Really? You mean on the Mac it isn't required to set up an IPhone or IPad that have no business relying on a desktop machine? You mean it isn't required I sync with it just to get Podcasts onto a device that already has internet connectivity? You mean on Mac it doesn't have a proprietary, signed procedure for syncing music to IPhone/IPod Touch/IPad, that makes it completely impossible to develop competing software without breaking the DMCA?

Sure the "ITunes experience" doesn't suck as hard on the Mac as it does on other platforms, but it still sucks. As GP says it's malware, only I would elaborate and say its malware that malicious to an entire industry.

Now that's a load of crap. I won't run Windows at any cost because it's not worth any cost to me. I am more productive in Linux, I enjoy customizing my experience, and I don't like having to run 3 heavyweight scanner software to keep my system free of virus, spyware, and malware. It's a better experience for me, so why should I waste time keeping a Windows install patched and safe?

And for the record, I do happily pay for games that run on Linux, and don't pirate software/music/video like my Windows using friends.

I think UT3 is dead because its not very popular on Windows, so why waste the effort?

The games that promised to go open source from the previous Humble Bundle did follow through. From the humble site:

As of 5/11/10, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra Overture pledge to go open source.

Announcements and source code links:
Aquaria goes open source.
Lugara goes open source.
Gish goes open source.
Penumbra goes open source.

Really? I hear this Android fragmentation concern all the time, and I wonder if those expelling this opinion were actually around for the last 30 years. For the entire history of PC computing, software makers routinely came out with brand new software that required the very latest cutting edge hardware. At first you had color games when people had only B&W. Then software required more than the 640k of memory most computers had. Then 16 color graphics when people only had 4-color monitors. Then new video cards came out frequently, and you either had the latest or you were getting 5 frames per second. Computers went from 16 bit to 32 bit, and this impacted all software. Operating systems began allowing you to run more than one app at a time, as long as you had hardware sufficient to support it. I could go on all day.

But the main take away is, it has worked out pretty well for PCs.

The good news is, most entire smartphones cost between USD $0 and $200. Which is much less than the cost of a single video card was ten years ago, when I was changing mine out annually.

If you want your software to run across a variety of hardware, it's going to take work. That's just life in software development. But let's stop assuming that everything written for Android absolutely must work on all phones. The Android market lets you control what devices your app is available to. Which by itself gives you the ability to avoid incompatibility issues in ways we could never dream of with PCs.

Any chance that
while you aren't
getting any raises
you are sending
emails with forced
carriage returns to
your boss? I'm
just saying...

That's typically not a level of openness found in the Apple playbook.

Apple has the IPad; The Playbook is Blackberry. Duh.

A link to an apk on a random file hosting site?!? Seriously? If you did the same thing with an exe you'd be flamed and hung from the Slashdot rafters. It should be the same with an apk, but everyone seems somehow fine with installing apks from random places with who knows what nasty code buried inside. One of these days everyone is going to get pwned by one of these hosted apk files.

I have a couple points that seem to be lost in this thread. First, this isn't the "Flash" that you know and hate. This is apps written in ActionScript 3 that are compiled into native iOS apps. They aren't necessarily going to be straddled with the same issues the community often complains about.

Second, there is one important aspect of this that no one seems to pay attention to. Adobe's Flash Packager for IPhone and MonoTouch are the only way for someone to develop IPhone software without buying a Apple Macintosh (at least without a Hackintosh, which is of questionable legality). It's always surprised me how few people point out that IPhone development requires a Mac, and that the barrier of entry is (or was) much, much greater than $99 / year for the majority of us.

Remember also that they did not force you to apply the update so if you wanted to you could have carried on playing all the single player games you already had and never upgrade. The only legitimate customers it affected were people who used the Other OS feature and also played games online.

First, this is not limited to Online games. I attempted to not apply the upgrade to keep my Other OS feature, and some of my non-online games required the update. Second, who cares online vs offline - I paid $50-70 for these online games, and I expect to be able to play them as well.

I was left with a choice of losing value for my original $600 purchase (the PS3, which I purchased partly due to the Other OS feature) or of losing hundreds more in games I can no longer play. It's pretty simple, Sony reduced the value of my purchased product. Sony sold me a feature, and then took it away. This is an illegal abuse, no matter how many or few people installed Linux.

Why do you think Oracle bought Sun?

For Solaris?

Ha. Hahahhahahah. I've got to read that a second time.

Why do you think Oracle bought Sun?

For Solaris?

Hahahahhhaaaa. Heeehee. Hah....hah. Oh man, tears.

Isn't this exactly what the GPL v3 is designed to prevent (Tivo-ization)? Seems like FSF's concerns are once again coming true. Too bad Linux won't ever adopt v3, it seems.

As has been pointed out, I am talking about open from an application-installation perspective, not open source. Windows and most OS are open from this perspective.

You're right. This is what I meant by "open platform". Something where apps don't require approval and/or can be installed from any source. Not an open source system as gp assumed.

You are right. Having a completely open platform has never worked before. *rolls eyes *

I honestly wonder about this though. I surf with my IPhone over Wifi exclusively, since I cancelled my AT&T service. The same pages on the same wifi router render considerably slower on the IPhone than on a laptop/desktop sitting right next to it. I really wonder how much of the slowness is AT&T, and how much is just that the IPhone doesn't render pages at the speed we are used to.

FWIW, I'm not an AT&T apologist. Friday I'm signing up with Verizon and getting a Droid, because I'm fed up with AT&T and (especially) Apple.