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Nvidia Lauds Windows CE Over Android For Smartbooks
ericatcw writes "Google's Android may enjoy the hype, but an increasing number of key industry players say the mobile OS isn't ready for ARM netbooks, aka smartbooks. Nvidia is the most recent to declare Android unfit for duty, stating its preference for Microsoft's Windows CE, which an Nvidia exec praised for having a "low footprint" and being "rock solid." Nvidia is busy optimizing its multimedia-savvy Tegra system-on-chip for Windows CE. Such improvements won't arrive for at least a year to Android, which has an inflexible UI and poor graphics support for devices larger than a smartphone, says Nvidia. Other firms echoing similar criticism include ARM and Asustek."
So you're saying software designed for mobile phones doesn't work as well on a little computer like device as software which was designed for little computer like devices?
Wow. Amazing. Incredible.
And they're the same age too!
No, wait, Windows CE is 13 years old. It's had a little more time to design the window manager for different screen sizes.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Isn't this NVIDIA opinion somehow influenced by having Microsoft as customer for their Tegra chips going to upcoming Zune HD?
From TFA:
"The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux," he said. "Printers didn't work, and devices didn't get recognized. The whole thing was a mess."
I'm sure all printers come with WinCE drivers these days. Or maybe Nvidia knows how to install Vista drivers on CE?
This is standard operating procedure for Microsoft contractees. Happened just this last month with Asus where as soon as Microsoft negotiated a new deal with Asus, Asus out of the blue started spouting anti-Linux FUD.
The Zune HD contract with NVidia obviously has the same type of garbage built in.
As Wikipedia says, native code runs under Android fine. The Chrome web browser runs on Android. Chrome is not written in Java.
What you might mean is that you can't run native code on some specific mobile phone type device without hacks, and that you can't upload native code to the App Store. That much is true. In the first case, some manufacturers like to lock down their devices - the iphone is also pretty much locked down. In the second, Google want platform independence. But Android itself can clearly run native code - most of the software that it ships with is written in C. And you can distribute and install whatever Java code you want on any Android device, which is better than Apple's "you only load what we want you to load on a phone" rules.
Mike Rayfield:
"The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux," he said. "Printers didn't work, and devices didn't get recognized. The whole thing was a mess."
And how is Windows CE/Mobile any better in that regard? I would think it's even worse.
The Zune HD that has been said to have a version of Win CE as the OS.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
"You do know that you can use C/C++ code right? JNI is fully supported you know."
You do know Google doesn't really officially support native code apps and there are no defined native mode API's to access the things you might want to access in native mode like graphics and audio. There are interfaces there but they are internal, not published and are "use at your own risk". If you use them chances are relatively high your native code will break the first time Google puts out a new version of Android.
I think the grandparent meant to say iPhone supports native code as a first class citizen while Google doesn't. You certainly can do some kinds of native mode apps that don't interact much with the hardware and OS, or do so only through clunky JNI.
Java is great for a lot of things, for ease of development, portability and improved security, but it is something of a limiting factor for applications that need maximum performance or to get closer to the metal.
Not sure if its intentional or not but in areas like media players it gives Google a degree of exclusivity in app development since they can use native code and their internal API's whenever they want, while that is a relatively dangerous thing to do for third party app developers.
@de_machina
Well, back in 2002 he was not the only one. He has probably changed their opinion now that Linux is crucial for their survival.
Does any one find this sentence scary: "Nvidia is busy optimizing its multimedia-savvy Tegra system-on-chip for Windows CE."?
Why are we now optimizing hardware for software? Hardware should be designed to be as accurate and effective as possible. Let the OS optimize itself for the hardware. It is much more difficult to redesign hardware than software (hence the hard- and soft- prefixes). Hopefully, this is just a poorly worded sentence and we are not headed towards Winvidia.
Personally, I think Android is not a very good choice for netbooks; Ubuntu Netbook edition is a much better choice.
It's disturbing how many people still don't realize that software that's designed for a specific purpose is better at that purpose than software that was designed for some other purpose.
now that Linux is crucial for their survival.
While I'd agree that linux has started to make an impact on mobile devices, thanks primarily to its non /GNU implementation in Android, it's clearly not the only thing keeping ARM alive (apologies for the wikipedia link, the sources seem to check out). While their profit/unit may be low, they've got £50 million net income, 1,500 employees and and have shipped 10 billion devices including 98% of phones. Linux may be a growing market, but suggesting it's keeping them afloat is ludicrous.
Google gives you Java (for App Store), but their own applications run native code?
Yes, because they want everything in the app store to be forward compatible: in future Android might run on chips that are not ARM, so native code would break, and though it would be the developers' fault it would still make their app store look bad.
Windows CE runs native, the portability point is pretty invalid.
Most of the native apps run on ARM chips only, and won't work e.g. on MIPS based devices (also supported by Windows CE). The portable apps use .NET Compact Framework, so the situation is more or less equivalent to Java.
on iPhone I have proper GCC/G++ compilers
Which you can't use without jailbreaking, so your argument is instantly moot.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
WinCE isn't even a good OS for phones...unless you enjoy rebooting your phone twice a day. And try suppporting activesync for desktops for a while and see how soon you want to send all WinCE devices to the bottom of the sea.