Microsoft To Invest In Rogue Android Startup Cyanogen 280
An anonymous reader writes The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft plans to be a minority investor in a roughly $70 million round of equity financing for mobile startup Cyanogen Inc. Neither company is commenting on the plan but last week during a talk in San Francisco, Cyanogen's CEO said the company's goal was to "take Android away from Google." According to Bloomberg: "The talks illustrate how Microsoft is trying to get its applications and services on rival operating systems, which has been a tenet of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system."
A good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not always. Even cyanogenmod has abandoned many devices that could still be viable phones today. CM seems to focus mainly on the most popular phones for the latest releases, and in some cases, the devs for a particular make/model of device have just gone MIA, and development stagnates.
Yes, it seems like most phones are abandoned by cyanogenmod at about the same time the manufacturer does. Certainly, this was the case Mytouch 4G/HTC Glacier. The last manufacturer release (less than a year after I bought the phone) was Gingerbread. The last Cyanogenmod: also Gingerbread.
They're good with Google's phones and the most popular Samsung phones but anything else is a gamble even if it is supported at the time you buy the phone.
Re:Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cyanogen mod don't have access to the source code for all of the drivers required to run the hardware. So they have to copy the binaries from the manufacturer.
If the manufacturer doesn't support new versions of android, with newer linux kernels, there's not much they can do.
Re:Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
this is why i'm waiting for a phone with Intel CPU+GPU. for now, intel's phone cpus come with powervr gpu which is probably the most linux unfriendly gpu there is. anybody remember intel gma 500? i'm not stepping in that sh*t again.
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And if you want a version of Android that doesn't do this -- that actually does try to reverse-engineer the binary blobs instead -- then you want to support Replicant [wikipedia.org] (although it works on fewer devices than Cyanogenmod right now).
Re:Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
True. But how vital is the specific kernel version to the upgrade from, say, Kit-Kat to Jellybean? Google goes with a new kernel for support for new devices - and to otherwise keep up-to-date. But couldn't the AOSP source code to Kit-Kat or Lollipop be built against the kernel used in Jellybean to get a CM ROM that has all the features of the latest Android - but works on otherwise abandoned hardware, using the binary drivers that were produced for that hardware.
There might even be a cash business for such a service. OEM's abandoned your otherwise viable device? Pay us 10 bucks and we'll upgrade you. Beats having to buy a new phone.
Re:Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it seems like most phones are abandoned by cyanogenmod at about the same time the manufacturer does.
The sticking point is drivers. Most SoCs are abandoned at about the same time and virtually none of the drivers are Open, let alone Free. If some influential manufacturer keeps using a particular SoC past the usual sunset, then odds are good that they will release a newer version of Android, and then the drivers can be taken from their image and used to roll a newer version of CM for other devices based on the same SoC.
AFAIK the only GPU with credible OSS drivers is still Mali 400, which is an antique by modern standards. Still works, though. It works well enough to play Q3, IIRC. Most of the rest of the hardware is less well supported than that...
Re:Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that unlike on the desktop, the display subsystem on many devices is more than just the GPU. Also, the subcomponents of the display subsystem interact with other subcomponents in such a way that if an OEM makes changes, those changes ripple throughout the whole subsystem.
The end result is that if one component of the display subsystem (and this includes the camera, since it has hooks into the display subsystem to handle preview and such) is closed-source and deviates from the reference implementation for that platform, it's a nightmare of reverse engineering to get the other components open-sourced.
That's why, for example, most of the original CyanogenMod maintainers for Samsung Exynos4 devices ditched the platform. Samsung had reference source at Insignal, but it was vastly outdated (Their "ICS" source had significant architectural components that dated back to Gingerbread) and didn't even remotely match what ANY OEM used (Samsung's own handsets did NOT use the "gingerbready" components referenced previously). Getting that source usable with any real device was a nightmare. The kernel wasn't the issue, it was all of the HAL stuff - hwcomposer/gralloc/etc - especially hwcomposer.
Cyngn (the abbreviation I use to refer to Cyanogen Inc) does have access to all the proprietary goodies that should allow them to support a device very well, but so far, their track record has been to do no better than the OEMs they claim to be trying to provide an alternative.
Oppo N1 - didn't receive KitKat OTA until November 2014, 1 year after KK was released. Epic fail. Yeah, there were CM11 nightlies, but Cyngn staff will aggressively remind you that community builds (including CM nightlies) are NOT supported
OnePlus One - Their current state is "average" - many OEMs upated to Lollipop within a month of Google releasing it, Cyngn is at 3 months and counting.
Re:Not always a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, Cyanogenmod devs will support what strikes their fancy. And if they are no longer interested in a device, it won't be supported any longer. Now if they get financing, maybe this will change as most consumers want some stability and continued support. It is one of the things that could differentiate itself from the phone makers... if they care to. If not, in this regard they won't be any different. And it would be a shame since it is nice to get rid of bloatware.
The vast majority of people will not port their own devices. They either don't have the time or the technical know-how or nether. I will use the stock OS if it isn't available as a stable CM. In fact I do with my P600 Samsung Note. But even if they did, after reading that sticky from the forum, I am less willing to adopt CM and choose to just root the device instead.
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Re:A good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
you know what's fucking bizarre? the part of nokia that microsoft bought had several android based models on the market(not in usa/euro are athough, in the markets they're available they're outselling windows phones..). but microsoft killed further developments of that line of devices.
so what the fuck are they meddling with cyanogen? I wouldn't mind having cyanogen for my nokia X though.
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That makes no sense at all. Cyanogen is a bit player; how many people do you know who are running it? (If you do know any, exclude all the tech-heads and answer again.) MS doesn't care about destroying something that's barely larger than a hobby project.
MS *does* care about hurting Google and improving the marketshare for Windows Phone, or somehow improving their own presence in the mobile arena. So any actions here are going to be towards that end.
Perhaps they see any move to help Cyanogen as something
why google keeps microsoft away (Score:3, Funny)
microsoft - we don't want your programs on Android because they suck
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Because Chrome isn't a steaming pile of shit that constantly crashes while consuming all resources when it manages to run for longer than 30 seconds.
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noun: exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
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I'm not sure what OS and version of Chrome you are running, but mine never crashes (though I use Opera and Firefox primarily). In fact I work for a pretty large company who uses Google apps for just about everything. While I miss Visio (Google Drawings is like "dia" and very primitive) everything else works just fine.. no crashes, no memory hogging, etc..
The reason I don't use Chrome is because I don't trust Google, and in most companies I have freedom to choose my web browser.. where the office type appl
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My Chrome on Android (cyanogenmod 11 and now 12) doesn't crash either.
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How odd for you to say that since Android itself is a huge steaming pile of shit. Why is Android so slow? Why does it take forever to boot or load anything? Why can't it scroll a simple menu without stuttering? Why does it often go unresponsive to touches? Why does it require twice the CPU and twice the RAM of both Windows Phone and iOS?
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Android is slow because applications are basically written in Java and run inside an interpreter or a JIT. Then again iOS applications are compiled directly to ARM and after a couple of upgrades the OS is slow as shit too.
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Revisit in Android 5.0 where dalvik is replaced by an AOT compiler.
Re:why google keeps microsoft away (Score:5, Insightful)
More specifically, because lots of Android's fundamental architecture was dictated by a perceived need to work on slow CPUs (as in, 400MHz ARMv6) with absurdly low-res displays (remember 240x360?). Literally NOBODY involved with Android's genesis would have believed you if you told them that 5 years after the HTC G-phone's arrival on T-mobile, a phone with 1280x800 display, 1Ghz dualcore CPU, a gig of RAM, and at least 4-8 gigs of flash would be considered uselessly ghetto and hopelessly obsolete.
Remember, the whole reason why Google made the Nexus One was its frustration with the wimpy hardware of the second-gen Android phones, and hints that the third-generation phones were only going to be another half-step better. On the day of its release, the Nexus One was literally leaps and bounds beyond any competing phone, and its popularity forced HTC and Samsung to throw away their roadmaps and race back to the drawing board to come up with the Evo4G and Galaxy S family.
Current things that make Android feel laggy:
* 30hz touchscreen drivers and screen update rates are still the norm. 1/30th of a second is long enough to be perceptible as "lag", and when you factor triple-buffering into the equation, the lag is more like 1/15 second.
* The resolution and color depths of high-end Android phones have completely outstripped the dumb-framebuffer 3Dfx-heritage architecture behind most current hardware. Most video chipsets were optimized for 16-bit color at 1280x800 (more or less), but some high-end Android phones now ship with 2560x1600 displays running at 24-bit color and can barely sustain 30fps, let alone 60fps or faster. Basically, they're optimized for (and accelerate) the wrong thing. They might have great 3D graphics for games, but those capabilities are unusable and useless at higher-res/color. That's why some Android homescreen-replacement apps use 3D acceleration, but become fuzzy during transitions... they drop the resolution and color depth down to what the chips can handle, and don't go back to full-resolution until the transition completes. You can see it for yourself... do the "rotating cube" effect (or whatever you want to use), and notice that the moment the gesture begins, the resolution gets fuzzed in half, then snaps back into focus when you stop.
* Android's primitive (compared to Java since 1.4) garbage collection, which practically forces the OS to constantly kill off apps running in the background to reclaim their RAM, coupled by the real-world problems of trying to use a phone's flash to do Linux-style virtual memory (if you aren't careful, you can literally burn through an eMMC's lifetime write count in a few months. MicroSD is even worse... more than a few guys at XDA have destroyed expensive Sandisk microSD cards with a few days of hard benchmarking and intensive swapping. That's why most Android ROMs no longer make it easy to enable swap, even though it can be a HUGE performance boost. Too many users were destroying flash cards too quickly. Cyanogen with a large swapfile that's tweaked to abstain from killing off idle tasks will nuke a brand new class-10 microSD card in about 3-8 months of normal daily use... and if you did a swapfile with the phone's INTERNAL flash, your phone would essentially get bricked once the counter tripped and the eMMC write-protected itself (because Android can't deal with booting into an environment where it literally can't write ANYTHING to disk).
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I always thought it had to be something else. Games on android are silky smooth.
Re:why google keeps microsoft away (Score:5, Informative)
the real-world problems of trying to use a phone's flash to do Linux-style virtual memory
No Android device I'm aware of uses flash for swap. There are a small handful that swap to compressed RAM, the fast majority have no swap at all; when physical memory is exhausted something has to die.
(I work for Google, on the Android OS.)
Re:why google keeps microsoft away (Score:5, Informative)
No Android device running a stock carrier ROM ever used flash for swap (that I'm aware of), but ~2-3 years ago, just about everyone running Cyanogenmod (or some other AOSP-derived ROM) had swapfiles. And yes, we really DID destroy $80+ microSD cards. It caught almost everyone by surprise, because we all blindly believed the manufacturers' assertions that the flash would last "a lifetime of normal use", failing to note that manufacturers didn't consider paging virtual memory almost nonstop to be "normal use". It was literally a use case the manufacturers never designed for, that didn't even become *viable* until overclocked class 6 and class 10 microSD became fast enough to make swapping to it faster than killing & re-spawning activities.
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Awesome. Can you please fix the biggest annoyance of android: if I place a call and immediately lock the screen the screen gets unlocked automatically when the call gets connected. That means if I put it in my pocket after I initiate the call it may hangup or go mute it whatever.
That's the main reason I went back to iPhone. Thanks!
Well, did you contact Google about this issue? They are a company that sometimes even responds to feedback.
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re: "skype or phone" - dialog. You only have to choose once - given that you check "always do this" This is the system letting you set the default app for a task.
Re: why google keeps microsoft away (Score:2)
Cyanogen 13.0 (Score:2, Funny)
Will use 640k of ram and a delightful assistant named Clippy.
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Will use 640k of ram and a delightful assistant named Clippy.
Clippy: I see you're trying to root your phone...
Good luck to them... (Score:2)
...but last week during a talk in San Francisco, Cyanogen's CEO said the company's goal was to "take Android away from Google...
Google has most of the world's internet and Android users where it wants them and that's not good news for Microsoft. Look, how can one ever do without Youtube or the search engine Google? Guess what, you want Youtube, you MUST take Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Docs and all the rest as well. Heck, Microsoft doesn't even have a compelling YouTube alternative!
I have problems with Google's Android though. Does anyone find that it's native Android apps are kind of cumbersome to use? I specifically point to the SM
Oh yeah, sign me up! (Score:2)
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However, if you're using the device for development, I don't understand why you would want to run an aftermarket ROM.
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Guess what, you want Youtube, you MUST take Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Docs and all the rest as well.
whaa? i watch youtube all the time with a gmail, docs, etc.
Heck, Microsoft doesn't even have a compelling YouTube alternative!
whaa? videos.bing.com is a total pornucopia.
Video search != video hosting (Score:2)
Heck, Microsoft doesn't even have a compelling YouTube alternative!
whaa? videos.bing.com is a total pornucopia.
It's not the same thing. Bing Videos is a search engine, analogous to the Google Videos search engine [google.com]. YouTube also offers hosting for videos uploaded by users. And in fact, for one random category I just viewed in Bing Videos two minutes ago [bing.com], a large number of the videos were hosted on YouTube. Bing Videos is to Google Videos as what is to YouTube?
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. Bing Videos is to Google Videos as Myspace is to YouTube
OOOOOH BURRRRRRN
"Rogue"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Rogue"? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cyanogen is "rogue" because it bucks that system and restores freedom to the project.
So, which devices run CM and have fully open drivers? Or hell, I'll give you the drivers so long as they only have a closed core and the parts that need updating when the kernel is diddled are open.
Re:"Rogue"? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the idea is that Google, Samsung, Motorola, and HTC have all made themselves into a sort of cartel that don't allow the "open source project" to actually be a source of freedom for consumers. Cyanogen is "rogue" because it bucks that system and restores freedom to the project.
Not really. That may be the perception, but it's not true. Google is quite happy to see CM and similar third party ROMs flourish; this is part of why all Nexus devices are unlockable.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer, and I work on Android, but I'm not a Google spokesperson and this is my opinion, not an official statement.)
Re:"Rogue"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is quite happy to see CM and similar third party ROMs flourish
Flourish or tolerate? Honest question. I've seen entire ROMs stymied by small things Google could/should have done as just a decent vendor, regardless of the ROM in question. For instance, a couple years ago the Droid3 port fizzed because the then-Google-owned Motorola wouldn't talk to anybody about releasing specs to turn on the camera.
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Google is quite happy to see CM and similar third party ROMs flourish
Flourish or tolerate? Honest question. I've seen entire ROMs stymied by small things Google could/should have done as just a decent vendor, regardless of the ROM in question. For instance, a couple years ago the Droid3 port fizzed because the then-Google-owned Motorola wouldn't talk to anybody about releasing specs to turn on the camera.
Flourish.
Your example just demonstrates that Google really did allow Motorola to operate as a separate OEM, not directly influenced by the Android team. It's also possible that Motorola didn't have the option of releasing the specs because of agreements with the camera manufacturer. (Note that I don't know anything about that specific incident, and hadn't even heard of it until you mentioned it. I do know that Google would like its Nexus devices to be much more open than they are, but can't get there with
Re:"Rogue"? (Score:4, Insightful)
My perception is that Google is fairly open, more so than the others, not locking down the Nexus devices. But on the other hand, their Android partners are really locking things down, and the most generous view of Google is that they're simply powerless to stop it. Often enough, it seems like there are people within Google who favor openness, but the company as a whole is happy to let users' freedoms be restricted so long as it pushes them farther into the Google ecosystem.
That's my perception, not that Microsoft or Apple, or even Blackberry are any better. Google is the most freedom-loving of the bunch, but still not exactly the rebel freedom-fighting bunch that their fans would sometimes like to paint them as.
That's my perception, anyway, as an outsider who follows things relatively well.
This! (Score:3)
And as for Microsoft's whining about not having access to the OS layer of Android to run it's applications, I suggest they learn what the application layer is and learn to live in it. Having access to every layer of the OS today is why they are still insecure after well over a decade of security people telling them to fix their stuff.
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They're "rogue" in that they address bug reports by zillions of users that Google ignores, like working OTG support, or Ad-Hoc WiFi.
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That's the first thing that came to my mind also.
Isn't Android being "open" supposedly one of its major strength? Now someone came and actually try to make use of it "openness" and they are now a "rogue" company?
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Cyanogen isn't a start-up either, they are well established and have been providing commercially supported operating systems (e.g. for the OnePlus One) for a while now.
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Um, by definition they're a start-up. They have only been established as a company for approximately two years, with only around 1.25 of those in public existence.
"for a while now" - less than a year for OnePlus One, just a tiny bit over a year for the Oppo N1 - which they completely failed to continue updating by not deploying KitKat until after Lollipop was released.
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pot and kettle (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system."
Haha, cry us a river Microsoft. I'm all for an open platform but this investment is just step 1 of their embrace, extend, extinguish operating procedure. What's that quote about how smaller companies should NEVER work with MS?
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idk, what's the quote.
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There is a whole wikipedia article on the machinations of M$ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org], then there is Embrace, extend and extinguish Embrace, extend and extinguish and there is also Fear, uncertainty and doubt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org], with M$ having a reputation for having mastered it. So the fellows at M$ were pretty naughty but that seems pretty much typical for major corporations when they become dominant, they just automatically turn into a great big old bag of exploitative dicks unti
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Haha, cry us a river Microsoft.
Now let us be fair, Microsoft may have published functions which are nothing more than an unpublished function plus a delay while using the internal functions int heir own products, but they haven't done much to keep other people's software from working on their OS — with the possible exception of the probably apocryphal ain't done 'til lotus won't run bit.
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After all, Windows is gone even before it has been booted for the very first time.
I subst "before it has been connected to the network" ... Windows is perfectly cromulent for verifying that hardware functions before my Linux install begins
I am actually in Windows right now, I still use it for gaming. But the writing is on the wall, because Steam. As annoying as I find it, I feel it's a positive influence overall.
Re:pot and kettle (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system."
MS has a bunch of apps in the Play store. https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
AFAIK, the only MS app Google has blocked was Microsoft's YouTube app, which violated the YouTube terms of service.
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Competition is good (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see Cyanogen succeed because the more competition there is in the smartphone market, the more companies will be pressured to develop new, useful features.
I bought my first smartphone two years ago last month. It's a Samsung Galaxy S III. It still works great, despite some quirks. I felt like with the Galaxy S III, the smartphone was beginning to take a quantum leap forward in features. Especially for the last year, though, it seems like there isn't much to crow about except for some fingerprint functionality nobody uses. Phones are getting a bit more memory, somewhat faster CPUs, a bit better screens, and improved cameras but you would expect all of these things. In terms of new and interesting features, it seems like we're in a mature market where we've all decided upon what it means for a device to be a smartphone.
Perhaps Cyanogen will bring some excitement back. At worst, they'll come up with some new ideas that Samsung can license or copy. I'm using Samsung as an example, but I could be talking about HTC or one of the Chinese startups. I don't see a whole lot to distinguish current smartphones (except that Samsung does not permanently glue batteries inside of its products).
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Phones are getting a bit more memory, somewhat faster CPUs, a bit better screens, and improved cameras but you would expect all of these things. In terms of new and interesting features, it seems like we're in a mature market where we've all decided upon what it means for a device to be a smartphone.
That's a problem phone makers are facing. Amazon's new fire phone, supposed to be revolutionary, is just some parallax graphics (and a bit of rotation magic).
When new ideas fail, you do what Apple did: re-skin it.
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Success via Microsoft will not produce 'competition'. They're not getting 'free money'. It always comes with lots of strings.
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My guess would be:
Microsoft is 'helping' Cyanogen to add some kind of cloud service.
Basically, putting you data in the Microsoft cloud.
I assume Cyanogen doesn't mind, because it's optional.
Well, that is my guess.
Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually cell phones are a nuisance anyway, people can't walk and text or phone and text, so they bump into you. On bicycles, they risk life and limb [theirs and unhappily others] in London by using headphones [though admittedly a walkman or ipod is just as 'good' for this].
Despite what you see above, I love tech, having been in/around it for 40 years, but I really, really believe we need to step back from our current destructive and rather purposeless [except for making cash, of course] product cycles. Fat chance.
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It will try to do what it did in gaming market. Use the cash cows of office and windows to subsidize a division and engage in a war of attrition. But it did not work out in many arenas. Like Quicken used its market dominance in TurboTax to fight off Microsoft Money. Microsoft tried to pay people to use Bing
Godzilla v. Mothra (Score:3)
You know those Godzilla movies where the monsters stomp around Tokyo causing more destruction than WWII, destroying everything around them?
Re:Godzilla v. Mothra (Score:4, Funny)
Balmer isn't head of Microsoft anymore....
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So just because Balmer has decided to go throw chairs on a basketball court, that doesn't mean that Microsoft can't gen up a new super villain. Just sayin...
Plan B (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Plan B (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is right. They're making more investments in getting their apps on iOS and Android. I think this investment is an indication that they're interested in having their own Android distribution (or one that they can at least partner with) which will allow them control while maintaining application compatibility.
And if so, I'd say that's a smart move. It's probably not a full plan yet, but more of a hedge while they try to push mobile application development by decreasing the barriers between development for Windows desktop, Windows Tablet, and Windows Phone. One way or another, they need a mobile platform with apps.
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Note that due to patent royalties, Microsoft already makes $5-$15 from every Android device. [howtogeek.com] That adds up to more than they make from Windows Phone.
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This is quite amusing.... (Score:2)
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...considering that Android -- at its core -- is a form of Linux. So is OS X and therefore so is iOS....
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Mac OS X is largely derived from NeXTStep, which was built on top of 4.4BSD UNIX variants (mostly NetBSD with a lot of FreeBSD userland). Stock Android uses a Linux kernel, but the Android app SDK is completely different from a desktop Linux distort, just as the iOS SDK offers zero overlap with a BSD UNIX desktop experience.
Both Android and iOS have their roots in UNIX-derived operating systems (though neither are "classic" SVR4-based systems). But although they are both derived from POSIX
Re:This is quite amusing.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Additionally, I personally would argue that from a OMG UNIX has conquered the world perspective that Android == Linux as little as Mac OS X == NetBSD since all the parts that people care about are derivative or proprietary.
That isn't true of Android. Sure, if you're writing in Java the *nix-ness is all abstracted away behind the JVM, but if you choose to write native code, you find yourself right back in Linux-land. There are some oddities, of course, like the assignment of UIDs to apps, rather than users. And starting with Lollipop, SELinux is used to block app native code access to many parts of the system (e.g. you can't go looking around in /proc to find out what else is running). But it's definitely still Linux.
It's not true of OS X, either. Again, there are lots of new APIs layered on top, but it's still very clearly Unix. Maybe you meant iOS, not OS X. In that case, I don't know if you're right or not because I've never worked in iOS.
Microsoft has never played nice (Score:5, Informative)
Oh please please please please.... (Score:3)
Please let them walk into a huge secret patent thicket which serves them green, green justice.
It worked great last time. (Score:2)
I wonder if Google has made themselves vulnerable (Score:2)
Google had problems with getting updates out to devices, so they decided to move many functions of Android the OS, into a Google Services library that could be upgraded when the core OS could not...
But doesn't that leave Google kind of vulnerable? In theory a different company could create their own variant of that library, take things the way they want...
I'm surprised Samsung at least has not done that, perhaps Microsoft is considering it.
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Google had problems with getting updates out to devices
And with just a little bit of developer money, so many devices out there could be running a safe, secure version of Android instead of being merely abandoned and left vulnerable ("you luddites running six-month-old phones...").
I've been waiting to see a nonprofit that would sponsor such work and then sell decent smartphones to people who could use them to benefit themselves economically. People throw away ("recycle") perfectly good hardware because the
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That much? Must be a Samsung with their bloat running. Root it and freeze some of those apps with Titanium Backup.
Should Cyanogen actually say yes to MS money? (Score:2)
Block a program (Score:2)
Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system
When was the last time evil Microsoft blocked a program from running on one of its platforms.
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Cyanogen sold out a LONG time ago..... Then screwed over a few phone manufacturers, and now this. Great track record they have...
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Not saying they didn't I just have never heard that.
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How exactly is this selling out? The parts of Android that are Free will still be Free, the parts that aren't still won't be. If Microsoft wants to bring its office software, exchange clients, etc. to a new platform, who is to stop them?
Believe it or not, some of us not only appreciate the Free part of free software, but the cost, stability, flexability, varieties of software (or specific software) available, etc. The Stallmanites care more about ideals than anything else, but not all of us are Stallmanit
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What can I run my Nexus tablet on now that Cyanogenmod has sold out? Suggestions anyone?
I suggest you be specific as to what Nexus tablet you have if you want advice, since there are several and they are all different. I also suggest you take yourself to the XDA-Developers forums for your particular device. There you will find a number of alternate roms for a variety of tastes.
Re:Well Shoot... (Score:4, Interesting)
AOSP?
Omni? (I'm biased here - the history is that it was founded by a number of Cyanogenmod maintainers that left as a result of the Focal fiasco. However I'll be honest, a lot of the developers have burned out and as a result we're really behind on a lot of things...)
Some of the Omni guys along with people from EOS and Slim are talking about forming a project that is strictly limited in focus to hardware support. Some of the ex-Gummy guys already formed such a project (AOD) but a number of people (including myself) are holding back because they kind of rushed things - starting to code without planning the project, while the challenge of such a project is planning and organization/politics. Screw up the planning and organization/politics and best case is that you wind up "just another ROM".
AOKP is dead due to Cyngn hiring Roman
Same for ChameleonOS
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I think what he means is that users aren't permitted to sideload their own apps on Windows Phone or Windows RT. At least not without paying a minimum of $30,000 for a pack of 1000 sideload keys that can only be used once, meaning they can't be re-used if that device is lost/stolen/replaced/upgraded.
App Hub (Score:2)
This was not true in the early days of Windows Phone. Developers had to pay $100 per device per year to unlock a Windows Phone 7 device for sideloading apps, the same policy that it had applied for XNA Creators Club on Xbox 360. When did Microsoft change this policy?
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How exactly could Google even stop Microsoft? The OS allows for side loading and alternative stores. If Microsoft can't get on the Play store, they could just sell their stuff through Amazon.
That summary makes absolutely no sense.
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My favorite slashdot mobile ads are the ones that somehow autoload a play.google.com URL, causing the Play store app to come up unless you go through the torturous process of disassociating the intent Play comes with.
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I should look to see if there's a NoScript equivalent for any of the Android browsers...
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gotomyPC!!!!
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Xbox Live Arcade (Score:2)
Trying to understand how Microsoft defines "exclusive":
MSFT will not allow a game on their device if it had an exclusive elsewhere.
Then how did any of the Xbox Live Arcade games, which were originally exclusive to proprietary arcade system boards, get released? Or are these all in the "too large to be intimidated by them" category?