Thursday, October 21, 2010

Android Creator Smacks Steve Jobs With The Geek Stick [Updated] BY BRIAN CAUFIELD


Technology

Android Creator Smacks Steve Jobs With The Geek Stick [Updated]

Oct. 19 2010 - 1:19 pm | 4,527 views | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
Image representing Andy Rubin as depicted in C...
Image via CrunchBase
Steve Jobs took five minutes to tear apart Google’s Android smart phone strategy on Apple’s earnings call Monday.
Android creator Andy Rubin needed only 144 characters to respond in a Tweet Tuesday.
Their dispute is far from settled, but two things are clear: Rubin is a whole lot geekier, and Jobs is a very difficult man to argue with.
Here’s Rubin’s tweet:
@Arubin the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”
Translation: open means you can do whatever you want with a piece of software, right down to downloading and modifying the source code. Nice.
The problem is Rubin reinforces part of Jobs’ critique even as he refutes another part of it: not a lot of people are going to understand Rubin’s tweet. Just because something is ‘open,’ doesn’t mean it’s accessible or usable.
Which leads to the core of Jobs’ argument: letting developers and modify an operating system’s code freely doesn’t necessarily make it more accessible.
Or as Jobs said Monday: “Google likes to characterize Android as open and Apple as closed. We find that a bit disingenuous… Android is fragmented… Compare this to iPhone, where every App works the same… the multiple hardware and software iterations present developers with a daunting challenge…”
In other words, who says ‘open’ — or at least Rubin’s definition of it — is any good?
Nevertheless, Rubin has  done a public service. Thanks to marketers who have embraced the word “open,” just about everyone describes their product as “open” and their competitors as “closed.” Rubin offers a concrete example of what “open” should mean, and every customer and developer Android wins over offers an example of how that approach can work.
UPDATE: Many twitterers don’t see terribly impressed with Rubin’s response.
Miguel De Icaza, founder of the open-source Gnome and Mono projects:
@migeldeicaza: I followed @ARubin’s instructions to get Android, and all I got was half a system. You can also get half OSX like that.
Matt Silas thinks that Rubin’s tweet makes Jobs point exactly: no one understands it.

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