Blood Socks

I am hurting for the new Android phone from T-Mobile. It’s called the HTC Dream and it is going to be sweet. Pre-orders, for existing T-Mobile customers, should start on Sept 23. I’m already registered for the Android Forums!

The reason I want an Android instead of an iPhone is because I think it will be better, and because I think mobile software development should be free, both as in beer and speech. Right now, the iPhone, with its Apple Developers’ Program, whose developers’ license costs at least $100, and its Apple-controlled App Store, is neither. My reasons are philosophical, but others have more practical reasons as well.

So, a few guys went and did an unofficial prelude to Portal. The trailer is pretty basic – it’s a new map pack, though also with new dialogue and a story. They seem to be getting plenty of buzz, out of people’s plain hunger for more Portal. It’ll be free when it’s done, so keep an eye out.

I’m surprised more people haven’t signed onto this list of sites who’ve dropped support for IE6. The site is only a few days old, though. I added this site on there, cause seriously, f IE6, and any other browser that came out in 2001. The browser market is moving away from IE anyway. That said, I like a lot of things about the new IE8 beta, try that out.

The new DS game Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is totally destroying me. I haven’t responded to a game with this kind of addiction in years. It’s a long, long game if you want to do everything (and I do), so it’ll likely be affecting my life in a net negative way for many weeks to come.

According to today’s latest reports/rumors, the Android will be $200 (with 2-year contract), and its data plans will be super low (~$20). I’d heard $25—$35/month for the unlimited plan, and even at that rate, it would be awesome. Also here are all known specs.

So, let’s summarize the practical reasons to buy an Android:

• Costs the same: $200, but much lower monthly rates than the iPhone’s $70/month or more.
• Includes a physical keyboard (hidden unless you need it) if you hate virtual keyboards, while many apps also offer a virtual keyboard option.
• Memory is in microSD, so you can upgrade your capacity without buying a new phone, and if you do buy a new phone, keep your original card. I found 8GB for $40.
• Can also be bought for $400 without a contract if you hate contracts.
• You belong to T-Mobile and don’t want to break your contract.
• You’re not under contract, but still don’t like AT&T.

And now the philosophical reasons:

• It costs nothing to develop and distribute an application for any Android phone.
• You can create a controversial app, or one that competes with Google directly; Google will not control the marketplace.
• You are supporting an OS not locked to any particular carrier or physical phone. Benefits to Android are benefits to the entire mobile marketplace, not just Apple.

If you guys can think of any more, I’d be happy to add them to the list. The Android is a great idea, the HTC Dream looks sweet, and it sends a strong message to Apple to keep the Internet open, even the mobile one. Especially the mobile one.

I pre-ordered my T-Mobile G1 today. Here’s the important new info:

• $179 for new customers and upgrade-eligible customers. ($300 for upgrade-ineligible customers.)
• Pre-ordering doesn’t mean paying that money today. It will get put on the first bill after you actually get the Android. This is the “take the phone now and we’ll bill you eventually” model, as my friend Ed says, and it’s a model I like.
• Data plans at $25 and $35 per month, not counting voice plan. Minimal voice + minimal data = $55. Next lowest voice (my current one) plus minimal data = $65/month, which I’ll do.
• It has an Amazon MP3 store app pre-installed, which is awesome because Amazon MP3 is way better priced than the iTunes store, and MP3s are way better than any DRM. I already use Amazon for all my music buying needs.
• Boy scout surprise: it’s got a compass.

It was the coolest just to see a major mobile carrier talk about open source in such glowing terms. The mobile industry has always been the most closed, most greedy, and most unfriendly industry I have ever had the displeasure of seeing and working with, so this was a huge breath of fresh air. Apple went a long way, a huge way, towards changing this, pushing AT&T’s competitors out of their comfort zone, and raising the bar of quality for everybody.

But, a commitment to open standards and development has been completely absent from the entire iPhone story, a flaw in an otherwise amazing phone and software culture. The G1 not only rectifies this, but brings a phone that is great in its own right, to a different carrier and set of subscribers, with the promise of coming to even more. It’s got its own cool ideas, and, most blessedly, gives Apple much needed competition. Apple’s iTunes music store vastly legitimized and stabilized the industry for buying music online, and made it a viable alternative to piracy, but it took Amazon’s MP3 store to force Apple to offer songs without awful DRM. Apple is a force for good, but it has to be arm-wrestled into being a force for great.

Ultimately, Android will be good for the iPhone, and it will be great for all of us. October 22nd can’t come soon enough for me.

Update: Ed rightly suggested I tell you what the T-Mobile rep said to me in the store yesterday. I was told that if I wanted the full discount (which I’m not eligible for), I should call Customer Care and ask them. I replied that I had done just that, and when they asked me how many times, I said ”...Once.” The lady winked at me, smiled, and said, “Third time’s the charm.”

I’m basically done with Android and G1 posts for a while, but one final note. I listed under my philosophical reasons for preferring the Android, the fact that apps made for Android aren’t subject to Google’s approval (barring viruses and malicia). I’d like to ground this point in reality. Somehow, I had missed the news story, now a couple weeks old, about an app called Podcaster being rejected from the iPhone App Store by Apple for competing with a feature of iTunes.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory; this was Apple’s stated reason for rejecting it. The guy who made the app paid Apple the $100 for a developer’s license, and he says he put two months of work into it. After being rejected, he then started using Apple’s licensed “Ad Hoc” method of distributing applications, and Apple even shut that down, and that’s after 2 weeks of terrible, terrible press. More recently, Apple denied a Gmail app that “duplicated the functionality of… iPhone application mail”.

Apple has also started appending non-disclosure agreement legal wording to its rejection letters, to stifle bloggers from talking about Apple’s reasons for rejection. To quote that article, “Because of the company’s restrictive non-disclosure agreement (NDA), iPhone developers are legally banned from sharing programming tips, discussing code or asking questions of one another in forums or over e-mail.” (emphasis mine)

This sort of hideousness is why open source advocates like me insist on companies giving up a level of control over their platform, and leaving people their freedom. Apple is, 90% of the time, a smart company who “gets it”, and even they can’t be trusted not to pull disgusting garbage like this. Don’t forget about their kill switch, so that they have total control over every app on every person’s iPhone. Jobs says they would be “irresponsible” not to have a lever like that to pull, denying the alternate perspective that they shouldn’t bear that responsibility in the first place.

In the meantime, Apple can enjoy the intense negative reaction from their decisions, and Google can build a place where people are encouraged to experiment without worry of treading on a huge corporation’s business model.

I still don’t even have my G1 in my hands, but already I can tell that it is going to be a huge success.

• Besides Google’s official marketplace, I know of two alternative marketplaces already, both looking sweet.
• There are also a bevy of news sites, blogs, and forums – AndroidGuys, AndDev, HelloAndroid, Phandroid, AndroidForums.
• Not to mention the mailing lists, all thriving. It’s tough to keep up with it all.
• And then there’s people like this guy, making things they think are just awesome.

As for me, I’m working on a couple (free) app ideas of my own that I hope to have out in the couple weeks following the election, and I hope to make Android app development a significant part of my income stream in my post-election world. The market for it is there, and I’m convinced it’s here to stay,

I’ve decided not to get huffy and private about my good ideas, or worry about people stealing them. It’s unlikely someone’s going to steal my idea unless they get as excited about it as I am, and I’d prefer the additional motivation I’d get from hearing feedback and suggestions.

So here’s some of the Android app ideas I’ve had lately, and would like to set some time aside to work on. Let me know what you think.

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Today I went to MobileCampNYC3, a BarCamp centered around mobile (that’s smart-person for phone) technologies. It’s a “BarCamp”, so as one of those “unconferences”, it attempts to be organic (as well as free). People signed up for speaking slots all throughout the day by making little signs on pieces of paper and taping them to the big wall schedule in the room/time they want. I went because a.) Erin Sparling told me to, b.) I’m an Android zealot, and c.) I could use the social interaction.

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"Hey FYI, I picked up my G1 from Walmart last week (one-year contract). It is awesome and I'm so glad I did. Have been loving it ever since. Thanks for helping me over the cold feet!"
-- Craig

That’s person #5 who I’ve convinced to get a G1 and is happy with their purchase. Fortune passes everywhere.

I’m subscribed to a few of the official Android mailing lists, and one message came along today that got my attention – a link to a New York Times article on how touch screen phones can help blind people, using the G1 as an example. Some excerpts:

Since he cannot precisely hit a button on a touch screen, Mr. Raman created a dialer that works based on relative positions. It interprets any place where he first touches the screen as a 5, the center of a regular telephone dial pad. To dial any other number, he simply slides his finger in its direction – up and to the left for 1, down and to the right for 9, and so on. If he makes a mistake, he can erase a digit simply by shaking the phone, which can detect motion.

Now that is brilliant – software that centers its UI wherever you first touch. Hell, I could see that being useful even for sighted people, like a stereo remote control app – just pick up the phone and start jamming with your thumb and it’ll do what you want. And for the future:

“How much of a leap of faith does it take for you to realize that your phone could say, ‘Walk straight and within 200 feet you’ll get to the intersection of X and Y,’” Mr. Raman said. “This is entirely doable.”

The article makes a good point, that it’s not just enough for software to read the text off signs; the problem is that the blind won’t know where the signs are to begin with. Maybe that’s the sort of thing that a massive, free map/geoinformation system like OpenStreetMap would be good for helping, by including a sign layer. Or maybe you could just have a huge camera on your chest.