It was unfortunately obvious that the writer had insufficient tech chops when use the phrase<p>"a post-API programming model"<p>But pressing on how somehow manages to blame the lack of updates to android phones on the modularity of the Linux kernel. The joke of course being that linux is monolithic and googles new OS is a microkernel ergo more modular.<p>The quote is "...however. I also have to imagine the Android update problem (a symptom of Linux’s modularity) will at last be solved by Andromeda"<p>Its hilarious that he can somehow defying all sanity ascribe androids update issue to an imagined defect in Linux. Android phones don't get updated because for the manufacturers ensuring their pile of hacks works with a newer version of android would represent a non trivial amount of work for the oem whom already has your money. The only way they can get more of your money is to sell you a new phone which they hope to do between 1-2 years from now.<p>In short offering an update for your current hardware would simultaneously annoy some users who fear change, add little to those who plan to upgrade to a new model anyway, decrease the chance that a minority would upgrade, and cost them money to implement.<p>Its not merely not a flaw in the underlying linux kernel its not a technical issue at all.
It bothers me that Google does not seem particularly interested in doing the one thing that would make their Android platform absolutely dominant: Allow Chrome to run Android apps on Mac and Windows.<p>Google has already done 90% of the necessary work by adding Android apps to ChromeOS. <i>Two and a half years ago</i> it created "App Runtime for Chrome" which demonstrated that Android apps could run on Windows and Mac in a limited, buggy way [1]. If Google had put meaningful effort into developing such a strategy we would by now have a relatively simple way to develop software which runs on 99% of laptops and 85% of smartphones and tablets. Developers would now be targeting 'Android first' instead of 'web app first then iOS then maybe Android'.<p>Sundar, if you're reading this - do it!<p>[1] <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/hack-runs-android-apps-on-windows-mac-and-linux-computers/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/hack-runs-android-ap...</a>
It's awesome that Google is doing this and in public too <a href="https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/" rel="nofollow">https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/</a><p>Unfortunately, the hard part of an operating system isn't in a cool API and a rendering demo. It's in integrating the fickle whims of myriad hardware devices with amazingly high expectations of reliability and performance consistency under diverse workloads. People don't like dropped frames when they plug in USB :) Writing device drivers for demanding hardware is much harder than saving registers and switching process context. The Linux kernel has an incredible agglomeration of years of effort and experience behind it - and the social ability to scale to support diverse contributors with different agendas.<p>Microsoft, with its dominant position on the desktop, famously changed the 'preferred' APIs for UI development on a regular cadence. Only Microsoft applications kept up and looked up to date. Now Google has such a commanding share of the phone market - Android is over 80% and growing <a href="http://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os" rel="nofollow">http://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os</a> - they have a huge temptation to follow suit. Each time that Microsoft introduced a new technology (e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundatio...</a> WPF) they had to skirt a fine line between making it simple and making sure that it would be hard for competitors to produce emulation layers for. Otherwise, you could run those apps on your Mac :)<p>There are many things to improve (and simplify) in the Android APIs. It would be delightful to add first class support for C++ and Python, etc. A project this large will be a monster to ship so hopefully we'll soon (a few years) see the main bits integrated into more mainstream platforms like Android/Linux - hopefully without too much ecosystem churn
The drivers-wifi repository contains a stub for a Qualcomm QCA6174 driver[1] which is found in the Nexus 5X[2], OnePlus 2[3] and meant for smartphones[4]. The drivers-gpu-msd-intel-gen repository contains drivers for Intel 8th and 9th gen integrated graphics[5]. I think it's fair to propose that Google plans on running Fuchsia on both smartphones and laptops…<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/drivers-wifi/blob/master/qualcomm/driver.cc" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/drivers-wifi/blob/master/q...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+5X+Teardown/51318#s112148" rel="nofollow">https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+5X+Teardown/51318#s112...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/OnePlus+2+Teardown/45352#s100455" rel="nofollow">https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/OnePlus+2+Teardown/45352#s10...</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7921/qualcomm-announces-mumimo-80211ac-family-increasing-the-efficiency-of-80211ac-networks" rel="nofollow">http://www.anandtech.com/show/7921/qualcomm-announces-mumimo...</a><p>[5] <a href="https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/drivers-gpu-msd-intel-gen/blob/master/src/device_id.h" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/drivers-gpu-msd-intel-gen/...</a>
Is this an actual plan of Google as a company, or is this some sort of Microsoft-style war between divisions where the Chrome team has just decided on its own that the future is based on Chrome and Dart?<p>Also, considering the way that the ARC runtime for Chromebooks was a failure and had to be replaced by a system that apparently essentially runs Android in a container, will it really be possible for a completely different OS to provide reasonable backward compatibility?
How credible is this source?<p>I don't understand half the decisions outlined in the article.<p>> I also have to imagine the Android update problem (a symptom of Linux’s modularity)<p>I seriously doubt the Linux kernel is anything but a minor contributor to Android's update problem. Handset developers make their money by selling physical phones. In two years, your average consumer probably doesn't care if their device is still receiving software updates. They'll jump onto a new phone plan, with a fresh, cool new mobile, with a better screen, newer software (features!), and a refreshed battery.<p>Maintaining existing software for customers costs handset manufacturers $$$, and disincentives consumers purchasing new phones (their cash cow). The money is probably better spent (from their POV) on new features, and a marketing budget.
If nothing else comes out of this, I hope we end up with an Android OS that works better than the current one.<p>I've been running Android since the Nexus One so I'm no newbie to the platform, but the ease with which iOS manages to get all UI interactions at ~unnoticable FPS and outstanding battery life is staggering when you're used to Android. It feels like some really fundamental choices were made badly on the platform that make it incredibly inconsistent and unreliable. A fresh start would be fantastic.
> I don’t see the average garbage-collected language using a virtual machine allowing for a target higher than 60fps realistically.<p>But... "<i>average</i> garbage-collected language using a virtual machine" doesn't describe <i>any</i> of C/C++, Dart, Go, Java, Python, or Rust. Nor Javascript.<p>I get greater than 60 fps with my existing Vive three.js WebVR-ish electron/chromium linux stack. Even on an old laptop with integrated graphics (for very simple scenes). Recent chromium claims 90 fps WebVR, and I've no reason to doubt it. So 60 fps "up to 120fps" seems completely plausible, even on mobile.
Since Fuscia is a new kernel, that means it will probably only support Google hardware.<p>The status quo right now among android hardware vendors is to violate the GPL, and they have faced few if any repercussions for doing so. I wonder if Fuscia is sort of viewed as the way forward to addressing that.<p>Anyone care to speculate why there isn't a community version of chromium os? I'd donate to it for sure. It sounds like getting android apps working on it would be pretty easy: <a href="https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?hl=en#!topic/chromium-os-discuss/OfBln-hl7ug" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?hl=en#!topic...</a>
Seems like Free Software that propelled early Internet pioneers served its purpose and those companies are turning their backs on it - first with Apple, GCC->LLVM, now with Google, Linux->Fuchsia :( I am getting afraid of another dark age on the horizon... I guess it's going to be inevitable as 90% of SW developers will find themselves redundant when inferring AI capable of composing code blocks and listening to/reading speech/specifications arrives in upcoming decade, making creation of typical web/mobile apps trivial.
Article author here. Posted this in the notes, but possibly too buried:<p>For anyone interested, I intend to write quite often about consumer technology on this blog. Topics will include hardware, software, design, and more. You can follow via RSS or Twitter, and possibly through other platforms soon. Sorry for the self promotion!<p>Thanks for reading. Please do send any corrections or explanations.
Why can't the pure web replace apps and programs? All the pieces are almost there: hardware acceleration, service workers, notifications, responsive design...<p>I currently "add to home screen" for most things. I edit my images online, and develop code using cloud9 ide, etc. There are few things I need apps/programs for right now, and that's improving day by day.<p>iPhone is dropping heavily in world wide market share, but they still have a lot of the wealthy users. There is a non-zero chance they get niched out of prominence by Android (aka every other manufacturer in the world), at which point network effects start encouraging Android-first or Android-only development. There might be a point where Apple needs to double down on the web, and/or maybe kill off apps, like they did flash, to still have the latest "apps".
This blogpost has waaaay too much assumptions. When reading about this it seems easy to rip out Kernels, OS & Software and put it like a layer on a cake on top of a new OS. Even for Google this is crazy complicated. It will not be that easy. For sure not... and I also see no clear strategy WHY somebody should do that. It's like baking the cake with too much ingredients. ;)
> IDEs written in Java are wildly slow…<p>My favourite IDE to use today is IntelliJ, and I prefer it over my experience with Visual Studio (though to be fair, I did not use VS intensively in the past 3-4 years).<p>I don't experience IntelliJ as "slow". It launches faster than VS did when I used it, and once it is running I keep it open pretty much the entire work-week without any issues.
"Fuchsia" and "magenta" are pretty gutsy names to choose, given how similar it sound to Apple's vaporware "Pink" OS from the 90s (AKA Taligent, AKA Copland). Somebody has a sense of humor!<p>It's really hard to tell if this is actually something that will ship, or yet another Google boondoggle to be swiftly discarded (like the first attempt at ChromeOS for tablets). Google under Larry Page built and discarded a lot of stuff; I wonder if it's the same under Sundar Pichai.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent</a>
This could be the first time Apple needs to truly worry about Google. The one massive lead Apple still has over Google (and the other major players) is the incredible OS they inherited back in 1997 and continue to extend and maintain today.<p>Neither Android nor Windows nor Chrome OS nor your favorite Linux distro have ever been able to truly compete with the NeXT legacy as it lives on in Apple.<p>Google is smart enough as a whole to see this, and so it's not surprising that they're attempting to shore up their platform's competence in this particular area. What IS surprising is that it has taken them this long.<p>Perhaps what's truly surprising is just how much mileage Apple has gotten out of NeXT. It's astounding, and I know Apple realizes this, but I question whether or not they know how to take the next step, whatever that may be. And if Google manages to finally catch up...
I'm a minority I know but I don't like material design because it's terrible at "scaling." It looks great, it's beautiful, but you lose too much damn functionality. When I had to redo apps to material design we had to completely remove multiple buttons due to them not fitting material design standards. I really hope they have some way to alleviate this problem without using 50px icons for all the extra buttons.
So Google is going with a DartVM on this one. Dart is cool and all, but why DartVM? It's the same restrictive model we have with Android (dalvikVM) where you can only develop with languages that can compile down to Java bytecode. In this case, however, we will be using languages that can transpile to Dart source instead! Why not JavaScript engine? With the current movement with WebAssembly, I see a lot potential use cases. The biggest point being the ability to code in any language that compiles to wasm. The engine could be exposed to communicate with the OS directly or sth. If they are going to consider V8 alongside DartVM, then that would be cool. I truly hope they don't repeat old mistakes.
Conjecture is fun, but the linked piece takes some enormous liberties with crossing massive chasms effortlessly. Not only is Fushia <i>not</i> Andromeda (a project), the needs of IoT is massively different from the needs of Android. And the net investment in Android is absolutely colossal, and making some new APIs or a microkernel does not a replacement make.
Google could have taken firefox and improve it to make it better, but they created something new.<p>Now instead of improving the linux stack and the gnu stack (the kernel, wayland, the buses, the drivers), they rewrite everything.<p>They put millions into this. Imagine what could have been done with it on existing software.<p>They say they are good citizen in the FOSS world, but eventually they just use the label to promote their product. They don't want free software, they want their software, that they control, and let you freely work on it.
"<i>The pitch will clearly be that developers can write a Flutter app once and have it run on Andromeda, Android, and iOS with minimal extra work, in theory.</i>"<p>How's that going to work? iOS, specifically? Is Dart a supported language?
So in the near future billions of devices will no longer be running Linux anymore? That would be quite a blow to the OS in terms of chances of dominating operating systems that are being used by end users. Or will they simply fork it and strip it down until only the parts they really like will remain?
re: "Flutter was [...]"<p>A bit weird to use the past tense here since it's not reached 1.0 yet. You can try it out today (tech preview) to create apps in Dart that run on Android and iOS:<p><a href="https://flutter.io/" rel="nofollow">https://flutter.io/</a><p>(Googler, not on the Flutter team itself, but working on related developer tools.)
Trying to see the other side of the coin : what economical reason is there for this project ?<p>A company the side of Google, with all its internal politics, doesn't work as a startup. Starting a third operating system project and hoping it to replace two major ones means convincing people inside the company to loose part of their influence. Now it may happen if chrome or android were failing, but they're clearly not.
I updated the article with the following clarification at the top:<p>I use Andromeda equivalently with Fuchsia in this article. Andromeda could refer to combining Android and Chrome OS in general, but it's all the same OS for phones, laptops, etc. - Fuchsia. I make no claims about what the final marketing names will be. Andromeda could simply be the first version of Fuchsia, and conveniently starts with "A." Google could also market the PC OS with a different name than for the mobile OS, or any number of alternatives. I have no idea. We'll see.
I hope the userland is POSIX/Linux compliant. There's a TON of useful software reliant on this compliance that will go to waste if it isn't compliant out-of-the-box.
As a sound/music app person the inclusion of ASIO for audio is exciting, Google's new is should be on par with iOS for sound with ASIO audio drivers at the core.
AFAIK the flutter UI framework is a react-like framework written in Dart (with C++ as OS glue) including the UI -> graphics rendering layer. It builds upon Skia and Blink. I am not sure how that will allow compatibility with other languages. The only language for UI apps looks to be Dart. Which isn't bad - its a pretty well designed language, but I don't see how apps can be written in a wide variety of language as the author suggests.
>the main UI API is based on, yes, Dart<p>Won't the Dart's single thread nature be bad to take advantage of Murli core processors? Or they are embracing web workers?
The author calls it Andromeda OS, but is this really the Andromeda OS we've been hearing about? I'm not so sure about that. What we do know right now is that the OS is currently code named Fuchsia.<p>Fuchsia repository:
<a href="https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/?format=HTML" rel="nofollow">https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/?format=HTML</a>
Link to the source code:<p><a href="https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/" rel="nofollow">https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/</a>
The article says it's a microkernel, I wonder if it will be a more secure general purpose OS, well windows NT started as microkernel but they changed that wit NT 4,let's see if it will be different. I also wonder about driver support and battery consumption. Good luck to Google.
> The pitch will clearly be that developers can write a Flutter app once and have it run on Andromeda, Android, and iOS with minimal extra work, in theory.<p>This is worrying for Apple. I can see the following playing out<p>- Apple continues releasing machines like the TB MBP, much to exasperated developer dismay.<p>- Other x86 laptop industrial design and build quality continue to improve.<p>- Fuchsia/Andromeda itself becomes a compelling development environment<p>- Developers begin switching away from Mac OS to Fuchsia, Linux and Windows<p>- Google delivers on the promise of a WORA runtime and the biggest objective reason not to abandon Mac OS, i.e. writing apps for iOS, disappears.<p>- Apps start to look the same on iOS and Android. iOS becomes less compelling.<p>- iOS devices sales begin to hurt.<p>Granted that the App Store submission requires Mac OS (Application Loader) and the license agreement requires you only use Apple software to submit apps to the App Store and not write your own, but it seems flimsy to rely on that.
Here is a link to the documentation:<p><a href="https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/master/docs" rel="nofollow">https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/master/docs</a>
I didn't see in the article explanations why those decisions were taken and not others. On the surface it feels like this is an OS insufficiently different from others to justify switching to.
We definitely need a universal OS for all our devices and I really believe Google is in a great position to get us there.<p>It would really surprise me if Apple got there first. Tim lacks vision and will keep on milking iOS even if the iPad Pro is a failure as a laptop replacement.<p>Windows is still king in the desktop space, at least as far a user base goes, but it's terrible on tablets and phones. MS has all the tech in place with UWP, but it's still pretty far in the race in terms of simplicity and usability.<p>Chrome OS ticks all the right boxes, and is experiencing a huge growth, but it's not universal. If Andromeda is real, and it's able to become a universal OS that merges Chrome OS and Android it might be the best thing since sliced bread.
I think it's intended for entertainment and content consumption just like Android and Chrome OS. And Apple is trying the same with merging iOS and desktop. How long it will take until all computers will be set-top boxes where you can only netflix and chill and if you want, for example, to draw something, you have to buy Professional Grade Computer for $50000?
wow! it supports Golang, since it has glsl, this will have nice UI.<p><a href="https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/#/q/project:third_party/go" rel="nofollow">https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/#/q/project:third_pa...</a>
NIH syndrome plus large organization people looking for job security, and rough, fat FLOSS full of maintenance and security vulns hell equals "Emperor's new clothes."
Quote: "I am not a programmer, so if anything stated above is incorrect, please, please send me corrections. I would also greatly appreciate any clarifying comments, which were one of my primary motivations for writing this piece." Essentially a bunch of nonsense, in other words.
It would be a real shame if Google wasted this once in a decade or perhaps once in multiple decades opportunity to not have an OS written in a language other than C++.<p>Also, it would be mind-boggling if they didn't actually fix the update problem this time, and if it wasn't a top 3 priority for the new OS.