T-Mobile loves contracts, kinda hates users.

So, look... I've been a T-Mobile customer for 18 months for exactly one reason: Nexus phones. They come out on Tmo first, so that's where I am. I have tended to think of Tmo as a carrier that has mediocre coverage, but good pricing, and tacit acceptance of unlocked devices.

That last point was reinforced with by Tmo's Even More Plus plans. You bring the phone (or buy one from them at full price), and since they don't subsidize it you get a cheaper plan. YES. This makes sense. However, late last year, the plans went underground. They weren't advertized on the site. Fine, nerds already knew about them and I was on it. People could still ask for them.

Cut to today when a friend of mine wanted to move to the EM Plus plan as he was way, waaaaaay out of contract. Went into the store, and he finds out that as of last month, the EM Plus plans are totally gone. Not just unadvertised, but you can't get them anymore. They have been replaced by the "Value" plan. And let me tell you, T-Mobile has some big fucking balls to call it a value. Let's examine.

A few months ago, if you had an unlocked phone bought outside the Tmo system (or again, bought a full-price one from them), you would get EM Plus and have a bill that was about $20 cheaper per month. It makes sense since you did not take a subsidy from T-mobile. So you pay more for the phone (likely $500 or more), but the plan is less. It was $60 per month for a single line. Since they didn't cover part of the equipement, there was no commitment to a contract.

Now let's examine the Value Plan. You pay full price for the phone, and get a cheaper plan costing about $10 more than EM Plus, but still cheaper than the regular plans. Kind of good, right? Oh, except that you have to agree to a 2-year contract. WHAT? Same deal you used to have, but with a 2-year contract. Why? I do not understand. What cost are they trying to recoup by forcing people to stay on for 2-years?

If you bring a phone in from outside, you're screwed. How screwed? Really screwed. T-mobile will not let these users get on a plan other than prepaid. That's $70 per month, and it is the only non-contract plan available. In addition, the prepaid plan has restrictions like no roaming and no call forwarding (making Google Voice pretty useless). Even AT&T and Verizon allow no-commitment pricing.

When this was explained to my friend at the store, it seemed insane to me. So I chatted up a Tmo rep online, and they confirmed the exact same information. T-Mobile used to be great for users that liked to jump phones a lot, but now it appears those days are over. T-Mobile is acting like two things it is not: A CDMA carrier and a top-tier carrier. Stop it Tmo, you stop that right now.

Fuck it... they're just going to be bought by AT&T soon anyway. 

Superbad: the new Android app protection scheme

I understand that Google needs to placate developers to some degree. No one wants their apps to be dead simple to pirate, but this new app protection scheme is terrible. A few months ago, Google started doing something different in the Market when devs upload apps. No longer were apps just copy protected. Instead, the app will reach out to the Google servers to verify that you have authorization to run it. The developer can decide how often that happens. It sounds fine, but it isn't. It's terrible. 

I have been away for the last few days, and my cell coverage is spotty at best. Many times I get no data at all, and when I do, it tends to come and go. There is also a depressing lack of Wi-Fi. What this apparently means, is that my apps are starting to think I'm a pirate. I just tried to play a game, and instead of joyful electronic entertainment, I get a popup telling me the Google servers could not be reached, so the game won't run. Another title just straight up says, "You are not authorized to run this app on your device." WHAT? So I try to launch an app I paid for, and I get 'GTFO Pirate'. People can complain about fragmentation and UI cohesiveness as barriers to a good user experience on Android, but things like this are the real problem.

Here's the thing, though. It's not like I was without data for 2 days. It was more like a few hours. It just happened that apps started to phone home while I was without data. My solution was to walk down the street until I got data, then launched the offending apps. With my license refreshed, the apps continue to work... for now. I just can't help but feel like this is a real usability issue for users in spotty service areas. If you are out, have poor data, and no Wi-Fi, your protected apps might shut off.

Was the old copy protection scheme the best approach? Probably not. But the new method seems ill-conceived to me. I don't appreciate being called a pirate by my software, and others won't either. That is, if they even know what is happening. To more inexperienced users, this might just look like their Android handset being a busted piece of junk. Yet another insance of DRM hurting consumers. 

The Android Market is Not Broken

Look, I'll be the first to admit the Android Market has some issues, but some have claimed recent events mean the model is fundamentally flawed. They claim that the open model has led us down a dead end. I assert that the events of the last 24 hours prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Android Market is working as intended. Let's look at what went down, and why that's cool.

First up, this morning we were all greeted by an Engadget editorial highlighting a Nazi theme app available in the Android Market. Don't be fooled; these were not happy Buddhist swastikas, they were the scary Nazi kind. How did this pile of hateful code make it in? Well, Google doesn't review what goes in the Market. What happened? Google pulled the app because it is in violation of their terms of service to upload apps that are designed to promote hate speech. 

Would it have been better if it hadn't been there in the first place? Sure, but the community around Android found a problem, and Google acted. This is how the Market works. You don't get a ton of scrutiny as apps are posted, but there is a little more care taken to control things on the back end.

The other issue of the day was a fake TweetDeck client in the Market. Surely this was timed to take advantage of the hype surrounding TweetDeck's beta release (hosted outside the Market). Certain people *cough Scoble cough* claimed that TweetDeck "revealed a MAJOR problem with Android app store that Apple doesn't have." A bad actor uploaded the fake TweetDeck app, and started charging for it. But guess what. The app was pulled almost immediately. If you search for it now, it's not there.

This is another example of the community working together to do their own app review. It doesn't matter if Apple has the problem or not, because this is how the Android Market works, and it works just fine. The app is gone, and presumably people got their money back. Additionally, TweetDeck didn't reveal the problem, things like this have happened (and have been dealt with) before.

The Android Market provides freedom, and that comes with responsibility. A vibrant developer and user community can keep everyone safe and the Market clean. There's no need for a draconian approval process for apps. If anything, today's events illustrate how good the Android community is at policing the Market for themselves.

What gives Twitter?

I really have to question Twitter's commitment to supporting their own first-party apps. They straight up buy Tweetie, then they launch Twitter for Android and barely update it. You know what would be awesome, Twitter? A Widget that didn't suck. And what would be just about as awesome? Not breaking the app with an update. 

The 1.0.2 update seems to have broken background updates for me and at least some others. There are complaints in the Market, and on Twitter, and only some of them are me! 

Stopped updating for no apparent reason.

Stopped updating automatically and no longer notifies of mentions.

Fix errors please

I dont recieve any status updates- MotoDroid

Those are just a few of the Market comments from today. For the record, one of the things the update was supposed to improve is auto-updates. That's a fail. I've heard that some people have had success uninstalling, then reinstalling. But Android 2.2 has the app integrated; you can't uninstall. I'll wait andsee how this shakes out, but come on Twitter. All that VC money and you can't put out a real update?