XML Co-Founder Joins Google, Blasts iPhone 628
Posted
by
kdawson
from the sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-apple dept.
from the sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-apple dept.
conner_bw writes "XML co-founder Tim Bray has taken the job of 'Developer Advocate' at Google. Don't other companies call that position 'Evangelist?' Because he sure doesn't mince words against the iPhone in his first sermon: 'It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.'"
To be fair (Score:5, Informative)
This is not a work-related "convenient opinion" of his. He's been critical of Apple's walled-garden approach to development for years, and an Android advocate since he got an Android phone in 2008 (see http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/12/18/Android-Diary [tbray.org] for his chronicles using and programming it).
Lack of credibility (Score:4, Informative)
Tim Bray bought his *first* smartphone in December 2008 and declared it the best he's ever owned:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/12/ [tbray.org]...
Maybe if he had tried 3 or 4 other phones and then settled on Android, his opinion would have weight.
This guy had never owned a "fancy phone" until 15 months ago and now he's an expert? Seriously Google, is this the best you can do?
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Informative)
A critic, but not direct opponent of swpats (Score:4, Informative)
Tim's critical of software patents, but his position is that there's just an implimentation problem - with good tweaking it could work. Kinda disappointing that he's not pushing for abolition. Surprising too given his experience in web dev and XML. Related info:
swpat.org is a publicly-editable wiki - help in expanding this info would be very welcome and useful.
Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The bird still sings in its gilded cage (Score:5, Informative)
Another way to look at it is that iPhone provides a solid single platform that developers can concentrate on features rather than UI and input differences.
Yes, because if Apple allowed pictures of women in bikinis [cultofmac.com], uncensored dictionaries [wordpress.com] or mentioning the name of a competitor [reghardware.co.uk] on the iPhone, the "solid single platform" would fragment into a dozen incompatible versions, right?
correcting myself: he's turned against them (Score:4, Informative)
While verifying my sources just now, I found that Tim is, since February 2010, against software patents. Glad to hear it.
I've updated the wiki.
Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm pretty sure you mean Nokia, not RIM.
No, he said smartphones. A smartphone is defined as being a device with few enough sales that the iphone looks like a serious competitor in comparison. Nokia do not make smartphones.
Re:Opinion of Google is Changing... (Score:2, Informative)
No, it really doesn't. I can still use products from both companies.
I also use Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Voice, Google Calendar, Google Webmaster tools, Adsense, GMail, iGoogle, Blogger, and YouTube. I have a Picasa account, but don't really use it. I occasionally use Google Code Search.
And then there's the more relevant Google Android. I don't have it, but if I did, there's hardware right there.
(Oh, this post is written in Chromium--and at work I use Google Chrome.)
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Informative)
and ceding Poland to Apple
godWIN!
The Sudetenland was ceded. Poland was invaded. Get your convoluted memes right.
Re:Opinion of Google is Changing... (Score:4, Informative)
But I'm sure that's so much better than actively locking people out of your store while signing things up as exclusive.
Re:Opinion of Google is Changing... (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing context. See here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/technology/14brawl.html [nytimes.com]
Apparently, Apple considered Google's Android a stab in the back. So now Google's CEO (Eric Schmidt) is off Apple's board of directors and Apple is suing HTC for patent infringement (Google is not named, but is the indirect target).
I'm surprised this whole fight hasn't gotten more coverage on Slashdot. In any case, I'm squarely in Google's corner on this issue. We need Android to succeed to preserve competition and openness in the smart phone and tablet/e-reader markets.
Re:Lack of credibility (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:5, Informative)
Quicktime today is h.264 video with AAC audio (Sorensen is gone).
h.264 is a licensed technology owned by MPEG LA. While it did go free for a few more years for usage, it was set to lose that until about a month ago and is still a licensed technology that can be used to lock.
iTMS files are AAC audio and fairplay is gone. Fairplay was easy to remove by yourself and Apple documented how to do so.
Again, AAC audio is not an open technology, it's a licensed one. The license is quite a easy one to stream and distribute (free), but to use the actual codec itself requires a company to obtain a license. This is why FOSS FAAC and FAAD software projects are only distributed in source code form only to avoid the patent issues. As for Fairplay, it was Apples way of keeping any songs bought from iTunes to only play on iPods. No other MP3 player was able to read the files helping Apple keep a monopoly, and is still being fought under the Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation [justia.com] Not to mention Fairplay is still being used by Apple. [latimes.com] Also couldn't find anything on the Apple.com site on how to remove Fairplay from anything.
iTunes works with anything as long as anything actually knows how to interact with iTunes (the fact Palm doesn't understand how is Palm's failure). Some vendors even get sync functionality (many Motorola devices, following the ROKR partnership), not just the iPod as you say.
iTunes works as long as Apple says it's ok, not if anything actually knows how to interact with iTunes. Palm does know how and kept programming to make it work. It was Apple that kept altering iTunes to purposely [slashdot.org] break [slashdot.org] that connection [slashdot.org] to wall out Palm since they didn't want to jump through Apple's hoops.
What was your point again ? Oh right, outright lies.
No, that was your point to make outright lies.
Re:Surprising? (Score:4, Informative)
So the Nokia N95 and E90 weren't smartphones ? Funny, because I could do stuff with those phones 5 years ago that I *still* can't do with an iPhone.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:1, Informative)
Let me fix that for you...
iTunes works with nothing as long you don't care about anything working at all. I can't imagine a shittier program.
By god for the last 10 years it's incapable of picking up on songs moved directly into a folder, only if you manage it through iTunes does it work and even then it's the worst experience ever.
Please explain how easy it is to remove "fairplay", if i remember correctly the instructions from Apple require you to BURN A CD OF THEM FIRST!!!! BLOW ME.
Re:Opinion of Google is Changing... (Score:3, Informative)
My opinion changed when they stopped releasing text-only copies of public domain works through Google Books.
Care to substantiate that claim?
As far as I see, Public Domain books can be downloaded in the PDF and EPUB format, for free. And there's a plain text version.
Example: "The origin of species" By Charles Darwin [google.com]
PS: Reposting this since I don't have mod points and the anonymous user's post is currently at 0.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:3, Informative)
Not legally. MP3 remains patented in the USA, and only licensees who pay the fees, or for whom the patent owners are willing to _accept_ fees, have been able to use it. This has actually been a serious problem for "free" operating systems, with whom the patent owners have either refused to cooperate or charged genuinely outrageous fees.
Fortunately, if you're not in the USA, there are plenty of downloadable players at locations like the "Penguin Liberation Front", which also has DVD decryption utilities, game emulators, and software with strange licenses that don't easily permit their use in Linux distributions.
Re:XML vs iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
Well that explains why proprietary alternatives to XML like JSON or YAML are so much better!
JSON is not propietary.
http://www.json.org/license.html [json.org]
Nor is YAML
http://www.yaml.de/en/license/license-conditions.html [www.yaml.de]
Or is there a woosh here that I am missing?
Re:XML vs iPhone (Score:4, Informative)
Try asbestos insulation.
Head, desk. Desk, head. HEADDESK!
95% (literally) of the asbestos ever used is of a type known as crysotile. Crysotile fibers are hollow and fibers shorter than 1.5 inches are quickly physically broken up in the lungs by the immune system and excreted. Fibers longer than 1.5 inches can get stuck in the bronchii and are carcinogenic. However, no processed crysotile with fibers that long are sold anymore. Only smaller fiber sizes are sold currently. On the other hand, the other types of asbestos are amphiboles and have a totally different fiber structure that is solid and that has ends that will flake off into microscopic pieces are are carcinogenic. It may be good to mention at this point that natural asbestos deposits are common and asbestos fibers of both types are probably something you inhale on a regular basis. On the other hand, if you live in the US and have vermiculite insulation in your home, and depending on the age tremolite asbestos, an amphibole, may be present. Surprisingly, asbestos is not like a toxic or radioactive substance and is safer if left alone, assuming it is in an enclosed space, like an attic, that is left undisturbed. Note, this changes is vermiculite insulation end up in your living room. When and if asbestos needs to be removed, hire trained professionals with the proper equipment.
Also, fiberglass insulation isn't necessarily any better for your lungs than asbestos.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft was enough of a power to be able to dictate to OEMs that they may not pre-install Netscape, simply by threatening to charge different prices for Windows licenses. If that's not a monopoly, it's pretty damn close, because these OEMs did not tell Microsoft to fuck off. The fact is, they played ball and squished Netscape as instructed.
MacOS X is irrelevant to the discussion, because it ran on PowerPC chips, because Apple wasn't willing to license it anyway, and also because the antitrust trial started in 1998 - some two years before the MacOS X Public Beta. As for Linux, GNOME's first major release was March 1999, entirely irrelevant to this discussion. KDE was first released in July of 1998, also irrelevant. So exactly which "pretty usable desktops" were you referring to?
The trial started in May 1998, while the iMac G3 that did not ship until August 1998. The iMac is also irrelevant to the Microsoft antitrust case.
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:3, Informative)
Steve Jobs has always been against DRM. Apple didn't create FairPlay to lock out other portable music players, Apple created FairPlay to appease the record labels. Ironically, the only reason the record labels have acquiesced on this is that they became afraid of Apple's near-monopoly position, and saw selling non-DRM'd music (including via competitors like Amazon) as the only way they could weaken Apple's stranglehold on the market (they tried to sell DRM'd music through other companies, but nobody wanted it because it didn't work with the iPod).
What the GP poster was referring to was an officially-sanctioned method to burn DRM'd tracks to audio CD, then re-rip them and encode to a non-DRM'd format, thus incurring a reduction in quality due to the use of lossy compression. There are other ways of achieving that goal without going through the hassle of actually burning a CD, but that's not the same as removing the DRM. There was one app that really did remove the DRM from iTunes Store purchased music, but Apple broke it in the next release of iTunes and it was never heard from again.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Informative)
This is a very confused post. Actually, modern sports car transmissions are still usually manual, and the automatic ones tend to be Direct-Shift Gearboxes [wikipedia.org]. Unlike a tiptronic transmission, which is just a normal automatic transmission that responds to your shifts (unless you ask it to do something really stupid), a DSG is much more similar to a manual transmission under the hood, in spite of supporting automatic gear changes.
Re:Err, no. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Err, no. (Score:3, Informative)
No, young and fashionable people only look like they get to have sex all the time, in reality they're just spending all their time trying to look fashionable. Fashion == advertising.
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Informative)
Gee! *No*...*I don't*!
You really think that a whole series of deliberately obfuscated tests, that could only be passed by MS-DOS and that serve absolutely no other purpose, were added *accidentally*?
Have a look at this [drdobbs.com] for a detailed look at the code. Seriously, tell me *that* is just a bug!
Re:To be fair (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What are they doing again? (Score:3, Informative)
Have you used The Missing Sync? It knows where your iTunes Library is, and it knows your playlists as you have set them up in iTunes itself.
You just select the playlists you want to sync from within the sync app itself, in much the same way you do for the iPod. Even the icons are the same.
The only difference is that the window that you put the checkboxes in (with your playlists, read right off the iTunes DB by the app automatically) is not inside the iTunes window itself. The sync experience itself is *practically* identical.
The Missing Sync enables much more than just "capable of syncing" - the experience is smooth and relatively seamless. All you have over the iPod is the fact that you need this app running instead of just using iTunes to do it all for you. The iTunes sync features are superfluous when you are using it since it replicates everything iTunes does.
I'm not being disingenuous here - I am in no way attempting to hide the fact that the app doesn't create a totally integrated experience - it clearly does not, but for the user there is very little difference.
Again, you can drop the hostility. I'm not interested in ad hominem attacks. I have not been hostile to you. Please act your age.