There seems to be a lot of confident talk about an Andromeda device, without any basis in fact or annoucement from Microsoft.
Yesterday on Windows Weekly it was suggested Andromeda as being a small mobile Windows based Note taking device.
But surely any mobile device, will require an mobile Apps ecosystem, and that excludes Windows as a platform. A mobile device without Apps, will not be acceptable to the buisness or consumer market. The only solution woud be an Android based device that would host OneNote and Android Apps the user wanted.
PeterC
<p>Well apart from all the blue sky tech thinking any of us may offer (me included), the one thing thats always got my attention is the name, Andromeda. Go check wiki on the Greek myths relating to andromeda. Basically – Andromeda was the very beautiful daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, who is stripped and chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster – but she is saved by Perseus mounted on a flying horse, (think Unicorn). </p><p><br></p><p>Maybe the question isn't what is Andromeda, but who/where is the hero (Perseus) and his Unicorn in this evolving Greek tragedy. I'll get my coat…….</p>
PeterC
<blockquote><a href="#293890"><em>In reply to Hassan_Timite:</em></a></blockquote><p>Right, thanks. So if andromeda the “device” is the beautiful woman in Greek mythology, then I guess panos Panay must be Perseus, riding Pegasus (the surface team) which was born from the blood of Steve the medusa Balmers surface rt. </p>
jean
<p>for an ubiquitous platform to be successful – regardless of the vendor – the fundamental prerequisite is the ability to adapt to the human (or better environmental) interface(s), the currently most dominant ones (not in order of relevance) touch, speech, gesture, pen, keyboard and mouse as input monitor, audio and force feedback as output.</p><p><br></p><p>the form factors of existing and new device classes WOULD ideally require the ability to adapt to the physical viewport and so does the "Shell" of an operating system. not surprisingly the major platforms tried and are still trying to grow/shrink from their current widest ecosystem: iOS apps on MacOS or Android apps on ChromeOS and also Windows with it's toxic dumping ground of APIs. A half-baked attempt is the browser "platform" where tailored sites (i.e. m.xyz.com) are sort of a way to accommodate for those needs – but who ever pinched and zoomed websites knows how far that goes.</p><p><br></p><p>Add the dual screen complexity in the mix, where in one of the usage scenarios one screen might be hosting the virtual keyboard being used as input device to an application on the other screen and thus having to have the focus… that's where the core of the OS will need to be extensible.</p><p><br></p><p>back to your question what is Andromeda ? I don't really know exactly – what I do know is: for it to succeed it must address the above, all of the above. Can we or better can Microsoft wait until the developers fully embrace this ? can they even finally resolve the shell topic ? </p><p><br></p><p>my 2 cents: get the basics right (shell at least to a degree) and get that device on the market (in a slightly broader scale as HoloLens) – waiting for the apps to get there first will certainly never happen. How big does an app ecosystem need to be (regardless of UWP or whatever) : really not that big 2 dozens of apps is all it needs given these are the ones with the biggest reach. </p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#294362">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>I guess it would depend on the kind of the app, but I think a lot of apps aren't dependent on the shape of the screen. The same app can run on different phones with different aspect ratios and square is just another one. Having said that, I'm not an Andromeda believer. </p><p><br></p><p>I agree with you that a Microsoft-branded mobile device isn't necessary for Microsoft to survive, but the Post-PC myth dies hard.</p>