
Amazon and Android forks - Doubleguitars
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/6/21/amazon-and-forks
======
sroerick
I wish I could actually be more supportive of this initiative. After Snowden,
I switched to FLOSS software, a dumbphone, and creative commons culture. I had
stopped using Google products primarily a couple years earlier, and last
summer really solidified me.

I have big issues with Microsoft, Apple and Google. Obviously, there are
concerns with Amazon, too, but they aren't as significant for me. They stem
mostly from not being able to read anonymously, and from the concern of DRM
and the potential issues with Amazon being able to revoke the Kindle books you
purchase.

Amazon's basic business model is not focused on surveillance or putting all
your data in the cloud or vendor lock in. This is a big plus these days.

Amazon also is in the interesting position of probably being able to disrupt
literally all commercial and retail business in the next couple years, which I
am personally hugely excited for. It will be interesting to see who the heck
buys this, and how they are able to operate without Google, iOS apps, what
have you.

Maybe we will soon have a major tech company promoting Open Street Maps.
Amazon will be in a position to offer a lot of products that other companies
can't. Right now, though, I wouldn't touch the Google Play stack with a
10-foot-pole.

~~~
josteink
_They stem mostly from not being able to read anonymously, and from the
concern of DRM and the potential issues with Amazon being able to revoke the
Kindle books you purchase._

Everything else apart, while this is a reasonable concern, it is also an
addressable concern.

The Amazon DRM is weak, known and can be decrypted. It take minimal research
to set this up, and then circumvention is merely a click away.

This means that while Amazon some time in the future can revoke your access to
purchases you've made for whatever reason (even though I doubt they will),
they cannot revoke you from using the DRM-free copies you've created once
you've stripped the DRM from your original purchases.

~~~
khc
I used to be concerned about this, and then I realized: if Amazon revokes my
access to the e-books/movies I legally purchased, I will just go download
pirated copies. Why do that kind of backups myself when the internet is
already doing it for me?

~~~
sroerick
I'm a huge supporter of piracy but I personally prefer to boycott any non-free
ebooks or movies instead.

It's easy to break the technological norms that protect books. It's a lot
tougher to break the cultural ones.

------
sergiosgc
This is the ugly head of the post-web world. Let's for a moment assume that
the web is being phased out in favor of a constellation of apps on a closed OS
gated by a monopolistic appstore/playstore. The end game is for a Microsoft of
modern days to form, with a far stronger power than MS in the 90s. Since every
player in the market knows this, there'll be fighting either for the top spot
or, at least, to keep the market fragmented enough to prevent the new monopoly
from forming.

In either case, consumers get screwed. Either they get screwed like in the
90s, or they get screwed by systems incompatibility and fragmentation.

All in all, this war is moot. Moore's law applied to bandwith, to device
computation speed and to software evolution leads to this:
[http://xkcd.com/1367/](http://xkcd.com/1367/)

~~~
pekk
That xkcd comic's idea would work if people would use web apps in preference
to 'native' apps. Moore's law isn't fixing that unless it somehow makes the
web into a hugely better platform for apps.

As it stands, we are limited to only using these lame DOM-based APIs which
have been strained far past their origin in hypertext, and only using
Javascript, which has been strained far past its design as a way of merely
scripting a browser. These contained some good ideas but they're essentially
dead. People want apps. So the original intent is warped to fit that demand,
and the result is neither fish nor fowl. It's mystery meat.

If the web weren't so crappy, the monopolist would not really have an
opportunity. Mobile platforms bring a lot of value because the web is a bad
app platform; where you have the choice, keeping HTTP but using other client
technologies is the best compromise available. Mobile platform creators had
that choice and went with decent languages and more appropriate environments.
Where a graphics API can be just a graphics API, and so on for everything
else.

We can count on Firefox OS and anything like it to fail to thrive for as long
as it is Mozilla against the world, defending the awkward status quo by
throwing more lame hacks on the pile and awkwardly bolting on new device APIs
to its browser.

Don't tell me that if I can use a decent language and decent APIs rather than
Frankenstein's monster, that I am "screwed by systems incompatibility and
fragmentation." The web status quo sucks at a technical level and that is why
it is threatened by monopolists. Doubling down on the technical suck isn't
going to help. If you want a benevolent monoculture to emerge, you aren't
going to get it by doubling down on the status quo and waiting until everyone
gives up mobile platforms for ideological reasons, or because a cheap phone
uses Javascript.

~~~
sergiosgc
> The web status quo sucks at a technical level (...)

I know you mean that it sucks when viewed from the perspective of an
application developer, and I agree with you. However, on a technical merit
perspective, the web is much more evolved, and much more a technical feat,
than either Android or iOS.

Android and iOS are a reiteration of what has been done cyclically through
times, ever since the first OS got written. A set of libraries and associated
APIs on top of a constrained set of hardware.

The web is, as an application platform, a set of APIs. That's it. There's no
defined hardware, no defined set of libraries. Guess what? Designing the API
alone is much more difficult, a lot harder to get right, and much more of a
technical feat.

On one side, some libraries got written and then documented. On the other,
everything is defined conceptually (well, not really; if done like this it
would be really impossible instead of just difficult, but the point stands).

------
shawn-butler
>> Google's Maps platform is very good and HERE, at least in western markets,
is not as good. As with Apple Maps, it works, mostly, but the gap is clear and
there is no roadmap that points to that gap closing. >>

Can anyone with some relevant expertise experience comment on this? From a
data perspective HERE/Navteq seems as good as if not better than google data
in my locale.

I wonder if article is referring to the lack of "add-on" feature parity?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I think the author wanted to play up the difficulty of doing this and saying
"and then they licensed the excellent HERE mapping solution from Nokia (which
they got when they acquired Navteq)" made it all sound too easy.

Similarly: "Without this Google layer you really only have a featurephone".
Yes, and without the battery it's basically a shiny brick. Luckily Amazon has
been shipping near identical devices, with apps and maps for several years
now, so we don't really need to fully explore this fascinating counter-
factual.

------
peterwwillis
> There's an interesting quasi-3D UI feature and a big flashing BUY button, in
> line with Amazon's role as the Sears Roebuck of the 21st century, but little
> that really changes anything or couldn’t be done on any other smartphone
> anyway.

Car manufacturers don't make new model cars because they "change" something or
do something other cars can't. They make new cars because they need something
sexier for people to buy so the manufacturer will continue to increase
revenue.

The iPhone didn't "change" anything or provide new features. Nokia and Sony
Ericsson already had phones with far more advanced functionality years before
it came to market. What iPhone provided was a sexier, easier interface. This
Amazon phone is just another badly executed new car that puts new technology
over the "sexy" factor, which is why you're unimpressed. But it serves a
bigger purpose...

> And that leaves people wondering why Amazon bothered.

To hook people on more subscription services like Prime. That's Amazon's
entire business model.

The purpose of the Kindle was to incentivize additional book purchases due to
the ease [of not having to ship a paper book or carry it around or keep it]
and cost [lower than for paper books]. Envious of the green Apple makes on the
App store, Amazon wants some of that mobile-market money, and a way to push
their own competing "store" (music, books, etc).

Basically, the mobile sector is turning out digital Walmarts where you can get
everything you could possibly need, and the retailers are providing mobile
devices tailored to their shops. Amazon doesn't want their shop to get
ignored, so they provide their own mobile retail interface to beat the
incumbent competition.

~~~
vitd
>The iPhone didn't "change" anything or provide new features. ... What iPhone
provided was a sexier, easier interface.

You just contradicted yourself. The interfaces of those Nokia and Sony
Ericsson phones were terrible for many people. People cheered when Steve Jobs
talked about how he used them and he wanted to throw them against the wall
because they were so annoying to use. That is a change that people felt was
worthwhile and it was more than just "sexy"; it was worth getting rid of your
"free" or $99 phone and paying $600 for a smart phone for the first time for
millions of people. (They weren't originally subsidized.) That's not "no
change."

