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Google’s not-so-secret new OS

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Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#101

Post by MarkMc »

mark242 wrote: post #87
MarkMc wrote: post #74

It bothers me that Google does not seem particularly interested in doing the one thing that would make their Android platform absolutely dominant: Allow Chrome to run Android apps on Mac and Windows. Google has already done 90% of the necessary work by adding Android apps to ChromeOS. Two and a half years ago it created "App Runtime for Chrome" which demonstrated that Android apps could run on Windows and Mac in a li…

Sun tried that, back in the day. Maybe you heard about Java applets, maybe you didn't. They were the slowest thing about the web, insecure even with a sandbox, and just an overall pain. Short of having a jvm always running on your machine, the performance of Android-via-Chrome will completely turn people off the Android ecosystem.

Sun's execution was poor. Google's doesn't have to be.

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#102

Post by thunderbong »

throwawaydbfif wrote: post #95
skybrian wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is, you really can fork. There's nothing preventing forking. I think you're complaining about merging. But every open source project has standards about what they merge. Try getting a patch into Linux and see what they say; it won't be a rubber stamp.

Yeah, you can fork. Take AMP or Android for example. With AMP, the instant you fork and change a single character of code it becomes incompatible because part of AMP is a verifier that makes sure only the official version is used with Google's cache. Without being able to serve your custom AMP pages from Google's AMP cache the entire point to its existence goes away. The reason? Typical "security". "Tampered" version…

Thank you. I wonder how many open source advocates recognize this.

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#103

Post by techenthusiast »

jm_l wrote: post #72
techenthusiast wrote: post #10

Article author here. Posted this in the notes, but possibly too buried: For anyone interested, I intend to write quite often about consumer technology on this blog. Topics will include hardware, software, design, and more. You can follow via RSS or Twitter, and possibly through other platforms soon. Sorry for the self promotion! Thanks for reading. Please do send any corrections or explanations.

Hiroshi Lockheimer has publicly stated several times that there is no merger of Chrome OS and Android. https://chromeunboxed.com/some-andromeda-perspective-hiroshi... I think you alluded to this, "cue endless debates over the semantics of that, and what it all entails," but it might be worthwhile to add the official statement.

I recommend looking through all the open source commits :)

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#104

Post by therealmarv »

MarkMc wrote: post #74

It bothers me that Google does not seem particularly interested in doing the one thing that would make their Android platform absolutely dominant: Allow Chrome to run Android apps on Mac and Windows. Google has already done 90% of the necessary work by adding Android apps to ChromeOS. Two and a half years ago it created "App Runtime for Chrome" which demonstrated that Android apps could run on Windows and Mac in a li…

You're forgetting something: This will not work for iOS. Why develop something which excludes a big chunk of the cake? I'm happy Google is not going this way... Apple is doing already enough damage with exclusive features.

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#105

Post by techenthusiast »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #38

The author calls it Andromeda OS, but is this really the Andromeda OS we've been hearing about? I'm not so sure about that. What we do know right now is that the OS is currently code named Fuchsia. Fuchsia repository: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/?format=HTML

There has been other reporting about this going back to last fall. I don't think Fuchsia is the marketing name.

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#106

Post by iced0wn »

MarkMc wrote: post #74

It bothers me that Google does not seem particularly interested in doing the one thing that would make their Android platform absolutely dominant: Allow Chrome to run Android apps on Mac and Windows. Google has already done 90% of the necessary work by adding Android apps to ChromeOS. Two and a half years ago it created "App Runtime for Chrome" which demonstrated that Android apps could run on Windows and Mac in a li…

In my opinion, android and its accompanying apps are simply a book google intends to shelf.

A fresh OS for devices that had chrome as an app and its android hornet behind it would make a bunch more sense.

Pushing the jvm kart is similar to something like bowser vs Yoshi

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#107

Post by justicezyx »

MarkMc wrote: post #101
mark242 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sun tried that, back in the day. Maybe you heard about Java applets, maybe you didn't. They were the slowest thing about the web, insecure even with a sandbox, and just an overall pain. Short of having a jvm always running on your machine, the performance of Android-via-Chrome will completely turn people off the Android ecosystem.

Sun's execution was poor. Google's doesn't have to be.

Eric Schmit come from Sun...

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#108

Post by frik »

pier25 wrote: post #9

We definitely need a universal OS for all our devices and I really believe Google is in a great position to get us there. It would really surprise me if Apple got there first. Tim lacks vision and will keep on milking iOS even if the iPad Pro is a failure as a laptop replacement. Windows is still king in the desktop space, at least as far a user base goes, but it's terrible on tablets and phones. MS has all the tech…

Exactly, Google is in the best situation. Their Android is by far the most used OS/shell (world wide market share).

Apple's CEO lacks the vision and is milking the status quo. Their iOS market share is a lot smaller and limited to a few devices.

Microsoft's CEO lacks the vision and is aggressively milking the status quo. They aggressively try to enforce a switch to software-as-a-service plus they are no in the gray adware/spyware business capturing way too much end user data which shades bad light. And the killed their QA. Their products since 2010 are a disaster. That's why XBoxOne tanked in all market beside US, WinPhone tanked world wide, Win8 and Win10 marketshare is lot smaller than Win7, which is the major desktop OS - and there is little reason to switch away from Win7. MSFT would profit from a 180 degree U-turn with a new management.

Re: Google’s not-so-secret new OS

#110

Post by thinkloop »

Why can't the pure web replace apps and programs? All the pieces are almost there: hardware acceleration, service workers, notifications, responsive design...

I currently "add to home screen" for most things. I edit my images online, and develop code using cloud9 ide, etc. There are few things I need apps/programs for right now, and that's improving day by day.

iPhone is dropping heavily in world wide market share, but they still have a lot of the wealthy users. There is a non-zero chance they get niched out of prominence by Android (aka every other manufacturer in the world), at which point network effects start encouraging Android-first or Android-only development. There might be a point where Apple needs to double down on the web, and/or maybe kill off apps, like they did flash, to still have the latest "apps".

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