“And I never think a country defending its citizens’ fair use rights is ‘utterly stupid.’”

This is way off-topic here, and I don’t want to hijack Michael’s excellent consideration of the issue. You’re welcome to debate the *specific* issues involved in the Norwegian case in my blog if you’d like.

You didn’t bother to respond to my point about Dell and HP. And with the exception of music downloaded as a part of Zune Pass, nearly all music in the Zune Marketplace is DRM-free.

I never said that DRM has anything to do with Linux’s journey on the desktop, but merely pointed out that before you say it has a joke of a market share, it’s important for you to recognize that overall OS X at this point doesn’t have a much higher one itself. I’ve never subscribed to the “year of the Linux desktop” theories because, yes, they’re absolute nonsense. Something outrageous would have to happen for any major shift like that to happen — and whatever happened would be small and the overall effect would take years to occur.

And I never think a country defending its citizens’ fair use rights is “utterly stupid.”

That’s demonstrably false. That’s precisely how Microsoft tried to counter iPod/iTunes by specifically attacking Apple for being “closed” and touted their “partners,” “options” and “alternatives.” That failed miserably. So embarrassingly that MS screwed its own “partners” to abandon the fantasy of “dozens of devices” to go into business for itself. Zune DRM is not licensed to anyone, only MS does Zune — hardware and software.

Linux has been saying the very same thing for years, it’s an undeniable fact that it has not caught on on the desktop, despite all the “This is the year of Linux” nonsense. You know why? It is not good enough. Let me repeat that, it’s not good enough for the ‘average’ desktop user. DRM has nothing to do with it.

I’m absolutely NOT a DRM supporter by any stretch. I am, however, a defender of Apple in the case of the utterly stupid Norwegian move, as I explained here:

Daily question: No lutefisk for iTunes in Norway?

http://counternotions.com/2008/09/30/norway/

Lay off the myth? Sorry, but I’m not going to hold off on the opportunity to confront someone who’s vigorously defending DRM on their blog.

Forget about Linux for a second… Ever heard of Windows? Perhaps you conveniently forgot that Apple is nowhere near the top when it comes to manufacturing computers. Dell, HP? No? Never heard of them, either?

And, take a step back for a second — the dozens of non-iPhone smartphones overall currently sell more than the iPhone. By a *large* margin.

Let’s go back to Linux — with its “joke” market share. Internationally, Gartner says Linux has about a 4% desktop market share. In the US, I think Apple just went into the double digits, but internationally they have maybe a 4-5% market share. Right — a joke market share.

Do you truly believe DRM is good? Don’t you realize that those who care enough will crack the DRM *every time*? Remember the AACS thing? DRM just places a burden on consumers who it isn’t meant for.

Look at Spore. The people who were going to pirate it just stripped the DRM and went on with their lives while consumers are stuck with a DRM-infused game that could very well be shut off in 5-10 years.

I bet you thought the NDA was a good thing, too.

Microsoft called and says that they have already tried that in digital media and all they got was embarrassment.

Linux called and says that they have already tried that for the desktop and all they got was a joke as market share.

Lay off the myth.

Seriously, there are a plethora of crap apps on the AppStore because a bunch of coder-wannabes have downloaded the SDK, *PAID $99* to Apple, and glued some widgets together in Interface builder, perhaps writing a few lines of code. It cost them money to release that crap…

But the Android platform won’t become inundated because, um, why exactly? Cost of entry for the wannabe will be lower, and app acceptance into distribution channels will be easier… can’t see any limits there – the wannabe is going to get his street-cred cheaper. Android may well have the unintended side-effect of *reducing* the amount of crap on the AppStore (hmmm, roll on Android, I say)

The OpenSource community has a habit of developing “free” copies of products it sees in other marketplaces. Until it comes up with something new, a killer app that the other platforms don’t (and *cant*) have, its going to be a technological curiosity. Because consumers don’t care about who did it first (see: Microsoft Windows), they care about how well it works…

Again, that’s an if. Although, for the “consumer’s” sake, I hope Android goes somewhere so we can have some decent competition to the iPhone.

Just look at Nikon and Canon “one-upping” each other in the camera arena. Now thats what the iPhone needs.

The biggest shortcoming for consumers is the [99% likely] hypothetical of the different types of phones, with different inputs, and different apps with different input requirements, etc.

Yeah, I should have been clearer in that I wasn’t talking to those commenting specifically as much as the Apple community in general, and I apologize if I seemed like I had no clue what I was talking about.

Maybe I overlooked something, but I still don’t see where Android lacks for consumers. Again, a “non-standard” interface isn’t as much of deal breaker for consumers as it is for more technology-literate people. In fact, it’s not a deal breaker at all, as (again) look at how many people use Windows on a daily basis and have little to no reason to complain.

Also, Peter seemed to attempt to make a point that Android will only house niche applications, and not more general ones like what Pangea is putting out. I highly doubt that will be the case, as EA and others have said that they are in the process of making Android versions of their games much like they have for the iPhone.

I think that if something open source gets enough steam behind it, and the right amount of contribution/editing (like Wikipedia, I guess) it can work. Take a look at Linux — namely Ubuntu, but other distros as well. It may not be a gigantic portion of the market, but a good amount of people are using it even though aside from the OS itself, not much is handed to users on a silver platter.

Google has a pretty damn good OS laid out in Android. It’s open, and it bears the Google tag. People who I never would peg as particularly tech-savvy, were telling *me* about the “Google phone” the day after it was announced. If that type of excitement and word of mouth can spread to developers, we may very well have decent competition to Apple.

And for the sake of Apple continuing to offer a great platform, and for other companies to strive to offer a similar package, we all better hope Android takes off.

In case you missed it, this entire post IS entirely about the consumer. If you want to talk about the developer, listen. I’ve said it here, I’ll say it again, and so have most of the other “NDA defenders” here.

Apple is entirely wrong on the NDA, and has huge fundamental problems with the App Store.

How you’ve missed people saying this time and time again is beyond me, but it’s pretty clear that you enjoy feeling better than all the “Apple fanboys” and not having us criticize Apple works out a lot better for you.

I tweeted this last night, and it is something that apparently still needs hammering in. Just because there is criticism of an open product, doesn’t automatically make me an open source hater. Open source products are by and large phenomenal. But “open” products like Android, well.. they sound good on paper, but looking ahead they have a large potential for problems.

I’d say that the iPhone and Android experiences are fundamental opposites. On the iPhone, developer life is pretty broken, while the consumer side of things leaves very little to be desired. On the other hand, the Android leaves quite a bit to be desired for consumers, and also has the potential for tons of confusion on down the road. On the flip side, it is at this point phenomenally better for the developers.

This is about the developer. As much as you and Steve Jobs may wish, developers thrive on being able to tweak things and poke all kinds of buttons, essentially. They thrive on having an open environment, and they thrive on being able to talk to other developers (regardless of whether or not they’re building open source or proprietary software).

How one defends the NDA, I don’t know. However, you don’t really seem to be saying much. You seem to agree that the more niche and innovative apps will be available on Android, and not on the iPhone… but that’s about all you’re saying. It’s not like you can’t do those things with Android. You just assume that because something is shiny that it’s inherently better, which is plain wrong. Some say that Live’s search result pages are “prettier” than Google’s. Does that make Live better than Google? No.

Obviously for the next few years, yes, there will be a whole host of different hardware configurations, which will be a pain. I do believe that soon enough that’ll sorta settle down like PCs have settled down over the past few years.

And what matters most to developers is the install base. Again, tens if not dozens of devices across multiple carriers in each country are, overall, going to sell more than one device that has two colors and two storage capacities. Unfortunately for you, with the exception of Apple fanboys like yourselves, many serious mobile developers don’t care about which OS has a prettier UI, but which OS has the higher install base — and don’t forget that Objective-C is barely in the top 35 programming languages I believe, while Java is a close second behind C and a long way away from #3.

I look forward to further debating this with Michael tonight.

I think that it’s only a matter of time before Apple gets there. Right now, they have other concerns with the AppStore on their hands…

Given that open source mostly has appeal to technical types anyway, and that the average user just wants a stable well designed product, I don’t think a reasonable lockdown on what it’s possible to do to a device is a problem.

Fun example: Suppose I’m a runner. A “serious” runner. I run miles and miles every day. Suppose also, I’m a stats junky. I want to see heart-rate information–heck, I want a full EKG for every inch that I run.

As a “serious” runner, I would pay good money for such a thing I could install on, say, my phone alongside my music which I like to listen to when I run.

Can I do this on the iPhone? Nope. Why? (a) Apple’s device doesn’t have a heart-rate monitor, (b) Apple won’t allow me to use bluetooth to talk to an external heart-rate monitor, and (c) Apple seems to be snarky about applications that use the GPS for tracking purposes.

Can I do this on Android/Windows Mobile? Yes. Why? (a) With more device suppliers, there’s a (not very good) chance that I could find a device with a heart-rate monitor, (b) they don’t care if I use bluetooth to talk to an external heart-rate monitor, and (c) they don’t care how I use the GPS.

Advantage, Android.

But it’s not much of an advantage because there aren’t all that many “serious” runners out there. Those that are would buy this in a heartbeat (no pun intended). I might sell it to 1,000 runners! But that’s a far cry from the tens or hundreds of thousands of people who would buy, say, Cro-Mag Rally or Pocket Guitar.

So where the “open” wins out is in the number of applications which do interesting and innovative things, like my above example. I doubt you’ll have as many flashlight, koi pond, and Zippo Lighter applications on Android.

OS X itself and the iPhone by extension utilize all kinds of open source software in areas where the collaborative nature results in a better product, but neither abandon the development and management of an entire platform to an open source community.

You typically don’t get the fit & finish of something like OS X in open source collaboration – it is almost impossible to do with a large unmanaged team. You also don’t get hundreds of eyes and ideas working on a closed source app, which is why I believe the right mix of the two methods is the way to go.

Open source software and OS’s form the backbone that allow things like TiVo to exist – but thank God, TiVo built the front end.

That being said, I’m excited to see what the open source community does with it. I look around at some of the applications I use every day, including OS X and Firefox, and I thank the technology lords for the open source projects which allowed these applications to exist at all. That makes me look forward to what we may see with Android.

It’s way to early in the game to declare Android a failure or a success. I think we should all root for it to succeed. Healthy competition in the marketplace will always result in a win for the consumer. If Android can bring enough pressure to the iPhone, I’m sure we’ll see the iPhone continue at a much faster pace than we would without a solid competitor.

Because the iPhone OS was planned out in the beginning? The iPhone had lots of flaws in the beginning and, as you said, still does have flaws.

Windows Mobile is a successful mobile platform and is not based on one sole device that Microsoft can control. Why can’t Android be the same?

The idea of an open Android OS is good on paper, but it just cannot plan out. Apple has a few major things wrong with the iPhone, but overall they have right what makes the Mac so great: They know what software is running on what hardware under what conditions, and thus, bugs and issues are much easier to target.

As more and more and more handsets for Android flood the market, it would be as if computer manufacturers began making computers, some which exclusively were voice based, some half and half touch and mouse driven, some with touch capabilities, and some without, and Windows (and more importantly all the programs and their developers) had to keep up.