They pressured google. That was the point. Google does not give a flying fuck about developer experience. I am not saying that is wrong or right. I am saying this was the case for Google for many years. They just didn't give fuck about the experience.
But look at the timing. Everyone was nagging on google for years about slow emulator. They didn't do shit for years. Microsoft released an emulator, which was superior in almost all aspect. Just after that Google released new emulator. and now it does make sense to discontinue that project.
Coincidentally, that was around the same time that Microsoft filed an Amicus brief supporting Oracle (in Oracle v. Google) arguing that APIs should be copyrightable[1].
Did that Project Astoria implement Android APIs? Would Google go after Microsoft in court had they officially released this? My guess is "yes" to both these questions. Nothing says wilful infringement louder than submitting a legal document to the courts spelling out why you think what you're doing (Astoria) is wrong.
I think you are wrong on the Google front. Google did everything to please devs. Take apple for example, they won't think twice about refusing your app. Google OTOH, since the early days, lacked so much in the Appstore, that they let all sort of trash inside. They just wanted the devs more than quality.
Wait till you have someone file a wrongful copyright complaint against your Google Play App. Google took ours down two weeks ago and won't respond to our appeals despite clearly owning the copyright for all work done on the app.
Just like Chrome extensions that get removed without warning and you can't even get an answer of why and how you can fix the situation (submitting it for manual review fixes nothing).
How many platforms does that Microsoft emulator work on? One? Unlike Microsoft, Google supports 3 development platforms and so their new emulator also had to support 3 platforms.
Also, the new emulator was written from scratch and that takes time.
> Unlike Microsoft, Google supports 3 development platforms and so their new emulator also had to support 3 platforms
No it didn't. If platform specific solutions make sense then we should use platform specific solutions. Not everything has to be cross platform and 100% identical across all platforms.
Feature parity does not mean the exact same tools on every platform. Trying to be identical across 3 platforms always means adopting the lowest common denominator and always results in being equally shit on every platform.
It's astounding that people still try to ignore the last 30 years of evidence of this.
So Linux users should get the shaft because they're the minority? Android Studio and the emulator work very well on all 3 platforms.
>Trying to be identical across 3 platforms always means adopting the lowest common denominator and always results in being equally shit on every platform.
In that case we're fortunate that Xcode isn't cross platform.
> So Linux users should get the shaft because they're the minority?
Linux users should get the best possible experience on the system, so should the windows users. If a better emulator is available on windows why should they get shafted? Linux tools even have the advantage that they may not need full emulation in the first place, but instead we end up with the worst of both worlds.
> Android Studio and the emulator work very well on all 3 platforms.
In my experience nothing about android development works very well on any platform. I'm not a huge fan of MS, but windows phone development and tools are an absolute dream in comparison.
>Linux users should get the best possible experience on the system, so should the windows users. If a better emulator is available on windows why should they get shafted? Linux tools even have the advantage that they may not need full emulation in the first place, but instead we end up with the worst of both worlds.
You seem to be under the impression that if you develop a cross platform solution that it's going to be inherently inferior. I disagree with that and the new Android emulator is proof of that. It's superior to the MS Android emulator in every way and it's also available on all 3 platforms.
>In my experience nothing about android development works very well on any platform.
In that case you probably don't have much experience developing for Android.
>I'm not a huge fan of MS, but windows phone development and tools are an absolute dream in comparison.
If developing for windows platform is a dream then why is their app store a cesspool filled with horrible looking apps?
Ive previously done iOS development (on the side) and tried Android development in the last few weeks and it feels like a massive, horrible hacked together pipeline. Why go through this horrible hack of a pipeline, recompiling and modifying .class files when you can instead create a compiler which does it directly?
So you could spend three times as much money and design completely different products for each platform, or you could have one codebase with a limited number of special cases for the different platforms and invest the saved money into making a better product...
How did you calculate 3 times as much? No one said nothing can be shared across platforms.
And again, we've got 3 decades of evidence that show precious few good cross platform solutions, so investing the saved money into making a better product doesn't seem to work.
It'd make sense if Hyper-V wasn't monopolistic. You can't run both at the same time, or better, no other virtualization host is allowed when Hyper-V is on. Which sucks.
But look at the timing. Everyone was nagging on google for years about slow emulator. They didn't do shit for years. Microsoft released an emulator, which was superior in almost all aspect. Just after that Google released new emulator. and now it does make sense to discontinue that project.