It's strange that I've been modded troll for what I said and I have replies like the parent, when the post I was replying to was adding nothing to the conversation, countering the valid point 'Why does it matter?' with 'well, if reality was different for a second, Slashdotters would pretend that it does matter because we're a bunch of fanboys.' I don't see how that is a useful point, as accurate as it is to point out, except to troll. It doesn't matter, and it wouldn't matter if the platform we were talking about was Android or iOS. The fact that some people would get their knickers in a twist if this was iOS is neither here nor there to the facts - and the fact that other people have said that folk are making 'excuses' is telling, because there are sound technical reasons for this whole thing. It's no use trying to proclaim that people are biased - everyone knows that, it's a fact of life - but the best response is to deal with it when it happens, on the next Apple security 'hole' that has a sound technical reason. Trusting at thin air, attacking the people that would otherwise do this, is worthless because nobody with feel like it applies to them, so all it reduces the post down to is a slightly sour attack that ignored the logical points for the sake of making a frustrated reply.

Sounds like you're a bit of a sore Apple user, or just an anti-Android person (why are people like this? I don't understand it) who is a bit threatened, or perhaps you just like to appear smarter than people by trying to point out that Slashdot is just as biased as any other place (which it is.) But trying to pretend that the competent technical folk on the site that have very correctly pointed out that this is a non-issue being propagated by people that don't actually understand what they're talking about, which is what I'm assuming you also are, as you didn't even continue to read the post you're replying to beyond the eleventh word.

Thanks - my geography sucks and I won't pretend that I haven't automatically made that assumption on the basis of being around too many racist and ignorant 'folk'. Though I guess I'm one of the ignorant now, at least.

Actually the long run-on sentences in English genuinely seems to be a common dialect artifact that I've seen from Middle Eastern folk, such as my Pakistani co-workers who have almost exactly the same grammar and sentence length. It's especially common if they're explaining anything. If anything, it adds authenticity for me because as I was reading it, I was just pleased that Google at least hired some local talent for their India product team!

Thanks for the useful reply. But you really don't understand what was just said. What, exactly, is restricting the use of this capability to just Safari? Protections, DRM style authentication? Nobody has ever worked around those ever. Nope.

n/t

Hi Sony. Perhaps you missed the part where he said "...I'll do with it what I damn well please. You have no right, no goddamn right, to tell me what I can and can not do with it?" Because that's pretty much what you've just posted. Perhaps you can explain to us instead not the logic behind wanting to backup the expensive games bought, but instead the reason that gives you the authority to tell him that he shouldn't be doing that, and to stop whinging about it?

All I have to say is this, as an owner of two android phones, the second only because it physically fell apart from (ab)use and from someone with a love for the platform:

Looks like we still have that 'DON'T USE APPLE BECAUSE IT'S A CLOSED TOTALITARIAN SLAVE PLATFORM!!!! COME TO ANDROID WHERE ITS FREE AND OPEN AND CHAMPAGNE AND PUPPIES!!!!!!' card, right lads? I mean, we're still laughing at the silly iPhone users having to jailbreak their phones so they can run what they want, right chaps? Right?

Now while we're at it, can I can a 'connect phone, run program, press button and you're done' solution for rooting my HTC Wildfire? I'm perfectly happy of course, to run adb and replace my bootloader and all the other things that used to get me wet while I was a student - isn't that the definition of open? - but I get the feeling that we could make it just as easy as those Apple user fellows and not lose any of the openness. Right guys?

Sarcasm away, that dream is gone, guys. The phone networks got to you and Google gave up. If you're going to carry on tooting about the openness of Android to users (they couldn't care less if their developers have to pay to develop or not) then you need some other talking points.