This leads me to believe there is a particular issue with Netflix, yet when trying to stream via a web browser, all seems fine. I also get an error that my user credentials are messed up, but again, I was able to stream via firefox and safari. Has anyone else seen this?

Please repost or leave a comment to discuss this odd outage. So far, no word from Netflix on the issue.

Now that 3.0 has arrived, and has finally been delivered to consumers on tablets, phones, and other interesting mobile devices, many companies are even suggesting it should boot on PCs too. This is truly a mistake. It’s fine for hobbyists to have access to the OS to boot on their PCs, but it would be much the same to dual-boot, say … WebOS on a PC. Really kind of pointless except for marketers at these companies to say “we have our own flavor of Android or some OS and it comes with every PC we sell.” It’s a good marketing game, but in the end it offers no true benefit to consumers as nothing has changed with the delivery of this OS except more pre-used space on a bundled PC from a branded PC maker.

Adding touch capabilities definitely makes Android 3.0 much better and up to date, as well as all the other speed, graphics, and many other optimizations, like increased hardware support, etc. that this new version offers. So you’d think that dual booting in a touch screen PC like the HP TouchSmart might make at least a little more sense. Personally I still say no, not even for the recently acquired WebOS.

The reason I’m saying this is wrong is very simple indeed, and it comes down to one word: Revolution

The addition of such OSes is just that. Extra. Fluff. Flab. Superfluous. Much like our appendix has been considered in our bodies, overall doesn’t make much sense, causes us problems if it gets messed up, and ultimately has to be removed if it does cause problems. Dual booting PCs to the other OS that customers didn’t order will surely expose them to it, but the problem is are we exposing them much like those who ride on a packed subway car near someone with the flu or like our children when we take them to a museum and provide a lot of explanation and hand holding.

Adding another OS to the PC landscape is a great idea, but an idea which has surely been rushed. Consumers and PC makers will both have to make an adjustment to the OS once this starts happening, but if it fails in the slightest, this type of integration will be viewed as a failure the same that most of us still run Windows and Mac OS today, and not Linux. That’s not to say that North America doesn’t have a pretty large base of Linux desktops. But the average consumer will stick with familiarity and ease of use, often one in the same.

So what can these companies do to get it right? I think it’s simple, but I’ll say it here: Start a revolution. Don’t just say how cool this OS is, or what it can do, but use that old Apple motto to seize the opportunity and “think different.” Go another direction and actually innovate, invent, and discover things that you can offer to people to make our lives easier. Not this “add a different topping on the same sandwich” approach and call it better or disguise it as choice. It isn’t. I don’t usually rant too much about this kind of stuff, but like so many example before, we live in a time when there is another opportunity to change how people that use computers and devices think or how those that don’t might be enticed to. Alternatively those people will change anyway and these companies will be left behind trying to catch up, a decade later.

The ball is now in your court HP, DELL, IBM, SAMSUNG, MOTOROLA, and the countless others out ere trying this approach. Bring real changes, or the world will change without you.

[Update 1]

I found this very (un)-helpful link that also shows this is happening to others:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/officeversion_other-office_install/office-mac-2011-unable-to-install-sp1-update/40d29dc1-2045-48b0-baf9-39e03689aac0

In principal, I believe this is the best course of action for Google and anyone in the android community. My issue though, if you can call it that, is that the amount of fragmentation by companies like Motorola, Verizon, HP, DELL, IBM, to name a few, is something that can come back to bite Google as unforeseen consequences. This is by no means to say that Google doesn’t know what they are doing, but there are some basic facts that come with any degree of fragmentation. At it’s heart, Android is just Linux. This is important to understand because Linux in it’s own right had to face and deal with this idea of fragmentation a while ago. Overall, the sub-trees and coincident branches that have sprung from the original source maintain and persist in someway today, but when RedHat, Novell/SuSe, Gentoo, Debian and others started cooperating on a set of standards, based on the original Linux kernel and community that supported it. Those companies were able to create another, higher level of maintenance within the OpenSource ecosystem that is sustained by the “core” community who began Linux, supported by an amount of corporate interest, required to support their branches and resultant kernels, but derived from a single pristine source, the “vanilla” Linux kernel source.

By deciding on a hierarchy like this, companies and the Linux community supported by hobbyists, scholars, etc, the community has grown fairly well to enable room for everyone but with a clear set of usability rules. I would like to see a similar set of rules for Android, but with a twist. In general Linux, and most operating systems, have no concept of an “app store.” so here’s the twist Google, you are “the” one source, “vanilla” if you will, for how everyone should treat this OS, develop apps, create new versions, etc, and rather than say “we’re not saying let’s not fragment Android” I think Google should be saying “we don’t want to see deep fragmentation, but if you have to, here are some guidelines. And, by the way, there are quality controls available to ‘every’ version out there to ensure portability, minimum performance characteristics, and minimum graphics quality, interface characteristics, etc, to make it easier to curate and reduce the “effect” felt due to fragmentation.”

One primary example of how this benefits end users is the KDE project on Linux. I could talk about iOS but that defeats the point. KDE is fairly portable, has visual and performance standards, and CPU and memory requirements to boot. This all helps ensure the users, regardless of which Linux distribution used, are satisfies, happy, and content and can easily use any version that runs KDE. No re-learning, etc, and programmers can easily write once and just recompile for any version with a high degree of confidence the applications written for KDE will look and run as expected. The missing component though is a quality standard at should apply to consumer devices, even if there is open source at the heart of those consumer devices, the application requirements should be allowed to meet some minimum performance capabilities of the OS on which those apps run.

Couple this with the idea of “cleaning” the store in which this applications are bought and sold only serves to help consumers who want “really good” applications regardless of who’s device they bought with whichever fragmented version of Android. This means that keeping fragmentation to a minimum is in everyone’s best interest, and it is still more open an anything that Apple has ever tried to approach. But because the Android store is technically wholly owned and operated by Google, doesn’t it mean that like any retailer a certain level of quality in e merchandise should be stocked and a feedback mechanism should be in place to prevent poor quality from seeping into that store, and if it does, to be quickly and prejudicially removed. After all, if you’re not a good coder, provide poor support, unresponsive to complaints and bugs, and all around don’t provide apps enough people want, it really doesn’t matter how much you like. androids open-ness. Either put up, or get out of the game until you get better at it. Since a lot of folks probably won’t do that on their own, then they should just be removed until their applications go through some sort of review process to prevent that possible consumer abuse in the future.

And all of this can be dine by also being “open” about how much fragmentation Android at large can handle and still survive. What I truly dread is some of the previously mentioned companies fragmenting Android, and then the application store that supposed to be “the” trusted source masquerading as Googles application store, but with very different and possibly conflicting rules than what Android and Google’s core principles are. From that perspective, I say that limiting fragmentation is a good thing for Android. Thanks for reading and I look forward to what the future holds for Google and Android.

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