Just spent a bit reading up some more on Google’s upcoming Android platform and reading up on the SDK. Looks really impressive; I can’t wait for some hardware to be available.
When I first heard that it would be Java based, I was very skeptical, due to the nightmare that is developing or running 3rd party JME “midlets” on phones today. However, in a brilliant move to bypass Sun’s ridiculous MIDP model and stifling licensing, Google has used Java’s syntax without the JVM: Android apps will run instead on the Dalvik virtual machine, and all apps will have equal access to the device just like the “default” apps!
Screw the iPhone and screw Java ME with all its profiles, midlets and the stupid requirement to crypto-sign your application to run on your own phone: I can hardly wait to get my hands on hardware that can run Android… and if they can’t support multi-touch out of the box because Apple owns patents on it, I’ll download the patch that enables it from a country where such nonsense doesn’t apply.
In fact, I’m so inspired by what Google is doing here that I’m ready to do something I should have done long ago: pledge to place openness as criteria #1 when making any further technology purchases, or at least when it’s remotely possible to do so. That means no more Windows Mobile, no iPhone or iPod or iAnything, and by this time next year at least my main home PC will be running Linux. More on that soon…
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