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Android and HoneycombAndroid and HoneycombPosted Mar 31, 2011 2:25 UTC (Thu) by cjb (guest, #40354)Parent article: Android and Honeycomb
> One could argue that Google needed to keep Android development in-house, so that it could keep up with the incredibly fast-paced smartphone market—and that may be true. One could certainly point to MeeGo as a counterexample of sorts, and one that has yet to really produce any tangible results in the form of products for sale.
It's not a counterexample. MeeGo's equivalent to Honeycomb -- the tablet version of its UI -- is its "MeeGo Tablet UX", which it's been demonstrating at conferences repeatedly (although they've thrown it out and started from scratch a couple of times) for the last year, e.g.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqeeQd-YNL0 (June 2010)
and which.. doesn't have any source available, as you can see looking at http://meego.gitorious.org/, and has never had any source available. So, MeeGo is just as culpable as far as developing in private, and moreover MeeGo's closed-source periods appear to be *longer* than Android's.
Maybe I'm missing something? I'm seeing lots of "Android sucks, I'm switching to MeeGo" posts (on identi.ca, mainly) since the Honeycomb announcement; I don't know whether I'm mistaken about how MeeGo actually works or everyone else is.
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Android and Honeycomb Posted Mar 31, 2011 3:49 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
Part of the difference: Meego Tablet hardware hasn't shipped yet. Honeycomb tablets have.
Android and Honeycomb Posted Mar 31, 2011 7:02 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
The key thing is that the tablet UX is just a one (somewhat unfortunate) piece of the puzzle, while most of the MeeGo is developed currently in the open, the developers committing while they develop and both sources and binaries being published all the time. Also because MeeGo is actually based on the traditional userland we all know, they are working closely with upstreams. Compare this to Android's "we might release one big tarball one day of our in-house code" policy.
The thing about UX:s is that commercial needs like marketing need to have some of "wow" effect, and some companies think it's better to develop such behind the curtains. The UX:s from Intel however should eventually all be open, and they've not yet failed any promise. Even if they would fail, the whole MeeGo Core is open anyway for anyone to build and extend, and there can be any number of UX:s (like say GNOME Shell, Unity, KDE Plasma Desktop etc.). I'm eager to see KDE tablet/mobile UX:s packaged into MeeGo via for example the MeeGo Community OBS: https://build.pub.meego.com/
MeeGo has still some way to go in its openness, but they are getting there. See for example the recently opened http://build.meego.com/project/list_public view to the buildfarm. While they are doing already so well, I don't want to take the opportunity to blame them for stuff they haven't yet achieved in the openness - I really do understand there are also other objectives than opening everything up, like dealing with the potential hw manufacturers and sw developers.
I have for example done test builds of MeeGo for ARMv4 (yes, the ooold instruction set) based on current development MeeGo snapshot. The possibilities seem to me to be endless, unlike with Android where I'm discouraged that I'd need to take some random stable snapshot without any possibility to see or influence development.
Android and Honeycomb Posted Mar 31, 2011 10:00 UTC (Thu) by lbt (subscriber, #29672) [Link]
> and which.. doesn't have any source available, as you can see looking at...
So your timing was just a touch off :
From Imad Sousou : [MeeGo-dev] tablet user experience source is now open...
eg: http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_UX_Components
However - it was an "over the wall" delivery... this time.
I think the development model is the differentiation between MeeGo and Android - lets hope it continues to mature and differentiate.
Android and Honeycomb Posted Mar 31, 2011 13:21 UTC (Thu) by cjb (guest, #40354) [Link]
> So your timing was just a touch off :
Pesky MeeGo, making my argument invalid by releasing all their source code! Great to see they made a release.
Android and Honeycomb Posted Mar 31, 2011 17:29 UTC (Thu) by xxiao (subscriber, #9631) [Link]
Meego is a wrong boat to jump on.
but again, there is really no alternatives. darn it
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