Huawei HarmonyOS and New Products Launch [video]
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Funnily enough (from above mentioned article):
> Owners of Huawei phones who have no access to Google services won't be able to download apps such as Gmail or YouTube. Instead, HMS offers shortcuts to the mobile sites of such services.
Yes, that kind of sounds... like an improvement actually, in many cases.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS
Unveiled on 9 August 2019, Huawei initially stated that it would be an independently-developed, microkernel-based, distributed OS, and "completely different from Android and iOS",[1] but it was later discovered that HarmonyOS was actually a derivative of Android.
I will give you it is not easy to get proper information on it as the primary documentation is in Chinese and there is quite a bit of bad faith coverage of anything Huawei out there.
Short term I think they focus on the Chinese market, so it doesn’t matter. However long term I guess they would have to advocate to English speaking developer communities.
https://device.harmonyos.com/en/docs/start/introduce/oem_wif...
Obviously what runs on a modern phone is a massive system of components and services. And if you want to android apps there would have pieces of android there.
What I think confuses people is that the demos and marketing videos really just shows stuff that is visual and kinda looks no different from a modern android phone.
However the ideas there: micro kernel, distributed os, letting user code run in kernel via static validation, ways of sharing capabilities across devices at os level ... are classic ideas that has been around in experimental oses for while, however never put into a big commercial os.
Hopefully they will succeed as these ideas can really bring the whole industry forward.
Harmony OS, this harmony OS, the one that's actually powerful and what you really care about, is just an Android reskin.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-h...
Huawei’s HarmonyOS: “Fake it till you make it” meets OS development
While it is true that Huawei did officially respond to the Ars Technica article, one of their developers did a detailed walkthru of the article trying settle some of the misunderstandings.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV12X4y1N7bd
It is in English but has a Chinese title which google hilariously translates into:
See the BBC again? The technology media from the West can't avoid the vulgarity. Seeing them embarrassing and black Hongmeng can't stand it, Brother Zhao refuted it.
Enjoy.
He confirms that the developer beta reviewed in the article is running Linux on ARM with all pieces of Android present, modulo Google Mobile Services replaced by Huawei Mobile Services. He then criticizes the article for concluding that it's just Android without trying out any HarmonyOS-specific features, but doesn't demonstrate them himself. To borrow his analogy, if Android is English and HarmonyOS is Chinese, why does he speak English the whole time? (And why so slowly?)
The video would've been much better if he'd booted up an emulator himself to show what was missing from the Ars Technica article.
EDIT: apparently there is a demonstration video here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27368995
https://space.bilibili.com/455592866
Unfortunately, the video I linked to appears to be the only one in English.
They have a similar brand, but are significantly different.
To be fair the HMS ecosystem is actually no small feat.
https://developer.harmonyos.com/en/docs/documentation/doc-gu...
And I can see that there are actually multiple supported kernels and a kernel abstraction layer.
Nonetheless it will be interesting how far this will be taken. I do believe they are serious about updating existing phones.
And that there are iot devices coming out with hardware similar to the development board I linked to and are running some form of this os.
watch this. you pair your phone to tablet, your phone gets mirrored on the tablet and you can drag photos from this window to your email on the tab. that is an improvement i would say
edit: it appears they have a "plug in" for pcs. i wonder it is an adaptation of kde connect/my phone from microsoft but this is nice
What does that have to do with with what HarmonyOS is?
I haven’t seen it in practice but that is the theory. It is a classic idea that no one so far has done at commercial level.
Just to be clear I am not a Huawei insider, just some random tech dude who is being put off by the general tech community’s unwillingness to try and understand what Huawei is attempting to do.
I'm all for reducing my reliance on American big tech.
As a European completely agree - but not to instead have reliance on Chinese big tech! But I guess anyone who buys Huawei doesn't care where their data goes.
GDPR: Strictly speaking as an average user who doesn't care about privacy - all they got is a cookie banner annoyance from GDPR. They see no benefit of regulation in EU. Sure, people on HN care about privacy and support this - but vast majority of people find GDPR laws a complete nuissance. Businesses implement the provisions in half-baked fashion because its expensive to be fully GDPR compliant.
EU regulation is a shitshow and usually poorly thought out. Intentions are good but when it plays out, it is a disaster for users and businesses alike.
No one in their right mind would have predicted that GDPR is going to turn out into a cookie popup extravaganza. It is difficult to predict what happens when clueless people put regulations together without precision and limits.
Historical precedence from the Ming dynasty showed that even when they have a big fleet, they're not interested in colonizing territories. The Ming fleet only traded, not conquered. Look up Zhang He.
Historical evidence from the Qing dynasty showed that in the 18th century, Chinese mining settlers in Malaysia tried to submit themselves under the rule of the Qing, but the Qing emperor refused, saying China is big enough already. Lookup Lanfang Republic.
Historical precedence from the Republican era showed that the People's Republic has given up territory compared to the Republic. See all of outer Mongolia, which was ceded (and which Taiwan, a.k.a. the Republic, still formally claims).
Historical evidence from a few years ago shows that China's policy is non-interventionist. Lookup Yanis Varoufaski, former Greek minister: https://youtu.be/9tJatdtv4jQ Lookup Gyude Moore, "China in Africa: an African perspective"
Where is the evidence that we can expect China to behave like the US?
There's a complicated relationship with Russia vis a vis scientific collab in space, and now we're entering the openly militarized age of space. Russia's relations with China, meanwhile, are improving.
Besides, the nature of domination going forward, in any kinetic sense, won't involve nukes, bayonets, bow and arrow, or the like, except as backup offensive strats. Could involve, say, leaking a virus from a lab.
The nature of global domination may be far less violent than we've seen, historically, but certainly has the potential to be far more insidious.
I'd much rather do my part helping the West maintain their incumbent role. As for Snowdon/surv topics: everyone did it, everyone does it, espionage is the 2nd oldest profession.
May I ask if you support China's ongoing initiative to reclaim Taiwan? They seem to be willing to use force to do so.
I'm hoping for a peaceful resolution. Whether that's reunification, or an acceptable form of independence, I'm fine with both. It wouldn't be that bad if China-Taiwan becomes like US-Canada: independent but at peace and with good relationships. Just... Stop fighting and hating on each other, for fscks sake.
I oppose any violent resolutions. But from my perspective, many parties involved in the matter seem to be hellbent on forcing a violent resolution.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-06-03/chi...
The DPP has done a lot of dubious things that raise tensions, all for political scoring, such as:
- blatantly lying about that they warned WHO about knowing about the Wuhan virus. They later published their email to the WHO... And their own email shows that they've been lying. :-(
- at the start of the Wuhan outbreak, they immediately banned all mask exports to China.
- they've banned TV and news outlets that have a pro-mainland stance.
- more recently, they've banned importing vaccines from China, even though they don't have alternatives. Even donations of western vaccines from mainland NGOs are rejected.
I mean, I understand the desire for independence. But surely you can advocate that without the need for immoral populist moves that harm not only the mainland government, but also the people, right? Lying about COVID and banning masks really pissed off a lot of mainland citizen. Banning mainland vaccines harms Taiwanese people. All this for scoring political points.
If you look at Tsai Ing Wen's Twitter, you will see a lot of mainland citizen mocking her. The article says the government has "fanned the flames of Chinese nationalism". But sorry, I can't agree with this. The article makes it seem as if Chinese people's thoughts are a wholly artificial construct created by the CCP. But Chinese nationalism existed before the CCP. Lots of people genuinely care about the Taiwan issue. There's a saying that if China becomes democratic, then it would have launched an invasion yesterday.
The article also makes it seem as if China has been strengthening its military with the primary goal of invading Taiwan. I also cannot agree with this. Its military strenghtening's main purpose is to defy foreign aggressions. One of the CCP's founding purpose, and its source of legitimacy among the people, is to end the era of foreign imperialism. China has suffered a lot, for 100 years, because it was weak and could not resist European and Japanese colonizers. Building a capable military is their version of "never again".
Military strengthing was accelerated due to Obama's Pivot to Asia. Around 2010,the US sent warships to the South China Sea, and instigated UNCLOS issues even though the US didn't ratify UNCLOS. Then China was like "so you want to play military games? Fine, have it your way". And now we have artificial islands in the South China Sea and aircraft carriers... https://original.antiwar.com/dave_decamp/2020/07/19/the-us-h...
As for the US again, they tried sending diplomats to Taiwan, which is like 1 step away from formal independence. They knew full well that doing this will trigger an aggressive response from China (and would have since 1949), but they still went ahead and did it. This still amazes me because it was the US in the 70s who co-created the One China Policy in the first place.
Like I said: multiple parties are hell-bent on forcing a violent resolution. For no concrete gain that benefits anybody.
I have seen more then enough censoring especially from the anti imperialist social media posters. Kinda funny moment was when twitter blocked Iranian officials from posting so the US and Iran had beef on Weibo.
[0] https://gitee.com/openarkcompiler/OpenArkCompiler [1] https://github.com/c2s/OpenArkCompiler
Anyway the interesting thing is the way the phone integrates. You just leave it on the monitor stand and it will project itself on to the screen in desktop mode.
In my opinion it looks like a good product, the 3/2 aspect ratio is plus too. And I think it looks more like a high end dell than an Apple monitor.
The cooperative form of organization seems quite healthy though.
https://www.huawei.com/en/facts/question-answer/who-owns-hua...
Reply based on facts and logic; Refrain from using derogatory words; Avoid straying into conspiracy theories; Upvote quality replies; Report those going way out of line.
Cheers.
But..... the whole connected thing makes me queasy
But then they’re introducing a new OS. What do we start with? Control panel! Ok.. that’s very strange. Perhaps you want to give more context about what you’ve done, why, and why people should care?
You can copy looks and camera shots, but apparently you can’t copy good storytelling.