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.
