Tech talk, cold comfort.

Anyone who has a pulse and a brain at Microsoft, you should read this article and think:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/ ... necessary/

The article's mostly about how Google has closed sourced bits and pieces of Android.

For some of these apps, there might still be an AOSP equivalent, but as soon as the proprietary version was launched, all work on the AOSP version was stopped. Less open source code means more work for Google's competitors.

FYI, AOSP is Android Open Source Project.

Hmmm:

Google's real power in mobile comes from control of the Google apps-mainly Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Hangouts, YouTube, and the Play Store. These are Android's killer apps, and the big (and small) manufacturers want these apps on their phones. Since these apps are not open source, they need to be licensed from Google.

Geez, I wonder how some Google competitor could get in on some of that action?

Read the section entitled Testing the waters with bloatware

It discusses what an OEM would have to do to set themselves free from Google and still have a useful fork of Android. It mentions adding functionality to AOSP apps, and how Google is using APIs to protect its interest in Android. Hmm, APIs. Google is arguing in court that those can't be protected. I wonder if MS might be willing to give up its support of Oracle in this matter if they could use APIs to gain some "exposure" in an Android fork? Just thinking out loud here.

Samsung is noted as having done some of this already. Further:

In response to this, Amazon was forced to license mapping data from Nokia and build a working clone of the Google Maps API. The company even has an instruction page dedicated to migrating your app from Google Maps.

Hmm, time to make a couple of phone calls, say one to South Korea, one to right here in the USA? Time for some development to the AOSP code? Time to bring in your partners such as Yahoo, et al? "Look we have all these companies, were more open". Might be a selling point. "We will help you build your own Android fork and you can use all of these services, if you want to". Might be another selling point.

Read the rest of the article and think, if you want. If not, just keep going the way you are. It's up to you.

I have read a lot about all this and it was so depressing that I even didn't post it here. Each time I think about it, I just get very angry, upset and depressed how they are closing down everything.

Personally, I use Cyanogenmod on my phone little pocket PC and delete as much Google junk as I possibly can from it. (Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini)

They never stop trying!

Dart 1.0 released. (https://www.dartlang.org)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dart_%28programming_language%29#Criticism

Critiques range from attacking the risk of fragmentation and proprietary vendor lock-in (comparable to ActiveX or Flash), to its unique optional type system.

Microsoft's JavaScript team has stated that: "Some examples, like Dart, portend that JavaScript has fundamental flaws and to support these scenarios requires a 'clean break' from JavaScript in both syntax and runtime. We disagree with this point of view."[20] Microsoft later released their own JavaScript superset language, TypeScript. Unlike Dart, Script#, and GWT, TypeScript doesn't discard the syntax of JavaScript, but extends it.

Apple engineer Oliver Hunt, working on the WebKit project (which, at the time, powered both Safari and Google's own Chrome browser) stated:

Adding an additional web facing language (that isn't standardized) doesn't seem beneficial to the project, if anything it seems harmful (cf. VBScript in IE).

[...] Adding direct and exposed support for a non-standard language [Dart] is hostile to the open-web by skipping any form [of] 'consensus' driven language development that might happen, and foisting whatever language we want on the Web instead. This implicitly puts any browser that supports additional proprietary extensions in the same position as a browser supporting something like VBScript, and has the same effect: breaking the open web by making content that only works effectively in a single product.

Mozilla's Brendan Eich, who developed the JavaScript language, stated:

I guarantee you that Apple and Microsoft (and Opera and Mozilla, but the first two are enough) will never embed the Dart VM.

So 'Works best in Chrome' and even 'Works only in Chrome' are new norms promulgated intentionally by Google. We see more of this fragmentation every day. As a user of Chrome and Firefox (and Safari), I find it painful to experience, never mind the political bad taste.

Unlike Dart, Script#, and GWT, TypeScript doesn't discard the syntax of JavaScript, but extends it.

Hmm. Like Microsoft did for Java?

Embrace, extend and extinguish.

The strategy's three phases are:

• Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
• Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the 'simple' standard.
• Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.

Take a look at this:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... _Microsoft


Perhaps someone at MS is bright enough to realize what I'm saying already:

Various reports citing unnamed sources have said that Normandy will be an Android variant in the vein of the Amazon Kindle Fire. Like Amazon, many smartphone and tablet makers customize Android with different user interfaces and unique services. Google created its Nexus line of smartphones four years ago, followed by Nexus tablets, in reaction to those customizations and to show what a more pure Android experience would be like.

I realize that these "unnamed sources" are likely analysts and I have learned not to take their word too seriously over the years, but I would love to think this was true. Again, with the work already done by Nokia (The phone itself, and the previously mentioned cloned APIs for Google Maps) combined with a few others you could get well underway. Samsung was mentioned in that article I linked to in my first post:

Samsung does a particularly "good" job of this, going as far as having its own user account system, backend syncing, and app store. It also maintains the most complete set of alternatives to Google apps. A lot of these, like Internet, E-mail, and Calendar, have roots in AOSP, but Samsung continued to add features long after Google abandoned them for closed alternatives.

Hello, Microsoft, is anyone home?

Read that bit, also in the previous article, about what Google did when Acer built a device that ran Alibaba's Aliyun OS. The makers of a fork could promise not to do such things.

Now, back to the article linked to in this post. Jack Gold's suggestion:

"They might even try to make the user interface look more like Windows Phone and can leverage the large number of Android apps to make the phone relevant in the market."

I'd strongly recommend not going that route. Why? Because the phones would need to be as Android-esque as possble to get developers and some end-users to use them. They would have a sense of familiarity. Be smart in the beginnings of this, don't see the goal as domination, but rather weakening Google's dominance.



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[Moderator log]
There is something odd about this post.
First it was a double.
We removed the double and cached the data before deleting.
Now the "quote"-sections are not showing up.
The "quote"-sections DID show up earlier.
We added the cached data for the double post inside the same post just in case.
Odd stuff.
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Take a look at this:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... _Microsoft


Perhaps someone at MS is bright enough to realize what I'm saying already:

Various reports citing unnamed sources have said that Normandy will be an Android variant in the vein of the Amazon Kindle Fire. Like Amazon, many smartphone and tablet makers customize Android with different user interfaces and unique services. Google created its Nexus line of smartphones four years ago, followed by Nexus tablets, in reaction to those customizations and to show what a more pure Android experience would be like.

I realize that these "unnamed sources" are likely analysts and I have learned not to take their word too seriously over the years, but I would love to think this was true. Again, with the work already done by Nokia (The phone itself, and the previously mentioned cloned APIs for Google Maps) combined with a few others you could get well underway. Samsung was mentioned in that article I linked to in my first post:

Samsung does a particularly "good" job of this, going as far as having its own user account system, backend syncing, and app store. It also maintains the most complete set of alternatives to Google apps. A lot of these, like Internet, E-mail, and Calendar, have roots in AOSP, but Samsung continued to add features long after Google abandoned them for closed alternatives.

Hello, Microsoft, is anyone home?

Read that bit, also in the previous article, about what Google did when Acer built a device that ran Alibaba's Aliyun OS. The makers of a fork could promise not to do such things.

Now, back to the article linked to in this post. Jack Gold's suggestion:

"They might even try to make the user interface look more like Windows Phone and can leverage the large number of Android apps to make the phone relevant in the market."

I'd strongly recommend not going that route. Why? Because the phones would need to be as Android-esque as possble to get developers and some end-users to use them. They would have a sense of familiarity. Be smart in the beginnings of this, don't see the goal as domination, but rather weakening Google's dominance.

We have found the error which made the "quotes" not show up. It was double bbcode.html file in the style folder. We will let the edited double post remain in case of future issues, however. It is nice to have a history of errors where they occurred.