211–220 of 355 posts
In fact, in Huawei's particular case, I don't even think it will be a push to create momentum for a truly open smartphone OS out of necessity, after all, Huawei goes through great lengths to keep the bootloader in their phones locked.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After this fiasco, I'm more than ever willing to change to Huawei. Best yet if they change to a platform not based on Android. I'm done with Google (and Android soon) in every possible way.
As first step I switched from terrible Android TV to WebOs and it's absolutely amazing OS. I wonder why nobody is using it in smartphones.
That, to me, seems like the real barrier for any new smartphone platform. It happened with Windows Phone, a platform backed by a huge company and even using a very popular language and platform.
I think WebOS and Firefox OS were before their time a little given the rise of progressive web apps, but I still don't think they're a complete answer until they can use native UI elements.
Google invested Billions into Android. Samsung tried to hedge for this by building Tizen(Bada) and realized how much needed to be invested to get an Android competitor going, so they kept the development going, but focused for their Smartwatches, as this would have to be a "if the worst happens" plan, not something that could be a profitable venture. LG has the Palm/HP borne WebOS for their TVs, i suspect with a simi…
Google kinda pulled a "bait-and-switch" with Android. When they released it, it was pretty much 100% Open Source, then they moved more and more elements to their proprietary GApps suite, included the Play Services required to run even many 3rd party apps. At this point Android is barely more Open Source than iOS and its Mach kernel, but the difference is that Google got its market share by selling to manufacturers th…
> When they released it, it was pretty much 100% Open Source, then they moved more and more elements to their proprietary GApps suite, included the Play Services required to run even many 3rd party apps.
I thought the reason they did this was because third party phone makers were controlling when/whether users could update the OS on their device. So users were often several Android releases behind, even on a phone that was only a year old. By moving a lot of the core functionality into apps, users could update these apps and have access to newer features even on older OS versions.
Though, I guess that doesn't explain why the apps themselves aren't open source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has spent the last decade cutting apart the open part of Android and making it more and more proprietary. Launcher, Phone app, Messages, Contacts, Calendar. All proprietary. Notification API, Location API, SMS APIs and step counter APIs, and even the new app format. All proprietary. It's a huge undertaking building an app for Android today without using Google's services, and sometimes even impossible. If you…
Phone companies tried to replace the open versions first. Google was faced with either: a different version of Android on each phone (with the apps replaced,) or making their own versions. Note too that they could have gone the Microsoft IE route and declared various apps as part of the OS. Instead they made their apps separate from Android, and let them succeed by bundling them together. Amazon Fire is at least one…
/thread
To answer the big question in this thread. Yes, Huawei can simply fork Android. It will be a pain in the ass, expensive, and not as usable, but they certainly can.
Google's "iron grip" in this instance is only ostensible, not literal and complete. HN is not immune to clickbait.
Google invested Billions into Android. Samsung tried to hedge for this by building Tizen(Bada) and realized how much needed to be invested to get an Android competitor going, so they kept the development going, but focused for their Smartwatches, as this would have to be a "if the worst happens" plan, not something that could be a profitable venture. LG has the Palm/HP borne WebOS for their TVs, i suspect with a simi…
Google kinda pulled a "bait-and-switch" with Android. When they released it, it was pretty much 100% Open Source, then they moved more and more elements to their proprietary GApps suite, included the Play Services required to run even many 3rd party apps. At this point Android is barely more Open Source than iOS and its Mach kernel, but the difference is that Google got its market share by selling to manufacturers th…
If you want to add in the Play Store into the mix, things change slightly.
Google invested Billions into Android. Samsung tried to hedge for this by building Tizen(Bada) and realized how much needed to be invested to get an Android competitor going, so they kept the development going, but focused for their Smartwatches, as this would have to be a "if the worst happens" plan, not something that could be a profitable venture. LG has the Palm/HP borne WebOS for their TVs, i suspect with a simi…
Google kinda pulled a "bait-and-switch" with Android. When they released it, it was pretty much 100% Open Source, then they moved more and more elements to their proprietary GApps suite, included the Play Services required to run even many 3rd party apps. At this point Android is barely more Open Source than iOS and its Mach kernel, but the difference is that Google got its market share by selling to manufacturers th…
Sure you could build a phone on top of Windows Mobile, Sonys Xperia X1 is my favorite entry from this time period, but you had no consolidated Software Vision for a mobile OS. Customers were craving phones that were as accessible as iPhones were, with a good example being the datepickers in mobile safari. You couldn't fix this with a Custom Windows Mobile Homescreen. Neither Nokia, nor anyone else in Mobile Phones at the time had thought about the software part as much as about the hardware. Even Andy Rubin got smacked in the face by the iPhone Keynote, but his advantage was the lack of organizational and technological debt that anyone else watching this keynote in a position to act plagued.
Apple was highly regarded inside Google when it comes to design decisions and is so until this very day (Why again does my Pixel 2 lack an 3.5mm socket?) so for Rubin simply adopting the design and ui vision while following different engineering principles was a path that had less hurdles for him than for everyone else in the position to do something about it in 2007.
That's why Android is where it is, not because Google decided to go the OpenSource way with it. Customers decided this was the only viable alternative, they brought money to the platform and developers followed.
Sure it was a lot fun stuff happening on the platform aswell that gave it the positive look, but this didn't affect the relevant apps to stay iOS only until they couldn't afford to anymore, simple market share decided that.
Device Manufacturers were desperate for anything, if they had to pay license fees for closed source software or not wouldn't have mattered if there had been a viable answer to iOS in 2007.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same choice company allways have when acing government Intervention: they can fight in court. I believe thats why they have lawyers.
They will fight in court and lose. What the US govt is doing is completely legal, no matter where you stand on the morality or sensibleness of these actions.
All based on a presidential order, without providing evidence.
Congratulations to US legal system then and feeling superior to authorian china.
The rationale for cutting off Huawei seems to be "No matter how much you claim to not spy, you are forced to comply when the Chinese government tells you to do so" - which so far appears to be the hypothetical worst case scenario. Considering that, it's kinda ironic that Google/Amazon/ARM et al are all _actually_ carrying out Huawei's own (formerly)hypothetical worst-case scenario because the US government told them…
I don't like it either, just explaining the motivations at play here. Also you must expect any entity (company, individual, etc.) to obey their government, otherwise there's not much point in a government is there (not that the governments decisions are necessarily good ones)?
It seems that it is up to Europe to give its people the choice in hardware and software by making appropriate regulations.
It’d be a better world if Europe could give people more choices by... giving them more choices, instead of regulating the choices that other countries provide and fundamentally control.
Competition doesn't happen overnight. The changes need to be in place for some period of time before entrepreneurs consider a new product/software in that sector to be viable.