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Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

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Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#131

Post by needlesslygrim »

oska wrote: post #121
yurishimo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you live outside of the US in which nobody gives a damn and they all use WhatsApp. After moving, I only get sms messages from the doctors office and my friends back in America.

> Unless you live outside of the US [...] and they all use WhatsApp This is such a ridiculously incorrect over-generalisation. China, Japan & Russia are obvious counter-examples, plus many others.

In China WeChat is the dominant messaging platform, SMS is only used for delivery notifications, spam, etc.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#132

Post by dividedbyzero »

omnimus wrote: post #99
yurishimo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you live outside of the US in which nobody gives a damn and they all use WhatsApp. After moving, I only get sms messages from the doctors office and my friends back in America.

Not true at all. This effect is pretty common in countries outside of US. It makes sense. WhatsApp is just another messaging app thats popular depending on a local whim. Where as iMessages get sent automatically between iOS users.

I'm sure there are dozens of people in Germany who actively prefer iMessage but I haven't met one yet. Whatsapp achieved pretty much total market capture here back when SMS still were costly and the network effects that arose from that are among the strongest I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure if someone was to do a survey, almost everyone would say Messages is for SMS only and I think most of them wouldn't know it can do more than that.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#133

Post by dividedbyzero »

31337Logic wrote: post #115
omnimus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true at all. This effect is pretty common in countries outside of US. It makes sense. WhatsApp is just another messaging app thats popular depending on a local whim. Where as iMessages get sent automatically between iOS users.

Y'all bitches gotta get on Signal. ;-)

I hear even the US government trusts Signal

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#134

Post by AnthonyMouse »

donmcronald wrote: post #71
soraminazuki wrote: post #20

This really reminds me of Open Solaris. > We will no longer distribute source code for the entirety of the Solaris operating system in real-time In the case of Open Solaris, the code never came out from that point onwards. For Android, the likely end goal is to do the bare minimum of distributing only copyleft code that they don't own copyright to. Until those get replaced with a closed alternative. https://www.youtu…

Yep. An open source license doesn't mean anything if a project is dependent on a single company for ongoing development.

The weird thing is, why is that the case?

I'm trying to think of a mobile OS feature addition that has made me say "I need to upgrade my phone" and it just hasn't happened recently. It's more like, damn it, the dastardly thing stopped receiving security updates and now I have to replace it for no good reason.

Isn't Android done yet? What further development is required that couldn't be done by the community?

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#135

Post by jbarham »

beAbU wrote: post #108
omnimus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true at all. This effect is pretty common in countries outside of US. It makes sense. WhatsApp is just another messaging app thats popular depending on a local whim. Where as iMessages get sent automatically between iOS users.

What countries other than US is this so prevalent?

According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma... iPhone also has > 50% market share in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Japan. FWIW I live in Australia and most group chats are via WhatsApp vs SMS/iMessage.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#136

Post by zmmmmm »

Will they still push all the native commits once they release?

I think it's OK if they do the dev internally, but if they just release source snapshots and we lose visibility of the dev process that occurred to get there, that will be a big loss.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#137

Post by c0n5pir4cy »

gman83 wrote: post #109
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the plan to move Android to Fuchsia eventually (and seamlessly)?

The plan was initially to merge Android & Chrome and create "Andromeda" - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/android-chrome-andro... Then they decided that Fuchsia was going to be the way forward - https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/117587/google-allege... Now the latest is that they're once again merging Android & Chrome - https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-becoming-android-... But Fuchsia is still…

As far as I remember, Fuchsia is used for all Googles smart devices now. So maybe just for them?

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#138

Post by rchaud »

mfuzzey wrote: post #45
rchaud wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android TV is not AOSP, it is an Android variant actively developed by Google and requires Google Play Services. Kindle Fire is based on AOSP, that was my mistake. I will say Amazon is a rare OEM in this regard; they're tablet-only, and happy with AOSP because they have their own app store that don't need Play Services integration.

In the tablet / phone world where end users expect to install applications from the playstore yes but there are many other device types that do use AOSP. For instance some parking meters / train ticketing machines / payment terminals run Android. source: I work for company that makes some of them though we are moving away from Android to more classical embedded Linux. Google play services doesn't matter in these cont…

Interesting? So Android replaced Windows CE in some cases?

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#139

Post by SllX »

owebmaster wrote: post #104
SllX wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say “go back” but that was never more than a niche thing. For better or worse, Google’s Android has pretty much always been the chief representative of mobile Linux. And far from being a waste of time, Android is the most widely distributed mobile operating system on the planet.

> You say “go back” but that was never more than a niche thing. but you could walk to a phone shop and buy a Linux phone, for example FirefoxOS.

Firefox OS lived a short and obscure life years after Android entered the market and certainly wasn’t a GNU or Debian-like distribution of Linux.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#140

Post by frostyel »

nvllsvm wrote: post #60
mainecoder wrote: post #14

I hope they make it closed source and make us much money out of it as possible for shareholders that is their job and their duty, why are they giving this away for free they have already captured market share by claiming opensource and building a community now all they have to do is make it proprietary and the old opensource version slowly wither and become unstable, then they can charge money for the operating syste…

As much as I - a Pixel 7 (GrapheneOS) user - would hate that, doing so would essentially put Android on equal footing as iOS and would give me a serious reason to consider switching to an iPhone. Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and better than Google's mediocre Pixel line.

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