Prolific Programmer on the Internets!

Russ asks whether the mobile OS really matters and concludes that no, it does not. I don't know why Google seems to be getting away from its roots. Let me explain.

Since the beginning, Google has always been platform-agnostic. Sure, it may be Linux on the backend, but that was invisible to the user. Indeed, to the client, it was essentially blind. It took HTTP requests in, and returned HTTP Responses. Even when they added APIs, they were always built on top of HTTP requests and responses. Google Maps was similarly built on HTTP. So is Gmail, Adsense. Even Google Earth is a glorified HTTP client (except it transfers SVG and looks like a desktop application). So, when I first heard about Android, I figured it was a platform-independant data interchange system, because control of a network derives not from controlling the endpoints, it derives from controlling the communications medium (this is what Microsoft and Apple don't realise and what Google did, but doesn't seem to anymore). In other words, I thought that it would be a peer-to-peer version of funambol. Apparently, I was wrong. But that's what I'd do if I were developing it. Whereas power on a network derives from the endpoints, control comes from the transport medium. Starting out as devoted to controlling the transport medium (and having succeeded at that, on the desktop anyway), Google is duplicating it on the mobile, in hyperdrive. The problem is that it's a serialised process and is very hard to do in parallel. Time will tell if Google can pull it off. But, for now, I'm sticking with Symbian, whether owned by Nokia or not.

I'm following the Android tutorial, having found a few hours this afternoon. It seems the download has permissions set incorrectly (at least on the Macintosh). Once set correctly, (find $ANDROID_HOME/tools -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644) it works properly. The eclipse plugin sets itself up to default to using an XML UI, so you'll just need to add which widgets you want to use into the main.xml file (res/layout/main.xml).