Microsoft to invest in Cyanogen
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
But it's hard to reconcile some of the public blunders that Cyanogen has made since becoming a company. Their OEM relationships with Oppo, OnePlus and Micromax seem haphazard and volatile, and it's not clear they present any real advantages to the consumer. As far as I know, the Oppo N1 isn't supported anymore, and while the OnePlus One is theoretically still supported at least in some markets, Jelly Bean is nowhere to be found, and OnePlus is off doing their own ROMs now.
Distractions like Nextbit's "Baton"[3] (a risky bet on an idea that doesn't appear to work with the majority of apps) leave me wondering what Cyanogen's real value proposition is.
It will be interesting to see where this is headed, and I hope CM remains faithful to their core community and support the maintainers that keep bringing to CM to the masses.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/24/2584340/android-4-0-aosp-... [2] http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/9/3229163/android-4-1-ported-... [3] https://nextbit.com/about/
Stock android is actually much more stable than the CM that ships with OnePlus. At least imho.
A friend is already selling his, after about 6 months with the phone. I haven't had it much longer but long enough to clearly see that stock android up to 4 offered much better usability.
The bugs I endure in the OnePlus just because I am sick of switching phones every year are borderline insufferable.
It seems confused about sound. I had to uninstall Google Play completely so my official JBL OnePlus headset wouldn't start playing music in Google Play instead of Spotify.
These issues continued when I made my first audio recording. I was at the doctors and recorded the meeting, after that every time I try to play music from my headset it starts that audio recording. Even though the audio recording program is closed several reboots ago. Workaround is to open the phone, start spotify playing, pause, then I can use the headset as normal.
The worst bugs in a phone are bugs in the actual phone feature, imo. And in my case CM seems confused about the screen when I'm in a conversation. It's supposed to darken when I move the screen to my ear but it never lights up again when I move the phone away from my ear. Often I have to unlock the phone to end a call. The headset also seems unable to end calls, only answer them.
Waking up it's very sluggish, sometimes unresponsive. It has this "knock knock" feature where it wakes up if you tap the screen twice. This feature worked for a day or two when it was new, then stopped working for several weeks until I tried installing a stock android image on it and failed, reverted to CM and then the knock-knock worked again.
Even though the knocking works to wake it up, it often will not accept input for those first few taps after it wakes up so you end up having to erase your unlock code and start over a lot.
And speaking of stock android. Since none of my friends with stock android phones, nor me with my Nexus 7 at home, seemed to suffer these issues I decided to try the official stock android images from OnePlus.
I ended up in a reboot loop issue that has been reported on the bug tracker and on the forums. The problem is that I can't have my sim lock on if I want to install the android image because then it keeps rebooting the phone as soon as I unlock it. So I had to revert back to CM because I didn't feel like disabling the sim lock was a good option.
I could probably go on if you give me some time to think about it, there are definitely more bugs that I have experienced in my short time with this phone.
On a personal note, I was intrigued by CM because I am a FOSS junkie and know that it's a fork of android. I've had phones like the N900, ZTE Firefox OS and Jolla in the past. I love ideas like Replicant. So you understand why I bought the OnePlus. But in retrospect I should have just gotten an Xperia or an HTC since they have both provided models with unlocked boot loaders and Sony have even opened up their Android source code.
The only bug I've had is that it refused to automatically connect to a particular wifi network. I fixed that by removing the network and adding it again.
- sometimes it starts playing my Shuffle player out of blue, while being in pocket (but for last months it didn't happen)
- sometimes my Sygic car navigation fails to catch up in plain open terrain for very long time (though this might not be related to OS at all)
- if phone is not on cable, I can be 1 hour next to known wifi and it will still use my limited 3g connection. Once i turn on screen, in 2-3 secs it's in. Same goes for some messaging apps (ie whatsapp)
overall OK phone for the price (especially when seeing colleague's Moto X being bricked/losing all data few times from google's updates), but far from bugless.
I just remembered this happens to me too.
I guess I should mention that I did have lots of bugs with CM11 but CM12 is running really stable for me. It's touch is way more responsive.
I also used Lollipop on Nexus 5 before I bought my OnePlus One and that was a bit more solid of an experience.
https://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2013/04/03/cyanogenmod-...
But at least the changes above are open source, and you can see what's going on. Or if they go too far, someone else can pick up the baton and move on. It's becoming more difficult for that to happen from stock Android, as more functionality and applications become reliant on play services, which can ultimately only be installed on terms set by Google.
Additionally, what major phone manufacturers and carriers are going to go with this? If Android devices do not come with Google products (GMail / YouTube / Maps / Hangouts), are the devices as useful? I think not.
I don't know anything about this deal, but I adore how small Silicon Valley sometimes is.
Search the mailing list for "microsoft" (which picks up e-mail addresses) compared to "windows" to see where MS involvement picked up.[1]
A lot of Microsoft's involvements in open source are via MS Open Tech. See their website for more information about their contributions.[2] While this doesn't show checkins, here are their blog posts about Cordova.[3]
[1] http://callback.markmail.org/search/?q=list%3Aorg.apache.inc...
Ten years ago my head would have imploded reading that. I remember distinctly balmer saying that linux was a cancer.
That's kinda been my vision for how Linux may succeed on desktops/laptops. The GPL'd Linux kernel with almost everything else closed source. I realize I'm just describing Android.
My job is kind of awesome - I'm basically at a full-time hackathon, juggling my MacBook, Windows Notebook, a bunch Cloud solutions, some IoT devices and whatever our hardware teams come up with.
The team is brand new - and we're still hiring. Hit me up (felixrieseberg.com / @felixrieseberg) if you're interested!
The short answer is that there are divisions in the company with a direct imperative to open source things, so if your manager is willing to encourage this (easy enough to figure out), the answer is often yes. Like almost every company, we tend to open source tools but not products (e.g., yes to Orleans, but no to the game it supports, Halo), so from there it's a matter of finding a group that has such tools, or is open to developing them.
Felix (who works for my old boss -- hi Felix!) is a special case. He works for a team called strategic engagements, whose job (I hope he'll correct me if I'm wrong) is specifically to engage with the public, usually on their own terms, which often involves non-MSFT tech. _That_ is an uncommon job, but if you want to talk to people in the group, just ping me when you get here and I'll put you in touch with the dev manager for the group.
Cyanogen is arguably the only creditable opposition to the Google Android hegemony. It's nice to see MS recognize that and support it. Too bad MS shut down the Nokia Android fork in its nascency.
It would be interesting to see if they can get more windows and windows phone compatibility into Android.
When I finally was able to get a new phone, I got a Palm Pre which was (and still is) the best phone I ever used until HP ruined it.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultrathin-Bluetooth-Slider-Keyboard-...
Cyanogen follows Google AOSP rules and thus doe snot oppose Google in anyway shape or form..
and despite MS actions Nokia, the other part MS did not buy is going ahead with an android fork.
Can you provide a source for this please? I remember reading about the new Nokia N1 tablet but it was built and designed by foxconn and just branded by Nokia so I am not aware of any Android fork there...
Nokia has the "Z Launcher" product which also the N1 tablet is running.
[0] http://www.androidauthority.com/cyanogen-google-kirt-mcmaste...
And I say this running my XPeria S with Android 4.1.1 and my Motorola Xoom on 4.1, with my wife's Samsung S4 Mini running some 4.1 or 4.2 (and no notification light, it's stupid). Let's hope nobody finds out where my devices are on the Internet because they're likely full of security holes that will never ever be plugged.
But no one engages critical thinking and reads here
AOSP is available under a standard open source license, and can be used by anyone under those terms. It's the use of Play Services and Google's Apps that requires specific permission and has relatively onerous terms. CyanogenMod can use Play Services, but it doesn't have to, and seems to be moving away from it entirely.
Sales: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/01/nokia-n1-doing-extremely-we...
Nokia Android fork lives. Stay tuned.
We (at SweetLabs) have been proponents of this "Windroid" concept for some time, and I think Cyanogen is a very smart way for Microsoft to move forward. Our "Windroid" thoughts were written up last year if anyone is interested: http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/01/windroid-what-if-microsoft...
Google wants standardization and consistency, Cyanogen wants an "anything goes" environment. I'm not saying Cyanogen's goals are not admirable, but Google wants control over the Android ecosystem and they definitely don't want someone else with that control.
This would be like Microsoft funding companies that make it easier to jailbreak iOS.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/15/google-blocks-windows-pho...
http://www.windowscentral.com/new-policy-google-voice-means-...
I used to be a big Google fan (before and after becoming a Microsoft employee), but seeing Google continue to block WP apps actually made me decide to move to WP and off Google services as much as possible.
And complaining that there isn't an official version of some Google app for Windows Phone is like complaining there isn't an official version of Microsoft Office for Ubuntu or FreeBSD. Why would you even expect there to be?
For the YouTube case, neither the Android nor iOS app were built on HTML5. Why did the WP app need to be? And, fine, if it needs to run on HTML5, were there API's or metadata provided to allow showing the ads using HTML5 standards? Nope.
Same for Google Voice - they won't provide an app and won't allow other developers to provide one. I don't care about having an official Google app; I do care about them completely walling off access to one.
Starting around the Google+ days, I began to get a very clear sense that Google cared about their strategies a lot more than me as a user. As a long-time Google user - since Gmail beta, OG Droid user, etc. - this was a dramatic shift.
Compare this to pretty much everything Microsoft releases these days - published standards, open API's. They publish things for other platforms and encourage developers to access and extend theirs. That's a technology future I'd prefer to support.
The problem is they're not really apps, they're services. Go ask Netflix if you can write a third party client for their service. Or Skype for that matter.
I'll be the first in line if you can get rid of all the useless DRM/telecoms regulation/whatever that makes these companies think this is necessary, but Google is if anything doing less of that than their competitors. At least they have platform-independent HTML5 versions of pretty much everything.
You have to admit the schadenfreude is delicious. Microsoft pushes DRM knowing full well it will disadvantage minority platforms and then it comes back to bite them now that they're the minority platform.
> published standards, open API's
It doesn't count when the standard just says "do it the way X version of Microsoft Office does it" without actually specifying what that is.
Not really an issue because Skype releases clients for Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, PlayStation...
> Useless DRM/telecoms regulation
What's that in reference to? Haven't heard Google say anything about that.
> HTML5 versions of pretty much everything
Sort of. See this thread on Google Inbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495257
And this for Google Hangouts: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912
> delicious
To me as I consumer, schadenfreude is never delicious when it affects me.
> It doesn't count when the standard just says "do it the way X version of Microsoft Office does it" without actually specifying what that is.
Which API are you talking about? There are published, documented API endpoints for all kinds of Office services: https://www.google.com/?q=office+apis
I wasn't just talking about Office, by the way. For example, part of the HoloLens announcement was the invitation for Oculus, Magic Leap and Google Glass devs to build on the holographic APIs (http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7865539/microsoft-windows-...).
Back to the original point - if a service provider won't provide an app, they should provide an API. Ideally both, but at least one. It's in their rights not to, but that's my cue to go somewhere else because that's not how I want to be treated.
It's still kind of an issue if you want to run it on SteamOS, Solaris, FirefoxOS, Tizen, BeOS/Haiku, Plan9, all the different BSDs, etc. etc.
You can't expect anybody to support everything.
> Sort of.
Yes, Chrome-only for the brand new bleeding edge stuff is stupid. But it doesn't actually exclude any platforms because chromium is open source and anyone can port it to whatever you like. And then they end up supporting other browsers anyway.
> To me as I consumer, schadenfreude is never delicious when it affects me.
Yeah, I was a little confused about that. It seems like you were saying that Windows Phone users are having a hard time so you decided to switch to it. In which case it affecting you would seem to be intentionally self-inflicted.
> Which API are you talking about?
The "standard" for OOXML that Microsoft pushed through so they could say it was a "standard" even though the standards document was essentially entirely written by Microsoft and didn't provide all the information necessary to actually implement it correctly.
> Back to the original point - if a service provider won't provide an app, they should provide an API.
What you're really saying is that they should always provide an API, because nobody is going to provide an app for each of 10,000 different platforms. And I completely agree. But YouTube is doing the same as Netflix/Hulu/HBO and Google Voice is doing the same as Skype/MagicApp/Vonage. Blame all of them or none of them.
> Skype
I fundamentally agree with you. Skype does support way more platforms than just about any service I can think of, especially when you consider Skype for Web beta (http://blogs.skype.com/2014/11/14/please-welcome-skype-for-w...). But I agree that nobody can support every platform.
> Chrome
Kind of true, but not all platforms can or will support arbitrary browsers. Worse, as a user I should never have to run multiple browsers just to use a web app. Extra chagrin here because holy cow this is the web we're talking about, and Google's established a pretty clear pattern over the past year of Chrome-only dev that should be pretty worrying to anyone that cares about web standards.
>shadenfreude
In my case, I decided that I was irritated enough at Google's actions that I'd rather not have Google apps on my phone apps than support their ecosystem. Plus, I genuinely prefer Windows Phone as a platform.
>OOXML
That was 2006, the same year jQuery was first released. Cars and Da Vinci Code were big movies that year. That was before Windows Vista shipped. It was a long time ago. If that's your reference on Microsoft's standards support, it's not the full picture.
>Blame all of them or none of them
I'll blame them all then, but I definitely feel like Microsoft's by far the least bad in this area. I'm disappointed, when I first got excited about the Android platform, I had high hopes that it would be something else. I ran early releases in VM's before phones were available. I was excited about an open source phone platform, and Google's general trend (at that time) of doing cool stuff on open source, open services, open API's. Things turned out differently.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...
The new standard for high capacity SD Cards - SDXC - specifies a filesystem in the standard. That filesystem is exFAT, a proprietary, patent-encumbered filesystem from Microsoft.
Microsoft like to make out that they're an all new and open company, but they were a nasty company in the past, and they're a nasty company now.
As for Open Sourcing .Net, what good has come of it as of today? It looks like a move to push their own environment more than anything else. But I'll tell you what: if in 2020 the decisions Microsoft are making today prove to be for the good, then I might start think better of them. At the moment, though, they've got a lot of past to make up for.
I get that this is inconvenient for users on other platforms that don't or can't license it easily, the same way GIF and MP3 and similar file formats have been in the past. I don't know why the SDA picked a proprietary filesystem.
Regardless, that was something the SDA did, and they did it in 2009. How does it relate to talking about how Microsoft currently produces apps and publishes APIs for other platforms?
But even assuming that Microsoft had nothing to do with exFAT being adopted as the SDXC filesystem (yeah, right) it still relates as MS could have released the exFAT specification and they could have released the filesystem from licensing.
That would have been sign of them being a more open company, allowing integration with other OSs, but instead it just looks like since they failed to kill off OSS, they're now trying to own it. Same old Microsoft.
Sorry but its evident to me as an outsider that Google has a chip on their shoulder when it comes to Microsoft, whether it be intentional weaved into their culture or not.
Here's a good summary of the history behind this: http://www.windowscentral.com/google-problem-windows-phone
Google definitely hates MS, as evidenced by how childish they act when it comes to Windows Phone. Apple hates Google, Microsoft hates Google, Google hates Microsoft. I'd say that's likely how it goes.
The human brain: simplifying complex issues with anthropomorphism since forever.
Kind of, but not really. Apple gives its operating system away for free, and sells hardware. Microsoft sells its operating system to OEMs and business customers. They aren't directly competing in the way that Coke and Pepsi are.
And Windows (of some version) still has >90% market share for desktop OSes, so OSX is not a credible threat to Microsoft in that space. Microsoft's biggest obstacle in the desktop OS space is Windows XP.
But Apple is more concerned these days in selling iPhones, which makes them a lot of money. And Microsoft wants in on that (disclosure: Microsoft employee, but speaking for myself).
Generally, the fanaticism in HN comments is much stronger than the sentiment of anyone actually working at these places.
Amazon has been expanding outside of their core retail space (e.g. AWS, advertising, services, etc) while Facebook has been eating Google's advertising dollars for a while.
I wouldn't go as far to say that Google doesn't care about Apple/Microsoft, but in both cases Apple has presents on their platforms and still makes money on them. They are only competitors if you view Android as something Google makes money with rather than something Google uses to advertise Google's services.
All I've ever heard are horror stories about how advertising on Facebook does not work. I definitely don't see how ads on a social network can compete with ads on the largest search engine and almost every ad funded website in the world.
Weird, I know. Actually, I do have an account but only used it to write a Facebook app for a client, not for actual use on that mini-Internet (kind of like Geocities isn't it?)
Facebook advertising has been very effective and profitable for at least some clients. I think Google+ shows that Google is terrified of Facebook. I have no knowledge of how Google's advertising revenue is doing, and wouldn't be at all surprised if they still dwarfed Facebook.
On the other hand, google knows it is likely just a matter of time before Facebook gets it right, and when they do they are one of the few companies who could complete at scale with google.
[0]: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Driven-by-Facebook-Google-M...
But people spend way more time on Facebook. It's entertainment, whereas Google is a tool. So brand advertising works better on Facebook. It's more like TV advertising.
Windows, I would like to see something like the project Spartan, a Windows based on unix.
I'm a dreamer I know but at this point I will not be surprised.
Back in the 90's, it was cool to be a Microsoft fan. Not so much over the last decade. They're trying hard to change that.
As Amazon knows, it's owning the ecosystem that matters.
I think this is a smart investment but the handling of the Nokia brand has been pretty bad if you ask me.
Seriously, my Lumia 520 is the best cheap phone I've ever bought.
I am really awaiting another well-designed Windows Phone device to upgrade to.
Battery life is stupendous compared to the Nexus 4 (even when it was brand new), or any iPhone prior to the 6 (which I lack first hand experience), even before the battery saver triggers. That's considering a pretty heavy usage (lost in a foreign country and using the GPS a lot) under the sun, so brightness to the max.
Cheap, the touchscreen is ok, gorilla glass, cell reception is good. Crappy camera without a front camera or flash though.
The bundled 'Here' apps are great and saved my bacon several times over due to the easy and accurate offline maps.
Removable battery, sim, the back is plastic so it survived several falls.
Basically, if you want a phone to (gasp!) make phone calls, which also has good navigation capabilities (specially offline) and to use 'mainstream' stuff such as whatsappp or facebook, then you don't really need much else.
Or if you want a backup phone that WILL have battery left when your iPhone dies. You can even carry spares, which is something you don't see often nowadays. If I ever go on a camping trip, that's the phone I'm taking.
E.g. - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008TXFPS2/ref=oh_aui_detai...
Does anyone do much work on tablets, out of interest?
My wife uses Google Sheets for a spreadsheet or two on her iPad but we're under no illusion that it'll replace a "proper" office package on the Mac/PC.
EDIT: Just noticed it'll need a subscription, so I am not their target market. Thanks for the info about the release though, I did not know about that.
But this would be more than Windows Phone...with Windows 10 merging into one store and Universal apps allowed, is it possible MS is telling everyone to build for Windows 10 and you'll get tablet and phone apps for free?
I'm a Windows Phone user (Lumia 1020) and really frustrated by the lack of a new flagship phone, but my feeling is MS is just waiting to leapfrog everyone else's hardware in 6 months. A lofty goal, but seeing the Surface Pro 3's success, maybe, just maybe they can do it.
But embedding Android inside Windows seems plausible to me.
[1] 10.5 million Lumia smartphones, 39.7 million Nokia-branded dumbphones -- http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/hardware-surprisingl...
Microsoft may not get a "controlling stake", but it will probably have a huge influence in the development of Cyanogen from now on.
[1] :https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Co...
Microsoft donated an entire architecture work to NetBSD...
Oh, so no Candy Crush Saga then? Well, that's OK. Better chance for everyone.
But for most people, supporting an additional platform for any duration more than a year can quickly cost upwards of that amount. With the tiny marketshare today, and nothing but hope that it will ever grow - hope that has not come to fruition in 3-5 years - it will be a net loss very quickly and also have diverted resources from the other aspects of the developer's companies.
If they could perhaps offer scalable incentives, like "support and consulting services worth $2000 per month" or "we pay you $0.05 per download (even if your app is free)" or "we'll market your app alongside WP marketing" then perhaps. Perhaps it might be functional developer incentive.
Disclaimer/note: As a cofounder of a company built around an app that Microsoft tried to woo us to port. We toyed with their APIs for a bit, but it was going to be a support nightmare with our hardware and sensor requests and we decided against following through.
The MS app store is flooded with so many cheap, quickly developed apps and knockoffs that finding anything good not simply produced by MS itself requires wading through stuff that's bad.
Could be I'm biased, refusing to buy anything I feel I could just make myself, but I can imagine as an app developer who actually tried to make money, developing for a platform where the margins are so low and the copying so easy probably doesn't provide much incentive.
MS even approved for sale, a fake Windows 8.1 update. That's how poorly it's handled.
Here's some pics to show the crap: http://imgur.com/a/xvqZg#0
Fake Windows Update: http://imgur.com/FOC0jr5
Contacting MS is useless. In the case of the fake Dropbox app, the MS CSR said it worked fine and I should try reinstalling this. This is regarding an obvious fake/scam/phishing app.
Even legit publishers are finding it hard to get pirate copies of their apps removed. If you look at the top paid apps, some of them are media players, rebundling things like K-Like Codec Pack (at least in name). Pretty much any popular title will have plenty of fakes going around.
MS prioritizes one metric alone: number of apps published. The store is filled with useless shit and is an embarrassment. As a user, it makes the Store difficult to use. And even after you get through the outright scams, the overall quality is pretty terrible. Just poor UI, janky software.
It's a shame, because the MS dev tools are really fantastic, and the frameworks look great.
If Windows 10 has any significant uptake and given that its integrated search is the machine, the web AND the app store, I would think they would curate just to improve peoples search result quality, to try and avoid given the feature a negative image.
Curious how such a small investment would make a dent in the seeming lack of apps for the Windows Phone platform.
I know that's what I did.
FWIW, Microsoft was giving out a lot of free developer devices, too.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4124548/microsoft-paying-d...
Source: They did it at my company
It would certainly put the jumper cables on Windows Phone.
Edit: Which isn't necessarily to say that wouldn't be Microsoft's best option for Windows Phone right now. Especially since games and entertainment apps are such a big part of the app market and their "nativeness" tends to be less important.
Maybe WP can regain some interest that way. Being close to Cyanogen makes a lot of sense in that scenario.
A) users will get the cool OS updates as soon as possible, but after the guys running the 'real' thing get them.
Guess what choice users will make?
B) developers who develop for your platform have to support the market leader, too; developers who develop for the market leader get your users for free.
Guess what choice developers will make?
This tactic killed native OS/2 apps and, subsequently, OS/2. The Blackberry plot didn't end that well for Blackberry, either.
Correction: This post originally said Microsoft would be investing $70 million in Cyanogen, but the company will be taking part in a $70 million investment round. It's unknown how much Microsoft is investing.Android: Doesn't have the dominance that Windows has had for two decades, thus limiting the power of Google. Also, there is much less lockin for phones.
Google builds an AOSP environment, as soon as everyone uses it, they move all the libraries into the proprietary Google Services Framework, and then they appended their contracts so that every manufacturer that produces "Android with Google Play" devices can’t sell pure AOSP devices anymore.
The vast, VAST majority of APIs that developers use and depend on are in AOSP either as framework APIs or in the support libraries (which are open source in AOSP as well).
Second the contracts were always there. Hell, the contracts (Open Handset Alliance) came before AOSP.
"Microsoft has no marketshare", "Microsoft just doesn't get it", "Microsoft lost the war", "Microsoft is dead".
http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Financials...
Microsoft is still an incredibly powerful company.
Meanwhile I'm using my cell phone dozens times a day and a tablet at least 3-4 times a day.
Man this must be terrifying for Microsoft. To have a dominant position on a form factor that is quickly becoming irrelevant.
And today we learn that it's actually Microsoft pulling the strings and "taking Android away from Google". That changes things quite a bit.
Microsoft will only keep it "open" as long as it benefits them (yes, kind of Google - which is precisely why I don't see any benefit in this for the user, just the major downside that will come with such a fork - Fragmentation).