haseman

I've been writing mobile software for 6 years, and I find all the belly-aching terribly amusing. Despite all the complaints, inconsistencies, and contradictions, Apple treats their developers better than any other mobile marketplace. I'll say that again. Apple treats their phone developers better than any other mobile software marketplace. (Android market might be a little better, but no-one is using it)

Wanted to submit an app for Verizon on the Get-It-Now shop? You're looking at spending 10,000$ in testing fees. Fail testing? You pay again.

By all means, lets keep up with the griping. The more Apple is forced to bow to the teeming masses, the better the other marketplaces have to treat us to keep up.

His bit about a lack of pretty applications should be the cue for every software entrepreneur to start salivating. Miss the iPhone app-craze boat? Now's your second chance...

No such thing as a sure-fire hit, especially in the mobile world. Verizon's Droid looks like the best Android phone to date, but that won't make it a hit in-and-of itself.

The Droid's best feature, over the iPhone, may end up being it's ability to actually make and receive phone calls.

Eating food makes you fat. Eating fast food helps. I've lost a fair amount of weight with a calorie counter, it's a pretty simple equation.

I live in the mission. It's amazing to be able to walk between a dozen coffee shops and bike to work. But it's not for everyone, it's especially not for people who don't want to sell one of their organs each month to pay the rent.

1000$-1500$ a month for a studio-1bedroom.

Magic happens: The Mission, SOMA, North Beach (more of an LA scene over there)

Most of the tech stuff happens in those areas but a lot of it happens down in the south bay.

Who wouldn't want the FCC to regulate the internet? They do so well with FM Radio and Television!

Yup. Feature. Allows you to do all sorts of fun things...like signing up for many twitter accounts on one gmail address.

Sidebars = Evil?

We've come a long way 'Evil' from Nazis to sidebars....

Nice hack! Pretty gnarly.

We used to be able to specify which assets/res/src directories to use in the shell build command. Google pulled this function in the latest release...which has me trying to figure out how to update our ant scripts and cruse-control build system.

What evidence do you have that the US Government would be capable of regulating the internet?

Not at all.

I support the concept of a neutral network and a fair playing ground on the internet for all. I also think the government and the FCC isn't an institution that can provide it. How is that inconsistent? What evidence is there that the US Government can magically regulate this very chaotic environment?

They regulate the radio waves. There's money to be made there but it's a total disaster and a near monopoly to boot.

They regulate the wireless spectrum...and the US has, hands down, the worst cellular network of any first world country. (I'll admit that this isn't all the US' fault, but they contribute to the problem)

What makes you think turning over the reigns of network priority will be any different?

Better the devil I know (corporate greed) than the devil I don't (lobbyist driven re-election hungry politicians)

In the same way, the government has exactly zero economic interest in a correctly regulated network. Over time, laws have a way of favoring those who are connected over those who are not... Goldman Sachs springs to mind as an example of just such behavior.

-sarcasm- I, for one, support net neutrality. I can't wait for the people who brought us the amazing FCC to regulate the hell out of the internet. Maybe while they're at it they could stop me from getting rick-rolled so much... -/sarcasm-

I'm skeptical of politicians...which is exactly why I support the concept of net neutrality but I could never support letting the US Government enforce it.

The mixed metaphor per sentence ratio of that article was off the bird in the hand charts.

To my understanding thus far...

it doesn't.

The amazing power of graphs...

Before I started a mobile enterprise anything I'd want answers to the following questions:

1) Delivery? How are enterprise apps going to be distributed? Right now almost all mobile software distribution channels are directed at the general consumer. This, obviously, won't work for enterprise, yet no-one has announced a solution to this problem. This also brings up the issue of authentication.

2) VPN? Blackberry is the only platform I know of to tackle the problem of VPNs. As in, within a native application, I can direct traffic over the VPN. There may be support for this on Windows Mobile...

3) Control: There is no centralized way to control access within 3rd party applications. My IT department can't lock me out of an app (aside from doing a full phone wipe, which only happens on the iPhone and the blackberry) they certainly can't control what I access from within the applications I download.

I'm starting to feel like a broken record online and amongst my friends. Mobile has a bright future but right now it's got systematic, challenging problems. Now's the time to start in, but if we move too fast we'll create another mobile.com bubble.

Agreed. No new information. Same screenshots I've seen on 5 or 6 other mobile blogs. Useless 'me too' article

My Macbook Pro maxed out too. It's 2009. How is it even possible for anything to peg my CPU playing video?

I personally write native apps. J2ME for most low end AT&T phones and blackberries. Brew (A SDK straight out of the 80's built on non-static C) for Verizon. Java on Android for the Google phones and, of course, Objective C on Mac OS for iPhones.

I'll work with any 3 of these platforms in a given day. 2 if I'm lucky, 1 if there's a looming deadline ;-)

Woah there. This is the kinda stuff we saw in the early dot-com days. Mobile will be big, but there are some huge hurdles to get over...just off the top of my head:

1-Bandwidth limitations. Have you tried using AT&T in San Francisco?

2-Divergent platforms: I write mobile software for a living and I'd say about 60% of my time is spent making the same software work on a different device. This is ruthlessly inefficient and I've yet to see anything (aside from the single resolution iPhone) to address this issue.

3- User Interface: Small screens, small keyboards.

Mobile will be big, but it's got problems, and if too much VC is poured in now we'll build up a market that can't be sustained. It's already happened, in some ways, with the iPhone marketplace.

Easy does it.

Too bad they don't own the rights to their own fingerprinting software...

At this point, it seems Shazam isn't much more than a brand. Which, I'm sad to admit, they've done a very good job building.

(fair disclosure: I work for a company that sells a competitive product)

Not a bad article, but he attributed to some giant evil conspiracy by the banks something that was, in fact, simple economics.

Banks weren't out to swindle people with all those 'new' investment funds, they were reacting to overwhelming demand from the managers of 80-something trillion dollars. That overwhelming demand was driven, in part, by the fed holding the discount window open for so long.

If we remove the author's notion of 'evil' intent on the banks part, for which there is little to no evidence, and chalk it back to 'incompetence' instead, the author's article becomes a rehash basic economics and a lot of empty hyperbole.

For a more dispassionate recap of the debacle, I'd recommend This American Life's article, the Global Pool of Money.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9032768...

ah, I read "rural users" and thought you were referring to the rural exchanges.

So evil, in this case, is not calling someone before sending them a C&D letter?

If their motto was "Don't be Annoying" I could understand the outrage... and yes, Google probably made a mistake by not calling the guy first.

But it seems like a simple corporate communications mistake... and last I checked mistakes, especially the first time they occur, aren't evil.

Many of the rural exchanges are anything but innocent. Many of them work with free conference call and phone-porn companies and then hike their connection rates to absurd levels. They rely on the law to over-charge telecoms. This isn't to say they're all doing it, but there are a lot of them out minting free money from the telecoms.

Incorrect and misleading headline. I'm all for bringing Google down a peg, but at least read the name of the regulations you think Google is in violation of first.

Mantis.

Free, simple, my QA guys understand it.

I wouldn't suggest it as a default setting. If power users want an alternative to holding the device up and shaking it until it switches, this could be it. You make good points, it's not intuitive, but it is a solution that wouldn't require more cluttering UI

Could easily be solved by a setting that turns off accl switching and allows users to make a two finger twisting gesture on the screen to rotate it.