It's only open source until Google decides that they don't want someone else using the "Open Source" code and files a court injunction as was done last week.

And your proof of this claim is...what, exactly?

Perhaps you are referring to an incident from about 2-3 weeks ago, when a ROM modder was sent a cease-and-desist letter by Google for including closed-source applications in his Android ROMs. The consensus opinion is that Google was legally right but clumsy in how they handled this incident. However, misrepresenting what happened helps nobody.

If you are going to bash, bash evenly.

Better yet, bash factually.

In the interest of full disclosure, per my sig, I'm involved in the Android development community.

The difference with Android, versus the other two options, is that the hardware manufacturer and the OS implementer are decoupled.

Android supports root just fine. However, device manufacturers offer no official means to get to root and no official means to flash root-enabled system images. This is no different than Linux supporting root but TiVo not exactly enabling it on their DVRs.

What Android needs is some manufacturer to step up and offer root-capable devices, with limited muss or fuss.

every one of these technologies degrades over time, as well as when heated.

And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?

Their power production curves are mostly the "fall to near-zero instantly" type, with very little warning that they're running out of juice.

And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?

They tool along, thinking they are doing fine, only 218 miles... 219.... THUNK. Car stops or drops to a crawl, barely enough power to operate the new "energy saving" drive-by-wire steering (if that much) to pull off the road.

Or, the engineers that designed the car had half a brain, and built in a reserve with a governor. Once the main cells are depleted, a reserve set of cells kicks in, with a governor that limits speed to, say, 25mph. This would be sufficient to keep the car moving (e.g., breakdown lane) to get it to a safe spot. The governor also pretty much blocks the behavior of the folk you so eloquently refer to as "boobs", since the reserve doesn't give the same performance as the regular batteries.

So now where are we? We have a dead car on the side of the road. Motorist assistance drops by, they're out of juice. Whoops, can't just give them a gallon or so of gas and point them down the road to the gas station 8 miles down... nope, have to get a hauler out there and have them towed.

Or, the engineers that designed the car built it so the battery packs are replaceable on the fly. Like, say, Better Place is calling for. So long as there are decent standards (and for Better Place to fly, there'd have to be such standards), all you need is a motorist service vehicle with spare cells to swap in, enough to get you to a regular charging or battery replacement depot.

there's no sign yet of a phone that is completely hackable by the end user

If you're referring to the ability to replace the firmware, that is definitely a disappointment. However, that's between HTC and T-Mobile. With Android published under the Apache License 2.0, there's not much anyone can do to force HTC and T-Mobile to allow self-signed firmware. My hope, though, is that some of these non-carrier devices, like the one cited in the OP, will allow replacement firmware. Only time will tell.

The docs are out there, such as The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development.

Thanks for the shout-out!

so we could see a utopia of community-driven apps, but it seems like Google is uninterested in the end user's extendibility of the platform, which was supposedly it's raison d'etre.

On the apps front, I suspect part of the hang-up is that the Android Market — the closest counterpart to the iPhone App Store — is only supporting free apps right now. Vendors interested in turning a buck (or yen or euro or whatever) either need to use one of the other markets or wait for the Android Market to start supporting paid-for apps. That's reputedly coming in Q1.

Even given that, the Android Market has a fair number of apps there. I don't remember the release rates for the iPhone apps when its SDK was released, but I'd be a bit surprised if Android is dramatically off the pace. Yes, many of the apps are trivial (umpteen tip calculators, flashlights, etc.), but it's not like every iPhone or WinMo app is a blockbuster. Considering hardware has been available for 5-6 weeks, I'm relatively pleased with the response to date, for what my opinion is worth.

As my sig notes, I'm somewhat biased on this topic, but I still think you're taking a narrow, short-term view of what the iPhone is.

Yup. Android still has the same problems that drove my company away from mobile development for years.

iPhone will have most of those same problems too. Just a bit more slowly.

Sure there's only one Android phone now, but a year from now...

Sure, there's only two iPhones now, plus an iPod Touch or two, but a year from now...

Do you honestly expect Apple will forevermore keep the same resolution, aspect ratio, RAM, CPU speed, system events, input methods, and whatnot that they have today? I think Apple is going to keep innovating, and that means new devices with new characteristics, characteristics that will differ from the current iPhone and will need to be taken into account by developers.

If Apple changes specs with future iPhone models, you will need to either support only a subset of iPhone models, or you will need to make sure your applications work well across all relevant iPhone models. No different from the scenarios you were just kvetching about.

Android will have a far wider range of device characteristics far sooner, because there are several manufacturers and carriers involved, let alone the possibility of more homebrew efforts like porting it to existing devices. But it's not like iPhone will be immune from this. If it is, then iPhone is toast in a decade.