Under a Gibbous Moon

I’ve written about this topic before and it just won’t go away. To a certain extent I can forgive random forum members and poorly trained sales associates but I cannot forgive a blogger for a major tech site. Jason Perlow from ZDNet  writes:

Why is it awful? Well, let’s start with the basics. In Android, as you start an application, its services will continue to run in the background when you start more apps.

Provided that an application is well-written, only a stub of that app continues to run, such as GMail’s message poller or perhaps a Twitter client’s notifier service.

But plenty of apps still commit a significant amount of resources to memory even when you stop using them or start a new process.

Which they really shouldn’t.

If these are left unchecked, your Android device’s performance and stability goes straight to hell.

Of course this is flat out ignorant, as Dianne Hackborn, a Google software engineer explains:

The fact that you can see an application’s process “running” does not mean the application is running or doing anything. It may simply be there because Android needed it at some point, and has decided that it would be best to keep it around in case it needs it again. Likewise, you may leave an application for a little bit and return to it from where you left off, and during that time Android may have needed to get rid of the process for other things.

…

Of course, there is a limited amount of memory, and to accommodate this Android must decide when to get rid of processes that are not needed. This leads to Android’s process lifecycle, the rules it uses to decide how important each process is and thus the next one that should be dropped. These rules are based on both how important a process is for the user’s current experience, as well as how long it has been since the process was last needed by the user.

The only evidence Mr. Perlow presents is that the existence of this myth is proof of its truth.

What’s the common fix to this issue? Well, an entire cottage industry of developers have written various task killer/task managment and memory optimization utilities for Android, which can be used with a single click of a button to wipe apps and services out of memory.

Of course there are a lot of popular apps written to kill task on Android but that is because people are constantly (and erroneously) being told that they need them. I remember that when my parents bought their phones that the store rep installed task managers on both phones. When I saw them later I explained to them why it was not necessary and it was just eating up resources for nothing. I uninstalled both apps but later, when they had gone back to the store for something, a rep again installed the app on their phone insisting that it was necessary.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to fix stupid but such ignorance is unacceptable in people who get paid to write about technology. Readers who are looking to ZDNet looking for information are going to be sorely misled by this article and this myth will be continued by people armed by the authority that the ZDNet logo imparts.

The summary for the article states that, “When it comes to task managment, the developers at Google think they know better than the end-users that are actually using their products.” In actuality, Google designed an OS that does not require end users to have to worry about task management and yet you bitch about it. Try educating yourself about your topic before trying to actually write about it.

This photo was taken at the aquarium in Camden, NJ. I don’t remember what kind of fish this was but it lives somewhere in the Amazon. It was just floating there staring and staring at me when I took this picture. No flash and a black and white filter give it the look of a monster peeking out of its lair.

I took this photo while sitting on the back porch of a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia. Like most of my really good pictures, I wasn’t trying very hard when I took it but the composition turned out perfectly. I gave it a kind of dark sepia filter with center weighted highlights.

I took this a a rather dreary day at a “pumpkin patch” a ways up north. The place was rather deserted and, despite being in current operation, looked as though it had been abandoned for the last couple of years. I was standing by one of their “attractions”, a gutted school bus that had been turned into a sort of playground, when I noticed a really nice looking cloud formation coming in that lined up well with the old fence and the abandoned looking carnival rides in the background. I washed out some colors while sharpening others to give it a nice retro aged look.

The most interesting thing about all three of these pictures is that they were all taken with a cellphone. No fancy cameras here. While they are certainly limited in the types of pictures that can be taken, a carefully framed photograph can still come out looking great.

Google recently released a new licensing system for Android developers. It involves a set a libraries that developers can add to their applications that will require that the fact that it had be purchased be validated by Google’s servers (gritty details can be found here).

The reason that this is being rolled out is that paid for applications can be pulled off of the phone and then distributed illegally, much in the way of about another other computer program.

Now, I have always found complicated DRM schemes to be far more of a burden to legitimate users than it is to software pirates. Simply put, every DRM scheme (to my knowledge) has been defeated. This means that the pirates still get the programs for free and legitimate users have to put up with the DRM.

First I would like to make some points for Google’s system. Twitter, being a wonderful thing, I was able to discuss the new system with a Google employee, @romainguy and an Android dev, @tomgibara.

The first an most important point is, that this system is not being made mandatory and the implementation, and the degree thereof, is left up to the developer.

The biggest problems that plague online authentication is what happens when the user does not have an internet connection or the server is unaccessible (either do to high traffic or the server going offline). The answer to both conditions is that the system allows for the caching of the validation for offline use for “a period of time” before a recheck is required.

I have to admit that the failsafe implementation seems like a good idea, except that its implementation is also optional.

Now for the downsides.

Part of the licensing system require that the phones unique ID number be used. This essentially limits the software that you buy under this system to the device that you are currently upgrading. Did you buy that $30 office suite? Well you’ll have to do it again when you upgrade to a new phone. While you could email the developer to work something out, once again it is DRM places the burden upon legitimate users. Edit 28JUL10. The validation system requires the IMSI not the IMEI, see comments.

The second downside is that while the system has been designed to allow for no server access scenarios, it is up to the developer to allow for them. Because of this, you could find that nice, shiny music player you paid for useless when you put your phone into airplane more for that long flight.

The final downside, to me, is purely philosophical. This move, by Google, strikes me as more of something that Apple would do. Restrictive licensing is essentially what Apple built their empire on and to see Google implementing something like that is, in my opinion, a step in the wrong direction.

So, how is this going to work out? I see it becoming a fixture in the Android Marketplace in the coming months. Quite a few Android developers on Google Groups and on Twitter have been responding very favorably to it. What effect will it have on the Android Market? I guess only time will tell if it becomes a Steam or another SecureRom.

The latest iPhone’s release has been a bit of a mess. From signal issues (you’re holding it wrong), the super glass that scratches, defective screens, and dead cameras.

I’m not an Apple fan, but this has surprised me. With Apple’s obsessive quality control, this phone has a lot of problems out of the gate. So now, one has to wonder why. It seems to me that the iPhone 4 was released before its time. The only reason I can think of for Apple pushing out the iPhone before it was ready was to beat the release of several high profile Android devices in the next few months (specifically the Droid X and the Droid 2).

With Android making inroads with mobile developers and it’s impressive growth, it seems that Android is able to put enough pressure on Apple that they are making mistakes.

I think that most people understand these days that Steve Jobs is dictatorial tyrant who wishes to decide what you can and can’t do with your technology and has a vast army of shock troops willing to enforce his whims with flamer wars of unimaginable destruction.

Back in April, when Steve Jobs was asked about Apple’s draconian content control policy he replied that if you want pornography you can just go buy and Android phone. It seems he was right…