The open source problem.

I love open source software. I've been using Firefox for years, love Thunderbird for email and run Adium as my multi-chat client. During my high school years I even dabbled around with Linux a bit, but now that I help administrate and troubleshoot Linux servers for a living, there's been less of an interest in using that as my home operating system. I guess technically I'm still a *NIX user, since I switched to using only Macs a year ago next month.

Even though I love my Mac, I'm a bit torn with how Apple handles things. When it comes to computers I appreciate things being as open as possible. The stability and performance improvements that OS X provide over Windows make it less painful to sacrifice some control for quality. Windows is even less open source than my Mac, technically.

When it comes to mobile phones, I adore my iPhone. I've had every model that Apple has released and plan to purchase this year's upcoming model, even though I don't qualify for a discount. Android is really intriguing to me, especially because of its integration with Google services. It's no secret that I love Google probably as much as I love Apple and having a phone that so tightly integrates with the software I use all day every day would definitely be nice. The only thing that's keeping me from switching to Android is the open source base. Surprisingly, that's a problem for me.

I just can't bring myself to fully support and rely on a nearly lawless, open source, platform for something I use heavily every day. Open source stuff is great, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure that a smartphone is the right place for that. I hesitate to have something that stores so much of my personal information and that of others be so open and open source operating systems have left a kind of bad taste in my mouth over the years. It seems that I've come to appreciate how strict Apple's App Store approval process is.

High school was great because I didn't care much about school. Instead of going home and doing homework, I'd try installing the latest Linux distro. on my computer. I didn't have the greatest hardware as it was mostly a mix of whatever I could find when something broke. I literally spent countless hours a week fiddling with Linux and spending more time fixing problems than actually using my computer. That was fun during high school, but now that I do that for a living it's not something I want to deal with. Ubuntu seems to have mostly solved this on the desktop level, but I still can't trust it enough to not annoy me or to not have some piece of hardware stop working one day for no reason. When I use my computer at home, it just needs to work... and quickly.

Android bring these struggles to mind. As cool as the OS is, I can't get past the idea of having to troubleshoot my phone because some app I installed broke. I also really dislike the confusion that Google has created with Android OS versions. Every time I hear of a new phone coming out, it seems like there's some new OS version or flavor available on this one that's not available on others. Add that to the confusion with device code names and regionally varying names and I just don't have the time to keep up with what phone is coming out in the US and on what carrier. Then I wonder if it will run a usable version of Android OS or not and whether it's going to have the processing power and RAM to do this quickly and reliably. Believe me, there are some version that aren't that usable and some that are severely lacking in hardware (the G1 and MyTouch 3G are two examples).

What's up with software compatibility in Android? I understand that one OS running on multiple hardware platforms has some inherent limitations, but it's totally unacceptable that an app may run fine on every device except the Droid, for example. When I was helping my Aunt learn how to use her new Droid, I had trouble finding an app dedicated to turning off Bluetooth. There were plenty of these types available, but none seemed to work on the Droid. The compatibility issue points to a larger issue, which is the interface. It's incredibly hard to find things. Turning off Bluetooth shouldn't requiring me finding my way through a maze of poorly constructed menus. People shouldn't have to make apps that exist only to turn Bluetooth on and off.

For the time being, I think I'm going to stick with my closed environments. I won't be fully happy with it, but I do appreciate that I've had nearly zero issues with my iPhones and Macs. I did have some recurring battery issues on my previous iPhone 3G, but I'm now convinced that was related to some battery drain bug in Twitterific. Apple's walled garden works incredibly well for me and I don't mind giving up some flexibility and control for a better computing experience. This has carried over extremely well to the mobile environment, too. There's relatively few people that legitimately complain about speed and reliability on iPhones compared to those I've heard complain about Android.

Open source has it's place. Amazing web browsers, email clients, chat clients and more have sprung up under this license. I appreciate the work these developers do and contribute to them when I can. My experience suggests that maybe open source isn't organized and mature enough to operate in the mobile space yet. I really hope this changes because I'd really like to have more open source in my life, even if it did cause me problems back in the day.