OLPC XO-3 on slashdot front page right now

[Chris Leonard]

On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 11:46 PM, Alexandro Colorado <acolorado at gmail.com> wrote:
> We talked about it on the IRC chat, however there is a lot of
> missconceptions like the crank meme, and now andorid.
>
> Why would we want a >13yr old kid in 3rd world to go to the android
> store to buy apps, get a google account and use G+.
>
> Just doesnt seem right.


Please consider the very pragmatic argument that one *really* good
reason to have Android on the demo of the XO-3 tablet at an event as
well publicized as CES is that neither Sugar or Gnome have yet
implemented all that neat touch-interface, tablet stuff like virtual
keyboards, etc. whereas all of this has been present in Android for
some time.

Demo'ing Sugar on the tablet at this point would probably require
plugging in a keyboard and a mouse, which would be a little
embarrassing in front of all of the press corps.

I'm fairly sure that Sugar and most likely Gnome will have tablet
support in time for a production XO-3.0, but it is a bit much to
expect all of that to be in place right now when they are showing the
earliest of hardware prototypes.  I would guess that one reason why a
small number of "extra-special" XO-1.75 prototypes had touch screens
installed was to initiate work on tablet support for XO-3.0, but that
would be speculation on my part.

I think the level of speculation around Android is all out of
proportion to it's real significance, but if you are really worried,
you should port Angry Birds to Sugar so that the scales are balanced.

cjl