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Do We Really Need Another Smartphone OS?

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Re: Do We Really Need Another Smartphone OS?

#41

Post by slurry »

gtufano wrote: post #36
slurry wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what to think about web-apps based operating systems like Firefox OS yet, I think it is a mistake. A modern operating system, particularly on mobile where power management and security are concerns, needs a mature well-optimized managed code environment to write middleware and more complicated applications in - hence Objective-C with automatic reference counting on iOS and Java/Dalvik on Android. HTML5…

Objective-C is not "managed". iOS apps are sandboxed, but obj-c is very near to C (and most of the Foundation API are pure C). Also, ARC is not mandatory and there is no garbage collector on iOS.

Nonsense. If my Objective-C app is sandboxed, it is "managed". Saying ARC "is not mandatory" is another way of saying it is "enabled by default". There is little formal computational difference between ARC and a conservative garbage collector.

Fact: Objective-C is "managed".

Re: Do We Really Need Another Smartphone OS?

#42

Post by barik »

ricardobeat wrote: post #22
garuda wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is a real Linux

Trapped in a Java VM

It is no such thing.

You are correct that there's a VM -- Dalvik is the process virtual machine in Android, and that a common use case is to use Java bytecode and then convert it to Dalvik, but this is a far cry from being "trapped in a Java VM".

In fact, at even the fundamental level, the Java VM is a stack-based machine, while the Dalvik VM is a register-based machine (the merits or criticisms of doing so are beyond the scope of this post; that's a different discussion).

And if the notion of a VM is still utterly offensive, you are welcome to write portions of your Android applications in native code, such as through C or C++, although for many applications there's really no or marginal benefit to doing so.

Re: Do We Really Need Another Smartphone OS?

#43

Post by urlwolf »

moccajoghurt wrote: post #12

Wouldn't a real Linux OS on a smartphone be every developer's dream? I will definitely get a Ubuntu phone. Think about the the variety of options you'll have... However I am not sure if the mainstream market will be as interested.

hmm, meego was 'real' linux. I had it on a tablet. It was horrible :). Intel gave every developer one in an event. I think the next day everyone had installed a different OS :)
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