> Another major nit I have to pick with HarmonyOS is its lack of access and transparency. Just accessing the SDK and emulator required me to go through an insane process that involved uploading a photo of my US passport and credit card to Huawei’s servers so that I could be approved to access the SDK after a two-day waiting period. Most companies just have a download link. You don’t get to run the emulator locally on your computer, where it could be inspected more thoroughly—instead, it runs remotely on a server in China somewhere, and video of it is streamed to your computer. After we wrote our article, Huawei took down the emulator and blocked “overseas” users from downloading the SDK.
> Just accessing the SDK and emulator required me to go through an insane process that involved uploading a photo of my US passport and credit card to Huawei’s servers so that I could be approved to access the SDK after a two-day waiting period.
My sample size is tiny, ymmv etc. but a few big-Chinese-company-designed products I've bought (DJI drone, wireless security camera) have been like that. Not "thanks for buying the product, please enjoy, there's an app if you want and we value your privacy." Instead it's "you WILL install the app and you WILL give it access to contacts, camera, microphone and everything else, then you WILL create an account on our web site where all of your personal information WILL be stored, and only THEN may you use the thing."
I don't know if it's just my bad luck with these products or if the Chinese market is much more accepting of this kind of invasive authoritarian treatment.
I tried doing iOS dev years ago. Apple had me fax them my driver's license. You can whine about the FSF all you want but I've never had to do that to use gcc.
It seems there are two emulation environments, one that is remote you need to sign in and verify yourself.
The other is your local simulator no need to sign in or verify.
The local simulator is only for wearables and cameras, if you want HarmonyOS 2.0 devices you need to use the remote simulator.
Edit: Locally you can only run project templates that have [Lite] in their name, maybe in the future they will make other simulators available. Signing up for remote emulation is too much of a effort for me.
> uploading a photo of my US passport and credit card to Huawei’s servers
What?! The Chinese government has found the cheapest way of building records on foreign citizens: just ask them to give you their credentials and anything that can be used to impersonate you. They'll do it.
How are people even doing that on purpose? Man, fuck that.
Look when you have a hostile foreign power destroy your entire business and and force you to retool most of your software stack, you get kinda restrictive with people inspecting your new stack coming from that country.
Fascinating to see how much is 'inspired' by Apple's design and Microsoft's for the document app. I'd feel dirty in so blatantly copying someone else's design, but Huawei doesn't share those concerns. Maybe for good reason.
The problem is that, in general, when a company doesn't respect intellectual property laws or obviously makes use of industrial espionage (and I'm not suggesting either is true for Huawei) they are sending a clear signal that laws do not apply to them.
So as a customer why would I trust any company with my most personal health, banking or own intellectual property if that company sees no reasonable limitations to its behaviour in any other sphere?
The original purpose for branding was to allow customers to identify food products they could trust. The same is true for technology.
Yeah of course the same way Western world feels "dirty" because they copied Yoga or patented indigenous herbals or any number of other things?
Perhaps it's time we recognised ideas and concepts are meant to be taken up and extended by other people? That's how humans have progressed these thousands of years. Not by paranoid, corporate silos and NIH syndrome and draconian patents.
Well those companies put a lot of money into design and customer feedback so it isn't much of a leap to think it will still work even on a new "OS", and Huawei doesn't seem to think it's bound by international copyright laws.
Let the best win, isn't that our modern capitalism's answer?
If Huawei is copying they will always lag behind. Still, are they really copying? or are they piecing innovations together into a new improved product?
Give them a break and a chance to bring something new - sanctions and all, it is pretty impressive they have persevered.
A shamefully ignorant article that--like many of the comments here--utterly misses the technical value of HarmonyOS, which I was able to glean in 5 minutes from looking at the official documentation.
HarmonyOS is evidently not a peer competitor with Android or iOS, but a further abstraction layer above these traditional mobile OS. This is obvious in the fact that HarmonyOS has a "kernel abstraction layer" which supports Linux (Android), LiteOS, etc. The heart of HarmonyOS is not in the particular terminal UI or kernel, but in everything in between--specifically the DSoftBus (from "dbus"?) which ostensibly enables first-class distributed computing across devices.
Based on this basic info, HarmonyOS should be viewed more as a "meta OS", which has been bootstrapped by existing OS-as-backend, Android Linux in the context of phones/tablets, but is not strictly dependent on Android Linux.
Smearing Huawei for this technical approach is like smearing Python as a "C clone" or Clojure as a "Lisp or JVM clone". It's shamefully ignorant.
If you read the article Ars Technica points out the direct lies Huawei is telling: "no single line of code is identical to that of Android," and in the linked original piece of reporting, "is completely different from Android and iOS." Huawei's top brass doesn't appear to value truthfully disclosing either the provenance of its software or what it actually is so why should I bother with it?
> Forking Android is not a big deal, and huge companies like Amazon do it for its FireOS. The difference is that Amazon is upfront about it and says "FireOS is a fork of Android" in the first paragraph of its developer documents. Huawei's developer documents don't reference Android and are mostly pure gibberish—and by that I mean they are paragraphs of buzzwords and circular links that don't actually communicate any technical information about what the OS is or how it works.
One question: IF there is a CHANCE that the entire OS is indeed just a `sed s/Android/whatever/g AOSP/`, is it legal (for a company that large) to do that?
If it is, please call me the creator of RobotOSxxx OS (Which really fuzzwords could not may Android) from now on.
Why wouldn’t it be legal? As long as the fork complies with all software licenses.
This happens all the time by large and small companies, orgs and individuals: Amazons FireOS is an Android fork, Amazons opensearch distro is an elasticsearch fork, LibreOffice is an OpenOffice fork, Mate is Gnome3 fork, Jenkins is a Hudson fork, Google’s blink is a fork of WebKit, etc.
> One question: IF there is a CHANCE that the entire OS is indeed just a `sed s/Android/whatever/g AOSP/`, is it legal (for a company that large) to do that?
Only replacing the string would probably not be enough, but if they also addressed trademarks and copyrighted stuff wouldn't that be more or less that CentOS does ?
I don't think so. But it is a Chinese company so its not the first time where they basically just did a copy and replace. Google doesn't wants to piss off the Chinese govt either by trying to shut down Huawei.
Moving running apps across devices is a big security risk. Look up "Mobile Agent" research on Google Scholar. There are some severe security problems with moving running apps between devices. Foremost is the problem of a compromised host that corrupts the apps and then sends them on their way to attack other devices. It is very difficult to protect your app against a corrupt host operating system. There may be some known solutions to the security problems with mobile agents, but I suspect Huawei spent most of the last two years working on other things instead of rewriting Android from the ground up to provide security for running apps that can jump between devices. Even if they did it is all new and not proven in the field. In fact there is another name for apps that can jump between devices, worms. What a great way for an attacker to spread an infection, worm capability built into the OS! And don't tell me it will all be under user control when the app can popup "click here to listen to your music on your TV!" which is a legitimate reason to allow any app to jump devices.
Huawei has "OS Kernel Lab" in their research division [1] and seems to do real research, including building an OS kernel. I guess they at least tried to ditch Android at a point.
I'm not supporting their PR strategy. Just interesting to see where a corporate research goes.
>When you enable Pure Mode on HarmonyOS 2, only apps that have undergone the stringent testing for listing in the HUAWEI AppGallery can be installed. And for an even higher layer of security, installed apps are constantly monitored to detect potential risks and security infringements.
At least you can turn the BS down on this one unlike iOS.
The only possible explanation for the way Huawei design their UI is to try and trick the non tech savvy into thinking they're buying something that runs the same software as Apple products.
I've bought Huawei phones and tablets in the past. I don't care one whit about the default UI. Samsung's sucked for years before OneUI. LG Mobile (RIP) wasn't good either.
The best part of Android is that you can make the interface look however you want.
> but China doesn't do huge amounts of software development.
It’s actually the first time I rethink whether there is a shortage of developers in China or not. Sheer amount there are tons of developers and the tech industry is pretty huge in China. However most are doing “application development”, definitely lacking experts from several fundamental domains (kernel, cloud backbone, etc).
Another aspect is they earned much less compared to US though still 1-2x for other type of jobs. However, many senior/principal engineers in FAANG still went back because the scope is substantially larger (you oversee 5-10x more headcount normally)
So when I looked at HarmonyOS when it was announced open source it had nothing to do with Android at all. It was much more Fuchsia like. A modern secure microkernel, message passing and it's own javascript engine, very few drivers. Not exciting, just solid. The total opposite to Android or Samsung.
I'm welcoming any competition to the app store duopoly.
I'm excited about Ubuntu Touch [1] as well. It's open source and hopefully does integrate well with Ubuntu Desktop. Would like to see a "Ubuntu App Store" as well.
Edit: Locally you can only run project templates that have [Lite] in their name, maybe in the future they will make other simulators available. Signing up for remote emulation is too much of a effort for me.
I think you'll find it's consumers who are actually slaves to Apple and Google. Developers are not particularly happy to use iOS or Android, there is simply no commercially-viable alternative.
[+] [-] chronogram|4 years ago|reply
Essentially useless for me then.
[+] [-] taneq|4 years ago|reply
My sample size is tiny, ymmv etc. but a few big-Chinese-company-designed products I've bought (DJI drone, wireless security camera) have been like that. Not "thanks for buying the product, please enjoy, there's an app if you want and we value your privacy." Instead it's "you WILL install the app and you WILL give it access to contacts, camera, microphone and everything else, then you WILL create an account on our web site where all of your personal information WILL be stored, and only THEN may you use the thing."
I don't know if it's just my bad luck with these products or if the Chinese market is much more accepting of this kind of invasive authoritarian treatment.
[+] [-] swiley|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonelite|4 years ago|reply
https://developer.harmonyos.com/en/docs/documentation/doc-gu...
It seems there are two emulation environments, one that is remote you need to sign in and verify yourself. The other is your local simulator no need to sign in or verify.
The local simulator is only for wearables and cameras, if you want HarmonyOS 2.0 devices you need to use the remote simulator.
Edit: Locally you can only run project templates that have [Lite] in their name, maybe in the future they will make other simulators available. Signing up for remote emulation is too much of a effort for me.
[+] [-] 1_player|4 years ago|reply
What?! The Chinese government has found the cheapest way of building records on foreign citizens: just ask them to give you their credentials and anything that can be used to impersonate you. They'll do it.
How are people even doing that on purpose? Man, fuck that.
[+] [-] grishka|4 years ago|reply
It seems that you don't even need the SDK — just build an apk with the regular Android SDK and rename it.
[+] [-] wdb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slver|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mosselman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lio|4 years ago|reply
So as a customer why would I trust any company with my most personal health, banking or own intellectual property if that company sees no reasonable limitations to its behaviour in any other sphere?
The original purpose for branding was to allow customers to identify food products they could trust. The same is true for technology.
[+] [-] Santosh83|4 years ago|reply
Perhaps it's time we recognised ideas and concepts are meant to be taken up and extended by other people? That's how humans have progressed these thousands of years. Not by paranoid, corporate silos and NIH syndrome and draconian patents.
[+] [-] Ly5846N929Rm6bb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 533474|4 years ago|reply
If Huawei is copying they will always lag behind. Still, are they really copying? or are they piecing innovations together into a new improved product?
Give them a break and a chance to bring something new - sanctions and all, it is pretty impressive they have persevered.
[+] [-] pphysch|4 years ago|reply
Check out the architecture diagram on this page: https://developer.harmonyos.com/en/docs/documentation/doc-gu...
HarmonyOS is evidently not a peer competitor with Android or iOS, but a further abstraction layer above these traditional mobile OS. This is obvious in the fact that HarmonyOS has a "kernel abstraction layer" which supports Linux (Android), LiteOS, etc. The heart of HarmonyOS is not in the particular terminal UI or kernel, but in everything in between--specifically the DSoftBus (from "dbus"?) which ostensibly enables first-class distributed computing across devices.
Based on this basic info, HarmonyOS should be viewed more as a "meta OS", which has been bootstrapped by existing OS-as-backend, Android Linux in the context of phones/tablets, but is not strictly dependent on Android Linux.
Smearing Huawei for this technical approach is like smearing Python as a "C clone" or Clojure as a "Lisp or JVM clone". It's shamefully ignorant.
[+] [-] emptysongglass|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirui|4 years ago|reply
One question: IF there is a CHANCE that the entire OS is indeed just a `sed s/Android/whatever/g AOSP/`, is it legal (for a company that large) to do that?
If it is, please call me the creator of RobotOSxxx OS (Which really fuzzwords could not may Android) from now on.
[+] [-] vbsteven|4 years ago|reply
This happens all the time by large and small companies, orgs and individuals: Amazons FireOS is an Android fork, Amazons opensearch distro is an elasticsearch fork, LibreOffice is an OpenOffice fork, Mate is Gnome3 fork, Jenkins is a Hudson fork, Google’s blink is a fork of WebKit, etc.
[+] [-] mrighele|4 years ago|reply
Only replacing the string would probably not be enough, but if they also addressed trademarks and copyrighted stuff wouldn't that be more or less that CentOS does ?
[+] [-] mithusingh32|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapjr9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flakiness|4 years ago|reply
I'm not supporting their PR strategy. Just interesting to see where a corporate research goes.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=huawei+OS+Kernel+Lab
[+] [-] swiley|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rock_artist|4 years ago|reply
Unlike Microsoft's Fluent, Material U or other UX/UI exploration.
This feels like a pale Apple copycat. oddly it'll become even less relevant by next week with Apple showing their newer UI iteration.
[+] [-] swiley|4 years ago|reply
>When you enable Pure Mode on HarmonyOS 2, only apps that have undergone the stringent testing for listing in the HUAWEI AppGallery can be installed. And for an even higher layer of security, installed apps are constantly monitored to detect potential risks and security infringements.
At least you can turn the BS down on this one unlike iOS.
Also that page lagged a bit on my pinephone.
[+] [-] drcongo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaba0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breakfastduck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marderfarker2|4 years ago|reply
10/10 of people I know buy for the brand.
[+] [-] rchaud|4 years ago|reply
The best part of Android is that you can make the interface look however you want.
[+] [-] whoevercares|4 years ago|reply
It’s actually the first time I rethink whether there is a shortage of developers in China or not. Sheer amount there are tons of developers and the tech industry is pretty huge in China. However most are doing “application development”, definitely lacking experts from several fundamental domains (kernel, cloud backbone, etc).
Another aspect is they earned much less compared to US though still 1-2x for other type of jobs. However, many senior/principal engineers in FAANG still went back because the scope is substantially larger (you oversee 5-10x more headcount normally)
[+] [-] rurban|4 years ago|reply
https://gitee.com/openharmony
This could have been the one renamed to openharmony and LiteOS.
[+] [-] reelbucks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] butokai|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quambene|4 years ago|reply
I'm excited about Ubuntu Touch [1] as well. It's open source and hopefully does integrate well with Ubuntu Desktop. Would like to see a "Ubuntu App Store" as well.
[1] https://ubports.com/
[+] [-] tvvocold|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
https://gitee.com/openharmony/docs/blob/master/en/release-no...
Looks they have added a new JS UI framework at os level. Probably to replace Android eventually.
Going pure JS (rather than Android Java or something else) I think will be a big plus for developer adaption.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dwardu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _gtly|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juliosueiras|4 years ago|reply
Just from the ars article alone I have extreme doubt of what the phone system(AOSP copy job) on release is the same as the code in open harmony repos
[+] [-] dragonelite|4 years ago|reply
Might give it a spin this weekend.
Edit: Locally you can only run project templates that have [Lite] in their name, maybe in the future they will make other simulators available. Signing up for remote emulation is too much of a effort for me.
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|4 years ago|reply