Everything you wanted to know about the history of Android
Summary: Chris Zeigler posted an amazing history of the Android operating system and I am sure mobile enthusiasts will enjoy this walk down memory lane.
It seems like only yesterday I wrote my exhaustive T-Mobile G1 review (over 260 images) and now here we are three years later and Android is the top dog in the smartphone market. Chris Zeigler wrote an epic article on the history of Android that serves as an amazing resource for anyone interested in the platform's evolution.
Chris covers the features and functions included with each new release, including new services and utilities. You will learn about all of the dessert upgrades from Google with a focus on the Android OS and not on hardware or skinnable UIs. I have owned an Android device running all of these, except for Honeycomb, and can't believe how fast time flies and how far we have come in just three years.
I would love to see a Red Licorice upgrade in the future since that is my all-time favorite treat.
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Talkback
To be correct, that is not 'everything' -- the article starts with 2008, ..
RE: Everything you wanted to know about the history of Android
Where did you get the "Apple showed iPhone in 1997"? The development of the iPhone began in 2005 and the prototype was displayed by Jobs in January of 2007; it was released to the public in June of 2007.
And it was NOT bought as a "Blackberry clone" but as a mobile OS. Some aspects were similar to Blackberry, but that is only because the technology of the day was limited. Touchscreens were VERY expensive items unless you include the "touchscreens" that needed a stylus to work - and no one liked having to use a stylus (and likely losing it). That facilitated a need for either a joystick-like button or a jogwheel like Blackberrys had.
And saying Google had access to iPhone APIs... well so does every developer of iOS apps. All of those 200,000+ apps in the Apple Store wouldn't be possible if Apple didn't release those APIs for their developers to use and Google was one of the developers... or don't you have GMail or Google Maps or any of the other Google apps on your iPhone? If you do, how the heck do you assume they got there?
I've seen you rant against Google and in favor of Apple whenever there's an Android article published on ZDNet. All of your rants are based on (at best) half-truths and assumptions. Repeating them endlessly (ad nauseum) doesn't make them any more true.
Oh, and the original founders of Android? They all work for Google still, all in its Android division. So you can't really say that Google stole Android either. They did exactly what Apple has done time and again - they bought the company. Or did you conveniently forget that Apple hired most of the engineers that created the GUI concepts at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center?
Of course, I meant 2007, not 1997
RE: Everything you wanted to know about the history of Android
Agh, all you people who post with authority from a position of all but complete ignorance are getting quite annoying. Perhaps if you bothered to check what you write before you write it, you'd be less likely to look foolish in retrospect. Quite simply, you don't know what you are talking about.
First, iPhone development did not begin in 2005, iPad development did. The iPhone project was an offshoot of the iPad, a year later. Second, Android most certainly WAS a Blackberry clone. If you look at the literature being shown to potential investors at the time, Android Inc. was quite clear in their intentions, to make an OS equivalent of the Blackberry OS. The UI, and requisite hardware (trackballs and jogwheels) were all but identical. This was Google's direction, as well.
As for the APIs, Google had access to them a YEAR before anyone else, and inside knowledge of the interface. That is what allowed them to so slavishly copy it in Android, and get it to market so soon after the iPhone's release. Please name ONE single developer that had access to the APIs during this time. You can't because there weren't any.
The only rants based on half truths (and to be honest, not even that much) are yours.
As for your ill-informed rant about P.A.R.C., first, Apple PAID XEROX 150 million just to see the work, and they NEVER saw the OS. What Jobs saw was the SmallTalk programming environment. A HUGE portion of the original MacOS work was done entirely in house. I know this almost first hand, as I am one of the original users of the XEROX system in question, the Alto. If you claim that Apple stole the OS and the concepts therein, please delineate for me how, exactly, one entered in commands to the OS on the Alto. (Hint: Google Alto executive.)
RE: Everything you wanted to know about the history of Android
RE: Everything you wanted to know about the history of Android
RE: Everything you wanted to know about the history of Android
So there was nothing stolen from apple here. "Mimicked," (from an icons and tap to initiate, all in a candy bar form factor, perspective) maybe, but definitely not stolen.
The Android UI "Borrows" more from Desktop UIs, (MS Windows,X-Windows,GDE,Gnome,etc) than it ever did from something as simple as the iOS app launcher interface.
The inclusion of Folders was a pretty original mobile phone OS concept on Android, can't say that for iOS, as was the pull down notification bar and multi-tasking. All of which came much later on in iOS!
iOS allows for little user customization while this was an Android UI design principle from the early iterations of the UI development.
RE: Everything you wanted to know about the history of Android