A Frog in the Valley

Unqualified Reservations: Five problems with Google Android :

As Google puts it, “all applications are equal.” However, some applications are more equal than others. Because all applications depend on native libraries that are not written in Java. And no application - and no end user - has any way to add any native library.

In the Android design overview, everything in the middle two layers (framework, runtime, library) is closed. For example, you cannot add your own presence manager, your own media types, your own browser, etc. You could probably build some of these things at the user level, but compared to the built-in versions they will suck.

An open computing platform is a platform on which the end user has the same level of control over the system as the manufacturer. Ideally, as in PCs, this includes the power to install a custom OS. (…)

Now, no one at Google is stupid. They’ve built the thing this way for a reason. They reason that (a) no one but a total major-league geek wants a command-line shell or a C compiler on their cell phone; (b) deploying hardware-independent, portable native programs is extremely difficult; (c) a secure native interface is unheard of; and (d) Android Java satisfies the needs of 99% of application developers.

They’re right about all these things. But they are still wrong.

Many great insights in there if you are interested in platforms (not just mobile, any platform, really)…
[Via Open Gardens]