Penultimate Nullificator

I wanted to ask Scoble (but will never log onto Google+): what exactly switching to Android will accomplish for RIM? 

I’m being serious - in what way does Android help RIM? It’s becoming more and more clear that Android OEMs not named Samsung are having a hard time in the market, why won’t RIM have a similar fate?

This reads as both a list of legal issues Google is currently facing and a pretty convincing argument that Google is a criminal enterprise. Crazy!

If you’ve ever wondered why people love native apps and avoid the “open web” when they can, this right here is why.

To develop an awesome web app, there’s a significant burden put on the developer beyond just writing a great app. Cross-browser compat, cross-OS compat, this shit adds up and takes away from time that should be spent making the app more useful. 

That overhead just doesn’t really exist for native apps, at least not to the same extent. iOS? You’re writing for one target. Android? Even with the fragmentation there, you’ve got a single target and tools to help cross-compatibility. 

To make real advances in web apps, you either need a single common browser that everyone can target (unlikely, but Webkit is the closest thing to that ATM) or the HTML/CSS/Javascript stack needs to be redesigned to be one cohesive standard that actually DOES adapt over time instead of stagnating under the thumb of standards organizations.

Was waiting to see what MG Siegler had to say about this Path privacy issue that came up. While he makes a couple good points in his post, I do take exception to this point:

But if we’re going to freak out about this situation, it’s naive to freak out about it over one app. Again, this is happening all across the iOS ecosystem. And no one has said a thing. For years. 

That’s just untrue. Every now and then some issue like this comes up and everyone gets upset at the developer. The first time I can recall this happening is Aurora Feint, an app that debuted in 2008 and ran into some privacy concerns doing something pretty similar. 

While I understand why Mr. Siegler would want to defend Path, I don’t get why he’s pushing the persecution angle. “Yes we did it but why are you only yelling at us for it?” is not a defense. 

I’m glad that Path has fixed this, and they deserve credit for being communicative on the issue and releasing a fix for it so promptly. But really, this never should have happened in the first place. It’s so laughably easy to accomplish the same purpose (locating friends) without violating privacy that it beggars belief that they actually decided it would be a good idea to upload everyone’s address books.

Love this part from the article:

In particular, I think no one can seriously claim to be a big supporter of open source and then be less clear and constructive on FRAND than the largest commercial software company in the world.

So true. I hope Google comes down on the right side of this.

[Update] Guess not

Clearly this is Apple just bowing to pressure from tech journalists - their original intention was obviously to own everyone’s content everywhere all the time.

[/sarcasm]

parislemon:

Notes Megan Lavey-Heaton for TUAW:

The change is an important one though, clarifying that Apple has rights over the format a book is in, not the content.

And we have yet another bit of controversy to file away under: Apple Is Not Fucking Stupid.

I haven’t weighed in on the EULA hubbub for this exact reason. If Apple was actually trying to suggest that they own the content of all iBooks published via iBooks Author, then yes, obviously that’s bad. But get this: Apple is neither the devil nor are they fucking stupid — as we’ve seen before.