What's weird about it? Did you somehow miss that the Nook app is from B&N? B&N isn't "loosing" any sales.
They only wish to sell me an e-book if I use their proprietary hardware ??
Their software is available for apple products , and , a version that is categorized as being for an android OS device is made available , but only through certain distribution channels .
It's soon to be more than just smart phones in the landscape. The tablets are coming !! And more that just Pricey I-pads !!!
They should make it run on any version of android DEVICE ; like Amazon kindle and so many others do !! At this moment , I'm buying Amazon books not B&N cause Amazon made it so I could run their software on a wider array of hardware and then made it availible !!( NOT just at the market !!)
But it's B&N's right to approach it how they want to ...
Obviously they would prefer that people pony up for their hardware NOOK !!! Which is fine really! ... make a buck! I'm not thinking they should be a non-profit; but they have lost potential sales from myself and others . It's a fact .
I have done further research and have learned that my products mfr seems to have chosen a chip set that is a newcomer . I still have many choices available in the way of android e-reader applications that are more than happy to load and function without Google and their closed little ARM's architecture walled garden .
Coming from a windoze background , It is a little bit of a shocker when one first finds that software for which you have a device that meets the minimum requirements for isn't even available for download ....
It would be like having a windoze PC and not being able to run an app because your processor was AMD instead of Intel... ( some timesDev's would like to blame deficiencies in there coding abilities on the hardware... Sometimes it's just a hwd problem , sometimes the programming is lame !)
Whats even better , is that some of the software would run fine , but since they are choosing to have a gatekeeping mechanism , isn't downloadable . They call it free software , but there is a hardware bar set and built into the initial purchase , so it really isn't "free" !!!LOL
In any event , The consumer is being offered a product that , whilst it has pretty impressive abilities and a never before seen cost to performance ratio ; Is fraught with software compatibility or availability snafu's.
I can't say that If I were in google shoes , that I might not approach it the same way . But it's a bit of a bumpy road for the NOOB!!.
Luckily there are work arounds and alternatives . It will be interesting to see how consumers react to googles approach once they figure out whats going on .
SEE
"
MIPS Aims to Break ARMs With New Smartphone Platform: Hands-On"
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375475,00.asp
MIPS has been around for decades, just not as an applications processor for smartphones. Almost all smartphones today run on processors using the competing ARM architecture. MIPS powers Velocity Micro's Cruz tablet, though.
The company makes an architecture for small processors that seem to work best in multi-core environments. For a while, they were essentially frozen out of the smartphone market because top OSes didn't support them, MIPS CEO Sandeep Vij said. But Android has changed that—Android runs fine on MIPS, so they're ready to get back in the game.
