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PC Plus Packs Windows and Android Into Same Machine
jones_supa writes "At the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January, it is expected that multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and Android, two different analysts said recently. The new devices will introduce a new marketing buzzword called PC Plus, explained Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies. 'A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well', Bajarin wrote recently for Time. 'They are doing this through software emulation. I'm not sure what kind of performance you can expect, but this is their way to try and bring more touch-based apps to the Windows ecosystem.' Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, suggests that PC Plus could get millions of consumers more comfortable with Android on PCs. 'Just imagine for a second what happens when Android gets an improved large-screen experience. This should scare the heck out of Microsoft.'"
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/27/2027222/pc-makers-plan-rebellion-against-microsoft-at-ces?sbsrc=md
1366x768 just doesn't cut it, no matter how many OSes you stick on it.
'They are doing this through software emulation. I'm not sure what kind of performance you can expect, but this is their way to try and bring more touch-based apps to the Windows ecosystem.'
..
More likely a pretext to extend the Microsoft Tax
One of the biggest causes of malware are attacks on the Web browser and its add-ons. Android is a lot more secure in this regard, so having the ability to browse the Web with the code executing well away from the Windows side will be a very useful security gain.
It won't stop Trojans, but it will help address one major vector for infections.
I'd buy one of these "PC Pluses" just because I do know that the Android side will almost always be usable. I won't be able to do the advanced workflow or run the usual applications and games as I do on Windows, but for a number of tasks, the Android side will be good enough. Plus, with root, it can serve as a way to offload some UNIX functions such as a caching DNS, squid cache, etc.
Is this going to require new hardware?
Or will this be purely software based?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This should scare the heck out of Microsoft.
Microsoft will just release patches that break the Android emulator.
And if accused of doing it just to break the Android emulator, they would just say it was coincidence and it wasn't their intention.
Think otherwise? Prove it.
really another dupe, and they still didn't fix the technical mistakes. i.e. it is one OS (windows) Android apps are being emulated in the OS. and same as last article, NO this isn't going to scare MS, probably more scary for Google as it removes the need to run android to use android apps.
Without Google certification and play services it will be an uphill battle for traction with a reduced pool of compatible apps. Even amazon has to work hard to make APIs that duplicate googles closed source ones.
Bridgeboard on my Amiga, 20 years ago.
Mostly random stuff.
So you run Android in a VM inside Windows. So what? This isn't a new trick, and it's not newsworthy either. It smacks of shameless shilling. Seriously, nothing to see here, move along..
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Dude! You just posted this same thing yesterday!
/vertisements?
Or they paid for two
Has anyone else taken a skeptical view of the word "experience"? I don't want to "experience" a computer. I just want a functional computer that works.
'Just imagine for a second what happens when Android gets an improved large-screen experience.'
I don't need to imagine much. When you use any system for something its not designed for the only thing that it will experience is its own demise.
This wont really work. It tries oh so very hard to have the PC do what the market wants tablets and phones to do. This is not the direction the PC market needs to chase.
The role of the PC is changing; It has competition in the market, because tablets and phones are reasonably powerful, and ultraportable.
For casual data consumption and small-scale gameplay (casual games and such) the PC has basically lost out. It needs to remember what it actually is: a consumer version of big iron. (Like it or not, the differences between a small server and a desktop PC are academic for the most part.) You dont carry big iron in your pocket. Big iron is for storing large quantities of data on, Big iron is for doing grunt processing that smaller, more dedicated devices are not suited to. Big iron is intended to provide services to a small fleet of lesser connected devices.
What do people use their home PC for these days, exactly (ordinary people, mind)--? They use them to download and store large archives of digital music and movies. They use them to preserve their digital photo collections when their phones get too full. They use them to manipulate data and files that arent well suited to processing on a mobile device. (writing wordprocessing documents, managing spreadsheets, etc.)
What do people do on tablets and phones? Basically anything else.
With that in mind, what kind of crack are these people smoking, to think that they can make a device that requires 120vAC constant power, and weighs 10lbs, needs a seperate discrete viewing hardware appliance, and bulky keyboard and mouse inputs-- be in any way comparable or desirable for software that is intended to be used on devices that weigh less than a pound, run on a 300mAh battery for hours, and have everything all together conveniently, and portably?
PC makers should understand that there are now 2 very different markets. The tablet/phone space, and the home server market, where PCs still sell.
If the home server marketplace isnt lucrative enough, then instead of wasting precious resources on boondoggles like this, they should be encouraging app store gatekeepers like Apple and Google to allow apps that are basically a front end for a network service running on a home server in the user's home, over the public IP network. (Oh, but that would make the ISPs so very sad, wouldnt it?) That would allow the raw torque of a home PC to be better utilized, a home internet connection to be better utilized, bring functionality not realistically possible to the tablet/phone space, and keep everyone mostly happy.
Instead, you have gatekeepers like Apple and Google wanting to cement their exclusivity as gatekeepers by preventing competing server services from being run exclusively for and by the end user, since that would cut into services like google's cloud storage platform, Chrome OS paradigm, and pals. This is because if they remain the gatekeepers, they get to hoover up all the delicious user profile information and use pattern data about that user, and sell it to advertisers and market analysts. (If the end users ran their own instances of a service on their own platforms and hardware, it would make doing that basically impossible to guarantee.)
But, because this is just another attempt by a market segment who's business model has shriveled up in the winds of change at resisting that change, I fully expect it to fail like the boondoggle that it is.
PCs will always have their uses; Fancy touch interfaces and pretending to be a big bulky tablet simply isnt the use that the market has chosen for them. Given the availability of superior offerings in the ACTUAL tablet space, this is NOT going to win anyone over except perhaps corporate idiots who respond only to buzzwords.
Are you suggesting that if Android is ran through emulation, it doesn't count as a running operating system?
One word: Bluestacks. Not open source but is freely available and already does what TFA is claiming major manufactures are going to do. I have owned my PCplus for about a year already. No touch screen though but the mouse works pretty good. If you have a touch screen laptop then you already own a PCplus.
I think this might help Microsoft too. If they can pull it off with a great user experience, people will be getting Windows to run both Windows software that they use (such as MS Office, and other corporate software) and run parallel Android apps for their personal stuff. This will be great in sandboxing the work and personal stuff in a computer. People will appreciative of the Windows environment because it can run whatever apps they like. It might also increase the adaptation of Windows (especially ver 8 and above.)
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
But the apps are all ARM based.
Go download the free Android SDK and try emulating an ancient 2.3x gingerbread ROM? Wow it was beyond painful.
Odd as it is written with java the apps are only ARM with it.
http://saveie6.com/
If they're going through all this trouble to rebel and add in some emulated Android, which is already a sandboxed environment on top of a Linux kernel, why not just sell these PC's with Linux to begin with?
Then we can run Metro apps with classical win32 apps side by side.
Why is this so hard?
It doesn't make sense for OEMs to do this unless ... unless of course the Windows 8 ecosystem is so overly optimized for touch that it is painful for anything else.
MacOSX has the right idea of allowing some IOS apps inside MacOSX.
All this shows is how out of touch MS is and how desperate OEMs are afraid of the tablet. Windows 9 needs to come out quick.
http://saveie6.com/
I've seen Android-x86 before and it looks interesting. Does it actually work, or is it some experimental flaky garbage?
I agree that Windows can't get viruses very easily since 2007 when Windows Vista introduced UAC. But it can get trojans such as fake antivirus and CryptoLocker, which are at least as bad for an end user as viruses.
I'm no expert regarding ARM emulation but when using the AVD (Android Virtual Device) that comes shipped with their ADK (dev kit) and I have Hardware Acceleration enabled (for video performance mostly) my games run at blazing speeds compared to a real Android device (mobile).
Perhaps your issues were that the emulator you were using did not have the advantage of hardware acceleration? Perhaps this new setup their proposing will have this advantage. Let's hope :)
Never happened. True story.
Windroy?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
it is expected that multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and Android, two different analysts said recently
they are doing it through emulation so they are running ONE operating system
Two articles in two days say two analysts say two computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems.
But the apps are all ARM based.
Some don't use NDK. Some use ARM but also have an x86 edition. And some are free software; everything on F-Droid, for instance, is a recompile away from running on Android/x86. Only apps that use NDK, that are non-free, and whose developer refuses to recompile to x86 would need emulation.
So what you are telling me is I can get Weatherbug, Okcupid, Facebook, Angry Birds, and other apps on x86.
Developers use it because it loads in less than 1 minute and my fans do not sound like a jet engine taking off like it does when I select ARM in emulation. But 99% of users only use ARM so why compile it with anything else? ... or I have an old Phenom II 2.6 ghz with a crappy fan.
http://saveie6.com/
Microsoft Windows 8 is a piece of crap. There is no other word to use. Windows 7 was awesome - and so Microsoft ditched it! It is the same with Youtube. Youtube was very good, and then Google came along with its stupid Google+ that hardly anybody wants and even fewer understand, and they completely buggered it up. The reasons people are turning to Android are: 1. Apple is too expensive. 2. Windows 8 is a piece of crap. 3. Windows 7 is no longer installed on new machines. 4. Linux is still not easy enough to use for most people.
Microsoft will just release patches that break the Android emulator.
In other words, you claim that Microsoft's Windows division still has a "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run" mentality. I thought that by now, Microsoft was bending over backwards to maintain compatibility with the past decade of Windows applications, using a different such as the compatibility modes and things like the separate memory allocator for SimCity.exe. Microsoft does this because it knows the big advantage of Windows over just shipping GNU/Linux on a PC was backward compatibility with existing applications. Case in point: Does Microsoft routinely release patches that break, say, NES emulators?
When you have app full screen on 15"+ screens.
also app store lock in will not work in the desktop / pro market even apple does not lock down mac os that way. But MS is trying it with RT
Windows 8/8.1 with Classic Shell should be close enough to Windows 7. Or what deal-breaking differences have you encountered?
...double the crapware
Most Andriod apps are not native ARM apps, but Java / bytecode which run in a virtual machine called davlik. Port that to Windows / x64, and suddenly all the Android apps run in Windows. The Android environment itself could be emulated in Windows or tied to replacement functions like the Windows desktop in the new platform (instead of a phone/tablet interface).
Windows is POSIX compliant and supports Unix if they chose the route of emulating unix functions, or they could build their own environment like cygwin/etc. It doesn't need this, but some apps might need something like it if it exposed the underlying unix features. It depends on how they wanted to implment it, cause it could also just wrap over to the Windows environment..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)
Still have my Emplant board in my A2000 - runs Windows 3.x, DOS 6, MAC 7.1 - yeah they are old - but the concept of running multiple OS's simultaneously isn't anything new... Yawn.....
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Am i the only one here that thinks android apps are barely passable as software. If you manage to find one without insane access rights, it's either complete crap covered with adds, or they charge you $5 for something you could do on windows, mac, or linux for free in much better quality. The last thing i want is android apps on my laptop, But if the pc makers think this will save the industry, who am i to judge they are obviously very intune with the market (not like they needed intel a chip maker, to hold their hands and help them make ultrabooks). Screw android apps just give me a high res screen, very decent graphics, big battery, and relitivaly thin profile while leaving all my ports where they were.
Rocket Surgeon.
For casual data consumption and small-scale gameplay (casual games and such) the PC has basically lost out [to tablets].
Both my Dell Inspiron mini 1012 laptop (running Xubuntu) and my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet (running Android) have 1 GB of RAM. The Firefox web browser on the laptop keeps a dozen tabs in memory at once without dipping into swap, partly thanks to my use of the Flashblock extension. I can load all of a day's Cracked articles in tabs, board the bus, and read them on the commute to and from work. Both Chrome and Firefox web browsers on the tablet, on the other hand, will forget a tab when I switch away from it and have to reload. Because I'm not willing to pay another $500-$600 per device per year for mobile broadband on top of what I already pay for Internet at home, the tablet will end up displaying an error message "You are offline" when I switch back to a tab.
And as for gameplay, point-and-click games work well, but other genres don't. I've tried to play platform games (similar to Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man) on a tablet's touch screen, and it's painful.
[Ordinary people] use [a home PC] to manipulate data and files that arent well suited to processing on a mobile device. (writing wordprocessing documents, managing spreadsheets, etc.)
Where "etc." could include running a compiler for a high school or college student's "introduction to computer science" homework. This is something that tablets have traditionally been lacking, even when docked to a Bluetooth keyboard.
[PC makers] should be encouraging app store gatekeepers like Apple and Google to allow apps that are basically a front end for a network service running on a home server in the user's home
There are already plenty of remote desktop viewer applications for mobile devices. SSH, X11, RDP, VNC, take your pick. One problem is that using them requires paying $500-$600 per device per year for mobile broadband on top of what the user already pays for Internet at home. The other is that for any service running on a home server, once you've added a Bluetooth keyboard and a stand to hold the tablet, you might as well be using a small laptop.
Simple: More desirable applications for home users are ported to Android/Linux than to GNU/Linux.
What sort of android apps exist that you'd want to have on a PC, that don't exist as a standalone web site?
Video games, for one. Several games are ported to Android but aren't available for desktop operating systems. Another is check deposit applications published by banks such as Chase that use the device's rear-facing camera to scan the front and back of a paper check. I called Chase and asked about a PC version of Chase QuickDeposit, but the representative told me there was no PC version.
PC+ Twice the exploits twice the bugs.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
But 99% of users only use ARM so why compile it with anything else?
If you're the first to sell your applications to the 1% of Android users who use x86, then you can be the medium size fish in a small pond.
This makes no sense.
From everyone I've talked with, the biggest, most obvious failures of Windows 8 are:
1. Removal of the start menu
2. The misguided idea that a PC needs "apps".
So the idea is to go to a second operating system (VM, Dual Boot?) that doesn't have a start menu, with apps designed for mobile platform? This just seems like bad marketing
Assuming I'm using a Windows machine, If I want to run an Android app on a windows PC, I'll just install Android SDK.
Sure they need their win32 craplets but in a few years of more declines they will wonder if it is wiser investment to go to a cloud and host them with Citrix via tablets instead as this is what everyone else is doing etc.
Until they see the $500-$600 per year price tag for the mobile broadband plan needed to use an application while on the road. Running applications on a leased server can replace a desktop a lot more easily than a laptop.
Maybe we just need a Android app that lets you run Windows applications. You know, for those times you need to run some ancient CRM app from the corporate network on your tablet. That's probably more useful than the other way round.
It's like being anally raped, AND choked to death at the same time!
Any OS can get malware that is installed by the user.
This is true of platforms where the user can install applications without needing to buy a developer license, such as Android, GNU/Linux, OS X, and Windows. On a platform where only the operating system publisher can install applications, such as Windows RT, Windows Phone, iOS, and the major game consoles, there's somewhat less risk of a novice user accidentally contracting a trojan.
Yeah I think a nice, supported linux distro that has a stock guest vm install of Windows on it would scare Microsoft shitless. Although, they would probably veto that setup.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
From the page you linked: "Monthly Charge: $25 per month". This means Chase charges $300 per year to rent the PC scanning machine, compared to $0 per year for the Android version that uses a device's existing rear-facing camera. So maybe I misled by claiming "there was no PC version", but this PC version doesn't appear intended for home use by someone who owns a webcam or flatbed scanner.
Is this something to switch banks over?
This is a dupe of an article posted last week. It even points to the same news article.
These systems do not "simultaneously run two operating systems". They run Windows 8 and only Windows 8. They also include an API to allow them to run some Android applications on Windows 8. That's all. Creating nifty new buzzwords, creating rumors that this is some kind of rebellion against Microsoft or any other buzzcrap doesn't change that basic fact.
Again, it's a Windows 8 machine that will also run some Android apps. That's all. It doesn't dual boot, and it doesn't run Android.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I can see where Microsoft would like to believe this is what happens, but I suspect more likely it'll be (six months later) oh, that Windows 8 box? I got rid of it. Got a Samsung tablet instead. Runs Android natively, less clunky GUI than Windows, does everything I want.
But what about Windows apps?
What Windows apps? I've got Quickoffice if someone sends me a Word doc or spreadsheet or something. You can't really interact with spreadsheets or create Word documents very well on a tablet anyway. I don't use it for that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You mean after choosing to download a malicious application
From a publisher who lied about its malicious nature.
choosing to install it, and choosing the grant it permission, Windows allows me to use software that DOES things to my computer that I may consider detrimental?
Yes. A novice user typically isn't aware of the often vast difference between what the publisher of an executable application claims that the application does and what the application actually does.
Oh, how I long for an operating system like Linux or OSX where, no matter how hard I try, the software will not be permitted to actually do anything.
Sarcasm duly noted, but it isn't just Windows. OS X, Android, and GNU/Linux have the same "problem",* except that GNU/Linux distributions have a reputation for vetting applications distributed under free software licenses, and by its nature, anybody can hire someone to review the source code of a free application. OS X and Windows 8 have added their own app stores that imply some sort of vetting of the executable by the operating system publisher, but developers have still managed to sneak misbehaving applications into the store and trigger misbehavior before the operating system publisher has a chance to learn of the misbehavior and take the applications down. The only real vetting Google Play Store does on Android apps is the automated "Bouncer".
* Scare quotes because ultimately I agree with your insinuation that it isn't a true problem.
Of course, the IBM mainframes running VM ran multiple OSes. Definitely not a new idea.
After reading the summary a wee bit more.....:
"Emulation".
bullshit. it takes 23 steps to make windows 8 *almost* like windows 7.
why bother? just use windows 7 and be good till 2020, probably Microsoft will release something in that timeframe that sucks less when the current dumb-asses retire or die off
It's not really a dual boot machine, just Windows with an android emulator. Amazon has had that for several years on their web site, they call it test drive, you can try android apps on your pc before you buy it.
Sounds like they've built an Android API implementation library for Windows ... i.e., Windows-based Wine for Android.
It'd actually be interesting to see if the tech involved was open and cross-platform, so we could port it to Linux.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Not just that, what is the biggest complaint against Windows 8? That it's a cellphone/tablet OS requiring a touchscreen to be effective. People want something like Windows 7. Now what do they come up w/ from the non-Microsoft world? Android - something that's closer to Windows 8 than anything else. Why not something like PC-BSD w/ Razor-qt, or ChromeOS? Something that at least looks like Windows 7?
Runs Android natively, less clunky GUI than Windows, does everything I want.
If you're reading a web page and taking notes in a text editor, Windows can prove less clunky. Under Windows, you can split the screen between the web page on one side and the text editor on the other. Even "modern" applications under Windows 8 can be snapped to a vertical strip at the side and still work. In Android, on the other hand, you have to switch back and forth between full-screen applications, as stock Android's window management model is all maximized all the time. (Another user explained why that is).
TFA itself links to a better FA at: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244953/Microsoft_to_face_computer_makers_rebellion_at_CES
This original source article includes a discussion of the architecture involved - and the person they interviewed admits he hasn't seen it in action, and has no idea how it works. He suggests it could be one of three approaches - dual boot, an Android API within Windows (somewhat akin to Bluestacks), or a VM running within Windows. I would add a fourth - a hypervisor, permitting both OSes to run concurrently as VMs - though that seems unlikely, as it would require the OEMs to license Windows differently, as I understand it.
Interesting times. I agree with the commenters who say MS should be afraid of this - Google has taken its sweet time maturing Android into a desktop-supporting experience, but it's close, and "Android PCs" are already in the pipeline to take advantage of it. Any familiarization for the "unwashed masses" with what it feels like to simply run Android as your laptop/desktop OS has to be viewed by MS as, well, "crossing the streams" bad.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
With the Win8 mobile phone screen style interface they were really just setting the scene for people to say "if it has to be like a phone then why not like one that I'm already used to."
You want updates? On an Android...?
BWAHAHAHAHA OK OK, you *were* being serious? Unless Google comes out with a Nexus or has Motorola do it, good luck with that pipe dream.
Yeah I think a nice, supported linux distro that has a stock guest vm install of Windows on it would scare Microsoft shitless. Although, they would probably veto that setup.
I think they'd love it - as long as you are paying a windows licence for every one of those VMs you ship (whether the user uses them or not)...
Take an estimated OEM volume windows price, multiply by number of Android shipments and add to MS's bottom line - no way would they turn that down.
or a Windows VM running in Android? I'd prefer the latter.
there is a andorid vm that runs windows very slowly.
And as for gameplay, point-and-click games work well, but other genres don't. I've tried to play platform games (similar to Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man) on a tablet's touch screen, and it's painful. Don't try run PC or console games. Try play the tablet focused games. Like Jetpack Joyride, Rayman, Plants vs Zombies. :)
You're just trying PC games on a tablet. Do it the right way
I've tried to play platform games (similar to Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man) on a tablet's touch screen, and it's painful.
Don't try run PC or console games. Try play the tablet focused games.
Then let me rephrase: What should a developer of a PC or console game who wants to port it to a tablet do to reimagine the game as a "tablet focused game"?
The other factor is if there is a strong demarkation between "user" and "sysadmin" or not.
That and on which side of the demarcation the owner of a device falls. A lot of owners of computing devices for home use aren't experienced enough with computers to be competent sysadmins. The walled garden is in part a workaround for this lack of experience, allowing the operating system publisher to act as a device's sysadmin on the owner's behalf.
I'm under the impression that the majority of home users want an appliance. They demand safety more than freedom because they don't know what they'd do with choice and freedom other than shoot themselves in the proverbial foot. Walled gardens provide this safety. The market doesn't provide what Benjamin Franklin thought people deserve; it provides what people demand, and in many cases, this has been safety.
All these games (Jetpack Joyride, Rayman, Temple Run, Plants vs Zombies, Minions Rush) are not focused on gamepad gameplay. I.e., they do not rely on the player ability to press a combination of one-of-the-eight-directions + an action button. They rely on "touch in the correct moment", with some combination of the accelerometer (motion control).
You might need changing the thermal paste, especially if it's the stuff that came with the processor's default heatsink.
Thank you for the suggestions. I was able to abstract two genres from them: steering games and RTS.
Plants vs. Zombies is a TD game (an offshoot of RTS), and I admit that games in point-and-click genres like RTS and TD translate fairly well from PC mouse or DS stylus control.
Jetpack Joyride is essentially "Balloon Trip" from Balloon Fight. Temple Run uses tilt for steering and swipes for sharp turns and jumping, and from what I could see on YouTube, Despicable Me: Minion Rush is a Temple Run clone. These are essentially steering games, not unlike car racing games. The last time I tried Rayman, it was a fairly normal platformer on the PlayStation. I looked up the mobile version on YouTube, and apparently it became a Canabalt-style thing called Rayman Jungle Run. So I can see how a jumping game that doesn't rely on attacking might be ported by designing the levels so that the player never has to press backward, letting the player use taps, swipes, and tilts to steer around a sequence of obstacles.
But I don't see how a control method for a steering game would generalize to play styles that include exploration. It's like the difference between the mine cart level and every single other level, or like the difference between a Duck Hunt or Time Crisis style rail shooter and a standard first-person shooter. The question of how something like Super Mario (with its focus on exploration of levels in everything after SMB1) or Mega Man or Contra (with their focus on attacking) might be retooled to "rely on 'touch in the correct moment', with some combination of the accelerometer (motion control)" is still open.
In the other side, TD games are not very nice to be played in a gamepad.
Rampart, probably the first TD game ever made, worked with a gamepad. The arcade version used a trackball, which acts like a mouse, but the ports to NES and Super NES switched to very effective gamepad control.
TD, race, fps, strategy games, balloon trip (as you said) are better in touch. Action games are better in a gamepad.
I agree that ideally, a game would be played on the device best suited for its genre. The problem is that devices suitable for some genres have far greater entry barriers than devices for other genres. For example, I'm told it's much harder to get licensed to develop for PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS than for Android tablets with Google Play. This tends to force smaller developers into steering games, strategy games, and trying to shoehorn other genres onto a suboptimal device. Is this sort of genre-forcing entry barrier a good thing for gamers? And if so, why?
Shades of "look! BeOS dual booting with Windows! Ain't Microsoft gonna be happy! OK.. I know it's not dual booting, but after M$' efforts to run signed apps only on their OS , I think they're going to fight this tooth and claw.. Certainly when they went after BeOS, we know what happened to that company. Shame. I REALLY liked that OS...
... OS X just keeps getting better.
That's a joke right? I couldn't tell if you were trying to be serious.. OK, have to 'fess up that until recently (the last 2 or so years), I was a huge OSX and Apple supporter... for 16 years, in fact.
But any company that walks away from 10% - 20% of their user base is making a mistake.
It's not so much of a mistake if a company thinks it can make 30% - 40% more profit off 90% - 80% of users if it makes a business decision to walk away from 10% - 20% of its user base. Nintendo made this decision in 1985 with the Nintendo Entertainment System, and it won the third generation of video game consoles in North America by a large margin.