[Landis]

Wow, there are a lot of free-spirit rebels in this forum

"Hey man, why do the imperialist corporations want to co-opt my phone, man? Don't they realize that wireless phones don't have wires because they need to be free from all that heavy stuff, man?"

Sure, it's nearly impossible for the small developer to get on the SPV right now. Yes, Orange should have had developer support in place at launch, but it is supposed to be coming soon.

A locked device has big advantages in protecting customers and Orange from poorly behaved apps pasted together by weekend developers. There are some very good games available now for the SPV. The vast majority of users will get along just fine without a variety of $5 tile puzzles.

The game consoles are locked. Who complains about that? The warez guys maybe. The developers for those platforms are happy they're locked.

Devices can be corrupted by even well intentioned programmers.
App signing can improve reliability and simplify customer support for any computing platform, especially one that is primarily supposed to be just a phone.

[Landis]

Wow, there are a lot of free-spirit rebels in this forum

"Hey man, why do the imperialist corporations want to co-opt my phone, man? Don't they realize that wireless phones don't have wires because they need to be free from all that heavy stuff, man?"

Sure, it's nearly impossible for the small developer to get on the SPV right now. Yes, Orange should have had developer support in place at launch, but it is supposed to be coming soon.

A locked device has big advantages in protecting customers and Orange from poorly behaved apps pasted together by weekend developers. There are some very good games available now for the SPV. The vast majority of users will get along just fine without a variety of $5 tile puzzles.

The game consoles are locked. Who complains about that? The warez guys maybe. The developers for those platforms are happy they're locked.

Devices can be corrupted by even well intentioned programmers.
App signing can improve reliability and simplify customer support for any computing platform, especially one that is primarily supposed to be just a phone.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by mookie123

I can already say SPV is a flop. It's just a not-so-dumb-phones, but not a true smartphones.

The phone is shipping from one carrier for, what, 30 days? How can you possibly say it's a flop? :wink:

[ThomasC22]

The SPV: I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. I'll be the first to say that there should be some kind of certification process to Smartphone2k2 products but as far as the charge...Microsoft or Orange have to eat it. That sounds bad (being I know they have to pay testers) but this early in the platform, while in competition with a fierce competitor, they need a Developer base far more than a $600 charge. BUT, we don't know that this wasn't one of the requirements that Orange insisted on...(since Microsoft has never been this stupid)

Palladium: Now, how did this get to be part of the discussion again? Seriously, Palladium has as much bad to it as it does good so I don't really see it as something worth waiting for.
Plus, there are some media implications to it that might inhibit many of it's advantages.

Symbian: I don't see what the outcry is about here. Is it such a stretch to think that people interested in PocketPCs might also be interested in Symbian? This isn't a case of PocketPC vs. Palm where one side is feature deficient, Symbian may very well have a more feature rich product in many ways and Series 60 may very well be a more intuitive interface (not saying that is the case, but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility).

[sullivanpt]

Originally Posted by Landis

The vast majority of users will get along just fine without a variety of $5 tile puzzles.

:roll:

But a few of us like $5 tile puzzles.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

I bet Ben liked $5 tile puzzles too! :P

[Landis]

Originally Posted by sullivanpt

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

I doubt ol' Ben would have considered an open wireless OS an "essential liberty"
It's not primarily a security issue for a carrier. I think it's more a reliability issue.

Originally Posted by sullivanpt

I bet Ben liked $5 tile puzzles too! :P

That would've been a whole weeks pay as a printer :P

Did you see the Ben Franklin biography that aired recently on PBS? Excellent :!:

[Leviathan]

Actually even Symbian warns out the user when it is installing something that has not been digitally signed but allows to continue the installation anyway. Of course a similar behaviour from Microsoft would have been too intelligent to accept so they preferred to lock everything down, after all when you are dealing with MS security they can't be sure of anything they are giving you and so it must be an all or nothing affaire.

By the way, signing an app for Symbian costs $400 from Verisign, so I guess the extra $200 for a Smartphone application goes to....

This is definitively a show stopper for most of the developers that were thinking about porting their application to Smartphone. The reassurance that developer support will come in a undefined 'soon' doesn't give any relief. The fact that to develop you need to buy a 'special' developer edition of the phone (which will not cost $300 of course) makes it a joke.

I could not comment until now because we were under NDA, but does anybody have really used the SVP? Eleven keystrokes just to shoot a picture? Crashes twice every hour, we had to get ours replaced three times owing to poor construction problems. While in use the phone seems to freeze every now and then for about 40 seconds and every action just show how this OS is inadequate for this kind of application. Did I forgot to mention that when you shoot a picture the shutter sound get played THREE seconds later? But you have got a PowerPoint viewer.... pleezeee! What a laughable system


Cheers,
Lev

[John Cody]

I came across the below links that unlock the application signing security of the Orange SPV SmartPhone - allowing unsigned apps to be installed on it. I could see doing this as a big benifit among potential Smartphone developers so they can test their apps on a Smartphone before forking over the significant expense of getting it certified.

http://www.coolsmartphone.com/app-cert.htm

http://msmobiles.com/article.php/20.html