"Conventional wisdom suggests that, just like Gingerbread in 2010 and ICS in 2011, the next version of Android could make an appearance sometime in the fourth quarter of 2012. But the current state of the Android ecosystem indicates that this might not be the best course of action for Google, its OEMs or their customers. In this article, we'll take a brief look at why Google should stick with Android 4.1 until 2013, and push Android forward with hardware, not software later in the year." Fully agreed. Give the ecosystem some time to catch its breath. I mean, it's not as if the competition has anything groundbreaking up its sleeve - iOS and Android are so close these days.
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Member since:2010-03-08
Well, I guess that the top CM contributors, who can afford to spend a lot of time on the project, have well-paid jobs which allow them to buy expensive gadgets.
That said, as a cheapskate Sony Ericsson customer, I can't complain so far. Since the company has opened up its bootloaders, the FreeXperia team has done well, though progress hasn't been as fast as, say, on the Galaxy S II, where Thom had rock-solid CM9 builds months ago (at the time, FXP's CM9 builds for my handset still had issues with basic GSM functionality).
The biggest problems are the relative scarcity of the documentation (due to device unpopularity probably), FXP's tendency to use terrible mirrors for their builds, and Sony's silly idea to release different phones with similar names (e.g. Mini Pro X10 vs Mini Pro).
Member since:2005-07-06
Still OTOH there's a legion of quite talented people scattered throughout the world, in less prosperous places. Too bad their efforts seem less coordinated, less focused.
Oh well, I hope CM (or some other similar project, similarly active) will realise what kinds of phones will really push Android uptake. Only, I'm afraid the main activity (or even language of builds) will be in Russian or Chinese 
(and maybe even there already is such movement particularly in the latter, but not spilling through to the world web...)
Meanwhile, changing mass-market handsets to the one with quite current CM support is also quite feasible - with reselling the old one, and much lower prices overall, it still ends up less expensive than Nexus or high-end phones in general.
Of course, might be less feasible for people and places
locked into contracts... (which I imagine is another factor influencing what kinds of phones are best supported)
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2005-07-06
TBH, the slight vagueness was kinda on purpose, to avoid any future liability
But yeah, more or less those. Too bad, really - I would expect the usually cheapskate (and I mean it in a fully positive sense! I'm like that...) ~OSS people to focus more on mass-market devices. Meanwhile, it looks like CM9 will be mostly limited to high-end stuff.
At least, over time, some mass-market devices do show up in CM official support (ZTE Blade most notably, or LG Optimus One; though both will be probably stuck at 7.2, as far as official CM goes). And ZTE Blade II (which, hw-wise, appears to be the mass-market device I've been waiting for) seems to already have Android 4.0 support from the manufacturer; Autumn (when more mass-market ICS devices will likely show up) might be interesting.