Random Precision

As everyone knows by now, Google has released its new SDK for mobile phones, Android.

Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. This early look at the Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.

The SDK includes basically a one-stop shop for application development infrastructure: an OS kernel (Linux), a virtual machine (interestingly, not the Java VM, though Java is the main development language), a SQL engine, a communications stack, 2D and 3D graphics toolkits, a GUI stack, and so on. Everything a developer would want in a deployment platform.

As you, my legion of loyal readers, will know, I play Second Life. The SL client is based on OpenGL. When I saw that Android supported OpenGL, it naturally occurred to me that one could create an SL client for Android. It would suck to use SL on a mobile phone, of course; tiny screen, no keyboard, etc.

But then, there’s surely nothing in the spec about a maximum screen size for Android, and no reason you couldn’t have a physical keyboard. In fact, if you were to take an Android system, built to run efficiently on a phone-class device, and put it on a laptop-class processor, it would fly…

Whoa.

What can a desktop machine do, that an Android-based mobile phone can’t do? Mostly it’s a matter of form factor; a mobile phone isn’t big enough for a full-sized keyboard, multiple USB connectors, a DVD slot…

But is there anything that says Android can’t run on a laptop- or desktop-size device? If Android catches on, isn’t it inevitable that someone will put it on such a device? And given how many smart people work at Google, don’t you think they already considered that? that they may in fact have planned on that from the start?

Lots of people have been wondering when Google will come out with an operating system offering that will compete with, and maybe displace, Microsoft Windows.

I think it just happened. And no one noticed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Open Source, Tech Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.