XO-3 Announcement?

[NoiseEHC]

>
> Secondly, and probably more importantly, neither of the aforementioned 
> assumptions are really true with Android. I've yet to hear the 
> argument that pupils absolutely need to use Android (or iOS for that 
> matter) based devices today because that's what they gotta know 
> tomorrow. Plus there frankly speaking aren't too many apps focused on 
> education (regardless of for learning or administration) available for 
> Android today (https://market.android.com/apps/EDUCATION?feature=category-nav). 
> I had a tough time finding German ones when I recently tested the 
> Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the number of Spanish ones seems 
> relatively small as well (and don't even get me started on Quechua, 
> Aymara, Dari or Amharic). In combination with the absence of many 
> years of Microsoft lobbying this gives Android vs. Sugar a much 
> smaller pull factor than in the previous Windows vs. Sugar situation.
>
>

You know, I have heard this "there are no educational apps for Android" 
thing so many times that I think that I should clear the situation a 
little. Even when Charbax interviewed some OLPC employee about the 
XO-1.75 he said those exact words. Now the dire situation is that there 
are almost no educational apps for any platform at all. What is needed 
are those hundreds of little apps for *every* lesson which can be used 
in a class. We do not have any (except the Nepali stuff which was 
converted from e-toys to HTML5). Now what Bryan Berry could tell you is 
that no matter how good a platform is if there are no developers to hire.

Another common question is this "what are the technical advantages of 
switching to Android" thing, even Walter Bender asked exactly this in 
this list. It is also totally irrelevant because there are not any. I 
mean in everything provided by both Sugar and Android, the Android 
version is better or faster, but it just does not justify the switch.

The real question is not where are the applications but rather who will 
write those applications which does not exists? How many Sugar 
developers are there? Probably several hundreds? How many Android 
developers? Millions? HTML? Tens of millions? So instead you should 
justify that developing a marginal platform which will have no 
developers to hire is so much better than Android or HTML5 that it is 
worth all the time spent on it. Clearly nobody justified it and frankly 
I cannot see it either.

Note that I do not want tell you what to do. Now I do not even want to 
tell you what not to do. I am just trying to show you a viewpoint nobody 
seems to consider. Because in the end you will have to hire developers 
to write those hundreds of little apps since no contributor will spend 
time on those booooooring problems. Contributors like writing platforms 
so that others can write those boooooring apps.

Just my $0.02