John Romero's Doomy View On Android and Ouya 375
An anonymous reader writes "Romero is willing to give Ouya the benefit of the doubt, but he sees it filling a niche for neither gamers nor developers. 'I think it's cool that they're making a platform, but it's not really the answer that's coming from Apple about the next generation of consoles. Developers really want to invoke the spirit of the Apple II, Android isn't the operating system with which to do it,' Romero said. 'There are two platforms: [iOS] makes money [and] is still very programmable, like the Apple II, and then the other is Android, which is a piracy platform, and you're not doing anything new with it.'"
Strange comments ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy is not the problem - incumbency and bugs ar (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy is not as big a problem as some devs are making it out to be. The vast majority of Android users wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to pirate an app. The main group involved in piracy is young, techie gamers, but even then it is not a huge portion of users, and I believe that these users buy some games too.
I think the piracy problem is over-blown by game developers who are dissapointed with their Android sales, often due to (a) their game just isn't that good, or (b) Android users are more cost conscious then iOS users and generally spend less online, or (c) they are coming to Android late and the apps that got their earlier have the advantage of incumbency (which I find to be a huge advantage, though less so with games).
Moving away from games (where the Android test suite does better) to general apps the big problem is bugs. Android has tons of bugs (and a very lacking test suite). Since phones don't get update regularly, developers must work around old bugs indefinitely. Look at the average Android app and you will see various users complaining that the app simply doesn't work on their platform. That's the bugs.
Check out the Android bug list
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list [google.com]
and you will see an astonishing # of bugs, and lots of comments from frustrated developers who are shocked that important bugs can take years to even be acknowledged by Google, let alone fixed (sorry for the bad grammer).
The most recent release (4.1.1) still has lots of bugs, but it appears to be much more solid then previous releases (like 4.0 and 2.3.0 which were shameful, in my opinion), so I hope this is an indication that Google is moving to get the bug infestation under control.
Finally, let me add that this problem has nothing to do with openness, open-source, or fragmentation. If Google would just start focussing on killings bugs, and extend the Android Compatibility Test Suite (the official test suite) so that manufacturers will stop introducing so many new bugs, then fragmentation would become diversity, developers would become more productive, and users would have a better experience.
Re: Oh, John Romero... (Score:5, Interesting)
Alright, lets clear up this business about when ad hominem is a logical fallacy. Using ad hominem to impeach an argument is a fallacy. Using ad hominem to impeach evidence is perfectly valid.
If Romero makes an argument, drawing from generally accepted truths, that "Android is a piracy platform," you can't dismiss the argument because this is Romero talking. If, however, it is reported to you by a reliable that "Romero says that Android is a piracy platform," in the absence of any information on his argument (or if he is simply making an unsupported statement), you can take your opinion of his reliability on that subject matter into account when deciding how much credence to give that statement.
Imagine how much thinking you'd get done if you were obliged to hunt down and evaluate the arguments made by any nutcase with an ax to grind. Since nonsense can be generated instantly as needed, you'd spend all of your time trying to pick sense out of nonsense. Yes, when the argument is right there, or in special circumstances you do have an obligation to give even a nutcase's arguments a fair hearing. But in general if somebody has a track record of unreliable reasoning, you don't owe his arguments a hearing before dismissing them if the conclusion sounds unreasonable.
I once had a dear friend who believed anything. He stored his razor in a pyramid because "pyramid power" would keep it sharp. He didn't know anything about electronics, but following instructions in a book he built a UFO detector circuit which he asserted worked because "it goes off all the time." He believed in fairies, ghosts, bigfoot, and sentient clouds that lived in the stratosphere. I found his notions about cryptozoology particularly charming, because they *might* be true, and a tramp in the woods to hunt hoop snakes and Pukwudgies was harmless amusement. But I didn't feel the need to give his theories about "pyramid power" a fair hearing.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
It was Commodore mismanagement which killed the Amiga. In the end days, not improving their hardware was just a symptom of that mismanagement.
An examples that quickly comes to mind is the A3000+ with the AGA chipset http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prototypes/a3000plus.html [amigahistory.co.uk] where they had the technology ready but put off releasing it for 2-3 years.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)