to read “iPhone Touch – Now Powered By Android”
J.
So much going on, so little time to blog about it.
kthanksbye.
Common English errors (about a gazillion of them)
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html
Please bare with me etc.
j.
(Thanks to AnnaBee for pointing it out)
Graffiti is and always has been a part of society… go read up about it. We’re talking thousands of years… even before Jesus.
Now obviously my title is rather exaggerated and designed for the express purpose of increasing my readership, but the thing is, I really am starting to get pissed off at those “Jesus Saves” people walking around painting over what they deem inappropriate.
First there was the international graffiti competition held in Cape Town where some of worlds best contemporary artists painted f-ing amazing murals on walls that made you want to stop your car and take a deep breath. 2 days later the Jesus Saves people painted that incredible wall full of art work grey. Not white, grey.
I was willing to tolerate that since graffiti is supposedly against the law… never mind the fact that supposedly these guys got permission from the owner of the wall.
Then there was “FREE ZIM!“, a piece of artwork so poignant and powerful that it made me seek it out and photograph it. It said everything that needed to be said and was a constant, daily, reminder to thousands of Capetonians of exactly what had to happen in Zimbabwe. It was also beautiful, with stencilled birds taking flight reminding me of the phoenix to our north.
Then in the height of the xenophobic attacks against Zimbabweans (and other foreigners) the “Jesus Saves” crew painted over it in a dull grey that angers me intensely every time I drive past.
Which leaves me to say, like some graffiti artists mural’d on a nearby wall: “Jesus must hate art”.
ps. For the kids out there who are going to start screaming about tagging. I am not talking about tagging. I am talking about art. Tagging is the equivalent of taking a shit on the pavement and expecting people to think you’re cool for doing it.
[[deleted]]
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Update: Apparently this post was really nasty and some tweople were offended. I am not a twigot, some of my best friends are tweople and I’d totally invite them into my house and let them use my cutlery I do.
By the way, Jonathan III has a neutral stance on Crocs.
I just have to say it, Python (and Django) are wonderful and I loved spending a small part of my weekend with them. Thanks Brad.
My weekend was as such:
Friday night we stayed in, drank Urbock (my new favourite beer) and watched Rocky V.
Saturday we had a nice little breakfast at home, then went wine tasting and lunching at Anura, then went to Kerry Anne & Paul’s for dinner. Then fell asleep because we had eaten too much.
Sunday morning’s breakfast was Avo on toast with grated cheese and lots of nandos garlic peri-peri sauce. Next we we went to Lynnae’s place and tasted her first batch of home-brewed beer… and then set up the fermenter for a second batch… (23 liters at a time baby!)
Then we popped in at my parentals because I love them. My dad hauled out his 1972 Scope Magazine so that Lynnae could read the story about *his* real near death experience at sea.
1972 Scope magazine is crazy! It’s full of ads for things that you can’t believe anyone would buy, like high-tech weight loss machines and anti-smoking pills… oh wait… Surprisingly enough there were only 2 ads for cigarettes and no boobies. Another thing I noticed is how so many of the ads mentioned how the product is being widely used in America as if to legitimise it. They had a “food section” which Lynnae was rather taken by. The “food styling” which, albeit in a dirty men’s magazine, was rather atrocious. I think I might borrow it and scan some of the more crazy stuff.
Then I spend the evening working on my new pet project (out soon) while Lynnae killed zombies on the xbox.
When in Rome homies… when in Rome!
arbitraryuser 