Ubuntucat

Many Linux advocates and Linux bashers still think the success or failure of Linux in the consumer (not server or embedded) space rests on technical merits. Implementation, marketing, pricing, inertia, vendor lock-in—no, of course, those have nothing to do with whether people decide on Linux as opposed to Windows or Mac OS X. Would it help to work on the technical merits of Linux? Sure. Will that alone make Linux a success for consumers? Hardly. Technical merits will get technical users into it (Network admin, want a server? Use Linux. Hey, TiVo, want a free operating system for your DVR product? Use Linux).

Linux had a few good opportunities to succeed, but flubbed on the execution:

1. OLPC. When I heard about the One Laptop Per Child project, I got giddy. It was marketed as the $100 laptop. It was going to be durable. It was going to use Linux. It was going to help kids in developing countries learn. If that had been what really happened, Linux would have really taken off, at least in certain demographic segments of the world. What really happened? Well, the laptop was nowhere near $100. It was more like $200. And if rich folks wanted them, they had to pay $400 ($200 to get one, $200 to give one). It also was a pretty ugly laptop, with an extremely crippled version of Linux.
2. Dell. When Dell started up its Idea Storm section, it probably had no idea the section would be bombarded by Linux users demanding Dell start offering Linux preinstalled. Well, Dell half-heartedly gave in and offered a couple of select models with Ubuntu preinstalled. This half-hearted effort doomed the new venture to failure. Dell hid Ubuntu away so no one could see it on their website without a direct link or clever Google searching. Dell priced the Ubuntu laptops more than spec-equivalent Windows laptops. Dell “recommended” Windows on all the Ubuntu laptop pages (it still does). Dell still used Linux-unfriendly hardware (Broadcom, anyone?). To sum up, Dell was not invested in really selling Linux preinstalled. It just wanted to sort of, kind of appease the Linux community (most of whom continue to buy the cheaper Windows-preinstalled laptops and then install Linux for themselves).
3. Netbooks. I love the idea of netbooks. The execution was terrible, though. They were not heavily advertised. Early netbooks had 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB SSD drives with 7″ screens. The battery life was poor. The keyboards were cramped. The screen resolution was practically non-existent. Worse yet, all the OEMs included crippled versions of Linux… Linpus Linux Lite, Xandros… installing software became in reality the nightmare that Linux haters often misrepresent it to be. It would be like having apps for the iPhone without an App Store. Yes, you could install a regular Linux version yourself, but that’s not what the everyday consumer is going to do. Microsoft slammed the years-familiar XP down on netbooks, and—suffering from a bad implementation and no marketing or advocacy from OEMs—Linux on netbooks floundered.
4. Android. In many ways, Android is actually a success. But it is not the success it could have been. When people were saying various Android phones could be the next “iPhone killer,” I thought, Hey, maybe they could be. We’ll see. I wasn’t surprised to see that the G1 did not kill the iPhone, the MyTouch didn’t kill the iPhone, the Hero didn’t kill the iPhone, nor did the Droid, nor did the Nexus One. I have a MyTouch 3G with Android, and I love my phone. I understand very well why it didn’t kill the iPhone, though. Apple understands how to make an excellent user experience, and Google doesn’t. That’s the bottom line. I’m not an Apple fanboy. I actually disagree with a lot of the design decisions Apple makes. What I don’t dispute is that Apple has a vision. Every decision, whether I agree with it or not, has a rationale that makes sense. Yes, there are pros and cons, and Apple weighed them and decided the pros outweighed the cons. With Android, though, and with various HTC phones using Android, I see various bad interface implementations that have no pros at all. I just don’t see anyone properly testing these things. For example, on the MyTouch and the Nexus, the speaker is on the back of the phone. Why? On some of the Android text dialogues, you have to tap into the text field (even if you have no hard keyboard) to get the onscreen keyboard to appear (shouldn’t it appear automatically if the text field is in focus?). Those are just a couple of examples.

Just yesterday, Steve Jobs announced the iPad to much ridicule. People made fun of the name. People said it would be useless without Flash, a USB port, without a front-facing camera, without multi-tasking. They called it an oversized iPhone. They said the 4:3 aspect ratio wouldn’t be good for movies. The LED screen wouldn’t be good for reading in sunlight or for long periods of time.

I kind of liked it. I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. I wasn’t drooling. But I can see the appeal. It looks like a slick device, and it’s priced a lot lower than people thought it would be (most of the speculation saw it between $700 and $1000). If it’s a standalone device (doesn’t need to hook up or sync to a Windows or OS X computer with iTunes), I might consider it.

I would be curious to see if any OEM is going to step up to the plate here, though, and give Linux a real chance. I doubt it. It would be quite simple, though. Create a tablet just like the iPad (has to include proper multi-touch, though… no backing out for fear of so-called patent infringement, Google). Run a Linux-based operating system that is mainly open source (but can have some proprietary programs on it). Include multi-tasking. Include a proper software repository. Use a regular hard drive instead of SSD drive. Include USB ports. Have better screen resolution or a widescreen aspect ratio. Then price it just a little below the iPad… oh, and give it a proper name… one people won’t make fun of.

How simple is that? Will it happen? Probably not. A bunch of iPad imitators will pop around, sure. They’ll each have serious flaws, though. Many will lack multi-touch. Most will be too bulky. Some won’t have a sensible user interface. Some will be too expensive. Then I can tack it on as yet another way Linux has failed in the consumer space.

Mark Shuttleworth, if you’re reading this, it’s about time you realized Bug #1 gets fixed once you create a full and unified software-hardware user experience. Hoards of Windows users aren’t going to download the Ubuntu .iso, set their BIOSes to boot from CD, repartition their hard drives, install Ubuntu, and then troubleshoot hardware compatibility problems. You (or someone with your savvy and financial resources) need to be the open source Steve Jobs if Linux is going to succeed in the consumer space.

I already wrote T-Mobile MyTouch 3G First Impressions and A month with the MyTouch 3G and Android, but someone requested I write yet another follow-up post after having used the phone for a while.

Well, it’s been almost four months, and I have to say that my general impression hasn’t changed much. I can sum it up as generally positive with a few annoying glitches. If you are a part of the Apple ecosystem already, the iPhone is a better choice. But if you are a Linux user or already caught up in the Google ecosystem, an Android phone is a much better choice. A lot of other Android phones have had more hype (Hero, Droid). The MyTouch is a good phone, though. If I actually liked Sprint, I would have waited for the Hero. And if I actually wanted a boxy-looking phone with a “real” keyboard, I’d have waited for the Droid.

Here are the annoying glitches that have bugged me the most:

• Every web browser for Android has a serious flaw. Ultimately, I’m willing to settle for the flaws in Browser over the flaws in the other ones (Steel, Dolphin, Opera, etc.).
• The Facebook app is basically good, but when you click on a picture thumbnail, it doesn’t enlarge the picture within the Facebook app. Instead, it launches the Browser app to view the picture. Lame.
• After the whole cease-and-desist fiasco, I wanted to support Cyanogen for making a Google-compliant fully legal rooted (i.e., jailbroken) ROM, so I’ve been using Cyanogen recently. Unfortunately, the performance has been spotty. Sometimes it’s super-speedy, and sometimes it’s super-laggy. I may end up giving DWang’s ROM a go again, even though it’s not technically legal (it’s in the spirit of the law but not the letter—apparently Google cares very much about the letter, though).
• Google Voice is a great service. The Google Voice Android app, however, is buggy as all hell. Sometimes it crashes. Sometimes it’ll randomly duplicate SMS messages if I write the message in landscape (instead of portrait) mode.
• This doesn’t really bother me any more. If you are thinking of getting a MyTouch, though, you should know this: the touchscreen interface takes getting used to. Unlike the iPhone, light swipes are not recognized. You need to press your finger on the screen when you swipe.
• With the latest versions of Android, there is no way to disable the camera sound (which is extremely loud). I had to install an app called Sound Manager in order to silence it.

That’s about it.

What has been the good stuff?

• Opening links in background windows (except the Google recently changed its Google News website so that you cannot open links in background windows—other sites work fine with it, though).
• Good Google Voice integration.
• Ability to turn any song into a ringtone without special software is great. Right now the Noisettes’ “Wild Young Hearts” is my ringtone.
• Ability to send unwanted calls straight to voicemail through the phone and to just block them altogether with Google Voice is invaluable.
• USB tethering is even better than Wifi tethering. You just plug it in and Ubuntu automatically starts using the connection. No need to select anything or change a setting.

In the end, though, a phone is a phone. It makes calls. It receives calls. I can check my email and look up something quick on the web. There are subtle nuances that will differentiate Symbian from WebOS and Windows Mobile from the iPhone OS X and all that from Android. SmartPhones all pretty much do the same thing, though.

When I first got my Android phone a few months ago, there was an option to turn off the annoying click noise that happened when you took a picture with the camera.

With some recent updates to Donut from Cupcake (or maybe even some backported Eclair updates in the Cyanogen rooted mod—not sure), that option has somehow disappeared from the camera settings. Frustrating. The only thing worse than lacking basic functionality in an interface is taking away fuctionality that had previously been there.

I did quite a bit of Google searching to find out if anyone else had this problem. Basically most people either didn’t have the problem or had no solution to it. One person suggested an app called Snap Photo. I installed the app, saw there was an option to disable the clicking shutter noise, but the noise was still there even when I selected that option. Another person suggested turning off the phone volume, taking the picture, and then turning the volume back up. An effective workaround but quite a bit of hassle, don’t you think?

After browsing through quite a few options in the Android Market, I finally stumbled upon an app called simply Sound Manager. It was perfect. It allows you to fine-tune the volume so you can keep the ringer, media, and other volumes at normal levels and then turn off the system volume, which is responsible for that annoying click noise. There you have it: Sound Manager.

After having rooted (or “jailbroken”) my T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, for a while I was using Cyanogen’s Android mod until it got the cease-and-desist letter from Google. At that point, Cyanogen began working on a legally conservative version of his mod, and I wanted something to use in the meantime, so I switched to Dwang’s donut mod. Dwang’s mod is super speedy and great. Unfortunately, it is good only for the short-term… until Google sends Dwang a cease-and-desist letter.

So after Cyanogen released a stable version of the Google-compliant rooted Android mod, I wanted to give it a shot. It isn’t quite as speedy as Dwang’s mod, but it’s usable, and I like that no lawsuit is going to suddenly bring it to an end (it has long-term sustainability).

So I then went on a quest to find a good theme for this new version of Cyanogen’s mod. I tried out a Ubuntu theme and a Hero theme, and I looked at a bunch of other themes that appeared to be too gaudy for me.

Finally, I stumbled upon the Little Big Planet theme. I remember my wife playing this game on the PS3. At the time I thought the little sack guy was cute in a demented sort of way. So I flashed the theme, and I like it. For those of you who are curious (and who do not want to create a login for the XDA Developers forum just to see screenshots), here is what the theme icons look like:

I think I can live with this theme for a while.

I love my phone. I think it’s great, and I don’t regret purchasing it (though had I known Oprah was going to let me have $100 off the purchase price had I waited a few weeks, I probably would have waited).

That said, I think T-Mobile did a lousy job launching this product. On the bus, I see people with iPhones and Blackberries. I even see quite a few folks with G1 phones (the first Android phone T-Mobile released here in the US). I have seen zero other MyTouch users out there. Why is this? Well, there are a few factors involved:

• Pricing. Most people don’t realize they’d ultimately save money on a smartphone using T-Mobile as opposed to AT&T. They look at the price tag of the initial subsidized phone purchase instead of how much the total of a two-year contract will be paying X dollars per month. So with the iPhone 3GS the “same” price and sexier-looking, a lot of people might favor the iPhone over the MyTouch, even though they’re paying more over the course of two years. T-Mobile should have subsidized the initial purchase price more by offering the phone at US$99 instead and maybe charging a little more per month for the phone contract. Lowering the price now to US$149 is too little too late. It also does no favors to the people who bought the MyTouch 3G the first month it was out.
• Advertising. So there were some skydivers in San Francisco on launch day for the MyTouch… uh, apparently. I didn’t see any. No one I know who works in San Francisco mentioned anything about them. I don’t really see how skydivers are even a good advertisement for a smartphone, anyway. Oh, and then a month after release, some random commercials show up with Whoopi Goldberg and… and two guys whom I guess are probably famous, but I don’t recognize them. Oprah offers some $100-off promotion, and yet sales still don’t skyrocket. Maybe Oprah’s better for book sales?
• Branding. MyTouch? Really? In other countries, it’s called the HTC Magic. Sometimes it’s referred to as Sapphire. MyTouch? Oh, do you want to see my MyTouch? That just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? How about a better naming scheme? The Hero sounds great. The Palm Pre sounds great. The iPhone sounds great. The Blackberry Storm sounds great. The MyTouch 3G… not as slick-sounding.
• Speaker placement. Okay, I know you could make the case this is HTC’s fault and not T-Mobile’s, but if Sprint can get HTC to remove the “chin” on the HTC Hero for the US release, why couldn’t T-Mobile have gotten HTC to move the speaker to the front of the phone? If I’m watching a YouTube video on the front of my phone, I don’t want sound coming out the back of the phone. If I am listening to my T-Mobile or Google Voice visual voicemails on speaker, I don’t want to press the message on the front and then turn the phone over to listen to it. This is about the dumbest engineering I’ve ever seen. Did some industrial designer out there actually think a speaker on the back of a phone was a good idea? I can still hear it, yes, but not as well as if it had been on the front of the phone. This has to be my absolute #1 annoyance with the MyTouch 3G.
• Differentiation. Even though the iPhone is in many ways a superior phone, there are actually some cool things my phone can do that my wife’s iPhone can’t. You can have a contact (like a wrong number who keeps calling you) go straight to voicemail. Your phone comes with a little bag. Google Voice? Android has an app for that. iPhone doesn’t. Instead, the ad campaign for the MyTouch focused too much on trying to get people to buy skins for the phone and repeating vague phrases about making the phone “customizable” without giving a lot of concrete examples. How about just saying “Want a picture of your cute cat behind your apps? The MyTouch has that”? Or even “Works with Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X” or “Doesn’t require specialized software to transfer music.”

The worst part is really the timing, though. Yes, I’m an impatient sort who wanted to see the G1 first before buying the second-generation Android phone (the MyTouch 3G). A lot of people go for third-generation or even fourth-generation. The buzz has been that the Hero is supposed to be the best Android phone, and Sprint recently announced they’d be selling the Hero. Verizon is apparently going to have an Android phone as well. There are lots of Google Android phones on the horizon. Launching the MyTouch right before the Hero was not a savvy move on the part of T-Mobile’s marketing department.

All that said as an explanation for why others don’t have a MyTouch 3G, I still have one myself. And I like it. And I generally like T-Mobile. Its service is much better than the Sprint service I used for years. I actually have coverage. Sure, customer service isn’t available 24 hours (it should be), but when I called after stupidly PUK-locking my sim card, I got through to a customer service representative quickly, and he was very helpful (he also had the same first name as me, which was funny). And, of course, the price per month for a reasonable number of minutes (I don’t talk much) and an unlimited data plan is only a little more than half what my wife pays for her iPhone plan with AT&T.

Google has some Android issues to iron out certainly.

I think the biggest problem with Android right now is web browsing. There are a lot of great things about all the different web browsers available on Android, but there is no one web browser that is fully satisfactory.

Browser is the name of the default web browser Android comes with. It also is the best browser available for Android right now. Its one (and huge) shortcoming is its insistence on refreshing pages every time you switch windows or wake the display up from sleep. You can read all about it here (I’m not the only user who has a problem with this behavior). This kind of behavior completely defeats the purpose of having the ability to load links in background windows. It also doesn’t recognize that users of phones are often on Edge or 3G networks and not necessarily connected to a fast wireless connection. And even if we are, why reload the whole page? Do you really think the page has changed that much in the last two minutes? Shouldn’t you leave it up to the user to decide when to refresh the page?

Other than that major deficiency, Browser functions well. Pressing the search button brings up the search screen, you have the ability to load tabs in the background, the keyboard recognizes if you’re typing in a URL bar or in a regular form and will include or omit the .com button as appropriate. The double-tap zoom works great. First of all, the browser is pretty good about squeezing pages into a narrow format, but even if it doesn’t, you can double-tap on a paragraph and the size will automatically adjust to fit the paragraph to the width of your phone. This is a lot easier than pinching the webpage with two fingers to try to adjust the zoom to the right size (nevertheless, I’m glad rooted versions of Android include multi-touch).

Steel is a very popular browser among Android enthusiasts. Great things about it are its speed (it downloads pages a lot faster than Browser does and, more importantly, does not auto-refresh them for you), its fullscreen mode… and that’s it. Two really annoying things about Steel are the search button not bringing up the URL bar, and the Menu key bringing you directly to settings instead of to a menu of other options (and window management). Worse yet, there is no option to open links in background windows.

Coco Browser uses tabs but will display tabs even if you have only one tab open. It also doesn’t allow you to access the address bar directly or go directly to search. To get to a new page directly, you have to open a new tab and then close the old tab. After I realized this, I gave up on Coco very quickly.

Opera is probably a great browser if you have a hard-key QWERTY keyboard on your phone, but it sucks for phones that have only touchscreen keyboards. That’s all I have to say about that.

Some hackers have created a specialized version of Browser called Better Browser. It allows you to use the regular browser in fullscreen mode. Unfortunately, it changes the double-tap zoom behavior to zoom in and out to an arbitrary degree. I like the default Browser’s double-tap to zoom-to-fit instead.

I’d love to see Google fix the Browser or port over Chromium. It’d also be great if Firefox created an Android browser, or if Opera recognized that touchscreen keyboard phones could benefit from a properly tweaked Opera Mini.

All in due time. Meanwhile, I’m just waiting for pages that have already loaded to autorefresh…