Worthwhile comment from C. Whiteham in the poll comments:
Originally Posted by
C.Whiteham says:
September 29, 2010 at 1:38 pm
To really get a sense of how Not-In-The-Same-League the smartphones (such as Galaxy S and other Android things) are, compared to the Internet tablets (N900, N9, N8, etc.), you really need to compare what happens when there is NO APP for what you want to do. Let’s think of something weird that no one would ever write an app for.
Does the Galaxy S have an app for “when the battery strength is less than 30, then send me an email”? NO. End of story. Sorry. Better luck next time.
Wait, does the *N900* have an app for “when the battery strength is less than 30, then send me an email”? No, it doesn’t. So what to do? Well, you can just type the following two lines in a file:
#/bin/bash
while /bin/true; do sleep 60s; if (( 30 \> $( lshal | grep percentage | grep -o \\d\\d ) )); then dbus-send –type=method_call –dest=com.nokia.modest /com/nokia/modest com.nokia.modest.MailTo string:”mailto:myemail@myaddress.com\nbattery is low!” ; fi ; done
There you go, *NOW* the N900 will send you an email when battery strength is less than 30.
But wait, Galaxy S owner, I know what you want to say: “But my cousin’s neighbour’s mom knows someone who wrote an Android app that does *exactly* that, which is available for only $0.99! And it even has coloured blinking lights on our HIGH RESOLUTION screen!”
Okay, fine then, does the Galaxy S have an app for “turn on the FM transmitter and speak the cellular signal strength on my car hifi using Mandarin Chinese”? NO. End of story. Sorry. Better luck next time.
Wait, does the *N900* have an app for “turn on the FM transmitter and speak out loud the current cellular signal strength on my car hifi using Mandarin Chinese”? No, it doesn’t. So guess what the N900 owner does? Why, create a new program with the following two-line text file, of course:
Let me guess, Galaxy S owner, you’re about to say, “Wait a minute! Did you just CREATE TWO NEW APPS there by typing in two lines of shell scripting?” Yeah, you can do it while you’re waiting for the train. What’s that, you were NOT about to say that? You were actually about to say, “What on earth is ‘shell scripting’?” Well, it’s like programming, but simpler. What’s that you say? “What is ‘programming’?” “What’s a ‘file’?” “What’s an operating system?”
What’s that? “Why are we talking about computers, anyway? This is a smart phone competition! Besides, who wants to type in those REALLY LONG 2-line programs which are freely customizable? We have an app store where we can wait for Google to get around to making exactly the right app, and you’re stuck with –okay, I guess the N900 has an app store, too, plus your set of three no-cost Maemo repositories… But, umm … we have more gigahertz than you! Yeah, that’s it!”
Seriously, Galaxy S, come back when your user does NOT need to go running off to some app store every time you want permission to do something with the device.
I tried out the scripts, and they work. Yeah, that sort of thing gives one a whole new respect for the n900.
