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RIM Changes Stance On PlayBook's Android Support
hypnosec writes "It hasn't been long since the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion announced that its QNX based tablet device, the PlayBook, will be supporting Android implementation on it. However, it has been revealed now that a sizable portion of Android apps will be cut off from running on the moderately successful tablet device. The news thus leads us to a situation where Android developers might not be interested anymore in coming up with new apps for the QNX powered gadget. The Android apps that won't be working in the PlayBook include Android Live Wallpapers; apps that contain more than one activity tied to the launcher, the Android text-to-speech engine, and Android cloud-to-device messaging service, amongst a few others."
first thing coming to mind....
The limitations are pretty obvious, ya know? Without access to the closed source bits of Android RIM isn't going to be able to support some parts of the Google APIs and unless they want to turn the home screen over to Android, in which case it becomes an Android device that runs RIM apps, wallpapers and home screen widgets are probably out.
Of course this throws the hybrid model of Android into sharp relief. It ain't Open Source and it sure as heck ain't Free Software.
Democrat delenda est
Isn't that the one that's the same spec as the new Kindle, but about 4 times as expensive? Wow - odd decision.
I look forward to picking one up at $49 just before Christmas!
It was always clear since the announcement that the android apps would be running inside a dedicated android runtime. like running it in a VM.
why is anyone surprised that a vm client cannot affect the wallpaper on the host?
I thought we were talking about "a moderately successful tablet device", not "a near-total failure".
Sure, it sound like the opposite of open to cull features, but is this a question of even less software freedom or just about different non-free features?
I recently had my first encounter with Android and motherfuck! There were icons on the thing that I could not remove. That's not like any gnu/linux I've known.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
At first it sounds like a facepalm move, but then you get to what they didn't bother implementing:
At this point I'm laughing at the overblown sensationalism. The author's credibility for bothering to write about this molehill is seriously threatened..
Ok, there's a few less-trivial-sounding things there. I don't even know what they are. Maybe the activity-tied-to-launcher or cloud-to-device thing (by any chance is it really Google-closed-API-to-device?) is something that someone will give a fuck about. I don't know. But this dude sure started off with a stupid example.
But it is not here.
Just leave it be.
I just picked up a Playbook (because they've already plummeted in price, and I wanted to try one out), and when I heard someone tell me the Android support had changed, I got a little freaked out.
Then I read the list of things that won't work and rolled my eyes, because they're all non-issues.
What a waste of time this story and linked article are. Move along, nothing to see here.
Maybe they reduced their support for Android apps because they didn't want their platform infested with malware?
;)
...relax...i kid, i kid
Only a Message Dialog Box saying 'Hello World' will be suported
I think they just need to cut their losses and go the HTC route. Forget your own OS and make a great skin for Android. Perhaps they can make "super apps" that only run on their machines.
Quite frankly, that summary makes it sound like they want to support Android apps, but can't always do it because of their technical limitations.
My other suggestion is they just try to get MS to buy them. If MS doesn't want them, they should try to sell themselves to HTC.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
So anything that relies on the device layer is not going to be supported (Sound, Frame-Buffer, etc). Any respectable nerd would already know this.
The old slashdot would have posted a detailed story on why some Android Apps will not work on the Blackberry/iPhone/Win7 phone etc.
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Disclaimer: I have never owned an android device, and my experience is quite limited.
AFAIK, when you install an app it asks your permission to do a number of tasks(update x, send messages, place calls ect...) Perhaps this limitation allows apps to do only one of those things. EG. a multimedia app that formerly played audio over bluetooth(task 1) and prevented your phone from sleep mode(task 2) is now crippled so it can do just one of those things
fools
Wonder if any of that is motivated by avoiding patents. Samsung just signed an agreement to pay Microsoft a fee for each Android phone sold to lessen its exposure to Microsoft's legal moves against Google. Another company that did that (motorola?) paid MS $5 per phone.
Wonder if these apps lessen the amount of IP possibly being infringed upon.
When they have the firesale in another couple months, we can just put Cyanogen on it.
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This is awesome news! (I should mention that I have Put options on RIM.)
These "missing features" are mostly due to not having Google services, which the Fire will also lack.
Not only is Google Maps missing, but any app that pops up a map itself will also break. Cloud-to-device messaging requires Google's servers. In-app billing, ditto. The text-to-speech and SIP VoIP components are also (AFAIK) specific to Google devices.
None of these features work on any non-Google-experience devices, including the Fire, the Playbook, the Nook Color, and all the cheapo crappy tablets too.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Is this a 'Change of Stance', ie a change of what had previously been announced, or more of a clarification/refining the details? I may be wrong but I don't recall RIM saying anything other than 'will have future Android support', which is kind of vague
I would love to see more of this bad news, so the abomination that is RIM can die once and for all. The company is a joke, the products are a joke, and I'm sure all those engineers and developers would be put to better use elsewhere in the industry. Maybe someplace that isn't run by two boneheaded "co-CEOs" with zero ambition and zero vision, and perhaps a few less PHBs ruining the rest.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
So 1-sided? Apple and Google are openly data-mining and disregarding consumer rights with their respective platforms. RIM has done the same, but, they're the only one's being bashed for it. I find it funny that when RIM was forced to reduce its encryption methods to sell their products (I believe this was in the UAE or India, but can't remember at present), everyone bashed them then too. However, when the first Android phone was rooted, everyone jumped up praising Google for the Android platform. Recently, with the iTunes fraud debacle, Apple basically said "we don't know ANYTHING about THAT!" and people still buy their products.
The bias that has developed since the beginning of the "smartphone" is scary, to say the least. In the past, we wanted to crucify companies for making these devices closed and full of bugs. Now, because RIM isn't offering the newest thing to play Angry Birds on (how popular this game became still amazes me), they should die? How about imposing more strict regulations on Apple and Google who openly violate your privacy rights (and then get you to sign documents throwing your rights away)? All 3 companies are doing Bad Things (tm). Make them all pay equally.
As subject. I mean, it sounds technically possible though awkward, and would explain a lot of the restrictions - they'd be at the technical level, not some odd marketing decision, more "er, this port to QNX neutrino or whatever only half works right now".
(Especially given Google's documented quasi-Microsoft-like GPL-hate, I'm surprised Google chose the Linux kernel for Android instead of, like, a BSD, but anyway. Why do manufacturers do that? BSD kernels are there for the use, no GPL, and they go and use Linux and then whine about the GPL. If you don't like the GPL, GTFO to BSD you assholes)
The Playbook was a total failure. It sold so many that RIM stopped developing them and out of the few that were built more than 60% are unsold, gathering dust at whorehouses.
To be something to be moderately successful, the demand must at least meet the low production numbers.
The Playbook does not need to make money. It needs to keep RIM in the corporate conversation long enough for them to make a more compelling argument for their existence.
How do you keep a company in the "corporate conversation" by naming a product with "Play" prominently in the title, and focusing on media consumption in advertising and demonstration?
Your paragraph is something RIM needed to read before they hit the drawing boards - or the boardroom.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why not just make an Android tablet in the first place and forget about QNX if they are going to all this trouble to get Android's apps running? What advantage is QNX giving to the end-user at that point? And, given that QNX is also their next-gen phone operating system, shouldn't they be going all-out to get a QNX app ecosystem going? If they are going to do the emulation thing on QNX, why not get Blackberry OS apps running on this thing, so that next year's phone buyers can still use the old Blackberry App World apps?
It's a shame - the Playbook seems like a pretty good product that just didn't make it, much like the HP Touchpad.
Sorry to point facts that fandroids refuse to believe, but Android sucks on tablets.
Seriously, what basis is there for calling the Playook moderately successful. You might (maybe) call the Tab moderately successful. The playbook drops in price every week. That is no kind of successful but un.
But it does raise a question of what the hell they're doing trying to be compatible with Android at all. If RIM supports Android apps, why should 3rd parties bother writing native apps at all? It's OS/2 vs Windows all over again. OS/2 2.1 and OS/2 Warp 3.0 allowed users to run Windows 3.x as a subsystem so what was the net result? Very few native apps and the slow death of the platform. You need an growing community of interested parties, not some blow-ins with little vested interest in the platform if it is to survive.
This depends on if the app will ru, but simply not use the listed capabilities vs. if any app using these capabilities will not run.
If it is the former, no big deal. If it is the latter, this would make a huge number of apps on the market unrunnable.
Screw them. Oh they already screwed themselves, never mind.