How so vis-a-vis mobile Flash?

Doesn't it do hardware acceleration?

I must echo the experience with Flash on the Xoom running 3.1. Performance is, finally, quite acceptable.

How is it on battery life?

Probably about the same as if you played that video with some other technology.

Regarding 1) Flash on Android doesn't run in the background.

Here's what I believe is going on:

Honeycomb adds a framework to support DRM plugins. Android 3.1 adds an actual implementation of a DRM plugin called Widevine (acquired by Google in Dec. 2010). Android 3.1 also supports HDCP. The DRM plugin is technically not built into Android; it's a modular add-on. The interface to the DRM plugins is part of Android.

In order for DRM and HDCP to actually work the DRM system has to validate that the system can be trusted. (That's all that DRM does.) If the system is rooted, apparently the DRM system can not validly claim that the system can be trusted.

Google's YouTube Movie Rental service that's part of the Android Market on Android 3.1 apparently relies on the DRM system to validate that the system can be trusted. (This condition may have been part of the deal to get the movie studios to allow their content to be distributed and rented through the Android Market.) If the DRM framework reports that the system can not be trusted because the system has been rooted then the jig's up -- no movies.

Bottom line: you can't have a movie rental service that requires that the system be trustworthy and a possibly untrustworthy system that would result from the system being rooted. You can have one or the other -- not both.

What I'd like to understand is how pluggable these DRM plugins are. For most things on Android you can just replace the default thingy with your own (dialer, home screen are prominent examples).

How long until someone comes up with a custom DRM plugin that returns true for all validation requests?

An app that is using android.drm will probably be looking for specific DRM plugins.

Plugins that would be signed. It'd also make sense if the whole communication with content owners (or Google) was encrypted.

You properly have to replace the entire component - eg you have to decrypt the movie (easy enough since the master key was leaked some time ago), talk to the hardware, etc.

I too was confused by their use of the name Hype and the awesome open source Hype Framework. Apparently there's no connection.

You are correct: there's no connection between Hype.app and the HYPE framework.

Were you aware of the name clash before you committed to your current name?

It's quite premature to call this game.

No one has seen Apple's cloud music offering.

How locked up will it be? How much will it cost? Will it support MP3s not purchased from iTunes? Will it work on non-Apple-brand devices?

Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

Good point. I would expect the Apple service to only work with Apple devices and to have the same 3 device (or whatever the number is) limitation that they currently have. I'd also expect it to be a pay service, as Apple doesn't do freemium.

I'd consider it a major fail if it's not accessible through a web interface, something I'm not expecting.

>only work with Apple devices and to have the same 3 device (or whatever the number is) limitation

That number is unlimited. You're restricted to 5 computers, but unlimited iDevices. I currently have something like 30 associated with my account.

Apple's consolidated.db is not a "mistake". A mistake would not have gotten rewritten for iOS 4 when the database got converted from XML to SQLite and moved to user data.

http://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-issues-...

Also iOS no longer uses Skyhook as of iOS 3.2. Plus Skyhook is for Wifi access point location data, not cell-tower location data. Apple uses its own database for that now which you consent to update with your location data. http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002145.html

> A mistake would not have gotten rewritten for iOS 4 when the database got converted from XML to SQLite and moved to user data.

If they are using CoreData as the storage engine, it is possible they changed backends without ever looking at what was stored in it.

IF they put you into a featured listing! First you have to figure out who to sleep with on the App Store team.

Someone should put up a parody dating site about this.

If I was head of Windows Phone 7 Developer Relations I wouldn't be writing public blogs critical of Scoble's evangelizing Android development.

People might misinterpret my motivations.