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Comment by tsally | Hacker News Reader

Hrm. So on the one hand, your personal beliefs prevent you from using a computer that is completely controled and locked down, but because everyone else is doing it for phones, it's ok then? I'm not criticizing Jeff for buying an iPhone, but let's be very clear on the price of the 'hacker mentality' in this case. :-)

An important lesson here for free software advocates as well. Only now are free software operating systems catching up in usability and user friendliness. Let's not make the same mistake on mobile devices as well.

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Android is quite a ways along already. Though it's not as polished as the iPhone's OS it's much closer than, say, Linux desktops are to OS X.

In fact I just ditched my first generation iPhone for a G1 running Android. While I admit the iPhone is a better device, the G1 with Android is good enough and much more freely hackable.

Good point. Atwood's essay about the proprietary nature of the industry neglects Android. It's not even mentioned once.

Or Openmoko which is even more neglected.

Openmoko is neglected by the market as a whole. I like what they do but the platform has been outclassed by Android.

AFAIK, nobody yet supplies an Android handset designed for hacking itself. I think they're targeting slightly different markets (which do overlap in some areas).

Actualy, Android's interface on the recently released HTC Hero is far better than iPhone's.

Android's the future.

How is the Android interface on the Hero different from the baseline Android interface everywhere else?

I'm no expert on the topic, but I believe he's referring to "the new HTC Sense widget-based interface" (http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/24/htc-hero-details-begin-le...).

I'm supposing Android's interface is customizable, so HTC managed to build a whole new experience on it.

Check this: http://www.htc.com/www/product/hero/overview.html

if they can cope with the fragmentation (which is already happening - with only TWO devices on market)...

it's funny to remember, though, that Symbian was the future when they announced it was open sourced. And then Maemo became the future. Then OpenMoko...

Symbian was never the future, it was an old product that had been OSSd. Maemo was never on a phone. OpenMoko was always a joke.

Android is the only modern, out of the box, touch based platform not designed to pus hthe agenda of aparticular handset carrier.

but it is designed to push the agenda of google. the g1 couldn't even be activated without creating a google account.

You're right, I hadn't considered that. Googles agenda does closely match my own, but not always - their record in china doesn't suit me at all. Though I'm no apple fan at least they've never helped put someone innocent in jail.

I currently have a skinned HTC WinMo phone with TF3D (the UI the Hero's UI was based upon) and it is definitely an improvement over the WinMo UI. It is debatable whether it's better than the iPhone interface, though. I have not used the Hero's UI so I will reserve judgement until I get to.

What I can say is that the HTC skin that is on the Hero will not make its way to any other manufacturer (officially). Keep in mind that Google is aiming Android at multiple manufacturers. In the best case this situation will allow all users to switch between skins in an open environment where the competition drives innovative UI. In the worst case, we'll end up with a WinMo like marketplace where phones with the same underlying OS and similar hardware act completely differently, fragmenting the landscape. There is currently only one main Android manufacturer (HTC) so this isn't an issue but with major manufactures (i.e. Motorola and Samsung) releasing Android phones in the near future, we'll see how the situation plays out.

And here we go again criticizing the Free Software (or Open Source) model, without any valid reason... remember that the iPhone is highly based on OSS, you just make a lot of non-sense.

Also probably you haven't tried the latest distro versions of Linux or an Android phone or WebOS.

Then you say: "Why do you call me fanboy?" read your comment and you'll know.

> remember that the iPhone is highly based on OSS

Based on, yes. But the stuff that makes the iPhone an iPhone -- Cocoa, multitouch, etc. -- is far from open.

Multitouch doesn't really make the iPhone since it stopped being unique to the iPhone, eg, when the Pre and Hero were announced.

That said, both the Pre and Hero's implementations are also proprietary.

The bad usability and user friendliness in free software is a product of the process, namely that anyone can change anything, and that there isn't one master designer. The reason Apple's products work so well is that there's a strict hierarchy, and only one person gets to decide how the product looks.

This won't change.

It is changing. Canonical's CEO (Mark Shuttleworth) said their aim is to deploy interfaces as good as Apple's.

What do you say about projects like GnomeDo with great interface?

I totally agree and we can name a lot of apps... people, use the software before criticizing!

IMHO yes, there are some OS X apps that are very good in usability but there are a lot of exceptions:

Banshee > iTunes Gnome-do > Quicksilver (even though this is not from Apple) Nautilus > Finder (yes this is very true)

I'm not even mentioning the apps that just don't exist in OS X: a real multi-desktop, Tomboy (even though there is a port), a real app manager.

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