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Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

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Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#91

Post by mainecoder »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #81
nashadelic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great example of the US shooting itself in the foot. I guess if we get more competition, its better for the consumer.

How does this hurt the US?

that's a good question, this hurts the US by enabling China to decouple itself from the US. Thus Once they make their own OS and have apps joining in their own app store, they can expand their markets and compete on OS. It may seem ridiculous now, but in 10 years it will be a serious OS and you can have all the apps in a .apk file that exist on android already working on their OS. Everytime the US introduces a restriction you are making them self sufficient(see how they are making their own Chips and own space station because of restriction on ISS) which in the long term is more sustainable for a country since they are not dependent on other countries and international order if things go really bad a self sufficient country is on top(see China is the sole manufacturing superpower by from the center of economic policy research).

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#92

Post by lemper »

markus_zhang wrote: post #34
csomar wrote: post #17

> Huawei did try to export the last version of the OS – and even offered assistance to developers who coded for the platform and targeted offshore markets – without success. I wonder if they really tried or if they just suck too much. I thought about getting invested into the eco-system. The technical details of NEXT are quite interesting; however, the on-boarding is literal garbage. I still, to this day, can't sign…

Huawei or other Chinese companies are not particularly good at developer support. Maybe it's cultural or large corp or both. I have heard some bad stories about Ali cloud too. They are usable, but not particularly easy to use.

in agreement bro. their ECS equivalent's pages are still in hanzhi making it quite a pain to use.

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#93

Post by pjmlp »

grishka wrote: post #76
rfoo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think Fuchsia was fine, there's just no reason to deploy it yet.

Didn't Google deploy it to some of its smart speaker devices a while ago tho?

Yes, https://9to5google.com/2024/03/01/fuchsia-16-nest-hub-whats-...

However it is quite clear by now, this is the best Fuschia will ever get, and it is mostly a top level software engineer retention program.

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#94

Post by horsawlarway »

tananaev wrote: post #82
Neil44 wrote: post #27

The article doesn't mention but it seems pretty relevant, Google kicked them from having the Play store etc on their phones a little while back as a result of political pressure so there's really no reason for them to care about Android any more.

I disagree with "there's really no reason". The reason is so that app developers can easily recompile existing apps for their platform with some minimal changes. If their system is completely incompatible, then it's probably a much bigger effort to build apps from scratch and many companies might not do it.

This is my take as well.

I see this as likely in the same vein as Google copying the Java APIs. The similarity is important because of the compatibility it brings.

So there's very much still an incentive to care about what Android does, and what API interfaces it exposes (at least in the transitional period).

Whether that will still be true a decade or two from now is a different question.

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#95

Post by pjmlp »

jokoon wrote: post #63
ak_111 wrote: post #49

I wonder the cost to Microsoft if there is a rigorous political effort by the CCP to move all Chinese desktop consumption away from Windows and Office Suite to open source (local) alternatives.

That's a cost to microsoft, sure, but probably a much bigger cost to china. I like Linux, but porting a country's software on linux is no trivial task.

Then have been at it for a while now,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

Also maybe EU should start thinking in better supporting SuSE or something like that.

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#96

Post by Throw83489i7 »

jokoon wrote: post #63
ak_111 wrote: post #49

I wonder the cost to Microsoft if there is a rigorous political effort by the CCP to move all Chinese desktop consumption away from Windows and Office Suite to open source (local) alternatives.

That's a cost to microsoft, sure, but probably a much bigger cost to china. I like Linux, but porting a country's software on linux is no trivial task.

A lot Chinese software was created for Windows XP or Win7. Keeping such software running on modern windows can be quite expensive. Many of them do not even have legal windows license.

Add security concerns... What happens if windows activation server goes down? Or Microsoft pushes some hostile patch?

Today, Linux with Wine can be the easiest way to run old windows software.

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#97

Post by exe34 »

mainecoder wrote: post #91
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this hurt the US?

that's a good question, this hurts the US by enabling China to decouple itself from the US. Thus Once they make their own OS and have apps joining in their own app store, they can expand their markets and compete on OS. It may seem ridiculous now, but in 10 years it will be a serious OS and you can have all the apps in a .apk file that exist on android already working on their OS. Everytime the US introduces a restri…

tbh I like the idea of a multipolar world - a lot of our biggest achievements came as a result of the cold war.

it also forces some redundancy into the mechanisms of running a technological world - a disaster that affects one of the two or three polities may well leave enough stuff working that civilisation doesn't need to collapse completely.

a world where everything depends on everything else working correctly is a bit more fragile than I would like.

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#98

Post by mrweasel »

horsawlarway wrote: post #88
mrweasel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point the Play Store is probably more valuable than Android for phone makers. It doesn't matter that Huawei has a new operating system, if it has no apps, or just lack the ones people really need. Depending on the country that's going to be some mobile payment options, banking apps, social media or government ID. If even one of those are missing, people will pick another brand, something with the Play Store.

I mean - developers for your platform have always been a huge driver (something something developers, developers, developers - Balmer). But I think it's a mistake to assume that the Play Store is equivalent to your developer footprint for a platform. Google has been fairly insidious about integrating OS level APIs with the Play Store, so that's blurred the line a bit here - but if the OS is otherwise "Android-like" e…

It doesn't matter that you have 90% of all developers supporting your platform, if the final 10% is responsible for the must have apps.

Huawei had a 4% market share last year. Is that going to be enough for something like MobilePay in Scandinavia to ensure that they are present on a platform, from a company and country they don't entirely trust? Without the MobilePay app, the number of people who'd buy the phones drop to almost zero. The same happens if Danes can't use their government ID on the phones, sales drops to almost zero, because the device just lost a major feature.

I don't think it matters that Huawei has a large swath of companies ready to support their OS, it has to be all of them (or at least the right ones).

They might pull it off and get every one on board, but the investment has to be really small to justify the work for such a small user base.

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#99

Post by FooBarWidget »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #86
FooBarWidget wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Somehow people in the west getting arrested for protesting against genocide, is acceptable/redeemable just because another country is presumably worse??? Do you actually care about freedom/human rights at all or are you just abusing those concepts to feel superior relative to other countries and to play petty tribal us-vs-them politics?

Usually not arrested for protesting. It usually for trespassing or vandalisation or something else. Or sometimes something stupid like blocking traffic

When $NON_WESTERN_COUNTRY arrests people for, let's say, "picking quarrels", people here usually see that as just an excuse for cracking down on activities that go against government interests. But when western countries do the same, people take those excuses at face value???

Re: Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch

#100

Post by 015a »

Throw83489i7 wrote: post #19
DeathArrow wrote: post #3

>Unlike previous iterations of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps. That's kind of big, HarmonyOS would not be just another Android flavor anymore. > we're sorry to report that Huawei told us it currently has no plans to offer Harmony OS NEXT outside of China That's to be expected. If you live outside of China and don't know Mandarin, the apps are not usable.

> If you live outside of China and don't know Mandarin Not just that, China has super apps that integrate everything from payments, food delivery, taxi, social media... To single application. Integrating this app directly into OS as a launcher (or shell) kind of makes sense.

> China has super apps that integrate everything from payments, food delivery, taxi, social media... To single application.

I mean, you're simply describing an operating system. The west builds this as an operating system. China builds it as an app. The rise of the Chinese super-apps is literally just a response to the reality that the West, especially Apple, forces everyone they work with to think inside the App box. Uber has to build an app if they want to access Apple's customers; but with the Uber app adding delivery, its also becoming a little Super.

The more interesting question is why the west doesn't have super-apps similar to the east. The reality, which I hinted to, is that I think we're starting to see more of them; Uber has delivery, Spotify is adding audiobooks, Google is adding an AI assistant, I think the scope-creep of these apps should give you a clue as to why China built them first.

There's certainly cultural aesthetic differences; maybe the west places greater importance on simplicity and focus. I think the bigger reason is market dynamics. The west has a relatively far more competitive market among these goods and services providers. The primary fuel funding technology companies over the past twenty years has been venture capital, which is attracted to younger, newer companies over the old established players. But, venture capital is slowing down, the marketplace is calcifying a bit among the established players, both new ones from the VC boom and old ones which survived it: And now we're starting to see these players branch out from their core competency and become more-and-more super-appy as they pursue greater growth with less fear that a startup is going to drive-by and eat their lunch.

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