Let me be really clear whisper_jeff:

I don't believe that with a computing device that I own, that I should have to be gated through a solitary portal to install software.

However, if they do insist on gating my usage in such a way, I expect them to approve applications quickly and based on criteria for the good of the application and the user, not the control of their own market, censorship or the other reasons I find distasteful that they have (in some cases) openly cited.

How Apple runs the app store to me, is highly subjective and non-competitive. Did I say however, that I hate them? I disagree with them.

I'm quite rational in my preferences. I'm quite able to think for myself thank you too without someone taking passive-aggressive shots at my sanity. *rolls eyes*

But hey, thanks for the ad hominem attack. You could have thoughtfully replied how you disagreed, instead of just spouting numbers of how successful you feel they've been and declaring me irrational.

You, sir, are a shill.

I think it's a great move and a well made app & service like this can only help Apple.

Unfortunately, I've got the distinct impression that Apple approved this app because it was poised to give them a lot of bad press if they didn't approve it. Maybe if their track record for app approval was a bit better, I'd be throwing kudos Apple's way, but at this point I'm pretty jaded.

I find lately that I'm quite glad Apple never gained the top spot in the personal computer market, because I dread what sort of control they would impose over my PC. Yeah the alternatives haven't been great, but seeing what they've done with a market where they do have significant share, I shudder thinking about what it would have been like.

All of the credit should go to Spotify itself. I'd really like to see it brought to North America and specifically Canada, where I can use it. It's really spectacular and more of the revolution in music listening than anything we've seen in a long while.

/Agreed.

None of the companies in this coalition had the balls to step up and do this themselves. I'm guessing they didn't think there was any money in it. Now that Google is doing it, all they see is an opportunity to take a shot at their competitor in other markets.

Note the wording of the writeup: "could make Google the main source". Not the only source.

First, claiming that the Cocoa API is simpler than HTML, CSS and JavaScript together is misleading.

Second, it assumes starting from scratch, but the point of the route Palm is taking is that there are already bucketloads of developers fully immersed in web development.

Third, isn't this exactly how Apple started out for iPhone development? Okay, Apple was much slower but they're where they are now and that's mostly what matters. Still, you're being very disingenuous overall.

Now personally, I've been developing web applications for the iPhone. In part because I've got my hands on one today and the Pre is still in the future for us Canadians. Regardless, I'm not developing with the Cocoa API exactly for the reason you've inadvertently illustrated: I'm leveraging the knowledge I already have.

Using what you already know = much simpler.

There really haven't been that many attempts at a wide-market OS overall. Not even if you start before Microsoft. I suspect most people here could name the major players off the tops of their heads.

Now if you're talking overall products, well you brought search into it and doesn't that kind of argue against your point?

They've been running their own flavour of Linux at Google internally for a few years now, so it only made sense they would release it as a packaged OS sooner or later.

I suppose that's just too mundane for news though.

To me, MxO just lacked the wonder and glory of the films. The obviously had to take a lot of shortcuts and compromises to fit it into a Diku-esque MMORPG and well, there was a lot to live up to for Matrix fans and it just plain felt non-cutting edge.

As one of the comments on the source article states "it catered to gamers instead of fans". Specifically they created a game firmly within an existing genre instead of something specific to The Matrix. I know that's easy to criticize, but regardless I think it's true.

Didn't we already hear this about 15 years ago or so?

Maybe if they concentrate really hard for another 15 years then wishful thinking might pop open an alternate reality or something.

Tap your heels together and make yourself less relevant.

This is my experience as well when I went through my old discs recently. All of my discs from '96-'98 work, every single one of them regardless of manufacturer, but if I recall there were few true manufacturers at the time, the rest were just relabelled / rebranded.

More recent discs have failed meanwhile.

Mind you, I recall how much of a pain it was to get a working burn back with my old 1X unbuffered burner, any bump on the desk or the slightest flaw in the disc and we'd have a coaster.

Is anyone else getting the feeling that the board of Facebook just might be the founders of Carrousel in Logan's Run?

You could have the greatest development the tech world has ever seen, but if you're over 30, prepare to be recycled as fodder for Andreessen's mythical 24 yr old.

The higher costs of service versus localized computing has been a known drawback since the beginning. It's part of the drive too, in the expectations of huge profits and / or market-share.

That doesn't mean that open source can't participate, it just means that the big players are the big players. It's not that much of a switch really, money drives a lot of things and "free" does too. I imagine in the drive for domination of the market, the big boys will be clamoring to have other software hook into their cloud resources. Certainly I imagine that will be a part of Google's strategy, leveraging their bandwidth and server farms to become infrastructure for others.

In the end, how is this so different from how the Internet has been so far? I don't mean technically or end-user experience, I mean in the nature of open source competing with closed. It's definitely a switch from desktop computing, but online services are already available in both "free" and various pay models.

You're so busy trying to make your point, you've wandered off topic and forgot to read the essence of what I was saying:

Firefox supporting Theora doesn't equate to Google having their pockets into defending it if submarine patents surface. Your opinion on Mozilla's arrangements with Google won't change that, but go ahead and bash away on a topic that's essentially unrelated. This is why I call your ilk conspiracy theorists, because you're connecting dots that aren't there and you're so determined to draw them in, you don't realize the scope of what you're talking about is just plain off-topic.