Apple’s announcements yesterday? Color me unimpressed.
And another thing. All the analysts that are calling the Kindle Fire “not an iPad killer” are totally missing the point. If the Kindle Fire does 80% of what an iPad can do and costs 40% of the price, it is an iPad killer.
Just like Android hasn’t been an iPhone killer.
Ouch.
I’m noticing an odd trend on Android applications.
Increasingly, applications are asking for more and more “privileges”. Today, CBS’ TV.COM application is asking for “audio record” capabilities on the latest upgrade.
Um… okay. What? You want me to allow your app to record audio from my phone? How about a no.
It isn’t the first app I’ve seen that’s done this. There’s been a handful of such “privilege escalation” attempts done by a few apps. Groupon, for example, at one point wanted “fine” GPS location instead of “coarse.” Um… no, “coarse” should be just fine, thank you (a later version seems to have rescinded this requirement).. you don’t need to know exactly were I’m at, a coarse cell tower fix should be fine. Other apps have wanted access to the SD card for no discernable reason.
In most cases, I suspect it’s just a sloppy implementation of a new feature. But for the life of me I’m still trying to figure out what legitimate purpose TV.COM needed to record audio from my phone.
Maybe CBS is working on some new reality TV show…