The promise of Java 'write once, run anywhere' is finally realised!
Android apps are flooding on to jailbroken Win10 phones
The addition of Android compatibility for Windows phones was called a "suicide note" back in April, and now somebody's composing the first draft. Intrepid tinkerers have opened up previews of Windows 10 for phones to allow a wide range of Android apps run without modification. Reports suggest that at this stage, far more Android …
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Tuesday 18th August 2015 18:08 GMT Ken Hagan
"Not by selling phones, that's for sure!"
I wouldn't be so sure. If the next generation of Windows phones can make a decent fist of running all your favourite Android apps, you might *prefer* to buy a Windows phone over a "real" Android phone because the former has an update system that allows the OS vendor to patch security problems. The news over the last month suggests that Google do *not* have such a mechanism for the majority of Android devices, even including some of their own ones.
Of course, choosing Microsoft on security grounds might just prove too insanely ironic for some geeks.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 13:20 GMT Ugotta B. Kiddingme
Re: @Ken Hagan
"If the next generation of Windows phones can make a decent fist of running all your favourite Android apps, you might *prefer* to buy a Windows phone over a "real" Android phone because the former has an update system that allows the OS vendor to patch security problems. "
Not only that, but a new Lumia 640 without contract is about USD$80 - less than half the cost of most mid-range Android phones.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 20:01 GMT Richard Plinston
Re: @Ken Hagan
> Not only that, but a new Lumia 640 without contract is about USD$80 - less than half the cost of most mid-range Android phones.
The problem with that is they are selling at a loss. Nokia phone division made a loss every quarter with Windows Phone in spite of getting a billion dollars a year from Microsoft. Now Microsoft are also running phones at a loss. The only way to get WP to sell is to price them at half that of equivalent Android phones - at a loss. This overcomes the perceived lack of value from fewer apps. The choice for similar phones is lots of apps (Android) or less cost (WP).
With Android apps available Microsoft will try to raise the price in order to make a profit. Then the choice will be Android apps with Microsoft control or Android apps with freedom (ie Play Store or many others).
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Tuesday 29th September 2015 16:54 GMT M man
Thing is,,,thats so Right. MS security beats google....
Oh the irony!
(Of course google is winning for exactly the reason (Wintel won the desktop race.
The flexibility and value off android allows you to do things that havent been invisioned by Apple Google and MS. ideas that are bigger than todays market.
But that flexibility and value come at a price, just like Wintel.
on phones
Wintel=Goog(le)Sam(sung)
Apple=Apple
Amiga/Atari etc =WinPhone.
And im afraid...this market will go the way off the PC market.
Apple will stagnate at the high end
Goog/Sam will flood the low end
Winphone will die and become collector items.
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Tuesday 18th August 2015 16:56 GMT Kyorin
An app ported properly using the right Microsoft tools apparently redirects calls to Google API's to the equivalent Microsoft ones, at least that's what I understood to be the case... So calls to Google maps are parsed to the Microsoft equivalent, whether that's Bing maps, Here maps (or is it MSN maps now), I don't' know. They keep re-branding things that I'm not sure which is current these days.
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Tuesday 18th August 2015 16:56 GMT The Original Steve
Not quite as it sounds...
... Sure you can run that Android binary blob - no problem.
What do you think happens when accessing contracts / Google Play Services API's...? Crashes? Requests to install Google apps?
Nope.
Microsoft redirects the call and sends the user to the relevant Microsoft Live services. E.g. you run an Android app that would normally call Google Maps mid-app - it will simply use Bing Maps instead.
That way MS can get the apps, but ties the user back to the native services.
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Tuesday 18th August 2015 17:06 GMT Charlie Clark
Could be good
This means that Microsoft doesn't have to concentrate on chasing the game with also ran apps. Maybe it'll even include some Android apps in its own store. This would remove hurdle for some corporate customers, and these are the only ones Microsoft stands to make any money from on mobile, from buying into some putative Microsoft Office & Exchange based eco-system.
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Tuesday 18th August 2015 19:39 GMT Camilla Smythe
Re: It's not fair!
Dear Mrs Trellis,
I should firstly apologise for my previous mistake in a former post whereby I have been correctly down-voted for my concerns about who ends up with whose data.
Obviously you are free to choose whose wood preservative you choose to smear on your body in order to protect yourself against unwanted advances but may I recommend,
'No Your Bum Does Not Look Big In This'.
Obviously I am not able to mention the manufacturer for fear of creating a competition issue with the EU but you can look it up on Google.
If you look beyond the sponsored links you will find we have a wide range of colours beyond the usual green and brown stuff that will blend with your surface and grain whilst protecting your modesty and minimising the apparent size of your bum.
In tests with the MOD we found that on painting their Tanks with our product the apparent size reduction was so great that 95% of male birds attempted to shag the vehicle rather than shit on it.
Kindest
Mr FencePost
Customer Support Department
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Tuesday 18th August 2015 22:32 GMT Camilla Smythe
Re: It's not fair!
Dear Mrs Trellis,
I apologise for the oafish and sexist response given by my trainee, Mr FencePost, in respect of your most recent enquiry.
If you were to discover our companies range of protective products via a Google search, Page 141.. below the sponsored links and recommended Windows installs, you would also find that all colours are available in plant friendly formulations for application to and protection of the intricacy of your delicate construction.
Sincerely
Mr WallBatten
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Tuesday 18th August 2015 22:32 GMT Richard Plinston
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
> Same will eventually happen to WP10...
What happened next was that Microsoft promoted Win32s add-on and then issued a new version which would not run under OS/2*. Increasingly, applications failed to run on OS/2 and users replaced it with Windows 3.11 - and then Win95.
* The OS/2 environment only catered for 2Gb address space in virtual memory. Win32s made a completely pointless memory access outside that which caused a crash on OS/2 but was OK on Windows 3.x.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 08:18 GMT MacroRodent
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
* The OS/2 environment only catered for 2Gb address space in virtual memory. Win32s made a completely pointless memory access outside that which caused a crash on OS/2 but was OK on Windows 3.x.
Interesting! I remember this problem of Win32s not working on OS/2 (which I used at home at the time), but though it was just related to the hocuspocus Win32s had to do to make 32 bit applications run under the 16-bit Windows 3.x, which itself was layered on real-mode MS-DOS. But having Win32s do something just to be incompatible does sound like typical Microsoft tactics.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 08:20 GMT Jess
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
What I remember from the situation is that OS/2 shared origins with NT.
It supported the Win 16 api very well but only had partial support for the Win 32 api (60%?). IBM took the decision not to chase full compatibility with the Win 32 api.
How different would IT be today if IBM hadn't, by that idiot decision, gifted Microsoft with a near monopoly on the desktop.
BB10 is somewhat ahead of the situation in the video. From the start it ran ported apps. The first official Android support allowed loading Amazon, which then worked to install apps. (It is now bundled).
It is also possible to sideload a working Google Play store compatible app. (So far the only app that annoyed me by not working was Expedia.)
An interesting question is whether android apps will be able to be run on Desktop WIndows 10 (as widgets, perhaps.)
But this news changes my opinion of Win 10 phone from something I'd dismiss out of hand, to a maybe.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 13:18 GMT chr0m4t1c
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
To be fair that wasn't the only problem they had or daft decision they made, for me the biggest standouts were:
- Launching with minimum memory requirements of 4Mb (yes, Mb!), but really needing 6Mb just after an earthquake took on of the world's larged memory fabrication plants offline causing memory prices to more than quadruple. That's not IBM's fault, just unfortunate.
- Launching without a TCP/IP stack just as the internet was beginning to get traction.
- Trying to charge £95 for the TCP/IP stack when they made it available about a year later.
So just as the home PC market kicked into high gear with machines available around the £600 mark, you needed to spend around £2,000 on a machine that could run OS/2.
They did eventually realise their errors and around late 1996 you could finally get a decent OS/2 setup for around that £600, but by that time Windows 95 was too well established.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 20:01 GMT Richard Plinston
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
>- Launching without a TCP/IP stack just as the internet was beginning to get traction.
>- Trying to charge £95 for the TCP/IP stack when they made it available about a year later.
OS/2 3.0 Warp included TCP/IP and much else and launched in 1994. This was contemporary with Windows 3.x which did not include TCP/IP (though 3rd party were available, including from IBM).
Windows 95 launched over a year later. The retail version had no access to the internet, only to Microsoft's own network (MSN) which attempted to replace the internet. The Plus pack was required at a price to get internet access.
Your complaints are untrue.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 20:02 GMT Richard Plinston
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
> What I remember from the situation is that OS/2 shared origins with NT.
Only in the name. 'NT' was used for OS/2 but there is nothing else shared with Windows NT (except there was an OS/2 'personality' in NT).
>It supported the Win 16 api very well but only had partial support for the Win 32 api (60%?). IBM took the decision not to chase full compatibility with the Win 32 api.
Win32 compatibility in Windows 3.x and OS/2 was provided by Microsoft's Win32s, an add-on DLL. MS released a new version which deliberately failed on OS/2 and included additional APIs so that newer software could not run on OS/2.
Because IBM had the right to run released Microsoft software but did not have the right to recreate the API with a different implementation they could do nothing about the Microsoft dirty tricks.
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Thursday 20th August 2015 12:14 GMT Mage
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
1985 OS/2
1989 MS & IBM divorce, MS Produces MS OS/2 with built in LAN Manager
1993 First version of NT, NT 3.1 (as MS OS/2 was sort of version 2.x) which included 100% OS/2 subsystem for console Apps, NTVDM for DOS in a virtual machine and WOW via NTVDM for win16.
OS/2 Warp was too little too late. Too lacking in ambition and 4 years too late.
So later with Pentium Pro, NT3.51 and then NT4.0 ran mix Win32, DOS and Win16 apps faster than native Win95 did because NT didn't use native 16 mode at all. Win95 had to switch to real mode for 16 bit, such a switch was really slow on Pentium Pro.
Win95 killed the Pentium Pro.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 13:18 GMT TeeCee
Re: Remember OS/2 Warp
Yes, but the reason they did that is that OS/2 was already dead-but-still-twitching[1] by the time Warp came out. IBM had to do this as nobody was developing for OS/2 by that time and to keep it on life-support at all, Windows applications were a "must have". The alternative was to try to convince potential purchasers that living with the limited and severely aging set of native OS/2 applications was a good thing[2].
[1] Ok, maybe it is the same as WinPho then.
[2] And when it comes to selling really bloody awful things to the public, even Goebbels would call that one a dead loss.
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 02:14 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Re: This could be a win
After all; what else is ever going to tempt Android users into even trying a Windows phone?
I just upgraded to a Nexus. While doing a comparison of the various phones my service provider offered, I realized mine only offered a token Windows Phone choice and definitely not the latest and greatest. Many, probably most, people don't look beyond what their service providers offer as part of a bundled plan when shopping for a new phone, so I think "doing a better job working with the vendors" might be part of the answer to your question.
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Thursday 20th August 2015 12:14 GMT Mage
Re: Java
Of course they can use Java Virtual Machine* if they pay a licence. But Android apps are only written in Java, they are not compiled to Oracle's Java Bytecode for JVM, but to a different binary system for Davik. Davik can be used for free.
J++ was their own version of Java. They developed it into C#.
The VM for Visual Basic (and possibly J++) and the .Net VM used for C# is a separate development from Sun's JVM. Both certainly owe a lot to 1970s UCSD p-machine.
[* A PC can use JVM for free, but a mobile device is supposed to use a cut down licensed JVM and Sun/Oracle wouldn't even licence the full JVM at reasonable terms for a mobile device, hence the development of Davik and the Oracle - Google law suit]
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Wednesday 19th August 2015 02:55 GMT Queasy Rider
Crossing my fingers
I keep reading that the main thing holding back WinPhone sales is the lack of apps. People (including myself) do like the user interface and the prices. Now that MS has offered a reasonable solution to the app problem you MS haters are still baying for WinPhone's blood. Let's wait and see. This might be the straw that saves the camel's back. I'll even go out on a limb and predict a slow climb in sales if SatNad doesn't continue to undermine the phone division. They might even pull in a few devs if the numbers get big enough. Then more phone sales in a virtuous cycle.
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Thursday 20th August 2015 16:46 GMT Frank N. Stein
Re: It would be a win for me
That sounds perfectly reasonable. I hope Sprint finally starts selling the Microsoft branded Windows Phones. The only reason I'm not currently utilizing a Nokia 1020 is that it wasn't available on Sprint, and I was not interested in going to AT&T to get a Windows phone.
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