4 ms·
> "The most well known simulator to any Android developer is probably (and ironically) the one that iOS developers use from Apple." I get it. Ironically Google
by mantraxB 12y ago
> "The most well known simulator to any Android developer is probably (and ironically) the one that iOS developers use from Apple."
I get it. Ironically Google didn't copy Apple for once, and their solution turned out bad. So now they need to ironically copy it, please, Google, pretty please. But the real irony is that Android developers both get to boast about Android being open source, yet when they need something, they go beg Google implement it for them.
And Google really can't implement an efficient iOS simulator for them, because there's no Android desktop operating system.
You see, while it's getting a bit old to hear Tim Cook brag at every keynote about how "only Apple can make everything work seamlessly together", truth is, they indeed share a kernel and over half their APIs between their desktop and mobile operating systems. This is why the iOS simulator is that good. Tim Cook knows it.
While a supposed "thin layer" Android simulator has to interface all its APIs with Windows and then do it all over again for OSX, and then again for Linux (common POSIX APIs notwithstanding), every version with its unique quirks and bugs, not matching the platform it's simulating.
So instead of that ball of pain, Google chose the easier task of virtualizing the actual hardware and then running the whole Android stack on top of that.
In their particular circumstances, this was, and remains the only feasible way of doing it, and no amount of blog whining will change that.
Turns out you really can't copy some things so easily.
- nailer 12y ago> Google really can't implement an efficient iOS simulator for them, because there's no Android desktop operating system. The x86 Android build provided by GenyMotion (cited in the article) performs at the same speed as the x86 iPhone simulator. It has two major issues: - The UI is quirky (but usable) - It's expensive - GenyMotion devices have no Google Play by default. Want to test how your website runs in Chrome? Spend ages hacking Google Play onto the Android device. Google could fix all of these things easily.
- ZoFreX 12y agoThe x86 images provided by Google run just as fast as the Genymotion images, and have Google Play. Just FYI.
- nailer 12y agoThanks for the suggestion. I spent an hour setting these up today - despite supposedly using x64, HAXE etc they're unusably slow. I have no idea what's wrong. The UI tools run at unacceptable latency (they're Java based) so I can't debug easily. This is on a 2013 Haswell MBA with 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. Google may as well throw the official emulator away.
- ZoFreX 12y agoWhen you run the emulator, do you get this message (on stdout): "HAX is working and emulator runs in fast virt mode"? Did you enable the "Use host GPU" option?