Those 68k Apple Clones weren't signed and blessed by Cupertino while the early PPC era ones were. The 68k clones were more-or-less outright theft as I understood their existence.

Samsung has been threatening that for a while. As far as I know they only have a failed watch to show for it.

I've largely gotten fed up with Samsung in general as things go on. The increased bloat/shitware and device instability would be a reason to move to any other device. So far Apple has not given me incentive to completely abandon the android pool yet.

Apple isn't going after "people who want a phone", they're cultivating a crop of people who are willing to hand over large sums of money for something they believe is superior regardless of it being superior or not. It's been the same for their desktop hardware for ages. Yes the stability is there, but the ability and capability of the computer compared to the competition is lacking.

Years ago, during the early PowerPC era, 2 things happened that I would have sworn to be impossible. (1) Apple allowed for hardware clones, (2) Microsoft had an OS to run on the platform. Apple opened their design and allowed 3rd party manufacturers to produce hardware and Microsoft built a version of WinNT to run on the PPC hardware. Apple then started losing sales to these "white box" vendors who were putting out good hardware (because they had to meet Apple's specs) notably cheaper than the real Apple boxes. On top of that, you also have the big competitor's OS running on comparable hardware and running very nice, very stable. Suddenly all the licensing to produce the clone hardware goes away.

Apple, for quite a while, has only cared about the money. The reason you saw ][e systems in so many schools and earlier generation Macs was that Apple gave a deep discount to Educational Entities. Certain events happened, certain people departed as certain people rose to power and suddenly that all went away. If you can keep people distracted enough and disconnected then you can push anything and it's like magic.

Part of the problem is the "we won't enforce anything" stance of Google. If Google made a requirement that device makers provide "No Bullshit" builds of the OS for their devices (no TouchWiz, no bloatware, no crap) and made the carriers agree to allow for the use of that firmware set I think Android would be better off.

Yes that more of a technical aspect, but it's not like they can't package things up to make it damn-near one-click simple from a Windows desktop. They don't have to advertise or push it, just make it available as an option.

I own 2 Apple ][e, still functional. Still own a Mac Plus that runs OS 7.5.5 and OS8. Somewhere I have a ][gs but I doubt it still runs. I've had multiple other Macs from the Quadra line. I have 2 of the G4 series Mac Minis. As far as Apple goes I've not been immune.

Most people I talk to about their iPhones gush about how great it is and I see hardware that is behind "state of the art" for other things. Very few iPhone owners have I been able to have a real conversation with about the merits of restricted hardware platforms vs the innovation nightmare of an open "wild west" hardware environment.

Apple has had some solid, stable devices. But their innovation has been somewhat flat because there is no competition, no drive to change, no evolutionary impetus.

How many of those people bought a cheap (crap) Android device and then instead of spending money for a "superphone" decided to go the the "cult of iDevices"? I've had a number of android based devices and given the broad range of hardware out there it's easy to get suckered into buying something that's absolute crap and then wind up blaming the part you can see. I've had a few friends that made this kind of switch and when I pull out my current Android device (OnePlus) most of them kinda kick themselves.

There's statistics, and then there's useless bullshit. I'm thinking this is more the latter.

That's the part that Google Licenses. You can't distribute their Services and Play because those aren't part of AOSP. That's where you put the hinge.

Yes you can download and install and distribute the OS. However most devices that do that aren't really well received. They tend to be low quality cheap knock-offs. Most vendors that sell Android devices need the Google Services and Google Play on their device and have a license to distribute those "Non-Open Source" components. The cheap vendors that are including these parts without proper licensing (and there have been a few, mostly China) are in violation and open to legal action.

I'm not sure how it's incompatible.

Requirement to be able to include Google Services and Google Play: You will make and provide a method for users of the device to install a build of Android that is untainted by any 3rd party applications in the firmware. They make the device with their standard extras and ship it. They provide links on their website for a download of the "same" firmware without all the extras and the firmware update tools to install it. The burden is then on the user or their designated 3rd party surrogate to flash the firmware to the device. Most people won't bother unless they have a geek relative or have the necessary tech skills to handle it themselves.

Now, I would expect that the Carriers wouldn't want to Warranty Support the devices at that point, but the Manufacturer would still be on the hook as long as you flashed their firmware with their tools. We're still "out of bounds" on certain things, but at least we'd have devices that didn't suck so much...

I'm not blaming Android/Google for anything other than not making a requirement that a "bullshit free" OS load be an option. If there were a firmware from Samsung that didn't have all the carrier/manufacturer mandated extras and BS added I'd be much happier and I'm sure some of the more tech-savvy users would be as well. Most of the people complaining that "Android Sux" are the ones who've never seen or used anything near an AOSP. They're fighting with Motorolla crap or Samsung crap or HTC crap. If Google made it part of the OS licensing that the vendor needed to provide something close to an AOSP load for their devices people could make a choice on using their "Branded Android" install or going with a "Native Android" setup.

As to "Why not Nexus".... Lack of SD card support and "small" internal storage. Tech specs that were (last I looked) a bit behind current flagship devices. In the case of the Note3 purchase: I can SSH into my servers when necessary and actually have a little bit of screen left after the keyboard is exposed because no one wants to make a device with a physical keyboard. And it didn't help that a friend had one of the Nexus phones that was RMA'ed 4 times in one year because the radio was crap. His wife's phone didn't have issues (another Nexus device), his did.

From my experience with the Note3, yeah you can "disable" apps from showing, but not completely. They're still resident in memory most of the time and a number that I wanted to disable, the option to disable was disabled.

After rooting I found that they had cross-linked dependencies. Some of the apps I wanted to keep were dependent upon stuff in apps that I wanted to remove. Freeze/remove some of the carrier crap-ware and other things that weren't so crap broke. :(

AFAIK none of them "let you" or "support you" doing it, but let's be honest... And geek of sufficient caliber is going to do it. ;)

I wish like hell this were available in the US. I'd have bought one already. I liked the keyboard on my G1, my Sidekick2 had pretty much a perfect keyboard and I've been stuck with touch devices ever since I started down the upgrade path....

I own a OnePlus One. Don't have any issues with BS "carrier apps" or anything like that, because there are none (in general, some of the Cyanogen bits are a little 'special' at times).

Sucks that Google hasn't made a requirement for a "clean" version of Android to be made available for major devices. That's where probably 75% or more of the issues come in.

I can't back that.

3 moves. 3 installs. 3rd install was to a house that already had FIOS (moved in with a friend, he's already got FIOS, I wanted my own link) and never had an issue. I use my own router (Routerboard running Mikrotik) and don't have any issues. Speed has actually been slightly better than what they're claiming to provide (when they "matched upload to download" I tested out having more UP than DOWN) and with the exception of their hardware upgrades for their "Quantum" speeds, no noted outages.

7 years so far, been worth the penny.

In general, if you're computer-savvy, hitting the XDA Forums will be your best option (IMO) if you're concerned about security. The SuperSU Package can be sideloaded into the device via manual ADB commands for most devices out there (some of them are considerably more difficult than others eg: Current Samsung devices with KNOX). I've owned multiple devices from several vendors and I have yet to have an issue with the posted information from the XDA forums. I would expect that anyone attempting to pass shit-ware in there would get found rather quickly unless it's a very niche device with few people actually interested in it.

Personally I've yet to use any of the "one click root" kinda options I've seen posted to various sites....