First Alpha of Qt For Android Released 212
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of Nokia's announcement that it will be cheerfully throwing its existing developer community under a bus by not offering Qt for Windows Phone, a project to implement Qt on Android has announced its initial alpha release. Necessitas project lead Bogdan Vatra writes, 'I had a dream that one day, I'll be able to deploy existing Qt software on any Android platform. I had a dream that one day, all Qt applications will use system wide shared Qt libraries. I had a dream that one day, all Qt applications once compiled and deployed to one android platform, will run on any other newer android platform and will last for years without any recompilation. I had a dream that one day, I'll be able to create, manage, compile debug and deploy Qt apps using a first class citizen IDE. Now, those dreams become reality.' The Necessitas wiki offers some documentation on Qt for Android. A demo video of Qt for Android in action is also available."
Qt ecosystem... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:3)
With or without it how will they fight the Nokia patent pool brought in court by their puppet master?
Why go to court? If only three people use it then it's hardly worth the effort. And if everybody starts writing Android apps with Qt, great! Just do the about face and tell all those Qt developers they employ to make Qt run on WP7 and suddenly WP7 has all the Android apps. Which would benefit both Nokia and Android at the expense of iOS, because it allows developers to target both platforms at once.
C++ doesn't even run on WP7 (Score:2)
Just do the about face and tell all those Qt developers they employ to make Qt run on WP7
How will Qt run on WP7 if standard C++ doesn't even run on WP7 due to not being verifiably type-safe? The excuse for C++ found on WP7 [wikipedia.org] has different, incompatible syntax for pointers and arrays. Even if they rewrite Qt line-by-line for C#, applications for such a Qt on WP7 won't be portable to anything else.
Re:C++ doesn't even run on WP7 (Score:3)
They don't have to rewrite Qt and make it incompatible. They just have to [get Microsoft to] allow standard C++ on WP7. Microsoft likes to make ugly language changes like that under the fig leaf type safety or whatever because they like to make it difficult to make portable Windows programs. When the situation is reversed and they're trying to get the larger number of Android apps running on WP7, portability is their friend and excuses like type safety start to look pretty thin.
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:3)
Re:Qt ecosystem...Not soon enough (Score:2)
Not soon enough I am afraid, it would finally make android a first class device.
Re:Qt ecosystem...Not soon enough (Score:2)
Frankly, the download time for the libraries is unacceptable - it should be packaged along with the application itself. If it's so large (25Mb is much more than most apps), then something is seriously wrong. When I get an app from the marketplace, I'm happy for it to be added to the system download queue and wait until I get a notification that it's ready to use. If that app then required focus whilst spending another 10 minutes downloading stuff, I'd just quit it and uninstall. I'd never get to find out how great the app might be.
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:2)
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:3)
Java and C#, like C++, are usually the least suited for GUI code - more expressive languages are much less aggravating for the task.
That's why they made Qt's QML [nokia.com]
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:3)
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:2)
this attitude is probably why so many guis today are boated and slow as hell on microwave frequency clocked hardware. more 'expressive' and abstract languages tend to run in VMs and/or interpreters (which are often coded in c++ anyway) which makes the execution speed orders of magnitude slower than they need to be..
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:2)
That's impossible when GUI code is normally responsible for
I understand this mentality runs counter-intuitive for the faith-based programmers, who can't comprehend profiling their code and then rewriting it to be more efficient.
Bad attitude, Mr AC. Even if the GUI is only 1% in total, that 1% tends to show up as annoying latency when you start your application that sucks the real CPU, or try to control it. And think about subtle but easily visible issues like a pointer lagging behind the control movement or sluggish scrolling.
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:2)
So, how long will take google to trash the java stuff...
Wouldn't this trash the existing application base?
No. It will take years to deprecate. Said Qt as primary, all the rest something else.
You did say trash, don't try to deny it ;)
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:2)
That will never happen, Google loves Java and Python (both are stupid choices if you ask me).
Obvious for the former, +1 for the latter. Guido shows an irresponsible ignorance of the importance of runtime efficiency.
Re:Qt ecosystem... (Score:2)
Qt and C++ were great in 1995. Last time I checked, it's not 1995 anymore.
If you think that either QT or C++ are irrelevant in 2012 then you are uninformed, delusional or both.
Flagged video (Score:2, Insightful)
So some asshole flagged the QT video on youtube and now there is no way to report it as incorrectly flagged. A new low for fanboys..
Re:Flagged video (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flagged video (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks for posting the link. So tired of americans obsession with nipples getting in the way of everything..
Re:Flagged video (Score:2)
Nokia is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
This is incredible. It's hard to believe how stupid are some companies. Nokia had some awesome assets. How could they not see it?
- You are the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones
- You own one of the best development frameworks in the world, a framework that is 100% cross platform, and totally Unix friendly
- The world is changing. Windows is decaying on desktops. Unix runs most servers, many desktops (combining Apple + GNU/Linux + other free Unix-like systems), and is the biggest mobile player (33% Android + 16% Apple)
- You have an awesome linux-based mobile platform (meego).
- Microsoft has consistently failed on the mobile market, and is irrelevant
- Every organization that has ever partnered with microsoft has lost, big time
So, the logical step is to throw away everything you have, ignore the market trend, and move to windows?
What. The. Fuck.
Partnering with Google, porting QT to Android, merging all cool meego functionality into Android, and cleaning up your product line didn't ever cross your mind, Nokia?
But you can see their main mistake was hiring Stephen Elop. Since he left Macromedia he couldn't hold a job for more than a year. Nothing screams failure like a CEO that roams through 3 companies in 2 years. And he got to Nokia from Microsoft. Really Nokia, just WTF.
Regardless, it doesn't seem to be the only company that doesn't get it. Most technology companies nowdays just plain don't get it. This morning I broke my samsung phone (android 1.6), so I bought a new one (Galaxy, 2.1 Eclair). It came with a shitload of crappy samsung apps, an awful theme, gmail replaced for some stupid mail app, and Yahoo as the search engine (can't be changed). I just rooted it, and installed Froyo. Looks awesome now. Why are technology companies boycotting themselves so badly lately? I just don't get it. /rant
Long live Nokia! (Score:4)
Sigh...
- You own one of the best development frameworks in the world, a framework that is 100% cross platform, and totally Unix friendly
A lot of people would argue .Net is a much better development environment than Qt. I can't understand why someone would willingly use C++ to develop user applications ( not systems dev ) in 2011. Even Android promotes Java for this.
- The world is changing. Windows is decaying on desktops. Unix runs most servers, many desktops (combining Apple + GNU/Linux + other free Unix-like systems), and is the biggest mobile player (33% Android + 16% Apple)
How is windows 'decaying'? Is that your emotional way of saying that it's losing marketshare? If so, why should Nokia care?
- You have an awesome linux-based mobile platform (meego).
Yes, unfortunately, only nerds care about that. And in case you missed Elop's many interviews, the board was focused on delivering more than just an operating system. Microsoft brings, XBox, office productivity, Bing and many other very large franchises.
- Microsoft has consistently failed on the mobile market, and is irrelevant
Many of the innovative features found on Android and IPhone today came from Microsoft and RIM. They ran the market for at least a decade before they faltered. WP7 has been out for only 3 months and has already gained 1-3% ( depends on who you ask ). That's without Nokia.
- Every organization that has ever partnered with microsoft has lost, big time
HTC made all its money before a year or two ago from Microsoft. That tiny company would never have been able to produce its own OS. Sony did the same. Dell and HP have both grown for decades using Microsoft software.
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:2)
Nah, it's the money.
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:3)
Good for you, but I am one of those people who prefer the power of C++, and more importantly to target other platforms than Windows. Besides, with Qt, C++ isn't any harder than Java (which sucks in its verbosity, I can't stand it, see how that works with opinions?). Android is by the way fully embracing native development now, as it improves performance, reduces reliance on the controversial Java code and Oracle threats, and allows much quicker porting of existing applications (exactly the same thing that's going to hamper WP7's C#)
Microsoft brings, XBox, office productivity, Bing and many other very large franchises.
Bing ?????? Who cares? Xbox ? Don't give a crap wrt my phone. Office productivity, MS already have this on Symbian
I have no doubt MS can and will produce a very smooth and nice experience, but as with Google it will lock in tightly to their own OS, their own services, etc. I highly doubt a WP phone will export itself as a generic mass storage device like Symbian can, for example, instead needing drivers which are of course only available for Windows, and probably only Windows 7 onwards at that. Email will favour Outlook/Exchange, just like Android favours gmail. IE9 will have its own quirks and deviations from the standard. What Nokia used to have was independent support of those, though none of it stellar
.
And of course this article is about Qt on Android, which is Nokia's strategy and investments now paying off in providing an upgrade path from Symbian - except to Android instead of their own next gen OS!
IMHO more people prefer Qt and targetting several platforms, than using MS only tools and targetting only WP. Nokia is shooting itself in the foot by not supporting Qt on WP, which is a purely political BS decision.
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people would argue .Net is a much better development environment than Qt. I can't understand why someone would willingly use C++ to develop user applications ( not systems dev ) in 2011. Even Android promotes Java for this.
He said one of the best, not the best. The fact is that most user applications are developed in C or C++.
The world is changing. Windows is decaying on desktops. Unix runs most servers, many desktops (combining Apple + GNU/Linux + other free Unix-like systems), and is the biggest mobile player (33% Android + 16% Apple)
How is windows 'decaying'? Is that your emotional way of saying that it's losing marketshare? If so, why should Nokia care?
Nokia should care because the argument for using MS is that the customers want Windows.
Yes, unfortunately, only nerds care about that.
That is a failure of Nokia's development or marketing. Meego could have offered customers a lot.
And in case you missed Elop's many interviews, the board was focused on delivering more than just an operating system. Microsoft brings, XBox, office productivity, Bing and many other very large franchises.
SO your suggesting that we will see XBox compatible phones? Or full versions of MS Office on phones? Otherwise MS is not bringing those to Nokia.
Many of the innovative features found on Android and IPhone today came from Microsoft and RIM.
Name five that came from MS. RIM is not relevant to a deal with MS.
They ran the market for at least a decade before they faltered. WP7 has been out for only 3 months and has already gained 1-3% ( depends on who you ask ). That's without Nokia.
How much is MS's total share of the phone OS market?
HTC made all its money before a year or two ago from Microsoft. That tiny company would never have been able to produce its own OS. Sony did the same. Dell and HP have both grown for decades using Microsoft software
HTC benefited because they were tiny and no one else was willing to do the same deal with MS. Dell and HP in the PC market are just box builders. As for Sony, which bit of Sony are you talking about? PCs? Consoles? Something else?
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:2)
The fact is that most user applications are developed in C or C++.
A growing number of applications available to end users are written in a mix of PHP and JavaScript, or Java and JavaScript, or Python and JavaScript, or Perl and JavaScript. The offline portions of web applications, using CACHE MANIFEST and localStorage, are written entirely in JavaScript or a language that compiles to JavaScript.
Nokia should care because the argument for using MS is that the customers want Windows.
And Windows Phone 7 doesn't support standard C++. (C++/CLI doesn't count because the syntax of its verifiably type-safe subset is incompatible with standard C++.)
SO your suggesting that we will see XBox compatible phones?
That's exactly what is suggested. Both Xbox Live Indie Games and games for Windows Phone 7 use the same XNA API. As I understand it, porting a game takes two steps: 1. rewrite the input part of the view to use touch, and 2. change the output part of the view to use lower-detail meshes, textures, and shaders for mobile IGPs. The model [wikipedia.org] and even part of the view remain exactly the same.
As for Sony, which bit of Sony are you talking about? PCs? Consoles? Something else?
The part that used to be called Ericsson, perhaps?
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:2)
A lot of people would argue .Net is a much better development environment than Qt. I can't understand why someone would willingly use C++ to develop user applications ( not systems dev ) in 2011. Even Android promotes Java for this.
Android doesn't promote Java because it's a better language than C++ for developing apps, but rather because of the benefits of using a virtual machine (just as ,.NET targets the CLR VM). Anyways, I'd say that C# (since you're implicitly comparing .NET to C++) has as much in common with C++ as it does with Java.
If you think that .NET provides more productive libraries/etc to build graphical apps than Qt, then I can only assume you've never actually used Qt (esp. the components like QML & Qt Quick intended for modern animated phone-type applications).
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:2)
A lot of people would argue .Net is a much better development environment than Qt. I can't understand why someone would willingly use C++ to develop user applications ( not systems dev ) in 2011. Even Android promotes Java for this.
I've used all three. I prefer Qt, though .Net does win in some areas. Qt comes with Boost (or vice-versa, please, I know that is not technically correct, but work with me here) but Boost is a C++ library that brings C++ into modern times, adding parenting, introspection and events (publish/subscribe - not just window messages) and a ton of other features that makes it 90% of what .Net is. This is proven by the Jambi and PyQt/PySide projects which are Java/Python wrappers respectively. C++ is effectively updated to a usable language that is compiled nativity.
The biggest difference to me, are a few things Qt lacks (XQuery update support, proper SOAP, etc, but these are on the roadmap) and the documentation. Qt's docs are a joy.
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:2)
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:3)
A lot of people would argue .Net is a much better development environment than Qt.
Those people can argue whatever they want if they are willing to be wrong. For one thing, .Net is not a development environment, it is a managed code execution environment. For another, QT is not a development environment, it is a GUI support library. And most importantly, even if they were both development environments, which they are not, nobody except Microsoft needs a development environment or a library full of patent traps waiting to be sprung.
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:2)
On the desktop applications can be developed in the language you want with the IDE you want and be delivered to the end user in the way that you want. What's so special about mobile phones that developers can't have that same flexibility?
There is an expectation among end users that a "telephone" be an appliance. PCs have a reputation for crashing often, largely caused by Windows 9x and lingering to an extent through Windows XP and Windows Vista. You can't get phone calls while your phone is frozen or rebooting. One way to improve reliability is to enforce type safety [wikipedia.org]. JavaScript, Java, and .NET environments can be made verifiably type-safe. Environments allowing standard C++ cannot; they have to rely on safety provided by the operating system, assisted by memory mapping hardware. This is why iOS 1.0 lacked native applications, the first versions of Android lacked the NDK, and the Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Live Indie Games environments (both of which use the .NET Compact Framework and XNA API) still lack native code support.
Re:Long live Nokia! (Score:2)
HTC's deals with Microsoft were non-exclusive.
And that is probably the only reason they were not sucked dry and spit out as an empty husk like practically every company that has made an exclusive deal with Microsoft.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Every organization that has ever partnered with microsoft has lost, big time
I don't know, Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, Lenovo and a large number of other companies have done quite well over the last 30 years selling hardware for MS software.
(standard disclaimer: as my profile states, I work for MS, but not on anything related to phones)
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Even Intel has had unpleasant dealings with MS. *cough*xbox1*cough*
But they are big enough that MS can't do much about them.
Even they know going along with MS is a bad idea in the long haul, you never know when they will backstab you once you have outlived your usefulness / when it's to their advantage.
Hence their investment in Linux.
Microsoft doesn't have partners (Score:3)
They have distributors.
That is only the half of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia is one of the few companies that has really good wireless baseband technology. In fact, their baseband phone chipsets are second only to Qualcomm's. They have lots of very good and probably very well-paid wireless engineers who do all this stuff. Mr. Steven Elop probably doesn't give a damn about baseband, if he even knows what it is. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that he will sack the entire wireless engineering division and start using chips from Qualcomm or someone else. Actually, he'll probably go for a 2nd or 3rd tier vendor for the baseband. After all, it is all about the OS and apps, right? That is all he knows.
Within a couple of years, Nokia will be another pure OEM that simply assembles phones in China based on 100% sourced components. Mr. Elop and his Wall Street buddies will enjoy a couple of years of profit because of all the cost savings due to the sacked engineers, during which his bonus will be large enough to let a couple of generations of his family live in luxury. After that, Nokia will slide down to be part with the Chinese OEMs, and Elop will go on to rape the next company.
Re:That is only the half of it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That is only the half of it (Score:2)
I've been out of the wireless space for a while and haven't been paying attention, thanks for sharing. That is quite a major move, I hope it works out for the guys, I know quite a few of them.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Blame the carriers for all the crap on your Galaxy phone.
They are usually the ones that want all this crap.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Counting Android as Linux is a bit weird: its programming API is very different from the classic Linux distribution..
I wonder what Google view are of the use of Qt on Android, I doubt that they're thrilled about it..
As for Nokia, they didn't even port Qt on Microsoft mobile phones! So I doubt that they like Qt much (probably blaming the tool for their own problems).
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
No different from the libc API, glibc is not the only C library for Linux: there are non-GNU one.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
"Why are technology companies boycotting themselves so badly lately?"
Same reason companies in any mature market do, it takes enthusiasts to build a new industry, but when they've got it established the business world takes it over.
The first commercial entities in any industry sector are almost by necessity built by the engineers and scientists that create the underlying product that allows that industry to arise, but after some time when the industry is mature, the scientists and engineers become treated like a commodity and the business folk move in and run the show.
It's really just a sign that the market is maturing, it's not about the technology anymore, it's about acquiring other companies, shifting assets around, and other tasks that maximise money generation but don't really provide anything to society.
I really really hate Apple, but to their credit, the reason they're succeding financially is because they're focussing on products, rather than churning out mediocre crap and just relying on their $60bn cash pool to play the trading and investment game to make money. You can see the business ideology at work with Oracle, they bought Sun and are just destroying some excellent assets purely because they don't know how to monetise them whilst trying to monetise other assets to the extreme to the detriment of innovation in society (i.e. Java). You can see it with Microsoft, under Ballmer innovation and hence growth has vastly decreased than under Bill, who was a technologist. You can see it with Dell- whilst the CEO hasn't changed, his mindset has, gone from being focussed on building really good systems, to racing to the bottom by gimping their support and quality through outsourcing to maximise profits at the expense of customer confidence. You can see it with Activision, Kotick took over some really top notch innovative franchises, burns them out with multiple releases a year then cancels the franchise because he doesn't care about the games, he only cares about the money.
Technology firm shareholders need to realise this more- that there's far more money in bringing in bosses that innovate, than there is bringing in a business minded boss who can buy and sell, and strip and and build other companies and just rearrange assets to make money. I suspect this is why Schmidt has been forced to step down - because they realise Schmidt is a businessman, whereas Google needs a technologist if it wants to keep up pace of growth and profits to more than a mediocre degree.
When a company switches to a business oriented leadership over a leadership enthusiastic in the industry, that's when it all goes wrong.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
BS Rant! You're complaining about the fact that your brand-spanking-new android device has tons of shitware on it, and didn't come with the latest OS version. Well, that's possibly because of a race to the bottom that's eroding margins for android OEMs, which should have factored in to Nokia's decision.
You also seem to have no regard for Nokia themselves or Nokia's customers, so why should Nokia care about your opinion (or opinions like yours). Your entire post was about Nokia doing what's good for FOSS/Linux/Qt. Nokia needs to be concerned about themselves, and about thier customers. Use the right tool for the job, and avoid re-inventing the wheel. If FOSS/Linux/Qt wins based on the needs of the hour, budget at hand, etc., so be it. You made zero (absolutely mother-fucking zero) arguments for how FOSS/Linux/Qt could help Nokia -- you just assumed FOSS/Linux/Qt superiority to be a truism and started spewing nonsense.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Actually, until the iPhone, WinMo6 was doing decently well.
Back in 2006, your main options were fairly simple:
1) WinMo
2) A used Palm Treo (since Palm was switching to WinMo)
3) Blackberry
4) Symbian
While Blackberry was definitely selling faster than Windows Mobile, Windows Mobile was not a failure by a long shot. Windows Mobile was the only one of those 4 options that ran on handhelds used in industry. So when you needed a handheld to do stuff, you got a Windows Mobile 2003 device.
GPS units of all sorts, including the majority of integrated navis in cars used the same core as Windows Mobile phones.
Meanwhile, the Symbian of then is roughly the same Symbian of now. And Linux for mobiles was OpenMoko.
How do I know who HTC is? It wasn't because of Android, it was because HTC made Windows Mobile phones with UMTS.
When it comes to smartphones before the iPhone, Windows Mobile was clearly not a failure. Sure, it's sucking ass right now. But that's what happens when you reboot your ecosystem from scratch.
(Yes, I have used this stuff before. I own a WinMo6 phone. I also own a Nexus S. And an iPhone. And a Windows Mobile 2002 handheld. And a Palm 3. And an even older Palm Pilot. And a Newton... or 3. And I had a Blackberry too.)
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Now explain, how has the Nokia CEO's decision to hand Microsoft a critical mass of the mobile phone market place/share and an unimaginable, for Microsoft anyway, customer base help NoKia?
I don't make this claim, so I don't need to defend it. I'm merely stating that GP is full of shit.
On the FOSS comment you so eloquently highlighted, did you miss the comment on CROSS PLATFORM DEVELOPEMENT? If you don't understand how that can benefit the ecosystem then pick back up the pipe and start smoking again.
Benefits, the ecosystem -- that is not the same as benefits Nokia. How does the cross platform development help Nokia?
If its all about the APPs, ecosystem and customer experience, then PLEASE explain how this move by Elop equates to Nokia looking out for themselves, no REALLY please explain?
Are you slow? Did you see me make some claim somewhere? Or are you the type of person who can only see MS vs. the rest of the world, so I someone is not towing the FOSS line, then they must be rooting for MS?
History is filled with previously apparently invincible companies dieing a death after missing obvious signs. Why would Nokia not be one of them today? A case for the future MBA courses unless they wake up, drop the pipe, and go back to their roots, innovation.
Sigh.. does generic fact-free garbage like this even warrant a response?
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:3)
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
The amount of ignorance masquerading as knowledge on Slashdot is truly frightening.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Note that this is not really actually "money".
It's things like Microsoft licenses (valued at outrageous prices), mentioning Nokia in ads (valued at outrageous prices), etc.
It's a bit like me giving you a self-drawn picture of a donkey, that I value at $1M, versus giving you an actual suitcase with $1M.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
Partnering with Google would have killed Nokia
Absolute revisionist rubbish. So far, Google is not known for sticking its fangs into its partners and sucking them dry as is Microsoft's habit. Quite the contrary. Google has lots of partners and would whither quickly without them.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2)
WP7 gives them a[n ...] OS that is already doing well in Europe.
Citation needed.
OMG 5 seconds naked breasts (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG 5 seconds of naked breasts. This monster who ever posted the video should be stoned to death. What if a child sees it? It will be scared for live and probably became a sexist rapist and a murderer.
What ever is wrong with American people? Why you are so scared of nudity, shouldn't you be so proud living in "the most free country in the world" with the first amendment and so?
Re:OMG 5 seconds naked breasts (Score:2)
What ever is wrong with American people?
I like staying employed. Naked breasts fall pretty squarely in the NSFW realm these days.
Re:OMG 5 seconds naked breasts (Score:2)
I like staying employed. Naked breasts fall pretty squarely in the NSFW realm these days.
That sounds scary... Thank heavens I live in Europe. :)
video removed for sexual content? (Score:2)
Does it matter? (Score:2)
I have a dream... (Score:2)
What goes around comes around. (Score:2)
Wow. He just described Java and its ecosystem... and wasn't Qt and it's C++ followers 100% against Java back in the day (before JambaQt). Wouldn't it be easier to just fix AWT/Swing/SWT?
Re:What goes around comes around. (Score:2)
Wow. He just described Java and its ecosystem... and wasn't Qt and it's C++ followers 100% against Java back in the day (before JambaQt). Wouldn't it be easier to just fix AWT/Swing/SWT?
Maybe he doesn't like Java, but Likes Qt C++? I know I do.
Anyway, with Oracle thing, there's more reason to be suspicious about Java than just not liking it personally. Also, he's not "fixing" anything, he's adding support for something which he already considers sufficiently unbroken. Quite understandable really, because he has power to do that, it's doable by one person (as demonstrated here), while chaning existing toolkits owned and maintained by various organizations... probably not realistic without a Death Star on orbit to use as negotiation tool to get changes to happen.
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
Re:nips in the vid (Score:5, Informative)
It's just a tasteful, nude background on his desktop. Nothing that should warrant a removal by YouTube, but it's their prudish prerogative.
For those of us who are adults and capable of seeing a female breast without going nuts, here's an alternate link to the video:
http://blip.tv/file/4790125 [blip.tv]
Re:nips in the vid (Score:3)
Would you feel the same about a "tasteful, nude male background"?
Can you see a penis without "going nuts"?
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
That depends, is there a ball bag in this hypothetical picture?
Is the penis gigantic, glowing, and blue?
More ontopic: When the Android NDK was announced, I knew something like this would happen eventually. I'm impressed that Qt was first.
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
Yes. Although, the closest body part would be the male nipple, not the penis. There's nothing naturally arousing about the female breast other than our culturally conditioned worship of it. It doesn't even bring sex to mind until you learn to equate the two.
Oh, there most certainly is something naturally arousing, as breasts are one big factor subconciously used by males to evaluate females ability to successfully raise children (not the only or the biggest factor, but one of the major ones). And even if modern sex doesn't often have anything to do with having offspring, sex drive is still mostly about that (not only about that, it's also about bonding inside the group a bit).
Multiple healthy offspring -> nutrition -> breast milk -> breasts <- producing offsping <- sex <- arousal <- visual inspection of potential mate
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
Re:nips in the vid (Score:3)
I saw nip at 1:15.
Apparently so did someone else, the video was taken down.
Re:nips in the vid (Score:3)
That explains the youtube link now saying "This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube's policy on nudity or sexual content.
Sorry about that."
Who knew Qt was so sexy?
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
What is up with the insane puritanical censorship from Google? A nipple? Come one, we get that regularly on public television and *noone* cares.
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
Clearly you are not in America.
US-centric again (Score:3)
Yes, I agree, but... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, and I say this with more than 30 years experience to back me up, there isn't actually a lot of connection between social progressiveness and engineering skills. Your own "having a hard time" is itself stereotypical - Richard Feynmann was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, but his attitudes to women were mixed up and sent some very bad messages. I'd suggest that for someone to want to do the work you describe yourself as doing, you might yourself have some background problems. I imagine most people without serious sexual hangups would find fetishism and so on incomprehensible and boring.
Re:nips in the vid (Score:2)
First its qt, then its SCSI! :)
SCSI has tits too?
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
I'd say that the odds of world domination look slim; but I don't see why QT couldn't continue doing what it did before the Nokia acquisition(even if Nokia has no further interest, they paid good money for Trolltech, so they'd be stupid to destroy them internally, rather than spin them off again and take what they can get...)
Re:It's too small (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd say that the odds of world domination look slim; but I don't see why QT couldn't continue doing what it did before the Nokia acquisition(even if Nokia has no further interest, they paid good money for Trolltech, so they'd be stupid to destroy them internally, rather than spin them off again and take what they can get...)
Nokia (or more specifically the MS guy who got into CEO position) essentially threw its entire 5 year "linux phone" development under the bus. Trolltech purchase is pennies in comparison.
Re:It's too small (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia (or more specifically the MS guy who got into CEO position) essentially threw its entire 5 year "linux phone" development under the bus. Trolltech purchase is pennies in comparison.
The funny thing is they spent all the money on Meego, which still exists, and now they aren't using it. But now some other company, maybe one with a strong Intel partnership, can come along, scoop it up and run with it if they decide their existing OS is dying a slow death. Especially if the existing OS is already Linux-based and they could reuse some of their existing code. (Hello HP?)
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
Except that they also could simply go with Android and let Google do most of the heavy lifting. Why go with Meego when you can get a supported and actively developed OS instead?
Every now and then someone rants about division between desktop Linux distributions being the cause of lack of adoption. In mobile Linux "distributions" there is one large player and porting to and from the various alternatives is much more complex.
Perhaps it's just better in the long run to rally around Android and do our best to make it as open as possible, Meego doesn't look like it's going anywhere. And I'm saying this as a happy N900/Maemo user.
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
Except that they also could simply go with Android and let Google do most of the heavy lifting.
Sure, but isn't that why Nokia didn't? They didn't want to be one of a thousand other Android distributors?
Although it does bring an interesting point: Android is Linux too. Can anybody just mix and match code from Android and Meego and make something that e.g. runs Android apps and has the good bits from Meego, or is there some kind of licensing mess?
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
Iirc (correct me if I'm wrong) but most of the android applications aren't linux applications. They're java that runs on a virtual machine. Linux is just the underlying embedded OS that runs the VM. That being one of the biggest reasons for remarkably horrible energy efficiency of the OS.
Maemo/Meego on the other hand is an actual linux on a phone. It runs native linux software by default, rather then through a virtual machine.
There is however the fact that people got android working on n900, and maemo/meego working on some of android phones, so they should be interchangeable to a point hardware-wise.
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
Right, so what I'm saying is, take the Linux kernel with whatever drivers someone has written for your device, and then install the Android VM and whatever else is required to get Android apps working on Maemo/MeeGo. Then you have a "Linux phone" which runs Android apps and any other part of Android you like, but can also run native apps and for that matter the whole GNU userland. Without really writing a huge amount of new code.
Getting the UI to be seamless would obviously take some work, but at first you could just do something like have an Android button in MeeGo that switches to the Android UI and vice versa.
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
This phone already exists. It's called nokia n900. The main problem is weak and unoptimized hardware, so android applications won't run nearly as fast as they would have to be usable. But it already exists, and nokia has announced that n900 will have a meego successor coming out some time this year (along with similar lack of real support like n900, essentially ending up the same kind of a hacker's/programmer's phone).
So keep your fingers crossed that all the meego hate and Elop's actions haven't buried it enough to be bad on release.
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Re:It's too small (Score:2)
Would've been an interesting set of points, if you didn't invoke end"foxnews looks professional compared to us when we talk about nokia"gadget.
They still have the article where they compared N8's camera to the slap on-crap that IP4 has and concluded that IP4 camera is better. They even sited their own pics which showed autumn London blooming with colors like beach in Bahamas on massively overprossed IP4's camera (which when you actually delve into the pics is done to hide the atrocious general detail quality even for 5mp camera) and conclude that IP4 is better.
Just because the other phone has five magical letters on it. And I'm not talking about apple.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
They simply don't have another year or two to coast on dumbphones while they sink money they can't afford into R&D for MeeGo in the hopes it'll shape up in time, and without a real product in the smartphone category they are bleeding share like there is no tomorrow.
Actually, no. This is the image you get from endgadget and co. Reality is, even in last quarter their symbian sales grew. They didn't grow fast enough to keep market share on a market that's exploding, but they grew. And outside USA, specifically in markets that will matter in long term (BRIC + EU i.e. no crushing personal debt issues, no middle massively shrinking middle class), pretty much any measure shows that nokia phones are still occupy majority of top10 phones sold AND top10 phones used. By a large and wide margin. They're also reporting profits every quarter, which means that they're not even posting losses yet - and their last quarterly shows 10 billion in cash, which means that they could afford to take losses for a while - something that Elop clearly wants to capitalize on.
So yes, they could coast on their phones for at least two years more EASILY. So long as they just ignore the "rape the customer, make the phones for operator" US market. When Elop said that "microsoft phone will be the most operator friendly phone on the market", pretty much everyone who stuck with nokia because they liked their phones in spite of dated OS UI, knew that it was game over.
That is in process of killing nokia. Not the market share bleed, while still growing every quarter in both smartphone and dumbphone market globally.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:It's too small (Score:4, Insightful)
QT isn't big enough to compete. The other juggernauts have the momentum and QT will fail. it is not because it is a bad technology - it just doesn't have the traction.
It's a framework, not a platform. Whether or not anybody else uses it is totally irrelevant to whether you can write an app with it and have it run on any Android phone. Or anything else they port the library to.
And if it works well and allows you to easily write portable software then plenty of people will use it, because there is no barrier (and significant advantages) to being an early adopter.
Re:It's too small (Score:3)
QT isn't big enough to compete. The other juggernauts have the momentum and QT will fail. it is not because it is a bad technology - it just doesn't have the traction.
I think QT has a place on Android. Think of all those useful Linux apps you'd like to see on your tablet for example. Then there are apps migrating from Nokia's platform which could find it useful.
What I would like to see on Android is a proper alternative to the Dalvik framework. There is the NDK but it would be nice to see a proper LLVM like environment where you can write C++ code but it is turned to an intermediate bitcode and isn't tied to one platform or architecture.
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
I think QT has a place on Android. Think of all those useful Linux apps you'd like to see on your tablet for example.
Not to mention a UI without the CPU overhead of Java bytecode interpretting or Jitting. Incidentally, there is really only one target architecture for smart phones these days: ARM, with pretty much identical instruction sets. Hardware differences appear mostly at the chipset level, in other words, this is the concern of libraries not the compiler.
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
That said, I think it is retrograde to compile to any native instruction set, even ARM. There are differences between ARM chipsets (e.g thumb instructions), and who's to say it wouldn't make more sense to use MIPS or x86 or some other chipset some other day? LLVM exists precisely so devs don't have to care too much about the hardware, compilation can be deferred until the app is installed on a device. Ship the app as bitcode and only compile to native when the thing is installed or first executed. Android has recently introduced Renderscript which does support LLVM support but its being used in a way more analogous to CUDA / OpenCL than regular C++. I would like to see the LLVM extended to support regular C++ apps.
Re:It's too small (Score:2)
Dalkvik doesn't interpret Java bytecode. It's register based which makes it more analogous to a virtual CPU than a JVM.
Bafflegab. Respectfully, please do not lecture me on interpreter design ;-)
Performance isn't too bad with it
Nonsense. There is no way you can make an interpreter of any description run at more than a fraction of the speed of native code. Note that conclusions derived from false premises are likely also to be false.
That said, I think it is retrograde to compile to any native instruction set, even ARM.
You may think that but the battery in your phone will disagree.
Re:GIVEN WP7 FIASCO RIGHT NOW I SAY GOOD !! (Score:2, Offtopic)
...(was she really that bad?)...
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Video Removed (Score:3, Insightful)
The video opens with a shot of his desktop which is photograph of a nude female torso.
So, it was correctly flagged. Unfortunate that he started the video that way.
Re:Video Removed (Score:2)
Re:A bit slow. (Score:2)
I had a dream that one day someone would read about my dream. I had a dream that that someone would post on my story. I had a dream that someone would make fun of it. I had a dream that someone would respond to that in light humor. I had a dream that they would note that in the same post. Now, those dreams become reality.
Re:I don't see the point. (Score:2)
Re:RAM usage? (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:2)
Mobile development is slowly but surely standardizing on html + css + javascript for the presentation layer. Qt on Android is about as relevant as a C64 emulator on Android - a cool hobby project for a few enthusiasts.
It'll be at least... 3 years before phones have browsers capable of displaying proper HTML apps. Probably more, as even HTML itself isn't quite ready yet, just in the "technology preview" state. So your statement is kind of premature, until then many apps just can't be made with "web technologies".
Re:Remote X (Score:2)
I really want to be able to use Remote X On my Android phone, that is the one feature I really want that I do not currently have. Hopefully this will allow me to do that sometime in the future.
Maybe in a roundabout way, making it easier to port a "virtual" X server to Android. But Qt itself has nothing to do with X (except on Linux platforms, which Android isn't for this purpose).