Closed ecosystems are one of the reasons I don't use an Apple Watch, iPhone, or MacBook. I know I'm not the typical target consumer, but I'm not that special. There are a lot of people who specifically avoid convergence.
This one might be different. Many Chromebook owners mostly use Android Apps when not browsing in Chrome. Chromebook tablets are great, for instance, because they are basically Android tablets with full desktop Chrome (I still use FF, though).
Adding a full desktop browser to Android would realistically remove the need for ChromeOS, and be more efficient since it would remove the emulation requirement.
A decade ago this would have been exciting news for mobile computing.
Enough has changed that all I can think is, uuugh.
Enough has changed that all I can think is, uuugh. This is exactly my feeling. While I still consider Google to be the lesser evil out of all the big tech companies. They have been in freefall in the last decade. Just the amount of telemetries give me shivers.
Also, it will be a license nightmare. As far as I know, Chrome OS is proprietary and actual Android has proper open source license.
Parts of Chrome OS are available, parts aren't. Parts of Android are available, parts aren't. Neither are really Open Source, but both have Open Source parts.
Same with MacOS and iOS. They're doing the same shift Apple has done over the last 25 years. Build on open-source, and slowly pivot to closed-source binaries. The perception of openness lags for a very long time until people finally realize it has just become more proprietary limited crap.
Not really as there is no Apple equivalent to AOSP
Incorrect. MacOS and iOS both started out as Darwin, the Mach microkernel, and FreeBSD. 25 or so years ago, Apple had open repos and package managers to install standard Unix tools, and the core of the OS even used things like cron to schedule tasks. You could even configure MacOS to not launch the GUI and run it command-line only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
Over time, Apple slowly turned everything into Libraries, Extensions, and Frameworks, and slowly closed-source everything application-by-application. The same way Google is doing with Android.
And if you missed the memo, there is no Google equivalent to AOSP. They killed it in March, because they are doing the exact same thing.
Google can't kill AOSP as it is under the GPL. They will always have to release the source code. Even if a lot of the apps have been abandoned the core system will still be GPL. I don't see them changing that any time soon as it would mean a total rewrite of the OS from scratch which would be insane.
Android also is designed to run on lots of different hardware unlike Apple. I don't really see the comparison.
Android also is designed to run on lots of different hardware unlike Apple.
Apple's OSes are also designed to run on lots of different hardware. Intel, PowerPC, ARM, nVidia, AMD, Apple GPUs. It is just all hardware Apple (mostly these days) designs. There's no reason to talk about what hardware they run on. We're talking about their parallel roadmaps to closing off the OS development from users/open-source, and how both are doing the exact same transition, Apple's is just a quarter century in the making.
Google has already been doing what is necessary to close Android for years. Example: The AOSP texting app they abandoned years ago. Google Messages is now the messaging app. Fully closed-source. No requirement to ever open it. They also used RCS as an excuse to close off the third-party messaging app arena. No third-party app can use RCS on Android now.
Play Services, Assistant, Chrome, YouTube, YouTube Music, GBoard, all their applications are being separated and the "old" version phased out. Some things will remain open-source, likely, like the Chromium bits of Chrome, but even that they've already forked their secret Chrome sauce.
With a hybridization of ChromeOS and Android, this will further accelerate Google not having a need to care about the existence of AOSP. Eventually, they'll just abandon it entirely.
If you use an AOSP-based OS like Graphene right now, you can see the remnants of the AOSP apps. Peeps on projects like Graphene do some massaging to keep them usable, but they're basically apps frozen in time to aid companies in proof-of-concepts and not part of what one would call consumer-facing Android today.
Vendors like Samsung and Lenovo pay to have early access to the Android source, so they'll still get early access for device development, but it is a 100% pay-to-play model. Likely with NDAs. Which again, is exactly what Apple does.
As far as I know, Chrome OS is proprietary
It's only proprietary in much the same way as Android. That's why there are forks like FydeOS.
Two decades ago people would remember when M$ decided to do something very similar on the desktop. Nothing has changed.
I'll thank you not to refer to 2012 as "two decades ago." Felt like I drank from the wrong grail, before double-checking when Windows 8 came out.
Who's talking about Windows 8 or 2012? I said 2 decades and meant it. I wasn't talking about the same time frame, just pointing out the history we are repeating. I was talking about "United States vs Microsoft Corp." (2001). That would have been regarding Windows 98 and Windows XP. ~~Internet Explorer~~Edge is still an integral and unremovable component of Microsoft's operating systems to this day and I guess everyone really has forgotten about Netscape Navigator.
Yeah it's almost like we were talking about something else entirely.
Why bother commenting at all if you're going to be proudly ignorant AND a jerk?
Why did you obliquely reference a different company doing a completely different thing? Microsoft did do something very similar on desktop - making Windows 8 tablet-centric. Nothing in XP or especially 98 has anything to do with mobile computing.
It's not a completely different thing. They were both trying to fully integrate the operating system and the web browser into one monolithic and inescapable thing: Windows XP + Internet Explorer to squash competition on the desktop; Linux + Chrome to squash competition on laptops; Android + Chrome OS to squash competition in the mobile space. The money to be made on operating systems is trivial in the consumer space compared to the power of control over platforms (like web browsers) that deliver advertisements and harvest data from comsumers. M$ saw the writing on the wall way back then in their fight with Netscape Navigator. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I feel like I'm talking to an AI chatbot completely unable to reason abstractly or consider the full context of the conversation.
Ah, so there's a grain of sense in this. Shame about the aggressive irony in whinging about tone while throwing dull insults.
The money to be made on operating systems was power over platforms, back in Windows 98 times. That's the whole reason the Xbox project emerged. They wanted to PC-ify consoles on the assumption they'd still own PCs. The project succeeded! The assumption, not so much.
I think MS barged its way into browsers because it already owned the desktop, and browsers were the next big thing, and barging was just how they did things. And they only integrated IE in the sense you could not uninstall it. Windows obviously still ran Netscape (and later Firefox), and the OS needing a browser is vastly different from the OS being a browser.
Exactly my feelings.
pls someone take android away from google before they ruin it even more.
Oh god they are getting rid of adblock on Android too :D
Hopefully everyone can start dumping support into Linux for mobile
I'm hoping for this too. All it takes is someone figuring out verified boot and encryption and I'm jumping ship. Could not care less about battery life or optimization, I am rarely far from a charger or portable battery.
Android is way better than any Linux device I've used. It is very solid security wise and has apps made for mobile. Mobile Linux feels clunky since the apps are typically ported from the desktop.
It would be better if there was a Android fork with lots of momentum and money.
???
Unless they ban installations from 3rd party stores, I don't see how that can happen.
You could always install firefox from F-Droid
With the EU's Digital Markets Act, I think its gonna be quite difficult to ban 3rd party installations, I mean unless they pull an apple and make 2 versions of the OS for EU vs rest of the world?
Manifest 3
Which does not affect Firefox
Apple doesn't exactly try to converge OS platform, even forking off iPad OS from iOS.
Microsoft's converged desktop and tablet OS hasn't been well regarded.
Google's efforts to make Android well suited on tablets has been poorly maintained.
I did find ChromeOS Flex on an old Surface Pro 3 to be a pretty good tablet experience. I'm cautiously optimistic about this, though I haven't tried the desktop mode on my Pixel 7.
Apple doesn’t exactly try to converge OS platform, even forking off iPad OS from iOS
It is more that they couldn't figure out how - but they keep on slowly removing bits of all three and making all of them act the same way, so eventually they will be one bloated monolith if they continue down this path.
Well iPad and iPhone did have the same OS at first, so they knew how to do that. I would have preferred when they forked iPad OS out for them to have converged desktop and iPad instead of making a 3rd distinct OS variant. I can't reasonably say that a docked iPad is the same as a Mac, as commercial apps I use have different versions, with different capabilities, for iPad and Mac. Things like Adobe Lightroom andIK Multimedia Amplitube. But my Surface Pro has one set of apps whether I'm docked at home, using a clamshell keyboard case, or as a tablet and pen. That's more useful to me than having a really well polished and dedicated tablet OS.
Lineage works great on the Galaxy Tabs that support it
Considering Google's failure to support the tablet form factor on Android (many 1st party Google apps have much better versions for the iPad), I am skeptical this will lead to anything good.
Their ChromeOS tablets suck as well. The only reason for me to buy Google hardware is to put GrapheneOS on it.
I miss the era around the release of Android 4 where there were all sorts of interesting 10" Android tablets coming out.
It's sort of an open secret for years now. But I'm not totally convinced that it will work well.
I have a Chromebook with a Ryzen APU (Ryzen 3250 or smth). And while it handles all web tasks really well, it completely struggles with Android Apps. Even apps like "YouTube Kids" or "Prime Video" run far worse than their web couterparts.
And I'm not even talking about gaming - even old games like "cut the rope" run at unplayable framerates.
(my guess is that the whole virtualization framework is holding these apps back.)
I have a Chromebook with a Ryzen APU (Ryzen 3250 or smth). And while it handles all web tasks really well, it completely struggles with Android Apps. Even apps like “YouTube Kids” or “Prime Video” run far worse than their web couterparts.
That's why future ChromeOS won't be a dedicated OS with an Android running in a VM. They'll be actual Android.
This is such a good business move
Android would really help to increase competition in the desktop space.
"No shit."
Everyone who remembers that announcement that chromebooks would run android apps.
I'm thinking this is the opposite direction, with the enhanced desktop mode in Android 16. You hook your phone up to a KVM and get Chrome desktop, complete with containerized Linux apps and your mobile apps staying on your mobile device.
this is pretty good news, seeing ChromeOS supports Linux apps and is wayland-based now
It would be nice if it way all unified so that Linux apps would run on any Android device.
I think this is precisely why they added Linux support to Android.
Supports Linux apps poorly.
Which I will never use, thank you very much.
The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!
Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.
🔗Universal Link: [email protected]
💡Content Philosophy:
Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.
Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: [email protected]
For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: [email protected]
📰Our communities below
Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.
No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to [email protected].
Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to [email protected].
No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.
No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.
No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.
No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.
No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.
No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!
No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.
Our Communities
Lemmy App List
Chat and More