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This sounds like an apology. Openness is just not a high enough priority for them. It's just not their goal to release an open device otherwise they wouldn't have released this.

It's their goal to do whatever it takes to compete aggressively and if openness can win them PR, they'll do it, but it isn't a goal in itself.


Well, I see that people have figured out why I'm quitting AOSP.

There's no point being the maintainer of an Operating System that can't boot to the home screen on its flagship device for lack of GPU support, especially when I'm getting the blame for something that I don't have authority to fix myself and that I had anticipated and escalated more than 6 months ahead.

So much for all that noise from Google about 'openness'. The detractors were right.


Even other open devices (Firefox phone, Ubuntu Edge) will suffer this fate - they all, AFAIK, will require proprietary blob drivers for the GPU.


I think the issue here is that Qualcomm won't even allow AOSP to distribute the binary blobs.


Intel provides FOSS graphics drivers [1]. I'm not sure though whether they do mobile graphics cards with free software drivers, too.

[1] https://01.org/linuxgraphics/


Depends what you mean by "mobile".

The non-Atom chips usually have real Open GPU drivers that work the same as the desktop ones; the Atom chips [AFAIK] are the ones that primarily suffer from being PowerVR-licensed things with badly half-working "open" drivers.


Not all Atom chips have PowerVR graphics, though AFAIK all the phone and tablet Atoms do.


And exactly with AOSP is not open?


If you are repeating that false 'rounded corners' meme then you are either paid by Samsung (who started that), or beyond reason.


That's a rather offensive false dichotomy. Please don't accuse me of being paid off or mentally incapable.


I apologize if you really didn't know that Apple didn't make that accusation.


On August 24, 2012 the jury returned a verdict largely favorable to Apple. It found that Samsung had willfully infringed on Apple's design and utility patents and had also diluted Apple's trade dresses related to the iPhone ... The jury found Samsung infringed ... design patents that covers iPhone's features such as the "home button, rounded corners and tapered edges" (US D593087) and "On-Screen Icons" (US D604305).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electroni....

This seems to indicate that Apple did indeed assert what I claimed. Can you show me how this is false?


Pretty sure Google's own lawyers told Samsung the design was too close before it was even released.


This document proves that the meme is false and that Apple did not attempt to protect 'rounded corners'.

Apple asserted a design patent that protects the overall appearance of the iPhone - the 'trade dress'. Rounded corners are one of many attributes that describe the appearance of the iPhone. If you copy enough attributes - as the court ruled that Samsung did, you have copied the appearance.

Taking a single element out of context is a lie that Samsung originated, designed to give the appearance that Apple attempted to protect a ridiculously broad concept which the documents show that they did not do.


> This document proves that the meme is false and that Apple did not attempt to protect 'rounded corners'.

You are straight up lying here. Observe the patent: http://www.google.com/patents/USD593087

'many attributes' in this case meaning 'two attributes'.

Reading your post history you have a short history of only posting pro Apple and repeating many similar assertions. Yet you have the gall to accuse me of being a paid shill. Hilarious.


Siri uses the proximity sensor to implement raise to talk.

The gyro for parallax is only turned on when the screen is on.

The rest of your comment is pretty much tinfoil.


The proximity sensor is not enough to trigger "raise to talk", you also have to have a little jerk of acceleration. If you have the feature enabled, try slowly raising the phone... it won't trigger.


Fair enough - however there is no evidence of how far up the stack that data goes - accelerometers do sudden movement sensing on-chip - not via the CPU.

My other points still stand.


My main point is that Apple is looking to push sensor data up the stack via new APIs in an energy efficient manner by reusing / repurposing components.

True - I don't work for Apple. But I've sampled most "context aware" frameworks and talked to some of the developers that implemented them. Pretty much every "frequent location" tracking implementation works in a similar way. I'm not saying anything revolutionary here (look up sensor fusion).

My 2 cents is just pointing out how meticulous Apple is when it comes to battery drain. There are other examples of this in iOS 6. The best one is how the CoreLocation team used the new MapKit vector graphics to clip GPS coordinates to streets. Again, Apple didn't invent a new technology to improve GPS accuracy, it leverage a new user interface innovation. To implement this Apple released a activity type (driving, walking, etc) API which alerted CoreLocation as to when it would be appropriate to clip coordinates.


Fair enough!


It's not an Amazing find at all, given that apple has built a relatively sophisticated UI for it.

It's public facing precisely because people are concerned about this kind of data collection. This way you can make an informed choice about what apps can see about you and what to send to apple.


iOS let's you choose:

- Whether this information is collected at all - which specific apps can access it - whether apple can receive an anonymized copy of it to improve their maps

The data is stored securely on your device and you can see it delete it.

What more control do you want?


If we stop doing evil, important solar processes will stop, leading to the collapse of the sun.


save it for the judge.


as long as you don't step on one barefoot


Even worse than stepping on a LEGO brick.


Really? Happy to be only threatened by LEGO then. Postive side effect, I'm also driving on the right side of the road! ;-)

EDIT: this has to change now, too, right?


Come on, this is Hacker News - stepping on an upturned PCB in the dark has to be some sort of prerequisite of membership? ;)


In that case Apple has still 'lobbied' far less than its US competitors by holding out against prism.


Utterly false. Apple is not a lobbying juggernaut at all and spends less on lobbying than any of the other major tech companies: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76073.html

Apple is also taking a serious beating from Obama's DOJ. So clearly not 'a favorite' of the governments.


Entirely incorrect. Evidently, you neglected to read the details of the article. First, Samsung isn't mentioned at all, so there's no context for this specific debate. The fact that Microsoft or IBM gave more money to government officials means absolutely nothing when someone is trying to to decide between Apple and Samsung. Moreover, this article pertains only to a three month period. You can't possibly pretend that this data is conclusive.

I actually looked up the empirics. First, Samsung didn't really lobby at all until last year, whereas Apple has consistently spent millions. Even when Samsung did start expanding their lobbying efforts, Apple has outspent them by more than double every year.

The article to which you linked is in no way pertinent to the discussion, and totally betrays the actual statistics.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000042406...

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021754...


Nope. I was replying to the idea that Apple is a 'lobbying juggernaut' and 'government favorite' which is demonstrably false.


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