Why is there a "workable business case for" a PDA running locked-down iOS but not a PDA running open-userland Android?
Because most people really don't give a flip about whether a system is open or not. A small percentage of a small percentage is worth ignoring for large companies.
By "off-contract", which of the following did you mean?
Any phone that matches the iPod Touch's specs will be in a similar (or lower) price range at this point. Its lower screen resolution and size, non-expandable memory, single camera, and aging CPU point to a budget phone. Something like a 2nd-generation Motorola Moto G kills it in every spec besides on-device storage, and it has a MicroSD slot to help take care of that. It's available new for $180, directly from Moto. Do you have more requirements that you haven't mentioned? Or are you just trying to be difficult?
[probably as part of the Qualcomm/whomever chip for processing cell phone signals]./ Since the signal is [most likely] coming from the cellular chip
It's apparently part of the bluetooth module in a lot of phones, rather than the cellular radio..
You need an antennae/other external hardware that receives those signals properly.
This is generally accomplished by using headphone wires as antennae.
Hardware-level support for FM is apparently present for some fairly popular devices, but not activated in software. I don't think that the difficulties (power requirements, technical difficulty of implementation, etc) are as serious as you're making them out to be.
Are you claiming that people who don't want yet another phone bill deserve to do without hardware too?
What does "deserve" have to do with business decisions? Someone who isn't willing to pay for a product+service that's available doesn't necessarily deserve to have an alternative that fits there need better. If there's no workable business case for it, it won't happen.
And what does paying for a cellular plan have to do with buying a smartphone, anyhow? There's plenty of capable hardware available off-contract. My last two smartphones see some limited use as PDA-like devices, and my current phone. Sometimes you make some good points. This doesn't look like one of those times.
Lol. Do you not get that I spend a lot of time talking with economists and financial experts around the world?
I think that there are a few problems that people have with your statements, and it doesn't have anything to do with whether they're true or not.
First, that bit that I quoted is a logical fallacy usually called Argument from Authority.
Second, you are making a lot of claims without providing evidence. Since you are making the claims, the burden of proof falls on you; you don't get to dismiss the counterarguments that others have posted (often with backing evidence, like links to studies and papers) since you haven't provided anything to counter them aside from unsupported assertions.
Seriously, do you guys not grok the 100 Gbps Internet 2 or something?
I think we do. Part of the point is that it's wonderfully easy to link to information, since you seem to have it available in abundance. Personally, I'm completely ignorant of the Seattle area. I'm sure that I could find some kind of information about the situation up there, since I'm fairly handy with a search engine; I don't know if it would reflect reality though, or if I'd just find the mouthpiece of someone with an agenda besides truth.
Just for the sake of being clear though: I don't think you're trying to persuade anyone of anything. I think you're just trying to make a lot of noise and see how many people you can hook with a troll line. Congrats; you seem to have a good catch.
Worst of all is when they embark on a rewrite and give up half way through.
I saw something similar happen at my employer. A newer employee was sent on a mostly solo project to rewrite some of the core of our product, to make it easier to make some planned enhancements. Things didn't immediately work perfectly, and some of the founding employees fought the changes. Since they were necessary for the next release, and there wasn't another option for the features that we were required to make available, we ended up with two parallel sections of code that did basically the same thing but in very different ways. That was what we put up with for 4 or 5 *years* before the politics of the situation allowed us to integrate the changes back into a single codepath.
Before that, if you didn't touch that code constantly, it was usually unclear which path was being actively used and which was bitrotted to uselessness.
No they are not, they are a combination of hardware and software
But we *have* open software to run on those. That just leaves the hardware that you could be talking about.
Yes, like the Linux kernel. But there isnt much you can do with just that.
Well, and the entire rest of the OS, if you don't count some of the drivers and firmware (which require either reverse engineering or published hardware specs from the manufacturers to implement openly).
But where is the free software (let's exclude the hardware component for a minute) version of these products?
Well, again, aside from BIOS/firmware and some drivers if I want all my hardware's features to work, it's here. We don't just have a kernel, we have full general-purpose OSes.
My point is that the idea that everybody should ditch closed source and proprietary software in favor of FOSS is misguided because FOSS doesn't have all the answers.
...And if the closed/proprietary software were to be open, then FOSS *would* have all the answers. As far as I can tell, that's the end goal of "the movement".
Sorry I mean restrictive open source (GPL) as opposed to permissive open source (BSD, et. al).
So did I. I see GPL-like licenses as being more protective than restrictive. They protect my access to code derived from the projects that are licensed that way. It's just a matter of perspective. I don't *want* to take someone else's open source code and make a closed-source derivative product. Until we have non-eternal copyright terms, I wouldn't really want to see someone *else* doing that either.
Proprietary and Free software work together to produce innovative products but there are a lot of absolutists with very limited vision that seem to think FOSS is the answer to everything.
I can see the benefit of a system where proprietary software is closed for a period of time, in order to encourage development of new technology, and then made open to enrich the public as a whole. I don't see that happening, so out of practicality, I'll accept closed/proprietary software and hardware as a stopgap. It does the job right now, and I'll just buy the next-available closed system when my current one doesn't have the functionality that I need.
Fact is restrictive open source isnt producing innovation
I've never felt restricted by open-source software. The problem has always been closed systems, for me. Although, I suppose that the licensing issues go to the back of your mind anyhow when you've got a system that won't do what you want, and there is no way for you or anyone else but the vendor to fix it.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne