[OT] mobile rising

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Wednesday, 8 November 2017 at 21:36:58 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I don't know why you go back to Apple, when you clearly cut out 
> the part of the above excuses quote where I pointed out that 
> _google had none of the advantages_ you think were necessary to 
> win mobile, yet created the OS that now ships on the most 
> mobile devices.

Android wasn't all that great in the beginning and most 
manufacturers didn't make much money off it. Samsung was more the 
exception than the rule, and no, not only Google is making 
Android happen. For a single company to go that route alone you 
better have a good starting point. Microsoft had it, obviously. 
Apple had it. Maybe the owners of BeOS could have done it, not 
sure, but there are few companies that actually could have 
produced a high quality OS + application frameworks + hardware in 
anything less than a decade. Apple could focus on hardware and 
drivers and a little bit of fickling with their existing OS-X 
frameworks. That's a major difference.

> belied by the fact that google had much less.  You talk about 
> OS expertise, all while HP has long had their own OS's, HP-UX

That's only a generic Unix with X11 on top. HP had WebOS, but 
gave up on it!! I can only assume they realized it would be too 
time consuming and too expensive to be worthwhile.

Just take a look at how difficult it is to build something as 
simple as D or C++ standard library. Then multiply that by the 
challenges when create complete application frameworks. Nokia 
bought up QT (which isn't all that great) for a reason, and for 
_a lot_ of money!

I think you underestimate what it takes to get it all to work 
together in a reasonably manner. Anyhow, with Android out there 
as a possible contender it basically wouldn't make a whole lot of 
sense to invest in rolling your own OS. I assume that is the 
reason HP let WebOS stagnate.