We’ll get to the instructions, but first let’s talk about what’s actually here. Freeform Window Mode is just what we imagined. It’s a dead ringer for Remix OS – multiple Android apps floating around inside windows – and might be the beginnings of a desktop operating system. It works on Android N phones and tablets, and once the mode is enabled, you’ll see an extra button on thumbnails in the Recent Apps screen. To the right of the “X” button that pops up after a second or two, there will be a square shape – the same ugly placeholder art Google used for the split screen mode in the Android M Developer Preview.
Press the square symbol for an app and you’ll be whisked away to a screen showing that app in a floating window that sits on top of your home screen wallpaper. The windows aren’t floating above the Android desktop; it’s just a blank wallpaper without any of your icons or widgets. The floating apps all have title bars like in Recent Apps. You can drag the apps around by the title bars or use the close and maximize buttons. Apps can be resized exactly how you would expect – press or hold on the edge of and all and move your finger, and you’ll see the app change shape. Just like in split screen mode, apps will auto-switch between their tablet and phone layouts (with some apps dealing with this better than others). You can only resize in one direction at a time though; there doesn’t seem to be a corner hotspot that will let you adjust the width and height.
It’s honestly kind of amazing that we get to see both Apple and Google work on scaling up their mobile operating systems for desktop use, with the eventual end goal of replacing Chrome OS and OS X (get used to it, people – OS X is on its way out), and unify everything from desktop, to laptop, to tablet, to phone, in a single user interface that scales from top to bottom.
It’s what Microsoft tried to do by scaling down, which honestly didn’t pan out very well. We’ll see if scaling up is a better approach, but exciting and interesting as it is to see this take shape before our very eyes, I still have my considerable doubts.
Too bad I (nor many others for that matter) will ever get to try it on our current devices.
So Apple wants their devs to use Swing and have APIs for that. MS have all their old C-stuff plus dotnet.
But does google really think that its a good idea to run an entire desktop on only Java/ART and HTML?
How is Java/ART + C++ any different from Swift + Objective-C or C++/.NET Native?
Those others haven’t been demonised for well over two decades.
You can have native on Android. I would expect them to continue to allow that.
Java is compiled to native code since ART so Android is fully native since Lollipop, just like iOS and WP.
However the only caveat is that the NDK is the most castrated SDK for C and C++ developers among all three major mobile OSes.
You are only supposed to use it for games or bringing in code from all platforms and call it via Java native methods or into Android APIs via JNI.
With Android N, Google is closing the circle to NDK code that links against non-public shared libraries. Those apps not following the NDK stable library rules will just crash.
It would be an interesting move to ban native code considering that all major game engines are more or less written in C++, for example Unity Engine.
Edited 2016-03-22 21:30 UTC
MS doesn’t have all it’s C stuff. Windows 8+ systems are .net only.
The Win32 API’s used by C & C++ programs has be obsoleted and will not be improved above the Windows 7 level.
Also note that Windows 8+ systems don’t have to have “Desktop” (the Win32 environment) installed. Desktop can only be installed on Intel x86 systems.
“The Win32 API’s used by C & C++ programs has be obsoleted and will not be improved above the Windows 7 level.”
No, that is simply incorrect.
For example, the DirectX 12 Library has a COM API and is accessible with the Win32 API.
Further Universal Windows Apps can be written using C++, so are not “.NET only”.
Edited 2016-03-21 16:56 UTC
Yes, the correct way would be to say that C is on the way out and C++ and .NET are the way forward.
C++ is now allowed on the kernel since Windows 8 and the goal is that the kernel can be compiled as C++ as well.
WinRT is based on COM and follows the design of COM+ 2.0, which was the early alternative to .NET when both were being designed at Microsoft Research.
Even Win32 is going to be made into a sandbox model via the Project Centennial.
I didn’t know that they’d gone that far downhill so as to allow C++ on the WIndows kernel. Now a whole new category of bugs can cause massive havoc. And next they’ll replace all the core code with C#. OMG!
I’m sure that as long as Linus is alive, Linux won’t move the kernel to C++. There is a reason that C++ is evil, and sometimes I’m not so sure that C is somewhat evil. Assembly forever!
Well, that doesn’t really mean anything. C was never “in” as far as the NT family is concerned.
How come?!
Win32 is all about C APIs.
“get used to it, people – OS X is on its way out”
-being the harbinger of doom again?
I don’t buy this prophecy.
Much as they might be consolidating codebases as much as feasible – and having a push for Mac App Store(or even App Store) on OS X.
I don’t seem them mandating this — they might just try. But there will be a bashlash if they do, and they WILL capitulate when there is. They might be an iOS first company now, but they won’t want to risk seeing their desktop OS business going down the swanny
Who knows:
Maybe some people may be looking forward to run iOS10 on a Mac Pro.
(Thom included…)
Edited 2016-03-21 19:25 UTC
Well whatever else could be said about that combination, it’d sure be fast.
We haven’t seen any signs of development tools being ported to iOS. Without that it is difficult to develop for iOS. So osx is still required. Is iOS restrictions compatible with development?
Unless and until Google/Android figures out how to upgrade their installed base, I won’t be remotely interested in any of this. It’s the one advantage that Ubuntu will have and it’s enough for me to switch to an Ubuntu Tablet (or phone) once they’re available. I’d rather have an upgradable and improvable OS than a thousand and one apps.
But that’s just me…
Canonical has long since used up their upgrade trust capital with me. Too many bugs and too little quality control. Couple that with having the same problem Windows Mobile 10 has and… just, no.
You make a fair point concerning bugs. However, in the last 6 to 8 years of using Ubuntu, I’ve been able to fix all of the bugs through web searches. All of them. One of the reasons I left Windows and MAC was because I had to pay them to fix their own bugs. In balance, I prefer and look forward to whatever Canonical offers.
Ballmer thought that MS had a lot of time to perfect mobile. He was wrong. Google at lease is taking their time to scale up, which can only work to their advantage with the blow-back against Microsoft over their overly aggressive upgrade tactics and ongoing poor decisions that get reversed, One Drive, poor support for new CPU’s. All of these missteps open the door for Android on teh desktop. If implemented well, with local printing, it will have legs.
I’m not very keen on those flat windows.
I do see Android looking like an OS that could replace OSX, Windows, and Linux. Generic windows are very useful, mice too. I’ll want to see full printer support, and even more I’ll want to see Android Studio (or the equivalent) support so I can build Android on Android. This would be neat for Android because right now you have to compile Android apps on Mac, Linux, or Windows, with all the difficulty that ensures.
Similarly, I’d like to see this happen for iOS. OSX is the most goofy OS on the planet, with bits of this and that thrown together. Junking it would be great, especially if you add a bit file system and other low-level iOS tools for developers.
Unfortunately, I don’t think either will happen. The security issues might be really too scary. Both Android and iOS have resisted including any apps that let you build apps. I hope I’m wrong because I would dearly love being able to develop apps on a machine that is also the target, and is also small and battery powered.
Oh, wait, I can do that with Windows, except for the small and battery-powered. Or can I do this on Windows phone 10?And if Windows can run on XBox, can I develop on XBox? Wouldn’t that be fun?
If I used to be able to develop apps on Apple II, Commodore 64, Timex/Sinclair, etc., why can’t I do it for modern systems, especially small ones?
I think it will be easiest for Android to do this, but not soon! But I sure do want it!
By that I mean that there is going to have be a better set of generic drivers or at least a set of good generic driver interfaces. Until that problem is fixed it’s going to be useless for laptops because it’ll destroy the progress we’ve had with laptop software upgrades over the last 10 years. We’ll just have the same problem that Windows 2000 and lots of XP laptops did, you can only install the exact version that came with the laptop because otherwise you won’t have the correct set of drivers.
This right here is the flat earth belief of software industry and every moron advocating it needs to be ridiculed without mercy.