Open in what way? Open like GPL? Open like any company can suggest changes to the spec? Or just open enough that others can implement something just to have Adobe pull the rug out from underneath them? I'm sure if it was properly open, Mozilla or someone similar would jump at the chance to fix things, since the majority of Firefox crashes are due to Flash.

I liken Flash to the situation of a number of years back on the web when many sites required Internet Explorer. Other browsers were free to implement the broken and horrible behavior IE had in rendering the web, and I'm sure they could have supported ActiveX somehow. Thankfully that wasn't the way things went, and we now have a better web experience due to browsers shifting to proper open standards. Sure, back then it sucked to be forced into IE or just not see content, but eventually things changed and people got over it. The more non Flash platforms out there, the quicker the same thing will happen again, allowing people on mobile devices to finally see when a restaurant is open without some 5MB SWF download.

I continue to laugh at Palm. Using HTML for what lives in a browser makes sense. Using a video tag to mark the spot for a video within a web page makes sense. But basing an operating system on serving up web pages? Hardly the same thing. And it doesn't make much sense at all for a full-featured platform. It's certainly doable for some applications, but developers can always have that choice on a platform like iPhone or Android which also allow native development.

Look, Adobe lost the browser battle with SVG. But they were winning the desktop content battle and made some nice coin. They used that coin to pick up their long-time rival and the technology that helped kick their ass. Suddenly it's the greatest thing ever because it continues to help line their pockets with cash.

I'm not a fan of much of what Flash offers on the web, even if it were completely open.

Well:



I infer that that means that they don't want other people changing it without their permission. But it's currently freely available. And I don't see any reason people couldn't distribute addenda separately from the Adobe spec. The only hole left is if Adobe stops distributing the specs. Since the license disallows redistribution, that would mean that only the people that had already downloaded it would have access to it.

They also say:


That doesn't inherently mean anything, but they didn't have to say it at all.

SWF and FLV/F4V are only the containers. How open is the content inside? Like Actionscript and all the bits that come together to actually make Flash work? And how about the compilers? I found some info that their goal is to make the next Actionscript compatible with ECMAScript, but thats no good for current content, only some theoretical future version.

Yeah, Flash sounds really promising for Android: http://gizmodo.com/5480985/why-most-current-android-phones-will-never-get-flash-101

Adobe hasn't put out an official comment yet, but it seems likely the person referred to in the article is an Adobe employee. 528MHz processors aren't suitable for running Flash 10.1? Sounds like a gem of a plugin.

You know what else sounds wonderful? There are Android devices out there relegated to version 1.5 of the OS. I'm sorry, this platform is on a slippery slope. Google needs to break out the spikes and get some traction fast.

Frankly, every "iPhone Killer" announced in the past three years only makes the iPhone look better and better in the end. I still can't believe that the most promising competition I've heard of so far is going to be coming from Microsoft. There's still plenty of time to completely screw that up of course.

I blame temporary morning dyslexia. Did anyone else see it this way?

I know that's not what I wrote, but I'll be damned if I didn't flip up to my post and see exactly that for a split second.

Anyway, none of the porn sites I visit use Flash.

As I understand it, everything is open (not open source, necessarily) from the SVG spec to the RTMP except for some patented codecs (like Sorenson Spark), and companies other than Adobe hold those patents. I'm not an expert, though. Go check out Adobe's Open Screen Project's FAQ.

ActionScript has actually been open source for a while.

The FLA format is not open. I think most everything else is, aside from the player.

Interesting read from an iPhone developer who bought a Nexus One.

http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/02/nexus-one-from-iphone-developer.html

Basic summary, the Nexus One is the best smartphone out there when excluding the iPhone. But when compared to the design, user experience decisions, and a few other factors on the iPhone, the Nexus One misses that last 10%. Mostly due to decisions like placing a touch sensitive home button right below the spacebar when in portrait mode leading to the occasional accidental application closure. He's also puzzled about certain performance issues at times, considering the hardware.

Definitely a little biased, but it's probably a good viewpoint for any iPhone owner looking at the competition for a potential phone replacement.

I mostly agree with the hardware section, with a few exceptions. I don't have the problem in sunlight that most people seem to. The notion that "Menu" and "Back" are not universal functions is ridiculous. I can agree with "search". I almost never use that button. The trackball is good for moving your text cursor around, but otherwise I totally agree with his point there. (It does also double as an indicator light, though, which he doesn't mention.) He mentions that rebooting the N1 takes a "long, long time." He's clearly never used a Blackberry. I don't think I've ever heard anyone else say that Android's text looks bad. I think it looks quite good.

I will add one additional complaint. Since the touch sensitivity of the screen goes right to the edge and the screen goes right to the edge of the phone, you have to hold the edges of the phone while you're using it, which can be awkward and not exactly secure.

I think he's way off base on the software section, though. I didn't miss the multitouch at all, and now that it's there, I barely use it. I find it an awkward UI at best. I won't argue that scroll bounce isn't a reasonable UI feature, but it's just barely a step above eye candy. I can understand how if you're used to it that the lack of it would be misleading, but simply not having it at all is totally unconcerning.

My biggest problem with his post, though, is his complete dismissal of multitasking, and it highlights an Apple thought process that annoys the crap out of me: the "most people don't" notion. It's pervasive in Apple's software design, and it's the biggest reason that a large portion of people eschew Apple software, even under MacOS. They've already decided what you want to do, and if you don't fit their notion, there's no poking or prodding that will resolve it. It's not off by default; it's just not there. There are at least seven instances where he thinks something is bad because "most" don't have any use for it (one of those being, admittedly, in the iPhone's favor), and several other instances where features are labelled extraneous because of his lack of need.

Anyway: multitasking. I'll fall back on my most noted problem with lack of multitasking on devices of this sort. If I can't background my SSH application, I can't effectively use it, assuming that I might need to reference an email, or some notes, or a web page, or anything. He seems to have something of a misunderstanding of process management under Android, too. Applications that are still running certainly do continue to consume resources, but the application developers can mark their applications as to the level of background support needed. Some can request to never be closed, as with services, some can request higher priority, etc. And Android will kill programs as needed. That is, if you leave your browser open in the background and you need more memory, it will kill the browser process to provide it to you. By and large, you don't need to worry about process management at all. The one time that it's caused me a problem is when I was running Google Sky and I left it in the foreground with the phone "off". Since it was the foreground app, Android wouldn't kill it and it drained my battery very quickly.

The software problem he didn't note is that all apps are stored in built-in flash, and you can't use the SD card to store apps. I think I understand why: you don't want your apps, especially your preferred apps, to go away because you removed your SD card. That said, it's annoying.

His points clearly illustrate some reasons why the iPhone will continue to dominate Android in the market however. Every day I just see Android becoming more irrelevant. It's actually scary looking at how much promise this platform had and how quickly Google and partners have completely fucked it up. They have perfectly followed MS treatment of CE/Mobile.

Remember that the person who wrote that article is a developer. A geek, just as much as many of us here. Average consumers are going to like Android even less compared to the iPhone.

UPDATE: Someone may be trying to get Android out of the woods. I just read a news blurb claiming all US Android phones will be eligible for a 2.1 upgrade - one day. That's a start, but they have to roll this out world-wide and it needs to become mandatory that anyone that uses a branded Android install on a mobile phone must do day-and-date updates - in other words, match Google's update/release schedule to the day. They also need to kill all default custom skinning on anything branded Android and mentioning "Google" at all.

I don't give a flip about market share, as long as Android continues to sell enough to let it continue. Given that it's a quality free OS for developers and a significant number of people are interested in it, I don't see that happening.

I mean, Apple doesn't exactly have market share in PCs, yet you still like them in that space. I'm guessing.

Apple has as much market share for personal computers as most other PC makers though.

The lucky thing about Android is it's funded by Google, who at this time have practically endlessly deep pockets.

Your stats, even as far as unit sales go, aren't for "personal computers" though. They include servers, which I'm sure really helps out HP and Dell a lot. Acer s up there thanks to cheap-ass PCs.

I was basing my comment on Apple being around 6% in units btw, which I was pretty sure put them around #5. I see that they're significantly bigger in the US at 7.5% where they are in fact #5, but globally they fall off the top 5 in units. Still respectable to be in the top 10 I suppose.

Let's look at this with the metric that matters most now... Dollars.

Has anyone seen problems with multi-touch on the Nexus One, especially compared to other handsets, such as Moto's Droid? Things like the phone not actually recognizing whee you're touching the screen.

Interesting article and even more interesting comment from Google:

http://androidandme.com/2010/03/news/is-multitouch-broken-on-the-nexus-one/



This amazes me on a few fronts. One, that a Google employee would make such a comment that puts their product and partner products in such a bad light. Two that they didn't offer some hope at least of being able to resolve this in software (it seems possible after viewing what's happening in the video). That Google is aware of this and still thought it was a god idea to use this touch sensor. I really get the feeling this is really just an HTC phone. That is, instead of HTC being the OEM producing a Google phone, w're just seeing an ODM relationship here with some re-branding. Basically this is just an HTC product running the Google OS.

This is just more evidence of the problems Google faces by maintaining these types of relationships and basically "phoning it in" when it comes to product design. No pun intended.

I do agree, it's an issue.

But frankly, I really don't care. This multi-touch controversy has been going on for a while, and the whole time I've just not seen why it was such a huge deal. I hadn't had it on my G1 for a year now, and it's never bothered me.

The video attached to that article is rather damning. That's a serious bug!

Well, once multi-touch is enabled, I think the issue shown in the video should bother anyone with the phone. It completely mis-tracks where the input is coming from and in what direction it's being moved.

Well, that's neat.

Yeah, that one's irritating, but, again, I haven't had much if any use for multitouch, so I don't really care that much in practice, but it's certainly annoying for a bug that significant to exist.

It's the same behavior the G1 had with its screen.

Why? If I'm not using multi-touch, why would it bother me?

By the way, is there anyone with a Nexus One within driving distance of DC? I'd love to drive out and check the phone out in person before I buy one, which is the major downside (IMO) to the way this phone is being sold.

BTW, I can confirm the problem by using the app "Simply Draw".

My inference from that is that you're saying that it just completely wigs out. If you're not saying that, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. Either way, it's worth a clarification of what's actually going on.

When both your fingers cross over the same line parallel to one of the axes, it tends to swap the x coordinates of the fingers, but not the y coordinates. (Or the other way around.) It seems to be fairly consistent behavior.

It also has the same symptoms if you put both fingers on the screen at the same time.

I'll bet that the sensor is sending the set of x coordinates that are being touched and the set of y coordinates that are being touched, rather than tuples of each distinct finger. When one finger is put down, there is one x and one y coordinate, which is pretty straightforward to interpret. When a second finger is put down, another x and another y coordinate show up, which is, again, pretty easy to interpret. But then the axes cross and the sensor is reporting two x coordinates, but only one y coordinate. At this point, the system still knows where the fingers are. But as soon as it sees a second y coordinate show up, it doesn't know which x coordinate to associate it with. Sometimes it gets lucky and sometimes it doesn't.

You summarized the problem and my thoughts accurately. Now, how/why on earth would a sensor manufacturer develop a product with such a hair-brained interface? Next, why would any company in their right mind select this component for inclusion in their product design? This seems like a monumental gaff. Do you think Microsoft would have done this with the Zune? Do you think Apple would have done this with the iPod or iPhone?

IMO, it's just more fodder indicating that Google, despite intentions, is just very half-assed. I can see it in all their software and the larger they grow the scarier it's getting. I'm sorry if I'm getting too hyperbolic.

If the reporting interface of the sensor can't be addressed in software, this is likely never to have a fix. This puts a lot of multi-touch abilities out of consideration for developers. And without developers, the platform isn't going to thrive. Android needs a better foundation of hardware as everything that's out there now needs to be replaced with something more unified and better specified.

I think the proper solution may be to simply drop multitouch. Of course, this is just my bias since I find multitouch to be an awkward interface anyway. I do use the de-pinch gesture, but only because it allows me to choose the zoom level easily. I still have no idea how it chooses the point to zoom in on, so I always have to pan after the fact, whereas double-tapping doesn't require me to do that, but it zooms in some predetermined amount.

And one other thing... Had this happened to be a problem with the iPhone, you'd see people screaming about it from the rooftops, a number of law suits and likely Apple recalling or replacing the product. That's part of the amazement I have with the Google comment on the matter.

Multitouch is useful outside gestures. Take for example typing. I don't have to slow down my typing on my iPhone to make sure only one finger is actually on the device. Without proper multitouch, it's possible for letters to be dropped due to the second finger either being ignored, or other just as bad situations that would slow me down.

The iPhone has a very distinct feel to it when used, hinted at in the article I posted earlier about an iPhone developer trying out a Nexus One. It's sometimes hard to quantify, but tends to be a combination of lots of little things that are highly polished that come together to form the complete experience. The multitouch ability of the device is definitely part of that. If Google wants to release a device/OS on par with the iPhone experience, they need to fix these issues and polish other rough edges. Otherwise, anyone trying to switch from an iPhone to an Android device is just going to be frustrated and not likely give the platform a second chance later.

Yes, well, that was a well-touted feature of the iPhone. This is an unannounced new feature for Android.