15 ms·

Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable.

178 points by AndrewDucker 13y ago

mpettitt 13y ago
Interesting article. I'm intrigued as to how CynaogenMod handles the lack of Google Play APIs - it seems to be skirted around on their website.
- AndrewDucker 13y ago
  If you run it on your existing phone then it extracts the Google Play apps from it and re-uploads them afterwards. However, their new phone is actually certified, and therefore gets them "properly": http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/19/the-oppo-n1-is-officially-the-first-google-cts-certified-cyanogenmod-phone-can-run-google-apps-suite-officially/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/19/the-oppo-n1-is-offic...
  - mpettitt 13y ago
    That's, hmm, interesting from a competitive and privacy advocate perspective. It means that whilst Prism Break and similar websites are advocating it, the key parts which report back to Google are still in place, since they aren't the bits being replaced.
    - tc104 13y ago
      No they're not. You have to manually install the closed source Google frameworks and apps -- so if they're "in place", it's only because you put them there yourself.
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Woha that looks pretty good. I didn't know about the Oppo N1.
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
Microsoft is just not going to abandon Windows Phone, for fundamentally these reasons: "If it's a core business function – do it yourself, no matter what." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard-lets-go-shopping.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard... MS certainly will view "a computer in every pocket, and all of them running MS Software" as core to their future. If they do abandon Windows phone, it will be because that has changed. In the meantime, MS is a company with a track record of plugging away until version x of the product is good enough to succeed.
- snom380 13y ago
  Agreed, although that track record stopped pretty much after IE and XBox.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    It's still happening, Azure is being iterated and improved a lot.
- fidotron 13y ago
  You forget "Embrace, extend . . " The other mobile ecosystems are now so far in front they have no viable option other than the embracing and extending. Android happens to be flexible enough at the software layer (not just licensing) to make such a thing remarkably easy to do, given the resources.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > The other mobile ecosystems are now so far in front they have no viable option other than the embracing and extending. That's your opinion. I doubt that it would get any traction inside MS. It just doesn't make sense - are MS more likely to take the android kernel and reskin it to look like WinPhone, or continue to believe that writing OS kernels is a core company competence ... which it is, really. If one day MS could not write OS kernels any more they would be in serious trouble. It's a core business function, so they do it themselves. How would re-skinning android help MS get "in front" anyway? They have technically solid product in Windows Phone, they need other things to make it win, and they know it. Hence, the whole Nokia deal.
Oculus 13y ago
This has been an ongoing cycle for all of Android. First people complain about Android lagging behind iOS so Google starts moving their services to GSM so they can avoid having to send updates through manufacturers. Then people complain Google isn't open enough so they start baking it into ASOP which takes forever to rollout. On the cycle goes..
- AndrewDucker 13y ago
  An alternative would be to use GSM as a shim, that just calls through to AOSP if the functionality is there, or fills in the functionality if it's not. But I'm not seeing the advantage to Google of doing that - as everyone gets GSM if they go for the major phones.
  - vetinari 13y ago
    There is one factor that causes what's going into GMS and what into AOSP, that the article conveniently glosses over: Functionality in GMS requries server side support. It can be computational capacity or server-side dabatases (fused location with wifi and cell towers? Google caller id? Map tiles? Storage? Server side push? Cloud support for games? All of them require something on the other side of connection). Unless someone is willing to step in and provide this, there will be no AOSP equivalent.
    - wyager 13y ago
      >Functionality in GMS requries server side support. Really? My calendar client, mail client, and launcher require server side support from Google?
      - vetinari 13y ago
        Launcher certainly does - where do you think that Google Now prepares it's data? Launcher without Google Now is part of AOSP. Both Calendar and Email are available in AOSP, Play Store has their binary builds for those that for some reason do not have current Android version. They can have at least current apps.
higherpurpose 13y ago
So Microsoft should fork Ubuntu Touch then. Problem solved ;)
- tc104 13y ago
  Microsoft should just fork off and die.
Zigurd 13y ago
Amazon has obviously forked Android successfully and has sold a lot of tablets. OPhone is an Android derived OS used in China, and other Chinese OEMs without access to the Google ecosystem have to do similar things.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  I own an Amazon Kindle Fire. It sucks. Out of the box it can do almost nothing that normal android devices can. I had to root it in a very frustrating and glitchy process to be able to install google app store software and even of that many don't install or don't work. What amazon has successfully done is build a kindle based on linux as opposed to whatever is on the original kindles. It's a very limited thing and nothing more than a kiosk to amazon purchases. The only reason people buy it is because of brand loyalty to the kindle device series they knew before.
  - bitwize 13y ago
    The original Kindles, afaik, were based on Linux, with I guess a custom stack on top.
    - briandh 13y ago
      Yep, the kernel sources are available on the Amazon website: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200203720 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
  - king_jester 13y ago
    > I had to root it in a very frustrating and glitchy process to be able to install google app store software and even of that many don't install or don't work. The root process for Kindle devices is very annoying. However, there is a reason why most app store apps don't work on Kindle. Unless a developer is specifically thinking about supporting a device without Google APIs, they are likely not to correctly handle when API calls fail or aren't available. Also, the Kindle Fires to date have had some quirks here and there that don't work exactly as you would expect, so a developer would probably have to actually test their app for Kindle (which is its own pain due to how bad the Amazon developer portal is).
fredgrott 13y ago
the article author does not know what eff they are speaking about: The AOSP counterparts are buggy, feature deprived, and by at least some accounts, barely maintained. If that sentence was true than stuff like the phone app would not work, obviously it does :) Author does not realize that AOSP is a snapshot of the full android OS
higherpurpose 13y ago
The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both". That's basically another way or saying "you can fragment the platform all you want, or choose compatibility (i.e. let Google control the platform across OEMs)". Remember when people were yelling from the rooftops "Android is so fragmented, and why it's always behind iOS! Google, give us standardization already!!"? Linux' biggest problem has been that Microsoft moved much faster to get Windows on as many PCs as possible through certain corporate deals, but in terms of gaining market share, the Linux ecosystem has also worked against itself, but allowing everyone to fork it into hundreds of different distributions, all doing different stuff, and with barely even a weak app store across several distributions. Linux is "everywhere", because everyone can fork it, and Android has certainly benefited from this strategy in the early years, too, but that seems to be an antithesis to an "ecosystem". As we can observe, even though "Linux is everywhere" in all sorts of devices, there's no significant "ecosystem". Google wants to keep and evolve the Android ecosystem, because that makes it much easier for users, and also developers to develop on top of a well standardized ecosystem of devices and OS images. I guess for an proper ecosystem to thrive, it needs to be controlled and standardized as much as possible, with restrictions for OEMs and carriers. The only alternative for the others, if they really want to start from the Android base, will be to form their own ecosystem, but that's very hard, unless we get to the point where only the web matters on mobile devices, too.
- _pmf_ 13y ago
  > The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both". Or you can be like Apple, controlling everything while still taking the liberty of shitting down developer's throats (who are delighted to be at the receiving end, for some reason).
fidotron 13y ago
It's not a poor idea at all. The main example used to be Amazon, but now it's China. China are going to be the source of a lot of Google headaches, thanks to their inability to operate there leading to a majority of Android devices shipped there not including their services at all, giving a critical mass to the market for applications without their components. Hugo Barra ended up at a Chinese company (Xiaomi) and Google just invested in Lenovo, but unless there's a big policy change on the way the Android/China beast will get further and further out of control. MS absolutely should weigh in with a privacy hardened Android with great Exchange and Active Directory support (and Nokia Maps). It would be huge, and it would force Apple and Google right on to the defensive.
- DrPizza 13y ago
  But it would have lousy app compatibility... so what advantage would it offer over Windows Phone?
  - fidotron 13y ago
    It would have about as lousy app compat as the Kindle Fire, which is to say nothing like as much as Google would like you to believe. I'll say it: the Amazon APIs are actually better than some of the Google equivalents too. MS can play exactly the same game, but with the muscle of small business users. Windows Phone simply has negligible actual interest from the dev community because it's too much of a technical island, and tied to the whole Metro disaster.
  - Touche 13y ago
    It would have better app compatibility than Windows Phone.
- BugBrother 13y ago
  I don't get why this censoring, which stop US businesses like Google, doesn't lead to a trade war? The Americans are usually not shy about those? Edit: fidotron, to me it seemed China tried to get rid of Google (internal hacking attacks, etc). That level of aggression is normal for China?
qwerta 13y ago
Many companies produce Android devices without google maps, gmail, play store... It solves a lot of privacy issues. In 5 years smartphones will be cheap commodity and there will be also good opensource community fork. I can see Debian on Android.
- cdibona 13y ago
  Five years? You can buy smart phones for 30$ in shenzhen electronic malls today. I don't know your threshold for cheap, but considering feature phones sit at 25 to 20 in the same places.. The future is now :-)
  - mikecane 13y ago
    >>>You can buy smart phones for 30$ in shenzhen electronic malls today. 1) That's in Shenzen. Might as well be Mars for most people. When Shenzen hardware is sourced by global brands, they usually have a generous markup where that "$30" quickly disappears. 2) How long do they last? "Oh, but they're cheap. If it breaks in 3 months, just buy another!" No. People just don't want to go through possibly losing data and having hardware just suddenly drop dead on them. So, yeah. I'll go with the guy who said five years. That's for stuff that won't drop dead in three months.
    - _pmf_ 13y ago
      > That's in Shenzen. Might as well be Mars for most people. Ah, yes, if only some smart people could invent some kind of global network for people to buy things remotely, and created some site where you could order these things. They could call it, for example, Ali Baba.
      - sixbrx 13y ago
        Have a link?
        briandh 13y ago
rbanffy 13y ago
Microsoft could build a fully functional Mono-based Windows Phone experience on top of the AOSP core minus the Dalvik VM. The only question would be "what for"? They'd gain nothing from it. They already have a more or less portable kernel upon which they can build phones.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Besides, since the Visual 2013 launch event, Xamarin has become an official Microsoft partner.
- ahomescu1 13y ago
  It sounds to me like what they need is exactly the other way around: Dalvik VM + all the Java APIs in Android, on top of the WP kernel (or they could go with Linux, but I think the kernel doesn't matter as much).
  - Maarten88 13y ago
    This. But there is one problem with that strategy: if Microsoft would support running Android apps on Windows Phone, there would be little incentive left to write native WP apps. Everybody would only write for Android, making it hard to differentiate the platform.
    - contextfree 13y ago
      I wonder if it would be feasible to support Java and maybe some (most? some well-defined base of?) Android APIs in "native" Windows apps, in a similar way to how JavaScript and HTML are supported via WinRT's notion of language projections. Although this would mean narrowing the goal from "making Android apps run on Windows" to "making Android apps easier to port to and maintain on Windows".
briandh 13y ago
This piece seems to imply that only full source compatibility with Android (including Play Services) would be valuable to the Windows Phone platform. I don't think that's the case. I think getting 80% of the way, combined with the Microsoft brand plus quality devices Nokia would be enough to entice plenty of developers to the platform. I think a more interesting question is whether Microsoft should fork AOSP as a whole, or place an Android compatibility layer atop Windows Phone, a la BlackBerry 10.
SoapSeller 13y ago
Didn't Google won the the "Oracle vs Google" case on the ground that APIs aren't patentable? What prevent MS(or any other big player) to re-implement GMS?
- BugBrother 13y ago
  It would be funny if Google copied Microsoft's monopolist strategies to avoid Windows cloning (APIs are ever changing and complex, especially regarding bug compatibility, no protocol docs+obfuscation, etc)... :-)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- baliza 13y ago
  Yes, but Oracle has appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (with Google filing a cross-appeal).[0] As of December 4, 2013, there are indications the three Federal Circuit judges "may be leaning against Google's position."[1][2][3] [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google [1]http://goo.gl/KQ6W6w http://goo.gl/KQ6W6w [2]http://goo.gl/2GpZH4 http://goo.gl/2GpZH4 [3]http://goo.gl/1aJBrT http://goo.gl/1aJBrT
- scholia 13y ago
  The "Oracle vs Google" case isn't over, it's up for appeal...
avenger123 13y ago
The title is a bit of a linkbait for sure. I don't think anyone at this point can say that Windows Phone is a non-player. It's going to be around and it can only get better. Suggesting that Microsoft would fork Android is more wishful thinking than anything else. Why not just say - "Android is unforkable" and leave it at that.
- pmelendez 13y ago
  >"I don't think anyone at this point can say that Windows Phone is a non-player." I wouldn't be so sure of that. Just this week I read a comment suggesting the same forking android thing and that windows phone is over.
  - _random_ 13y ago
    Would you like me to write a comment suggesting that Apple is opting for using Windows for their products? I can write some other comments as well.
- jeroen 13y ago
  From http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/07/satya-nadella-mobile-windows-phone-android http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/07/satya-nade... , which is linked at the beginning of the article: "To add to all the advice being ladled out to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief, here’s another piece: stop bothering with Windows Phone. It’s a waste of money which will never pay off. Instead, focus the efforts of Microsoft and soon-to-be subsidiary Nokia on forking Android .." So at least someone with an audience is saying that MS should fork Android, and Ars is responding to that.
  - x0054 13y ago
    People with an audience say all kinds of idiotic things. Arguing that Microsoft should fork another OS is like saying that Ford should license the Toyota Prius design and concentrate on their core competency of putting Ford badges on cars.
- zmmmmm 13y ago
pmelendez 13y ago
Well since that is a comment that pop up in here very frequently (that Nokia and now MS should fork Android) I am very happy to see that I am not the only one who thinks that would be a bad idea.
bane 13y ago
"typed on my Kindle Fire"
edderly 13y ago
Interesting analysis but I think he overcomplicates the situation. From a third party app point of view you can build your against Android API level X, or a corresponding ‘Google api’ release associated with the given API level. An app built against API level X will work seamlessly on the corresponding AOSP release. So far, unless you’re interested in more tightly integrating into Google services, you don’t need to build your app against the Google api, but obviously Google are interested in app developers using their custom apis. As far as the increasing integration of core applications into GMS is concerned, it is rather overblown to call the AOSP versions broken or buggy. AOSP remains the base platform for the hardware ecosystem to develop their reference designs, AOSP has to work and does work well. The hardware domain is a big problem for rolling your own OS from scratch, the associated software stack to support a given piece of hardware is non-trivial. Even generic Linux is now being supplanted by Android variants in the embedded space especially if you’re interested in graphics or multimedia. However, also consider that the most successful player in the Android space, Samsung, have pursued a strategy of lightly forking Android with their own features and customizations without breaking compatibility deliberately.
tc104 13y ago
Yawwwn. This is just handwaving and guesswork by a barely competent tech journo.
stusmall 13y ago
The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here. It is a complete and fully functional mobile OS under extremely permissive licensing. Pull it! Change it! Build it! Fork it! Whatever! AOSP is open source. Look at the closed source services google adds. As far as I know they are all related to google services(Someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Their store, their maps, their email, their location services. This isn't needed in the open source distro and it works great without them. Also there are a lot of restriction on the brand and how you use it when release an Android product. That isn't unique to Android. See firefox vs iceweasel. Sure sometimes it gets annoying that a lot of Android design decisions are made behind closed doors and in working in the framework sometimes I have to play the game of "Guess what the Google engineer was thinking" because documentation can be scarce. Also from what I've heard sending changing upstream isn't an easy process. These things are nice and make it an easy product to work with... but aren't required for it to be truly open source. The code is there in a series of open git repos and under Apache license. That is open source in my book.
- ageorgia 13y ago
  >The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here. >AOSP is open source. Clever switch there from Android to AOSP, no wonder its the top comment. The difference between them is what the author is talking about. You just prove his point.
- Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
  I think the issue is that all of those Google services are really what makes Android Android. An Android phone lacking integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, etc, without something else to make it compelling (like the Kindle Fire), would be a pretty tough sell I think.
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    That's true, but if say, Microsoft, wanted to, they could clearly create replacements for those services. Now, it's arguable whether an Android phone with Hotmail + Bing Maps integration is even an improvement, but at least it's possible. In China, most Android phones are already sold without Google services: http://www.radiofreemobile.com/android-in-china-no-google-here/ http://www.radiofreemobile.com/android-in-china-no-google-he...
blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
The guy that ran windows phone is now the head of the entire windows division. His name is Terry Myerson. I doubt very seriously that he is going to shitcan windows phone.
- raptormissle 13y ago
  Windows Phone is already shit canned. MS just isn't smart enough to get it.
  - theg2 13y ago
    Quick, give us more of your amazing market insight!
    - raptormissle 13y ago
      Sure, no problem. Windows Phone will be cancelled in 2015 after MS realizes it's been a massive failure. They'll also lay off 30,000-40,000 people in 2014. And they'll quietly sell off the device division they bought for 7 Billion dollars and take a massive loss.
      - blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
        I think that you missed my point. The guys that was in charge of developing Windows Phone 8 is now the guy in charge of Windows. Windows Phone won't be canceled, it and Windows will become the same thing...just with form factor differences. Same thing with XBOX OS. It's Windows. Things that make sense for the desktop won't be on the XBOX or the Phone...and vice versa. You sound like you aren't a metro fan...They do need to make sure that the desktop is still a useful tool...but here's the thing. In 5 years you will be hard pressed to find a monitor of any size or type that isn't touch enabled. As to selling off the device division...I don't see that happening either. MS needed Nokia's supply chain, and delivery systems. They needed to have a division that knows how to take a device from the drawing board to the shelf quickly...which Nokia should be able to do now that it doesn't have to make money. It's weird, but taking a long term view with the device department just like bing and xbox gives the people in that org some room to move. I find it crazy how much people dislike one company while another company...also a legal fiction that exists solely to make money...that company is ok. They "get" me...or "it". Like Google's PR moves like "solving death"? Seriously? They sell advertising. Meaning that they sell YOU. I"m under no illusions about MS prior behavior. I'm also under no illusions that Apple or Google are somehow different. They aren't.
wambotron 13y ago
I don't have much to say about the forking issue, but it want to say this: I own and LOVE my Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 822). I started on android (Droid X) after deciding the iPhone was too small, bought another one (Droid Razr Maxx), and finally ended up at Windows Phone after playing with it on some online simulator. I wouldn't go back to android or ios. I don't think they're as usable or fit me as well. Anecdotally, my wife also joined me on Windows Phone recently after dropping her android phone. She started on iPhone, lost it, was gifted my Razr Maxx, then broke it. She liked the UI of ios, but loved Swype on android and said she'd never go back to ios. Then while we waited a couple weeks for our phone upgrade, she played with my phone and ended up really liking it. She now says it is her favorite phone (Nokia Lumia 920). She likes the camera and the excellent apps from Nokia. Obviously I don't want MS to switch to android. There may be more apps, but so many are of such poor quality that it is entirely irrelevant to me. Same goes for the apple store. It's almost overwhelming how many bad apps there are.
- tmzt 13y ago
  What feature or features of Windows Phone drive you to love it? How would you to describe the experience in relation to Android or iOS? Are there multiple web browser options?
  - theg2 13y ago
    Honestly IE on WP8 is a great experience so I haven't felt the need to look but no, all browsers use IE on the phone. And for me the key feature is everything just works. Theres no need or feeling that I need to flash a rom (which I felt I has to do endlessly on Android). The integration with the ecosystem is nice, sure it's missing some core features iOS and Android have after years of beating MS to the market but hopefully it'll show up. The major thing its missing is device integration, my fitbit not syncing saddens me everyday and theres not much I can do about it.
  - TheAnimus 13y ago
    For me, it's the design of Metro UI. I remember the first WIMP computer I had (well my dad had) an A5000, with 4mb of RAM (this had to be soldered on, and was considered wantantly excessive). If I wanted 256 colours, resolution would suffer as it lacked VRAM. Windows 98 had gradient title bars, I this was a big deal. I remember being impressed by how smooth it looked. I wasn't completely used to high resolution, high colour systems. Metro shuns this, information is put above anything else, the fact that I only want to see my mobile signal if I've a problem by default, it is hidden unless I have none. It doesn't take long before this really starts to make sense. I'm tired, I don't want to be bamboozled by information, I want important stuff put up above anything else. It's exactly the same reason Web Browsers have 'hidden' away the lesser used functions. I type this on a desktop with 2 * 30" of screen real estate, yet I still want my browser to hide the file menu, have no favourites bar, not waste space for the tabs and the title bar. You get where I'm going with this. I also have a few Android devices, and a iPad, I find it almost tiring to use them in a way, I'm no longer impressed by having a 3d glass effect or similar, it just impedes my usability. I don't like skeuomorphic patterns, I'm an veteran user, I don't need familiarity, I want information presented as effortlessly as possible. That said, I hate the lack of a notification timeline. I am genuinely saddened to see how Windows Phone team appears to have lost their release cycle momentum (three years ago major features came fast and frequent, now... not much).
ksherlock 13y ago
Android is already forked[1]. Gingerbread: 20% Ice Cream Sandwich: 16% Jelly Bean: 60% KitKat: 2% 1: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
- scholia 13y ago
  Not forked, fragmented.
- raptormissle 13y ago
  idiot.
cwyers 13y ago
I want to like the article, because the idea that Microsoft should fork Android is kinda silly. The idea that nobody should do it is even sillier, though. The article, in the course of explaining why it can't be done, names two major examples of where it already has been done successfully -- Amazon's Kindle ecosystem and any number of Chinese OEMs. It doesn't mention other (admittedly less successful) forks, like B&N's Nook tablets or the Ouya. It also doesn't mention how far along the road Samsung was to having the ability to ship Android without Google Mobile Services, until Samsung and Google made a peace treaty that involved sending Motorola off to live with Lenovo. Yes, if you fork Android, you lose Google's ecosystem. It's not impossible to duplicate, though -- Amazon's done it, Samsung just about did it. And Microsoft already owns all the things it'd need to do it -- that's how Windows Phone has an ecosystem. Losing Google's ecosystem isn't the downside of forking Android, it's the entire point. Once you've done it, though, you need to convince people to use your fork instead of Google's. Microsoft's success at prying people towards Windows Phone and away from Android can basically boil down to: 1) The ability to run on lower-powered and thus cheaper hardware and still provide a polished experience, and 2) Nokia's build quality. Switching OS cores to AOSP instead of the current Windows Phone OS wouldn't entirely solve Microsoft's app problem (look at the Amazon app store), and it would piss away the only competitive advantage their platform (as opposed to their OEM partner) has against Google's Android experience. Microsoft isn't Amazon -- they aren't a cloud company looking for an OS to give to consumers, they already have an OS. They just need to make their ecosystem more appealing, and giving up on Windows Phone now wouldn't do that.
- recuter 13y ago
  > 1) The ability to run on lower-powered and thus cheaper hardware and still provide a polished experience, and 2) Nokia's build quality. The Moto G has put a price floor on things. Even if Microsoft/Nokia could limbo under it, why would anybody buy a basically-the-same Nokia for $150 instead of $179 Real Android? Its too late, these are commodities.
  - cwyers 13y ago
    You can get a Nokia 520/521 for a little over a third of $150.
mwcampbell 13y ago
As the developer of a couple of small Android apps, I know that I would rather post them to a Microsoft or Nokia Android app store than port them to Windows Phone. Of course, it helps that I specifically avoided using the Google Play Services APIs, but even if I had used those APIs, it would be easier to make my apps Google-independent than to port them to a whole other platform with miniscule market share.
stefantalpalaru 13y ago
What do they mean unforkable? Cyanogen Mod[1] has been doing it for years. [1]: http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ http://www.cyanogenmod.org/
- bad_user 13y ago
  Amazon also did it.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  Cyanogen Mod cheats by backing up GMS prior to install.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
Dianne Hackborn (who works on Android) responds in the comments: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neither-microsoft-nokia-nor-anyone-else-should-fork-android-its-unforkable/?comments=1&post=26199423#comment-26199423 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neithe...
mkr-hn 13y ago
Not having Google Play hasn't limited my Kindle Fire experience so far. All the important apps are on the Amazon store, and most of the rest are low quality IAP bait.
ryen 13y ago
Has Microsoft, Nokia, etc considered some kind of app api bridge or outright code converter tool for Android/Java apps into their own native SDKs? Seems that if a lack of apps is your main problem then easing the time to port an app to your ecosystem should be a high priority. Sure you'd have to re-implement some proprietary api features, but they likely already have equivalents in the Windows phone SDK (location services, in-app purchasing, etc).
css771 13y ago
AOSP is open source, period. Just because Google apps aren't doesn't make the entire thing closed. The binary blobs and baseband firmware might as well be on any "open" phone. The issue here is not whether Android phones are open or not, it's whether phones in general can truly be "open" or not.
DannyBee 13y ago
Oh, another Peter Bright ("Microsoft Editor at Ars Technica") clickbait article. Yay. The author of such fine pieces as: "Firefox ships, but we shouldn’t really pay attention" "Android OEMs should hear Microsoft, Nokia out on Google-Motorola combo" "Android tablets may provide sales, but profitability is another matter." etc Sadly, judging by the old argument rehash going on here so far, it looks like it's working :(
erikb 13y ago
Hm. It sounds a little like Google would be doing really bad to seize control over their infrastructure. But since they do, the whole Android world has improved, at least in my opinion. Think about the upgrade complains we had a few years back. As far as I know that's gone now.(?) So I think it's actually good what Google is doing in that regard. From my own experience with developing FOSS is also that other people don't try to integrate their solutions into your system. Everybody heads off and makes their own stuff. Stupid forking is no problem for a project like GCC. But Android is a brand name. And if other people fork it and head off doing their own stuff and fail, then it is always Android that fails. And really as a developer I also fight for the freedom of software, but as an end user I want to be able to go to a shop and buy an "Android phone" and it just works. Therefore, yes, please, Google take control! Good job!
tmzt 13y ago
There's a response from Dianne Hackborn (hackbod) of Android. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neither-microsoft-nokia-nor-anyone-else-should-fork-android-its-unforkable/?comments=1&post=26199423 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neithe...

178 points by AndrewDucker 13y ago

Interesting article. I'm intrigued as to how CynaogenMod handles the lack of Google Play APIs - it seems to be skirted around on their website.

AndrewDucker 13y ago
If you run it on your existing phone then it extracts the Google Play apps from it and re-uploads them afterwards. However, their new phone is actually certified, and therefore gets them "properly": http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/19/the-oppo-n1-is-officially-the-first-google-cts-certified-cyanogenmod-phone-can-run-google-apps-suite-officially/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/19/the-oppo-n1-is-offic...
- mpettitt 13y ago
  That's, hmm, interesting from a competitive and privacy advocate perspective. It means that whilst Prism Break and similar websites are advocating it, the key parts which report back to Google are still in place, since they aren't the bits being replaced.
  - tc104 13y ago
    No they're not. You have to manually install the closed source Google frameworks and apps -- so if they're "in place", it's only because you put them there yourself.
- muyuu 13y ago
  Woha that looks pretty good. I didn't know about the Oppo N1.

SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago

Microsoft is just not going to abandon Windows Phone, for fundamentally these reasons: "If it's a core business function – do it yourself, no matter what." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard-lets-go-shopping.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard... MS certainly will view "a computer in every pocket, and all of them running MS Software" as core to their future. If they do abandon Windows phone, it will be because that has changed. In the meantime, MS is a company with a track record of plugging away until version x of the product is good enough to succeed.

snom380 13y ago
Agreed, although that track record stopped pretty much after IE and XBox.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  It's still happening, Azure is being iterated and improved a lot.
fidotron 13y ago
You forget "Embrace, extend . . " The other mobile ecosystems are now so far in front they have no viable option other than the embracing and extending. Android happens to be flexible enough at the software layer (not just licensing) to make such a thing remarkably easy to do, given the resources.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  > The other mobile ecosystems are now so far in front they have no viable option other than the embracing and extending. That's your opinion. I doubt that it would get any traction inside MS. It just doesn't make sense - are MS more likely to take the android kernel and reskin it to look like WinPhone, or continue to believe that writing OS kernels is a core company competence ... which it is, really. If one day MS could not write OS kernels any more they would be in serious trouble. It's a core business function, so they do it themselves. How would re-skinning android help MS get "in front" anyway? They have technically solid product in Windows Phone, they need other things to make it win, and they know it. Hence, the whole Nokia deal.

Oculus 13y ago

This has been an ongoing cycle for all of Android. First people complain about Android lagging behind iOS so Google starts moving their services to GSM so they can avoid having to send updates through manufacturers. Then people complain Google isn't open enough so they start baking it into ASOP which takes forever to rollout. On the cycle goes..

AndrewDucker 13y ago
An alternative would be to use GSM as a shim, that just calls through to AOSP if the functionality is there, or fills in the functionality if it's not. But I'm not seeing the advantage to Google of doing that - as everyone gets GSM if they go for the major phones.
- vetinari 13y ago
  There is one factor that causes what's going into GMS and what into AOSP, that the article conveniently glosses over: Functionality in GMS requries server side support. It can be computational capacity or server-side dabatases (fused location with wifi and cell towers? Google caller id? Map tiles? Storage? Server side push? Cloud support for games? All of them require something on the other side of connection). Unless someone is willing to step in and provide this, there will be no AOSP equivalent.
  - wyager 13y ago
    >Functionality in GMS requries server side support. Really? My calendar client, mail client, and launcher require server side support from Google?
    - vetinari 13y ago
      Launcher certainly does - where do you think that Google Now prepares it's data? Launcher without Google Now is part of AOSP. Both Calendar and Email are available in AOSP, Play Store has their binary builds for those that for some reason do not have current Android version. They can have at least current apps.

higherpurpose 13y ago

So Microsoft should fork Ubuntu Touch then. Problem solved ;)

tc104 13y ago
Microsoft should just fork off and die.

Zigurd 13y ago

Amazon has obviously forked Android successfully and has sold a lot of tablets. OPhone is an Android derived OS used in China, and other Chinese OEMs without access to the Google ecosystem have to do similar things.

Mithaldu 13y ago
I own an Amazon Kindle Fire. It sucks. Out of the box it can do almost nothing that normal android devices can. I had to root it in a very frustrating and glitchy process to be able to install google app store software and even of that many don't install or don't work. What amazon has successfully done is build a kindle based on linux as opposed to whatever is on the original kindles. It's a very limited thing and nothing more than a kiosk to amazon purchases. The only reason people buy it is because of brand loyalty to the kindle device series they knew before.
- bitwize 13y ago
  The original Kindles, afaik, were based on Linux, with I guess a custom stack on top.
  - briandh 13y ago
    Yep, the kernel sources are available on the Amazon website: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200203720 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
- king_jester 13y ago
  > I had to root it in a very frustrating and glitchy process to be able to install google app store software and even of that many don't install or don't work. The root process for Kindle devices is very annoying. However, there is a reason why most app store apps don't work on Kindle. Unless a developer is specifically thinking about supporting a device without Google APIs, they are likely not to correctly handle when API calls fail or aren't available. Also, the Kindle Fires to date have had some quirks here and there that don't work exactly as you would expect, so a developer would probably have to actually test their app for Kindle (which is its own pain due to how bad the Amazon developer portal is).

fredgrott 13y ago

the article author does not know what eff they are speaking about: The AOSP counterparts are buggy, feature deprived, and by at least some accounts, barely maintained. If that sentence was true than stuff like the phone app would not work, obviously it does :) Author does not realize that AOSP is a snapshot of the full android OS

higherpurpose 13y ago

The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both". That's basically another way or saying "you can fragment the platform all you want, or choose compatibility (i.e. let Google control the platform across OEMs)". Remember when people were yelling from the rooftops "Android is so fragmented, and why it's always behind iOS! Google, give us standardization already!!"? Linux' biggest problem has been that Microsoft moved much faster to get Windows on as many PCs as possible through certain corporate deals, but in terms of gaining market share, the Linux ecosystem has also worked against itself, but allowing everyone to fork it into hundreds of different distributions, all doing different stuff, and with barely even a weak app store across several distributions. Linux is "everywhere", because everyone can fork it, and Android has certainly benefited from this strategy in the early years, too, but that seems to be an antithesis to an "ecosystem". As we can observe, even though "Linux is everywhere" in all sorts of devices, there's no significant "ecosystem". Google wants to keep and evolve the Android ecosystem, because that makes it much easier for users, and also developers to develop on top of a well standardized ecosystem of devices and OS images. I guess for an proper ecosystem to thrive, it needs to be controlled and standardized as much as possible, with restrictions for OEMs and carriers. The only alternative for the others, if they really want to start from the Android base, will be to form their own ecosystem, but that's very hard, unless we get to the point where only the web matters on mobile devices, too.

_pmf_ 13y ago
> The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both". Or you can be like Apple, controlling everything while still taking the liberty of shitting down developer's throats (who are delighted to be at the receiving end, for some reason).

fidotron 13y ago

It's not a poor idea at all. The main example used to be Amazon, but now it's China. China are going to be the source of a lot of Google headaches, thanks to their inability to operate there leading to a majority of Android devices shipped there not including their services at all, giving a critical mass to the market for applications without their components. Hugo Barra ended up at a Chinese company (Xiaomi) and Google just invested in Lenovo, but unless there's a big policy change on the way the Android/China beast will get further and further out of control. MS absolutely should weigh in with a privacy hardened Android with great Exchange and Active Directory support (and Nokia Maps). It would be huge, and it would force Apple and Google right on to the defensive.

DrPizza 13y ago
But it would have lousy app compatibility... so what advantage would it offer over Windows Phone?
- fidotron 13y ago
  It would have about as lousy app compat as the Kindle Fire, which is to say nothing like as much as Google would like you to believe. I'll say it: the Amazon APIs are actually better than some of the Google equivalents too. MS can play exactly the same game, but with the muscle of small business users. Windows Phone simply has negligible actual interest from the dev community because it's too much of a technical island, and tied to the whole Metro disaster.
- Touche 13y ago
  It would have better app compatibility than Windows Phone.
BugBrother 13y ago
I don't get why this censoring, which stop US businesses like Google, doesn't lead to a trade war? The Americans are usually not shy about those? Edit: fidotron, to me it seemed China tried to get rid of Google (internal hacking attacks, etc). That level of aggression is normal for China?

qwerta 13y ago

Many companies produce Android devices without google maps, gmail, play store... It solves a lot of privacy issues. In 5 years smartphones will be cheap commodity and there will be also good opensource community fork. I can see Debian on Android.

cdibona 13y ago
Five years? You can buy smart phones for 30$ in shenzhen electronic malls today. I don't know your threshold for cheap, but considering feature phones sit at 25 to 20 in the same places.. The future is now :-)
- mikecane 13y ago
  >>>You can buy smart phones for 30$ in shenzhen electronic malls today. 1) That's in Shenzen. Might as well be Mars for most people. When Shenzen hardware is sourced by global brands, they usually have a generous markup where that "$30" quickly disappears. 2) How long do they last? "Oh, but they're cheap. If it breaks in 3 months, just buy another!" No. People just don't want to go through possibly losing data and having hardware just suddenly drop dead on them. So, yeah. I'll go with the guy who said five years. That's for stuff that won't drop dead in three months.
  - _pmf_ 13y ago
    > That's in Shenzen. Might as well be Mars for most people. Ah, yes, if only some smart people could invent some kind of global network for people to buy things remotely, and created some site where you could order these things. They could call it, for example, Ali Baba.
    - sixbrx 13y ago
      Have a link?
      - briandh 13y ago

rbanffy 13y ago

Microsoft could build a fully functional Mono-based Windows Phone experience on top of the AOSP core minus the Dalvik VM. The only question would be "what for"? They'd gain nothing from it. They already have a more or less portable kernel upon which they can build phones.

pjmlp 13y ago
Besides, since the Visual 2013 launch event, Xamarin has become an official Microsoft partner.
ahomescu1 13y ago
It sounds to me like what they need is exactly the other way around: Dalvik VM + all the Java APIs in Android, on top of the WP kernel (or they could go with Linux, but I think the kernel doesn't matter as much).
- Maarten88 13y ago
  This. But there is one problem with that strategy: if Microsoft would support running Android apps on Windows Phone, there would be little incentive left to write native WP apps. Everybody would only write for Android, making it hard to differentiate the platform.
  - contextfree 13y ago
    I wonder if it would be feasible to support Java and maybe some (most? some well-defined base of?) Android APIs in "native" Windows apps, in a similar way to how JavaScript and HTML are supported via WinRT's notion of language projections. Although this would mean narrowing the goal from "making Android apps run on Windows" to "making Android apps easier to port to and maintain on Windows".

briandh 13y ago

This piece seems to imply that only full source compatibility with Android (including Play Services) would be valuable to the Windows Phone platform. I don't think that's the case. I think getting 80% of the way, combined with the Microsoft brand plus quality devices Nokia would be enough to entice plenty of developers to the platform. I think a more interesting question is whether Microsoft should fork AOSP as a whole, or place an Android compatibility layer atop Windows Phone, a la BlackBerry 10.

SoapSeller 13y ago

Didn't Google won the the "Oracle vs Google" case on the ground that APIs aren't patentable? What prevent MS(or any other big player) to re-implement GMS?

BugBrother 13y ago
It would be funny if Google copied Microsoft's monopolist strategies to avoid Windows cloning (APIs are ever changing and complex, especially regarding bug compatibility, no protocol docs+obfuscation, etc)... :-)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
baliza 13y ago
Yes, but Oracle has appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (with Google filing a cross-appeal).[0] As of December 4, 2013, there are indications the three Federal Circuit judges "may be leaning against Google's position."[1][2][3] [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google [1]http://goo.gl/KQ6W6w http://goo.gl/KQ6W6w [2]http://goo.gl/2GpZH4 http://goo.gl/2GpZH4 [3]http://goo.gl/1aJBrT http://goo.gl/1aJBrT
scholia 13y ago
The "Oracle vs Google" case isn't over, it's up for appeal...

avenger123 13y ago

The title is a bit of a linkbait for sure. I don't think anyone at this point can say that Windows Phone is a non-player. It's going to be around and it can only get better. Suggesting that Microsoft would fork Android is more wishful thinking than anything else. Why not just say - "Android is unforkable" and leave it at that.

pmelendez 13y ago
>"I don't think anyone at this point can say that Windows Phone is a non-player." I wouldn't be so sure of that. Just this week I read a comment suggesting the same forking android thing and that windows phone is over.
- _random_ 13y ago
  Would you like me to write a comment suggesting that Apple is opting for using Windows for their products? I can write some other comments as well.
jeroen 13y ago
From http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/07/satya-nadella-mobile-windows-phone-android http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/07/satya-nade... , which is linked at the beginning of the article: "To add to all the advice being ladled out to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief, here’s another piece: stop bothering with Windows Phone. It’s a waste of money which will never pay off. Instead, focus the efforts of Microsoft and soon-to-be subsidiary Nokia on forking Android .." So at least someone with an audience is saying that MS should fork Android, and Ars is responding to that.
- x0054 13y ago
  People with an audience say all kinds of idiotic things. Arguing that Microsoft should fork another OS is like saying that Ford should license the Toyota Prius design and concentrate on their core competency of putting Ford badges on cars.
zmmmmm 13y ago

pmelendez 13y ago

Well since that is a comment that pop up in here very frequently (that Nokia and now MS should fork Android) I am very happy to see that I am not the only one who thinks that would be a bad idea.

bane 13y ago

"typed on my Kindle Fire"

edderly 13y ago

Interesting analysis but I think he overcomplicates the situation. From a third party app point of view you can build your against Android API level X, or a corresponding ‘Google api’ release associated with the given API level. An app built against API level X will work seamlessly on the corresponding AOSP release. So far, unless you’re interested in more tightly integrating into Google services, you don’t need to build your app against the Google api, but obviously Google are interested in app developers using their custom apis. As far as the increasing integration of core applications into GMS is concerned, it is rather overblown to call the AOSP versions broken or buggy. AOSP remains the base platform for the hardware ecosystem to develop their reference designs, AOSP has to work and does work well. The hardware domain is a big problem for rolling your own OS from scratch, the associated software stack to support a given piece of hardware is non-trivial. Even generic Linux is now being supplanted by Android variants in the embedded space especially if you’re interested in graphics or multimedia. However, also consider that the most successful player in the Android space, Samsung, have pursued a strategy of lightly forking Android with their own features and customizations without breaking compatibility deliberately.

tc104 13y ago

Yawwwn. This is just handwaving and guesswork by a barely competent tech journo.

stusmall 13y ago

The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here. It is a complete and fully functional mobile OS under extremely permissive licensing. Pull it! Change it! Build it! Fork it! Whatever! AOSP is open source. Look at the closed source services google adds. As far as I know they are all related to google services(Someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Their store, their maps, their email, their location services. This isn't needed in the open source distro and it works great without them. Also there are a lot of restriction on the brand and how you use it when release an Android product. That isn't unique to Android. See firefox vs iceweasel. Sure sometimes it gets annoying that a lot of Android design decisions are made behind closed doors and in working in the framework sometimes I have to play the game of "Guess what the Google engineer was thinking" because documentation can be scarce. Also from what I've heard sending changing upstream isn't an easy process. These things are nice and make it an easy product to work with... but aren't required for it to be truly open source. The code is there in a series of open git repos and under Apache license. That is open source in my book.

ageorgia 13y ago
>The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here. >AOSP is open source. Clever switch there from Android to AOSP, no wonder its the top comment. The difference between them is what the author is talking about. You just prove his point.
Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
I think the issue is that all of those Google services are really what makes Android Android. An Android phone lacking integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, etc, without something else to make it compelling (like the Kindle Fire), would be a pretty tough sell I think.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  That's true, but if say, Microsoft, wanted to, they could clearly create replacements for those services. Now, it's arguable whether an Android phone with Hotmail + Bing Maps integration is even an improvement, but at least it's possible. In China, most Android phones are already sold without Google services: http://www.radiofreemobile.com/android-in-china-no-google-here/ http://www.radiofreemobile.com/android-in-china-no-google-he...

blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago

The guy that ran windows phone is now the head of the entire windows division. His name is Terry Myerson. I doubt very seriously that he is going to shitcan windows phone.

raptormissle 13y ago
Windows Phone is already shit canned. MS just isn't smart enough to get it.
- theg2 13y ago
  Quick, give us more of your amazing market insight!
  - raptormissle 13y ago
    Sure, no problem. Windows Phone will be cancelled in 2015 after MS realizes it's been a massive failure. They'll also lay off 30,000-40,000 people in 2014. And they'll quietly sell off the device division they bought for 7 Billion dollars and take a massive loss.
    - blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
      I think that you missed my point. The guys that was in charge of developing Windows Phone 8 is now the guy in charge of Windows. Windows Phone won't be canceled, it and Windows will become the same thing...just with form factor differences. Same thing with XBOX OS. It's Windows. Things that make sense for the desktop won't be on the XBOX or the Phone...and vice versa. You sound like you aren't a metro fan...They do need to make sure that the desktop is still a useful tool...but here's the thing. In 5 years you will be hard pressed to find a monitor of any size or type that isn't touch enabled. As to selling off the device division...I don't see that happening either. MS needed Nokia's supply chain, and delivery systems. They needed to have a division that knows how to take a device from the drawing board to the shelf quickly...which Nokia should be able to do now that it doesn't have to make money. It's weird, but taking a long term view with the device department just like bing and xbox gives the people in that org some room to move. I find it crazy how much people dislike one company while another company...also a legal fiction that exists solely to make money...that company is ok. They "get" me...or "it". Like Google's PR moves like "solving death"? Seriously? They sell advertising. Meaning that they sell YOU. I"m under no illusions about MS prior behavior. I'm also under no illusions that Apple or Google are somehow different. They aren't.

wambotron 13y ago

I don't have much to say about the forking issue, but it want to say this: I own and LOVE my Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 822). I started on android (Droid X) after deciding the iPhone was too small, bought another one (Droid Razr Maxx), and finally ended up at Windows Phone after playing with it on some online simulator. I wouldn't go back to android or ios. I don't think they're as usable or fit me as well. Anecdotally, my wife also joined me on Windows Phone recently after dropping her android phone. She started on iPhone, lost it, was gifted my Razr Maxx, then broke it. She liked the UI of ios, but loved Swype on android and said she'd never go back to ios. Then while we waited a couple weeks for our phone upgrade, she played with my phone and ended up really liking it. She now says it is her favorite phone (Nokia Lumia 920). She likes the camera and the excellent apps from Nokia. Obviously I don't want MS to switch to android. There may be more apps, but so many are of such poor quality that it is entirely irrelevant to me. Same goes for the apple store. It's almost overwhelming how many bad apps there are.

tmzt 13y ago
What feature or features of Windows Phone drive you to love it? How would you to describe the experience in relation to Android or iOS? Are there multiple web browser options?
- theg2 13y ago
  Honestly IE on WP8 is a great experience so I haven't felt the need to look but no, all browsers use IE on the phone. And for me the key feature is everything just works. Theres no need or feeling that I need to flash a rom (which I felt I has to do endlessly on Android). The integration with the ecosystem is nice, sure it's missing some core features iOS and Android have after years of beating MS to the market but hopefully it'll show up. The major thing its missing is device integration, my fitbit not syncing saddens me everyday and theres not much I can do about it.
- TheAnimus 13y ago
  For me, it's the design of Metro UI. I remember the first WIMP computer I had (well my dad had) an A5000, with 4mb of RAM (this had to be soldered on, and was considered wantantly excessive). If I wanted 256 colours, resolution would suffer as it lacked VRAM. Windows 98 had gradient title bars, I this was a big deal. I remember being impressed by how smooth it looked. I wasn't completely used to high resolution, high colour systems. Metro shuns this, information is put above anything else, the fact that I only want to see my mobile signal if I've a problem by default, it is hidden unless I have none. It doesn't take long before this really starts to make sense. I'm tired, I don't want to be bamboozled by information, I want important stuff put up above anything else. It's exactly the same reason Web Browsers have 'hidden' away the lesser used functions. I type this on a desktop with 2 * 30" of screen real estate, yet I still want my browser to hide the file menu, have no favourites bar, not waste space for the tabs and the title bar. You get where I'm going with this. I also have a few Android devices, and a iPad, I find it almost tiring to use them in a way, I'm no longer impressed by having a 3d glass effect or similar, it just impedes my usability. I don't like skeuomorphic patterns, I'm an veteran user, I don't need familiarity, I want information presented as effortlessly as possible. That said, I hate the lack of a notification timeline. I am genuinely saddened to see how Windows Phone team appears to have lost their release cycle momentum (three years ago major features came fast and frequent, now... not much).

ksherlock 13y ago

Android is already forked[1]. Gingerbread: 20% Ice Cream Sandwich: 16% Jelly Bean: 60% KitKat: 2% 1: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

scholia 13y ago
Not forked, fragmented.
raptormissle 13y ago
idiot.

cwyers 13y ago

I want to like the article, because the idea that Microsoft should fork Android is kinda silly. The idea that nobody should do it is even sillier, though. The article, in the course of explaining why it can't be done, names two major examples of where it already has been done successfully -- Amazon's Kindle ecosystem and any number of Chinese OEMs. It doesn't mention other (admittedly less successful) forks, like B&N's Nook tablets or the Ouya. It also doesn't mention how far along the road Samsung was to having the ability to ship Android without Google Mobile Services, until Samsung and Google made a peace treaty that involved sending Motorola off to live with Lenovo. Yes, if you fork Android, you lose Google's ecosystem. It's not impossible to duplicate, though -- Amazon's done it, Samsung just about did it. And Microsoft already owns all the things it'd need to do it -- that's how Windows Phone has an ecosystem. Losing Google's ecosystem isn't the downside of forking Android, it's the entire point. Once you've done it, though, you need to convince people to use your fork instead of Google's. Microsoft's success at prying people towards Windows Phone and away from Android can basically boil down to: 1) The ability to run on lower-powered and thus cheaper hardware and still provide a polished experience, and 2) Nokia's build quality. Switching OS cores to AOSP instead of the current Windows Phone OS wouldn't entirely solve Microsoft's app problem (look at the Amazon app store), and it would piss away the only competitive advantage their platform (as opposed to their OEM partner) has against Google's Android experience. Microsoft isn't Amazon -- they aren't a cloud company looking for an OS to give to consumers, they already have an OS. They just need to make their ecosystem more appealing, and giving up on Windows Phone now wouldn't do that.

recuter 13y ago
> 1) The ability to run on lower-powered and thus cheaper hardware and still provide a polished experience, and 2) Nokia's build quality. The Moto G has put a price floor on things. Even if Microsoft/Nokia could limbo under it, why would anybody buy a basically-the-same Nokia for $150 instead of $179 Real Android? Its too late, these are commodities.
- cwyers 13y ago
  You can get a Nokia 520/521 for a little over a third of $150.

mwcampbell 13y ago

As the developer of a couple of small Android apps, I know that I would rather post them to a Microsoft or Nokia Android app store than port them to Windows Phone. Of course, it helps that I specifically avoided using the Google Play Services APIs, but even if I had used those APIs, it would be easier to make my apps Google-independent than to port them to a whole other platform with miniscule market share.

stefantalpalaru 13y ago

What do they mean unforkable? Cyanogen Mod[1] has been doing it for years. [1]: http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ http://www.cyanogenmod.org/

bad_user 13y ago
Amazon also did it.
TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
Cyanogen Mod cheats by backing up GMS prior to install.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

Dianne Hackborn (who works on Android) responds in the comments: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neither-microsoft-nokia-nor-anyone-else-should-fork-android-its-unforkable/?comments=1&post=26199423#comment-26199423 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neithe...

mkr-hn 13y ago

Not having Google Play hasn't limited my Kindle Fire experience so far. All the important apps are on the Amazon store, and most of the rest are low quality IAP bait.

ryen 13y ago

Has Microsoft, Nokia, etc considered some kind of app api bridge or outright code converter tool for Android/Java apps into their own native SDKs? Seems that if a lack of apps is your main problem then easing the time to port an app to your ecosystem should be a high priority. Sure you'd have to re-implement some proprietary api features, but they likely already have equivalents in the Windows phone SDK (location services, in-app purchasing, etc).

css771 13y ago

AOSP is open source, period. Just because Google apps aren't doesn't make the entire thing closed. The binary blobs and baseband firmware might as well be on any "open" phone. The issue here is not whether Android phones are open or not, it's whether phones in general can truly be "open" or not.

DannyBee 13y ago

Oh, another Peter Bright ("Microsoft Editor at Ars Technica") clickbait article. Yay. The author of such fine pieces as: "Firefox ships, but we shouldn’t really pay attention" "Android OEMs should hear Microsoft, Nokia out on Google-Motorola combo" "Android tablets may provide sales, but profitability is another matter." etc Sadly, judging by the old argument rehash going on here so far, it looks like it's working :(

erikb 13y ago

Hm. It sounds a little like Google would be doing really bad to seize control over their infrastructure. But since they do, the whole Android world has improved, at least in my opinion. Think about the upgrade complains we had a few years back. As far as I know that's gone now.(?) So I think it's actually good what Google is doing in that regard. From my own experience with developing FOSS is also that other people don't try to integrate their solutions into your system. Everybody heads off and makes their own stuff. Stupid forking is no problem for a project like GCC. But Android is a brand name. And if other people fork it and head off doing their own stuff and fail, then it is always Android that fails. And really as a developer I also fight for the freedom of software, but as an end user I want to be able to go to a shop and buy an "Android phone" and it just works. Therefore, yes, please, Google take control! Good job!

tmzt 13y ago

There's a response from Dianne Hackborn (hackbod) of Android. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neither-microsoft-nokia-nor-anyone-else-should-fork-android-its-unforkable/?comments=1&post=26199423 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neithe...