A few things piss me off about this. First, a forum post? Seriously, that’s how you inform customers about an update we’ve been waiting for? Second, why isn’t this update OTA? And third, Froyo? Okay, it’s nice that we’re finally getting 2.2, but this phone was an insurance replacement for Nexus One. N1s have gingerbread now. Arrgh. When it comes time to replace this phone I don’t think I’ll be getting another Samsung.

It’s not a battle! They are different products, and they serve different purposes. When I say “No Contest” I don’t mean clearly Android is better – I mean it isn’t a contest. Why isn’t anyone taking Apple to task for continuing to develop the OS X when clearly the future is iOS? Or Microsoft for continuing to iterate Windows when now they have what appears to be a decent mobile OS?

The answer is pretty simple – a keyboard and mouse OS is not the same thing as a touch screen OS. That’s been the main driver behind the App explosion. Apps typically mimic functionality that could be happening in a browser, but they’re designed for touch screens.

Yesterday Google notified me that I was overcharged, and would be receiving a partial refund:

We’re writing in regards to your recent Nexus One purchase. There was an issue with the way the sales tax was applied to your order. When your order was placed, you paid taxes on the full retail price of the phone. However, you should have only been charged taxes on the sales price of the phone. We apologize for this issue and wanted to let you know that Google will issue a partial refund for the difference in the amount of taxes you were charged.

Today they made good on it with a $17.50 refund.

More Android Awesome.

There aren’t six reasons on that list, there’s one: Steve doesn’t want people using their proprietary solution, he wants them to use his proprietary solution. This is a pissing contest, and iPhone users are getting pissed on.

Jobs says Adobe Flash is proprietary and Apple is “open” because they’re using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. This is funny coming from one of the reigning kings of both closed source hardware and software. Somehow, faced with the exact same problem Google has worked out a solution. It turns out supporting HTML5 AND Flash are not mutually exclusive! Google loves “open,” but something had to give for the sake of user experience.

This is a power-play for the Apps market. Unbridled Flash support threatens to redirect money from Steve’s pocket. I don’t necessarily agree with Andy Rubin’s idea that people care about this whole “open” thing. I think it’s just the geek-set that cares, and in fact even just a subset of the geek-set. I tend to count myself among that group – until I really need to get something done with the tools I have right now. That’s why my Ubuntu laptop dual boots Windows XP, and why I keep a copy of Office 2003 installed, even though I mostly work in Open Office.

If the reliability, security, performance, and battery life problems Jobs points out are true, Flash is garbage. And I think they are true, and Flash is garbage. Either Adobe will fix them (they won’t) or Flash will die a natural death. But as he popints out, “75% of video on the web is in Flash.” What good is the 1 GHz Snapdragon in my Nexus One if I can’t use it to surf the web as it exists today? Are people buying iPhones to use them today, or to surf the web in some mystical, open web of the future?

Here’s how I’m looking at the US Grappling site now:

www.usgrappling.us in Chrome

www.usgrappling.us in Firefox

www.usgrappling.us in IE

www.usgrappling.us in Opera

www.usgrappling.us in Safari

Seem like overkill? Consider this: on the PC I use 90% of the time I didn’t have Internet Explorer installed. According to our Analytics 48% our visitors are using Internet Explorer. I didn’t know it until I happened to see the site in IE, but our shopping cart does not work in IE. I’m still trying to fix it. I have no idea how long this has been a problem, or how many sales we missed.