Comment by toyg
5 years ago
> with our consumer decisions to trade 'freedom in computation' in smartphones
TBF, the first few iPhone releases were arguably better and more open than anything before them. Apple refused to bow to carriers and provided a standard development platform for the first time. Then the Appstore, again bypassing carriers, increased developer access to mobile platforms by 1000x or more.
Sadly, both consumers and developers then failed to push for even more open alternatives, to the point where Apple and Google managed to entrench themselves too deeply to address this problem through simple market mechanisms. It's time for authorities to step in, hopefully we're seeing that (slowly) happening.
I don’t think Android was well understood by the Linux and Open Source community in it’s first three years. A lot of people happy that it was consumer Linux and hacking away on root kits, bootloaders, and alternative marketplaces. We didn’t realize Google would have an effective monopoly on software distribution inside of the Android ecosystem (at least in western markets).
What? There are other software stores available for android? and even apks for the adventurous
I recall first iphone couldn't even run apps at all. It had "web apps".
yeah but they refused to integrate with carrier crapware or otherwise customize it in any way to suit the carrier. iOS was iOS and that was it. This seems trivial now, but at the time it was new - most phones would be sold with carrier-tailored operating system and apps, which made it difficult to build anything on multiple devices.
It was quite easy, just like with iOS, you just had to pick one platform (Windows CE, Symbian, BREW, J2ME,...) and target those devices.
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