Posted on 10/29/2015 5:08:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Google will fold its Chrome operating system used in personal computers into the Android mobile OS, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Beginning in 2017, Google will only have a single operating system on the market, with Android featured on tablets, smartphones, and notebook computers. Google will show an early version of the new unified Android OS next year, The WSJ said, citing anonymous sources.
The move should help unify Google's software efforts and make its platform more appealing to third-party software developers.
Until now Google has maintained a clear delineation between its two operating systems, The Chrome OS, based on Google's Chrome web browser, is for the traditional laptop and PC-like family of Chromebook devices. Android is for lower-powered devices like tablets and smartphones, and increasingly gadgets like watches and TVs.
Google will rename the Chromebook notebook computers, once they feature the new version of Android, The WSJ said, but the new name for the Chromebooks has not yet been determined. Google's web browser will apparently keep the Chrome name.
The move is not a complete surprise. Google executives have acknowledged in the past that Android and Chrome "will likely converge over time." Google united the teams working on the two operating systems under one management structure in 2014.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
More like a growing, cancerous M$ Blob....
Mediocre software championed by mediocre deciders, chosen by sheep. You get what you don’t know any better about.
I’m wondering if existing Chromebooks can be upgraded to become Androidbooks.
“We can’t rewind, we’ve gone to far”
I spent years on Android smart phones and all experienced the exact same behaviors, slow down over time, memory leaks, buggy native text messaging and then ultimately a bricked phone unable to place calls. I switched to iPhone 6 Plus over a year ago and I can tell you I’ll never go back to POS Android devices
I'm working with Android for a while, and it is pretty good. It's very easy to create useful applications in it, once you learn the ropes.
Currently Android is not a desktop OS for one simple reason: its window manager (WM) is a single-window, always-fullscreen one, despite existence of some animated overlays. This prevents use of Android on a generic PC, because on a PC you want overlapped windows under control of a more complex WM.
This is, basically, all that Google needs to change. Maybe a few drivers need to be added for a few common Ethernet chipsets; that is not a big deal, and all of these are already present in Linux (which runs Android as a GUI and a VM.)
The combined version of Android will be very well received. Android already has quite a few useful applications, and more are added every day because software development for Android is free and requires nothing but a PC. If Android can be deployed on a common PC, this will further dilute the market of Windows 10 - as Win10 is a terrible overkill for the vast majority of systems. About 100% of home systems will be much happier on Android. When was the last time you needed to fix registry on Android, or recover from BSOD? Even Dalvik, which is not even the latest VM, is amazingly fast; but Android 5 uses ART, which is even faster:
Unlike Dalvik, ART introduces the use of ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation by compiling entire applications into native machine code upon their installation. By eliminating Dalvik's interpretation and trace-based JIT compilation, ART improves the overall execution efficiency and reduces power consumption, which results in improved battery autonomy on mobile devices. At the same time, ART brings faster execution of applications, improved memory allocation and garbage collection (GC) mechanisms, new applications debugging features, and more accurate high-level profiling of applications.[1][4][5]
This further marginalizes native code (C/C++ etc,) improves portability, and fully enables the long-sought idea of "write once, run anywhere." That idea is already mostly alive within the Android's environment. If it spreads to PCs, there will be very little reason to code for anything else, unless you are doing very specialized work.
What Greysard said.
“improved battery autonomy”
Please explain.
Ya know, Google may just be able to outcry*p Microsoft quality.
They’ve already proven their electronics are right up there with....er.....uh.....
Thanks. I have a few Android devices. All but one are now years old and slow and fussy, but can do some amazing things using one app at a time.
Mediocrity Killed The Singularity Star
The device needs less power to perform the same work; the battery can be smaller, but the device will work longer.
The hardware is not that essential (to me,) but the software is the Remix OS. You can expect something similar from the Google's project.
Tablets mostly took a back seat at CES this year, but there were still a few interesting announcements that came from Vegas, including one from a new company called Jide. Founded by some former Google senior engineers, the company introduced its Remix "ultra-tablet" with the promise that it would improve the productivity of those using the Android OS.
It certainly looks better than Windows 10. Though pretty much every OS nowadays looks better than Win10 :-)
But indeed this is a great illustration of my assertion that Desktop Android would be usable and beneficial to many, if not most, PC users. Even the most valuable resource of Windows - the large number of applications written for WIN32 API - is being slowly but surely reduced in relevance because a lot of modern development happens on Android and on iOS - except industrial applications; for them the only acceptable hardware platforms are PCs, and those currently run only Windows/Mac/Linux.
Interesting device new on the market runs Window 1o on Intel Atom chip:
Device is smartphone size....
I want my Gnome shell ...etc....on it.
Interesting.
Some CA School Districts invested in Chrome books for their commie core.
(After LA School District’s fiasco with iPads)
R-Pi or BBB is cheaper. But Linux works fine on Atoms in any case.
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