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Google's Android To Challenge Windows?
PL/SQL Guy writes "Search giant Google is set to offer its free Android mobile-phone operating system for computers, opening a new front in its rivalry with Microsoft by challenging the dominance of the company's Windows software. Acer Inc., the world's second-largest laptop maker, will release a low-cost notebook powered by Android next quarter, said Jim Wong, head of information-technology products at the Taipei-based company. Calvin Huang, an analyst at Daiwa Securities Group Inc, says that adoption of Android-based netbooks will likely eat into Windows' share of PC operating systems."
Meanwhile, notes reader Barence, Asus is continuing to distance itself from Android, saying it "isn't a priority."
Right now, Android is more a rival for symbian than for Windows.
And it's just about as much of a threat to Symbian as it is to Windows: not at all.
Yes, Android is going to make it the year of the Linux desktop. Just because you sell a few copies to some geeks doesn't mean you're going to take over the world, it'll be good when you finally get it into your head.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Would be funny to see your comment join the ranks of famous quotes like "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." and "640kb should be enough for everybody" a few years later,
A few years later? That's pretty funny in and of itself. You are telling me that an OS that has barely reached 1% of the smartphone OS market is going to dethrone Symbian and Windows in only a few years? I almost spit up my drink laughing so hard. Yep, I'm sure that day will happen at the same point when Microsoft open sources Windows.
Not really sure where you get that idea. The DS has about 5~6 hours continuous battery life. My g1 lasts about 9-10 hours of continuous use. And uhh, if I'm on my phone for 9 hours straight, I'm not doing my job very well.
Anyone can write a Windows and/or an iPhone app as well. For free, assuming you want to put some effort into cross compiling your iPhone app from Linux, then you don't even need a Mac or a Windows machine.
And in what way is the Win32 API or the iPhone API different? I have complete reference texts for both, not sure how Android can be more open. This is a place where having the source to the API is unhelpful outside of debugging. Sure you can figure out that there is a bug in the API and you can even fix it, but you aren't going to force everyone with an Android device to use your special patches unless you intend on breaking other software that expects those bugs or works differently without them.
And anyone can publish to the app store and the windows market place. Just because no one KNOWs about the Windows marketplace, or that Apple charges a base fee doesn't make them any less open. I hope you're not silly enough to think that an App will never be rejected from the Android app store.
Okay, you got the iPhone on this one. But do you think Windows is different? The second thought to all that is, while you can rant and rave about how great it is to be able to install any app you want, 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of the people on the planet don't give a damn so the practical value of this is 0 to everyone that isn't a hard core geek, and 0 to many hard core geeks that just want their phone to fucking work nicely.
Fanboy much? All of your 'points' except for one are factually incorrect about both Windows, Windows Mobile and the iPhone. The one point you were correct about the iPhone is a technicality that no one really cares about except for an extrodinarily small portion of the worlds population that no one outside that population cares about. The geeks ranting on principle about not having the ability to run ANY app they want on their phone will not make a noticeable difference in the books of any company on the planet regardless of how many iPhones, Windows boxes, or Android devices they buy. The population of the world that matters just doesn't care, and why should they, most of them would rather have someone doing SOME sort of vetting of apps anyway, so they don't have to be so paranoid about getting something bad on their device.
No where did you point out anything that matters from a practical point of view about the 'openness' of any of the platforms over another. Its cool that you're all gung hoe about OSS and making it so anyone can do anything they want, but from a practical standpoint your entire post just smacks of ignorance. Come back to me when you've written an app that patches the kernel and system libraries on MY G1 just by installing the app and without breaking in any way all the other apps I have on mine.
Let me summarize your post for you:
OMG OMG CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED BAD BAD BAD I HAVE NO CLUE WHY IT WOULD MATTER TO ANYONE INCLUDING MYSELF!
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager