will the QNX OS allow easy ports from Android?
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from USANEWSWEEK:
The competition in the tablet PC market is heating up, as many companies are getting ready to release their own version of device to challenge Apple iPad- currently the undisputed king of the tablet market. Research In Motion also joined the race with its new BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM's device will run a new operating system. An article in enterprisemobiletoday.com highlights some important features of the new BlackBerry Tablet OS. Lets take a look:
1. PlayBook Is Based On QNX Neutrino operating system
Although QNX is not popular, the OS has been around in one form or another since 1982. It was acquired by RIM in April when RIM paid $200 million to acquire QNX Software System. QNX has been used in diverse range of systems, including Las Vegas hotel fountains, car "infotainment" systems, military vehicles, air traffic control systems and power stations, claimed Enterprisemobiletoday.
2. The OS will introduce new gesture
BlackBerry Tablet OS will have new touch gestures, which RIM said that will go beyond anything that is possible on an iPad or Android tablet. "There will be new sets of gestures you haven't seen before that open up some pretty exciting possibilities for applications," Dodge said last week.
3. The OS uses a microkernel for reliability
The OS is different from other OS' in market because it's built around a microkernel architecture, reported Enterprisemobiletoday. The drivers, the networking stack and file systems will run outside the kernel in memory protected user space. It will make the operating system more stable. "Reliability, scalability, performance, portability -- they are all a natural product of its microkernel architecture," says Dan Dodge, QNX's co-founder.
4. Gives a secure window to a BlackBerry phone
The OS has been designed keeping in mind that the users should not find any difficulty in connecting the PlayBook to a BlackBerry phone using Bluetooth. RIM said that "this means owners will be able to "use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data."
5. Adapt At Multi-tasking
The BlackBerry Tablet OS is capable of carrying out multi-tasking. he PlayBook is powered by dual-core processors such as the 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and the OS will definitely work faster using the high end processor.
6. Will support older BlackBerry apps
The OS will also support apps built for older BlackBerry devices. "Flexibility is in the very DNA of the BlackBerry Tablet OS. We've designed it to easily support additional runtime frameworks and virtual machines. For instance, you can expect to see a virtual machine that supports BlackBerry 6 Java applications," is how Dodge put it on the BlackBerry developer's blog, quoted by Enterprisemobiletoday.
7. It supports Flash 10.1
Unlike Apple's iOS, the BlackBerry Tablet OS will support Flash 10.1. It will also support HTML5, Java and Adobe Air.
8. The OS Will Support All Kinds Of Games
The OS supports OpenGL for 2D and 3D graphics intensive applications.
9. User interface will be familiar to BlackBerry, Palm users
The interface of the new OS will be familiar to BlackBerry, Palm users because it features a familiar BlackBerry icon view, plus a "card view" of running mobile apps.
10. The OS will be used On Blackberry smartphones In Future
It is expected that RIM will introduce the BlackBerry Tablet OS in its upcoming smartphones.10-13-10 01:29 PMLike 0 -
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pcgizmo#IMCrackBerry Ph.D.Which part of this answers the OP's question?from USANEWSWEEK:
The competition in the tablet PC market is heating up, as many companies are getting ready to release their own version of device to challenge Apple iPad- currently the undisputed king of the tablet market. Research In Motion also joined the race with its new BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM's device will run a new operating system. An article in enterprisemobiletoday.com highlights some important features of the new BlackBerry Tablet OS. Lets take a look:
1. PlayBook Is Based On QNX Neutrino operating system
Although QNX is not popular, the OS has been around in one form or another since 1982. It was acquired by RIM in April when RIM paid $200 million to acquire QNX Software System. QNX has been used in diverse range of systems, including Las Vegas hotel fountains, car "infotainment" systems, military vehicles, air traffic control systems and power stations, claimed Enterprisemobiletoday.
2. The OS will introduce new gesture
BlackBerry Tablet OS will have new touch gestures, which RIM said that will go beyond anything that is possible on an iPad or Android tablet. "There will be new sets of gestures you haven't seen before that open up some pretty exciting possibilities for applications," Dodge said last week.
3. The OS uses a microkernel for reliability
The OS is different from other OS' in market because it's built around a microkernel architecture, reported Enterprisemobiletoday. The drivers, the networking stack and file systems will run outside the kernel in memory protected user space. It will make the operating system more stable. "Reliability, scalability, performance, portability -- they are all a natural product of its microkernel architecture," says Dan Dodge, QNX's co-founder.
4. Gives a secure window to a BlackBerry phone
The OS has been designed keeping in mind that the users should not find any difficulty in connecting the PlayBook to a BlackBerry phone using Bluetooth. RIM said that "this means owners will be able to "use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data."
5. Adapt At Multi-tasking
The BlackBerry Tablet OS is capable of carrying out multi-tasking. he PlayBook is powered by dual-core processors such as the 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and the OS will definitely work faster using the high end processor.
6. Will support older BlackBerry apps
The OS will also support apps built for older BlackBerry devices. "Flexibility is in the very DNA of the BlackBerry Tablet OS. We've designed it to easily support additional runtime frameworks and virtual machines. For instance, you can expect to see a virtual machine that supports BlackBerry 6 Java applications," is how Dodge put it on the BlackBerry developer's blog, quoted by Enterprisemobiletoday.
7. It supports Flash 10.1
Unlike Apple's iOS, the BlackBerry Tablet OS will support Flash 10.1. It will also support HTML5, Java and Adobe Air.
8. The OS Will Support All Kinds Of Games
The OS supports OpenGL for 2D and 3D graphics intensive applications.
9. User interface will be familiar to BlackBerry, Palm users
The interface of the new OS will be familiar to BlackBerry, Palm users because it features a familiar BlackBerry icon view, plus a "card view" of running mobile apps.
10. The OS will be used On Blackberry smartphones In Future
It is expected that RIM will introduce the BlackBerry Tablet OS in its upcoming smartphones.10-13-10 01:37 PMLike 0 -
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some of you here are a bunch of world class jerks. I simply found the article on QNX interesting and thought I'd share it. Instead of anyone saying, "hey that's interesting" (despite it not directly answering any specific questions in the thread), all I see (some of you are on "ignore") is a bunch of whiny, baiting BS. stuff it.10-13-10 04:20 PMLike 0 -
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If you found it interesting then why not post it in a thread where it would be relevant instead of a thread asking a specific and somewhat unrelated question?some of you here are a bunch of world class jerks. I simply found the article on QNX interesting and thought I'd share it. Instead of anyone saying, "hey that's interesting" (despite it not directly answering any specific questions in the thread), all I see (some of you are on "ignore") is a bunch of whiny, baiting BS. stuff it.
Here it is no more useful then a spambot picking up key words and posting an advertisement that matches.
Oh and yeah, it can get hostile on this forum. DEAL.Last edited by grahamf; 10-13-10 at 04:31 PM.
10-13-10 04:28 PMLike 0 -
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exactly you post was completely worthless in this thread. go make your own if you thought that article was worth the read. personally i skimmed thru it cause it was a copy/paste and YOU provided no input.10-13-10 05:05 PMLike 0 -
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The short answer is no. Porting android apps (written in java) probably won't be any easier then say porting them to BlackBerry OS 6.
That said, its possible that someone could port the Android VM (Dalvik) to run on QNX. It currently runs in Linux on android devices. That would probably allow most Android apps to run without any changes.10-13-10 08:05 PMLike 0 -
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Which is what I was wondering. QNX is as close to Linux as Darwine is(Mac OS X) and Darwine can easily run any Linux app using Fink, so i assumed that the case would be similar for QNX.The short answer is no. Porting android apps (written in java) probably won't be any easier then say porting them to BlackBerry OS 6.
That said, its possible that someone could port the Android VM (Dalvik) to run on QNX. It currently runs in Linux on android devices. That would probably allow most Android apps to run without any changes.10-13-10 08:26 PMLike 0 -
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You're confusing different technologies, they're really not similar in the way you're thinking. Also, Darwine is for running Windows apps and uses technology originally built for Linux. Completely different from Fink's porting of Linux apps to OS X.
Android apps are written in Java, but not just normal Java, they're written in Android Java (extremely close, but not directly compatible). The existence of Android Java is why Oracle and Google are currently in a lawsuit. The only VM that run Android Java is Dalvik, the Android VM. I don't expect porting Dalvik to QNX would be easy, it's integrated right into the core of Android. That's just the VM, then there's all the libraries. So that leaves porting the apps themselves. The only Java on the PlayBook is the legacy OS6 compatibility part. If it was easy to port from Android to normal (BlackBerry) Java we'd already be seeing it, but we aren't. Part of the reason it's not easy is that the user interface APIs are completely different. Unlike in the desktop space where there are several cross platform UI toolkits (like Qt) this doesn't exist in the mobile space, mostly due to fundamental platform differences.
Most of those Linux apps you install with Fink use a library like Qt which enables the cross-platform support. Alternatively, they run using the Apple X server, which is you can think of as kind of like porting Dalvik (it's not at all like that on a technical level, but it's a useful comparison).
We really don't know how the PlayBook UI works yet. If it's based on X then I expect the question will be about porting apps from desktop Linux. If it's something completely proprietary, we'll just have to wait and see.Last edited by taylortbb; 10-14-10 at 11:36 PM.
10-13-10 11:47 PMLike 0 -
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The report from the analyst today says one of RIMs goals for QNX is to port a large portion of the Android App Market onto QNX or to virtualize Android. So all of Androids apps will run on QNX with no modifications to the apps themselves.
So if that is RIM's intentions I'm sure they will do everything they can to accomplish it. It would be truly awesome for the PlayBook and all future QNX BBs to launch with all of Android and BB apps.10-14-10 01:30 PMLike 0 -
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I've been trying to make heads or tails of the Android licensing, but from my understanding RIM can easily integrate the Android JVM in order to run Android apps without infringing on the Apache license (the GPL licence is a bit of a problem though)The report from the analyst today says one of RIMs goals for QNX is to port a large portion of the Android App Market onto QNX or to virtualize Android. So all of Androids apps will run on QNX with no modifications to the apps themselves.
So if that is RIM's intentions I'm sure they will do everything they can to accomplish it. It would be truly awesome for the PlayBook and all future QNX BBs to launch with all of Android and BB apps.Last edited by grahamf; 10-14-10 at 01:55 PM.
10-14-10 01:52 PMLike 0 -
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as far as I'm concerned. who cares about android apps. What I care about is an easy to develop system that Android seems to cater for. This is what Blackberry phones, let alone the RIM Ecosystem has been missing and NOW we have a fair amount of different ways to tackle development via the QNX (PlayBook OS). This in itself should allow for quicker ports or overall design changes that will suit the playbook hardware and then in turn suit the blackberry smartphones that will support this OS.
Hopefully this will fuel developers into pushing one step further and developing for OS 6 since QNX OS will be backwards compatible (OS6)Last edited by zensen; 10-15-10 at 06:39 AM.
10-15-10 06:36 AMLike 0 -
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QNX is completely different and is not compatible with OS6 at all, let alone backwards compatible with any RIM phone OS. It does have a direct interface and will work with tethered OS5/6 phones. But RIM has stated that QNX will be it's phone OS also in the future, so then they will be compatible.as far as I'm concerned. who cares about android apps. What I care about is an easy to develop system that Android seems to cater for. This is what Blackberry phones, let alone the RIM Ecosystem has been missing and NOW we have a fair amount of different ways to tackle development via the QNX (PlayBook OS). This in itself should allow for quicker ports or overall design changes that will suit the playbook hardware and then in turn suit the blackberry smartphones that will support this OS.
Hopefully this will fuel developers into pushing one step further and developing for OS 6 since QNX OS will be backwards compatible (OS6)
At least that's the way I understand it, but perhaps I'm unclear on it?
10-15-10 07:58 AMLike 0 -
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It either will include or will have an emulator of sorts to run BB apps. That was in the press release, the keynote, and any direct documentation longer than one page.QNX is completely different and is not compatible with OS6 at all, let alone backwards compatible with any RIM phone OS. It does have a direct interface and will work with tethered OS5/6 phones. But RIM has stated that QNX will be it's phone OS also in the future, so then they will be compatible.
At least that's the way I understand it, but perhaps I'm unclear on it?10-15-10 10:26 AMLike 0 -
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Agreed. I will have a JVM to run the utilities/apps but that does not make it compatible. Java runs on Windows, Linus and OS X, and you can build a JVM for those OS's as well to run BB apps if you wanted to (who would?). It hardly makes them "compatible" with OS6.
Guess it's a matter of semantics and what your definition of "compatible" implies.10-15-10 10:31 AMLike 0 -
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welll *I* think your post was interesting and i *do* appreciate you sharing the info!some of you here are a bunch of world class jerks. I simply found the article on QNX interesting and thought I'd share it. Instead of anyone saying, "hey that's interesting" (despite it not directly answering any specific questions in the thread), all I see (some of you are on "ignore") is a bunch of whiny, baiting BS. stuff it.10-15-10 10:33 AMLike 0 -
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will the QNX OS allow easy ports from Android?
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