

Android code now available - agotterer
http://source.android.com/

======
siculars
game on! i've played with the iphone sdk and just the process to get started
with android is simpler than apples offering. i just dont see how apple can be
so closed in their sdk when they have this massive competition staring them in
the face. dont get me wrong, i have an iphone and am even called, dare i say,
an apple fanboy. but please apple, open up more! or else all your potential
devs will bring the cool toys out for android and screw you again like you
were screwed when all the apps came out for windows first.

i mean, does anyone really remember why windows beat mac 10-20 years ago? i
really think it was because at that time, windows was a better development
platform. they had more killer apps. it wasnt the hardware. apple - dont make
the same mistake twice!

~~~
pxlpshr
Yes, I do remember why Windows beat Mac 10-20 years ago, but I also look at
why Mac is challenging Windows today. And don't forget who reinvigorated this
mobile ballgame last year. Your average consumer wants something that does a
few things, but does them extremely well. The iPod and iPhone success stories
are a prime example of this.

I'm not saying that I believe open markets are bad, I think they are necessary
for maintaing a competitive market and nurture innovation. But as far as the
consumer is concerned, they'll head in the direction of quality over quantity.

Apple is doing a great job letting technology fit into our daily life without
making it a hinderance. I don't expect cell manufactures and carriers to work
in conjunction with developers to deliver a seamless experience 99% of the
time, and this is where I feel Apple wins in their development offering.

~~~
siculars
it's true that apple is doing well now. it's true that they ship good stuff
that people want (and believe me, i own a ton of). but i attribute apples
market share gain to windows vista suckin the fatty. their only dominant
market is ipod/itunes, the other stuff (macs/iphones) is still small compared
to the overall market.

~~~
cpr
I think that's less and less true over time.

Watch the recent laptop intro and see Tim Cook explain how Apple now has 18%
of retail unit sales and 32% of retail dollars. That's pretty impressive.

------
bdfh42
Excellent - now all I need is something to run it on. It would be good to see
it ported as an alternate OS for a couple of existing smart phones.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
It would be even better to see it ported for the older ARM CPU in the Openmoko
Neo's. Then you'd have truly-free hardware for your free/open-source Google
Android. Win-win!

------
SingAlong
Ah! I was searching all day about the app gallery and downloading android
stack on the Google Code site. And co-incidently google releases the code
today.

Just wondering why the source is 2.1GB? How do mobile phones it as? 2.1GB or a
compressed and tailored stack?

~~~
krschultz
Source form > binary form. In OpenEmbedded development (what I generally do,
not that familiar with Android), my dev folder is >15 gigs and the image I
create is <128megs.

~~~
SingAlong
Can u just upload the 128mb image you created somewhere?

I have a spare old P3 CPU. Will try to get Android running on it. I know its
for mobile phones. But guessing if I can use my spare CPU with a lightweight
OS(Android should be light for a P3). So that I can develop apps and do
something interesting.

------
jmatt
This is great news. Finally some real competition for Apple iPhone's SDK.

Google couldn't manage to get android.org? I'm split on whether Google is
doing the right thing by not paying for it or whether they should buy it and
protect their branding for Android.

------
SwellJoe
Just waiting for my G1 to arrive tomorrow to really start tinkering.

edit: It just arrived. Woot!

~~~
jyothi
Great. I assume you have got a chance to use iphone too. Whats your take ?
Would like to hear first hand.

~~~
SwellJoe
Hardware is mildly disappointing. Not as nice "feeling" as the iPhone (though
the 3G iPhone also now has a plastic back and doesn't feel as nice as the
first-gen iPhone, so I guess things are tough all over). When taking the back
off to put in the battery and SIM card, I felt like it was going to break. It
didn't, but it felt like it was. Likewise for the little covers for the
data/charge port and the SD memory slot...they're plastic and tiny and feel
fragile. The one exception is the keypad, which feels very nice to me. Since I
used a Sidekick for many years, everything feels very intuitive to me (where,
as usual, "intuitive" means, "what I'm used to"). But, keeping in mind that
the G1 is dramatically cheaper than the iPhone 3G ($179 up front and cheaper
per month for the plan--though I haven't actually looked at different plans, I
just kept the one I've been on, which is about $10 cheaper than iPhone--so
$240 over 2 years), I think it's a great buy, and a whole lot of hardware for
a very small price. Price wasn't my primary deciding factor (openness was),
but it certainly didn't hurt that I wouldn't have to pay more per month to
upgrade to the G1, while I'd pay out $240 more over 2 years for the iPhone 3G
for the same service. I'm going to see if I can drop down to a smaller voice
plan--the Sidekick I had before had minimum plan requirements, but I didn't
see any such requirements when signing up for the G1, so I might even be able
to _save_ $10 per month with the G1 over the Sidekick, since I never use the
phone. I use maybe 100 minutes per month of a 1000 minute plan.

Software-wise, it's plain awesome. I find it pretty intuitive...the lack of
two-finger gestures, as found on the iPhone, is somewhat disappointing, but
it's no slower to use the popup magnifier buttons, once you're accustomed to
it. Dragging and such is smooth and accurate, so I guess the touch screen is
pretty good quality.

Contacts works well, the phone sounds good and clear, having Google mail,
contacts, calendar, etc. is _sweet_ (my old phone couldn't handle more than
about 500 messages via IMAP, and I get more messages than that in a week, and
obviously GMail just works great with practically infinite mail). Web pages
look great, and browsing is fast. WiFi was quick and easy to setup. YouTube
videos work great, both on 3G and on WiFi. It's my understanding that
T-Mobile's 3G network is still somewhat small...so if you don't live in the
valley, your mileage may vary, but it works fine for me here in Mountain View.

I installed an Open Source ssh client off of the web--no jail breaking
required...this was a big issue for me with the iPhone. I don't want to have
to have permission to install arbitrary apps that I've written or someone else
has written. I also installed Compare Anywhere, and a bubble game from the app
store, and the quality of everything is really slick. Really impressive for a
launch day catalog, especially since everything is free right now. I haven't
spent a lot of time with the apps on the iPhone, so I don't have much to
compare to. But, I'm excited to play with stuff.

Also, it worked right away when I plugged it into my Linux desktop. No futzing
around with weird stuff to get songs onto the device. The iPhone/iPod is a
_bitch_ in that regard. That one thing made me ecstatic in ways I haven't felt
over a device in a long time. Coming off of years of screwing around with
iPods and an iPhone, and it never quite working right, having a drag and drop
music experience is miraculous. (Take this with a grain of salt, as I may be
strange. I find iTunes incredibly confusing and difficult to use, so on those
occasions when I've given up on getting Linux to work and rebooted into
Windows and run iTunes for the purpose of putting music onto the device, I've
ended up spending a long time futzing around _anyway_ , because I never could
figure out what all the syncing options meant or how to use them...so every
time I would fiddle until something happened, and occasionally it would just
end up deleting all of my songs either on the PC or the device, and I would
give up in disgust. I also have trouble using several other Apple software
products, and find them hard to use, so I could just be a retard.)

------
mattmaroon
I wonder if the dude in the video realizes how ridiculous that earring looks.

~~~
davidw
Hah - I mentioned that to the Google guys on the irc channel. No offense to
the guy in question, who is presumably a super badass hacker, but it's really
distracting to watch that earing bounce around.

~~~
mattmaroon
It looks like a D20 at the end or something.

