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Microsoft Is Embracing Android As the Mobile Version of Windows (theverge.com)
Microsoft unveiled a bunch of new hardware during a press event last night, but one of the most interesting announcements the company made was their new "Your Phone" app for Windows 10. Basically, the feature will let Android users mirror any app on their device to a Windows 10 desktop. The Verge's Tom Warren writes about how Microsoft is embracing Android as the mobile version of Windows: We've seen a variety of ways of bringing Android apps to Windows in recent years, including Bluestacks and even Dell's Mobile Connect software. This app mirroring is certainly easier to do with Android, as it's less restricted than iOS. Still, Microsoft's welcoming embrace of Android in Windows 10 with this app mirroring is just the latest in a number of steps the company has taken recently to really help align Android as the mobile equivalent of Windows.
Microsoft Launcher is designed to replace the default Google experience on Android phones, and bring Microsoft's own services and Office connectivity to the home screen. It's a popular launcher that Microsoft keeps updating, and it's even getting support for the Windows 10 Timeline feature that lets you resume apps and sites across devices. All of this just reminds me of Windows Phone. It's only been three years since Microsoft launched its Lumia 950 Windows 10 Mobile device at a packed holiday hardware event. Windows Phone has vanished in the last couple of years, and Microsoft finally admitted Windows Phone was dead nearly a year ago. The software maker has now embraced the reality that people don't need Windows on a phone. Instead, it's embracing Android as the mobile version of Windows.
Microsoft Launcher is designed to replace the default Google experience on Android phones, and bring Microsoft's own services and Office connectivity to the home screen. It's a popular launcher that Microsoft keeps updating, and it's even getting support for the Windows 10 Timeline feature that lets you resume apps and sites across devices. All of this just reminds me of Windows Phone. It's only been three years since Microsoft launched its Lumia 950 Windows 10 Mobile device at a packed holiday hardware event. Windows Phone has vanished in the last couple of years, and Microsoft finally admitted Windows Phone was dead nearly a year ago. The software maker has now embraced the reality that people don't need Windows on a phone. Instead, it's embracing Android as the mobile version of Windows.
You know what the other two "E"s are...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Time to end the Great Schism of computing by putting Windows out to pasture.
Would they re-invent WINE or become contributors to it?
The real competition for android is AOSP.
Last time I saw the numbers* for Mobile OS market share:
Android total: 81%
- Google's Android: 55%
- AOSP Android: 27%
- iOS Total: 18%
- Other: 1%
% do not add up due to rounding errors
So, phase 1, embrace Google's Android, while mantaining compatibility with AOSP.
Phase 2: Extend AOSP, giving it functional equivalents to the functions Google keeps behind the Google Play Services, that have either no equivalents in AOSP, or Delerict APIs
Phase 3: I hope they do not extinguish Google's Android, but at least lessen Alphabet's grip on the mobile market. This monoculture is as bad (or worse) for us than the Windows desktop and browser monopoly was in the 90's and 00's.
* Numbers come from here:
http://communities-dominate.bl...
Sorry for not posting the full link, /. threw a filter error
I do not agree with all that Tomi wites, and I do not like his writting style, but I give it to him, he has the best publicly available numbers, and I thank him for give them away for free.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Repeat article. I just read the exact-same thing last night.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Would they re-invent WINE or become contributors to it?
I wouldn't think so, the Win32 API would remain and probably have some sort of Linux Subsystem for Windows (the opposite of the Windows Subsystem for Linux) so the kernel could be switched. Then most likely new APIs and functionality would go through WSL so they could run on a Windows kernel but be switched to a Linux kernel.
Stomp your foot. Say it again.
Go ahead and pout if it makes you feel better.
Agreed. When the post said Microsoft was offering its Launcher on Android, I was hoping that meant you could have an Android that looked like the Windows-on-phone system, but running Android apps; so when my Lumia gives up the ghost, I could get a cheap phone but still have the same-looking GUI. No such luck, the launcher seems to be much less useful.
I'm certainly no fan of Android or any other half-assed knock-off of Apple's IP, but calling it the "mobile version of Windows" is much further than even I'd go in disparaging it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Android already WAS the mobile version of Windows, in that it was a case where someone elseâ(TM) work was taken by a company that grew really huge with the help of something they did not create, and who paid very little or nothing for it, and then proceeded to build an EMPIRE on it, while in reality, objectively, it is an ugly kludge of cobbled-together, mismatched parts that has become, despite its many, many MANY flaws, THE big thing that people eventually either come to love, or love to hate.
So Microsoft giving its irrelevant blessing just looks like an octogenarian announcing that he is joining a punk rock band, and learning to skateboard and wants to do body shots to convince his great great great grandkids he is cool.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
But why do they think that *this peculiar time* it's finally going to work after a gazillion of failed attempts by nearly everyone else ? (e.g.: Citrix)
The history is littered with the corpses of failed such attempts.
Why do they think that suddently its going to work better now ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just another step along the path Microsoft has laid out for themselves, to be the one-and-only OS in the world: now begins the annexation of Android, like they've been doing to Linux.
There's this one big recruiting company that's very interested in me again for some reason. Been corresponding with one of their recruiters at length for a couple of weeks now. Last night, I was talking about the things I will and won't work on, and/or code with. I mentioned that I'll write code on or for just about anything... except .net. To which I followed up, "But Microsoft has been oddly standards based the last couple of years, it's completely out of character for them. And, honestly, I'm worried them. I hope they feel better and get back to their evil uncompetitive selves soon."
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Also agreed - too bad it didn't do better. A launcher might end up working out really well for them. Hundreds of millions of younger generation that are intimately familiar with XBox UI and also Windows 10 now.
Have you tried the app? All it does is let you remotely control texting and photos access from your PC. It doesn't let you run Android apps on your PC, it doesn't even let you do a sort of "remote desktop" to your phone. It's much simpler than that.