Tizen 2.0 loads up on native code [LWN.net]

Tizen 2.0 loads up on native code

Posted Feb 21, 2013 18:52 UTC (Thu) by ikm (guest, #493)
Parent article: Tizen 2.0 loads up on native code

> what is striking is the extent to which Tizen is now supporting native application development at all, when one considers the HTML5-only message that dominated Tizen's early days.

The same thing happened to Android and Windows Phone. Both initially featured managed code only, and both yielded after being for some time on the market and realizing that managed code only is simply not enough. It's great that Tizen got the same lesson *before* hitting the market.

In fact, Tizen's offering of HTML5 looks very weak compared to Java/.NET offered by competitors, so I doubt it could have stood a chance with HTML5 only.

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Tizen 2.0 loads up on native code

Posted Mar 7, 2013 10:03 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (3 responses)

It is a mistake everyone needs to make. Even iPhone caved in and let users install applications on the phone. Apple also pushed the HTML5-only message hard in the beginning.

(Which always surprised me. Not that they have a change of heart, but that they push somewhat platform independent technology so hard. The lockin effects offered by native applications must be worth a truckload of money.)

Tizen 2.0 loads up on native code

Posted Mar 7, 2013 15:46 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

<conspiracy>Maybe they knew they wanted to do native, but wanted to use "but we tried to be nice; we're not *that* greedy!".</conspiracy?>

I actually think it more likely that they wanted their nice, sacred, internal APIs for themselves and not allow third party apps to compete with their apps (cf. apps forced to use the system webkit and any other renderer is banned…and the Nitro JS implementation is off limits to not-Apple). Now they just gate everything instead of just not providing the API via HTML5 in the first place.

Tizen 2.0 loads up on native code

Posted Mar 7, 2013 16:00 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Reality is simpler - the initial iPhone didn't have a stable enough API. And the first SDK versions for iOS were pure crap (with applications started under the root user, constantly crashing, etc.)

Tizen 2.0 loads up on native code

Posted Mar 7, 2013 17:03 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

That might be the technical-side motivator, but I wouldn't be surprised if the political decisions which allowed the technical decision to move forward were along the (non-tagged) lines I described.