hammersend

"The alternative is Google, who doesn't release any top-tier paid apps on Android or Chrome Web Store."

Google's business model isn't to release paid apps on their stores. They have many free apps that are downloaded by the 50's of millions and have 4.5-5 stars almost across the board so, yes, they do release top tier apps.

"Besides that I don't even know why a normal user would want root access"

When I mention wi-fi tethering and explain how it works people's eyes light straight up whether they are a "normal" user or not. Some phones come with that feature enabled out of the box but most require root.

Yes. You can't zoom out that way though.

It is possible they see their OS as being suited for one-handed devices. One of the things I do not like about Ice Cream Sandwich on my Galaxy Nexus is Google has removed the "+"/"-" buttons in most of their native apps so now I have to either use some really unwieldy one-handed finger contortions or use two hands to zoom in and out. I think an argument can be made that in many instances at least on a smart phone as opposed to a tablet multi-touch while being fun to use is actually a step backwards in usability.

That isn't a touch screen. They are using a projector as is evidenced by the objects being displayed on the "screen" are from time to time superimposed on the persons fingers.

What would you suggest as an alternative? Not bundle flash? Then people will just download it anyway and many will end up with an old vulnerable version. At least with this the user can stay updated automatically with Chrome. The alternative is a net security net negative.

They might be waiting for the prices for quality touch-screen components to come down. Tacking a capacitive touch-screen to every laptop will probably add at least 100 dollars to the cost of the product. I saw the Dell laptop in CompUSA recently and it was 500 plus dollars with essentially netbook class hardware sans the touch screen.

Where I work many of the Photoshop users have multiple monitors and aren't power users by any stretch. It is very unlikely they would be familiar with any shortcuts in windows beyond ctrl-c/v/x and the "Windows" key.

Very interesting. Note there is already a cli based Android development environment running on devices called TerminalIDE that uses vim, complete with very useful plugins already installed, as the editor. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr....

Go has been released with a BSD-style license including patent grants. If Google dropped it tomorrow they couldn't stop anyone else from just picking right up where they left off.

http://golang.org/LICENSE http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/PATENTS

My understanding is that Chrome on Android is still very much in Beta and they are intentionally doing a very limited release while the major bugs are being worked on. Isn't IE9 only available for Vista and 7 while XP still has neck and neck market share with 7?

There's another project called TerminalIDE here:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spart...

that also allows you to develop real android apps right on your device. TerminalIDE is primarily cli based and even comes with a version of vim already set up with a custom vimrc and relevant plugins. That said, I'm very excited about this project as Android is capable of being a "real" OS it just needs more real applications.