Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: persia on November 15, 2012, 06:02:40 PM
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http://www.zdnet.com/android-really-is-the-new-windows-7000007450/?s_cid=e539 (http://www.zdnet.com/android-really-is-the-new-windows-7000007450/?s_cid=e539)
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Thing is, you cant install android on an x86 desktop (or at least I don't think you can)
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Thing is, you cant install android on an x86 desktop (or at least I don't think you can)
actually you can: http://www.android-x86.org/
but what makes me laugh really if that vendors abandon a hardware model almost instantly. I've been watching the market and what friends bought... the large majority of phones are not receiving upgrades. Buy a model, and that's the Android version you will be stuck with. Even for the Amiga you could at least buy the kickstart ROM when needed.
Tom UK
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Android x86 runs quite well on my Acer Iconia Tab W500. Right now it dual boots Android and Windows 7, but Bluestacks is performing so well that I think I'll forgo the dual booting and just run my Android apps using the Bluestacks emulator under Windows.
The W500 is powered by an AMD C-50 processor with integrated Radeon™ HD 6250 graphics on the same die.
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actually you can: http://www.android-x86.org/
but what makes me laugh really if that vendors abandon a hardware model almost instantly. I've been watching the market and what friends bought... the large majority of phones are not receiving upgrades. Buy a model, and that's the Android version you will be stuck with. Even for the Amiga you could at least buy the kickstart ROM when needed.
Tom UK
Yea, one would think that there was some generalized method of upgrading Android. I have a tablet that is stuck with 2.0 with no hope of upgrade unless I compile one myself. Since Android is really Linux, one would think it would follow a similar path. It's one reason I haven't bought a larger tablet, but instead went to a netbook for portable computing.
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Of course this is only true in the mobile market. Still, it's a good point made that they're winning by dint of exactly what Microsoft is throwing out in their attempt to cash in on the tablet boom: an open approach to software development and distribution. Congratulations, Microsoft, you completely missed the farkin' point, as per usual.
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Am I the only one that feels that Windows 8 is a lot like Windows ME? Lacking focus and direction (if I want stupid big icons I will buy a tablet not a PC). So what will Windows 9 have? A giant start jog wheel (like the iPod). Back to the topic - windows upgrade pricing is showing how bad MS is doing... When has MS ever been generous?
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Am I the only one that feels that Windows 8 is a lot like Windows ME?
Funnily this is how I described it to my friend. It tries too much and lacks any sort of focus or direction. it's useless as desktop OS unless you have a trackpad or touchscreen computer. And the computers I have tried that have touchscreen funcionality it was still twitchy. And the whole desktop isn't really a desktop but an app to run "legacy" software is a ball ache.
Once valve work out the best way of getting games working in Linux then I can imagine lots of people dropping windows and making the switch. My Sabayon install is super speedy and rock solid stable. Same can't be said about Windows 8 in my experience with it.
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It's sounds as if you guys have never heard of CyanogenMod. There are current versions of Android out there for nearly every Android device that's ever been made. I even have JellyBean running on my first generation Nook Color and on my wife's Motorola Xoom. It's great.
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I have heard of that and I was using ICS on a samsung galaxy ace with it. Very handy. I think what was been mentioned was the lack of any kind of rolling release by the hardware vendors. Community led distributions will continue to thrive while hardware vendors, especially at the cheap end of the Android market, will dump their distributions wihtout a moments notice.
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Yep MS is in big trouble and Windows 8 will only make things worse I think.
I read the other day that their new Windows 8 surface thing (basically a laptop with a naff keyboard) doesn't actually run native Windows applications because it's ARM based.
How crazy is that, a Windows laptop that can't run Windows software?
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Thats where their version of the app store kicks in. People will have to buy things through their store in order to get the functionality they need. It's called the Apple Cock Move. Basically they sell you a shiny device that they claim will do everything you need but in reality only does this once you spend hundreds of pounds on software you can get for free on a normal Windows 7, Linux PC.
Apple and Google have been doing this a while now. Microsoft have only just caught up. Thats the fuuny bit.
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How crazy is that, a Windows laptop that can't run Windows software?
But NovaCoder, if they just let people run the surfeit of quality Win32 software built up over its seventeen years as the most popular desktop API in the world, how would they ever get people to buy stuff from the Windows Store?
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if I want stupid big icons I will buy a tablet not a PC
Well, since 99% of the users probably uses only a handful (or two) applications during 99% of their computing time, you *could* argue that presenting those applications in the "Metro style" can make more sense than burying them deep down in some start menu hierarchy, even on a desktop system. ;)
But I agree that those being only *icons* are kind of meaningless, but a metro field (is there a proper name that I have missed?) displaying information and providing direct links to certain features directly on the desktop makes more sense. Like an e-mail app that in its metro "icon" field shows how many new mails you have in the inbox, and the subject line (direct links) for, say, the 5 most recent ones. Or a facebook app browsing through the most recent stuff, and provides direct links to any new messages, any new friend requests, etc. Or MS Word providing a list to the 5 most recent documents you worked with. Same in Photoshop, Excel, etc. Your favorite news site, with headlines and direct links. Weather, with direct links to detailed hourly forecast, and 10-day forecast, etc. You get the point, not just some icon, but relevant, up-to-date, actual information presented to you directly on the "start screen", each having multiple ways into the app, for various features. Then I actually think this can make sense for many people. A start menu isn't very intuitive really, if you think about it. If you use only 3-10 applications regularly, it can make sense to have them easily accessible in the metro style.
The above doesn't mean I like the concept. I don't, I'm a traditionalist. And no doubt will people be unfamiliar with this approach. But I think that broad masses of common people can actually learn to like this much better than any start menu or traditional icon system.
We will see in time. Microsoft is putting a lot of weight on this one, and they put a lot at stake, a bit like win or lose, but maybe not that dramatic. I think they have "focus-grouped" a lot about this though.
We'll see...
:)
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We will see in time. Microsoft is putting a lot of weight on this one, and they put a lot at stake, a bit like win or lose, but maybe not that dramatic. I think they have "focus-grouped" a lot about this though.
Yes, and so did Coca-Cola. Yet companies keep failing, again and again, to learn the lesson that New Coke taught us: all the focus grouping in the world won't help you if you screw around with what people are comfortable with and they don't like it.
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Yes, and so did Coca-Cola. Yet companies keep failing, again and again, to learn the lesson that New Coke taught us: all the focus grouping in the world won't help you if you screw around with what people are comfortable with and they don't like it.
But sometimes just sitting down on your turf, doing nothing, can mean that you are left behind in evolution, when everyone else moves on to something new. Some lead, others follow, some don't bother with anything. Only dead fish floats down-stream. Yada yada. :)
I can easily see and understand the USP's of Metro, even for desktop. Personally, I don't really like it though, but I actually think most people will get used to and actually like this feature.
Again - we'll see how things fold...
:)
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But sometimes just sitting down on your turf, doing nothing, can mean that you are left behind in evolution, when everyone else moves on to something new. Some lead, others follow, some don't bother with anything. Only dead fish floats down-stream. Yada yada.
Yes, they do like to think like that, because that's what gets so-and-so's department's budget justified for the next quarter so that it doesn't get slashed. But that has zero relevance to what the consumer thinks. Again, Coca-Cola probably had every reason to think that it wouldn't hurt to shake things up, might drum up some new interest and help them regain the ground they'd lost to Pepsi. That actually makes perfectly decent sense from a business standpoint, which is more than can be said for Microsoft's "screw around with everything that was already fine in an attempt to leverage our monolithic desktop success as a way to break into the mobile market we've absolutely failed to crack with every previous attempt, and remove as many legacy features as we can get away with in an attempt to herd customers onto the new model so we can get a cut from third-party developers" approach to Windows 8. And just like Microsoft claims to have, they meticulously focus-tested the new product and didn't proceed until they'd determined that the testees loved it.
None of that saved their bacon. The simple fact of of the matter is that, no matter how you try, in the end you cannot manufacture a customer to fit your product. If people don't like it, they don't like it, and that's true even if the only reason they don't like it is because it's replacing something they were familiar with. And the more you try to push it on them, the less successful you'll be. Microsoft of all people should know that; they got a lesson in it not six years ago, with Vista. And people still remember that; now customers and OEMs alike know that they can make Redmond pay attention, if they're stubborn enough.
For all that they still dominate desktop computing, Microsoft has less power over their customers now than they did when ME was the supposed new hotness that, in reality, didn't live up to its predecessors. Yet they act like this is even more of an inevitability.
Time will tell where it all goes from here; but if the Windows user base decides that they don't want this, Microsoft is going to have a hell of a reality check waiting for them.
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The real question is how much damage will MS do to their desktop market share to try and gain market share in the tablet/mobile market.
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Well it will make this guy happy - http://www.goodbyemicrosoft.net/news.php
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actually you can: http://www.android-x86.org/
but what makes me laugh really if that vendors abandon a hardware model almost instantly. I've been watching the market and what friends bought... the large majority of phones are not receiving upgrades. Buy a model, and that's the Android version you will be stuck with. Even for the Amiga you could at least buy the kickstart ROM when needed.
Tom UK
You're talking apples and oranges, though. The first "smartphone" I had was an awful device (actually for the first six months it was fine, then I made the mistake of putting apps on it), the Samsung Intercept. My wife still has hers and it's a practically crippled little thing with little RAM and an anemic SOC. Even though you can expand it's "storage" to 32gb, there are some apps and some updates that cannot be put on the SD Card, so newer updates take up more and more room, leaving less memory for the OS to use.
What that is, in analogue to PCs, is like buying a 386SX-16 and feeling "abandoned" because you can't keep updating it year after year. Android 4.x doesn't run on the Intercept because it can't - just like Windows NT4 (or 2000, or XP) can't run on that 386. The phone I replaced it with, an HTC Evo V 3d, was originally released with Android 2.3 but by the time I bought a model had been updated to 4.0, and when I unboxed it and booted it up, it updated again. But, I'm sure, someday the phone won't get a new build of Android - because it will be out of spec.
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Woz thinks M$ is starting to innovate now..
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/14/keen-on-steve-wozniak-why-woz-worries-microsoft-is-now-more-innovative-than-apple-tctv/