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Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android
- protomyth 7y agoBy moving to its own OS, Facebook could have more freedom to bake social interaction — and hopefully privacy — deeper into its devices. Privacy? I expect some amazing detailed & intrusive data gathering.
- twiceaday 7y agoBy 'Privacy' they mean they will be the only ones with access to your data.
- hurricanetc 7y agoExcept for all the companies that accidentally leak it to, all the companies that grab it in breaches, all the companies that find it sitting in S3, all the companies they sell it to, etc. But otherwise yes only Facebook will have it.
- MobileVet 7y agoSeriously, what a ridiculous comment by TechCrunch. Facebook is openly hostile to your privacy, don’t give them an inch. It would be great if journalists stopped sharing the PR snippets from companies and focused on what they actually do. Actions should always speak louder than words
- mattynice 7y agoAll the more reason to consider the HTC Vive or Steam Index if interested in being an early adapter of VR where their achievements can be more collaborative. Side note regarding Portal and other "social hardware", I can't imagine there being user-friendly privacy toggles when facebook owns the complete stack..
- baroffoos 7y agoValve has done a pretty good job at standardizing VR tech with OpenVR/SteamVR. All of the headsets except the oculus seem to have really good hardware compatibility. The vive controllers can be used with the pimax hmd, etc. Facebook seems to be trying really hard to create a lockin with the oculus, if you buy games on the oculus store, you are now forever locked in to only buying oculus hardware from now on.
- collias 7y agoThankfully you can use Oculus devices (or at least, the Quest) with the new Link feature to turn the headset into a sort of external display, which is then compatible with SteamVR. Honestly it's the biggest selling point of the Quest for me, in addition to being able to hack around on it through an adb shell.
- rb808 7y agoWasn't there one like this already (though used android) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First
- sjg007 7y agoMakes sense. It'll be a *nix variant probably.. we might get a nice new UI layer out of it.
- whoisjuan 7y agoFor a company of the size of FB and its ambitions, this seems kind of late. I would have thought they already had something like this.
- Slippery_John 7y agoI doubt this will get much in the way of mainstream penetration. You're never going to see any competitive phone installations of this. It'll probably mostly be for things like portal. I doubt they'd be successful in doing a chromebook competitor either given how horribly tarnished their name is, but it does at least seem more realistic than a phone.
- behringer 7y agoYou kidding? Free phones with Facebook OS built in all funded by selling every scrap of your data? Third world countries are gonna eat that up to begin with, and then it'll spread all over.
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- Apocryphon 7y agoFinally, a rival for Fuchsia.
- tommyengstrom 7y agoEye OS, because they will always be watching you?
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- kerng 7y agoMark Lucovsky is pretty legendary! Every Windows exe starts with the two bytes ML! EDIT: As others pointed out its actually another Mark, MZ. Lucovsky was the Mark, who Steve Ballmer was throwing chairs around when he said to leave for Google. Still legendary. :)
- justinsaccount 7y agoEvery windows exe starts with the two bytes MZ
- umeshunni 7y agoThat's MZ for Mark Zbikowski - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zbikowski https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zbikowski
- kerng 7y agoAh, thanks for correcting. Microsoft always had too many Marks, Russinovich is another famous one.
- r00fus 7y agoGood luck with that, Mark.
- npo9 7y agoIt’s an obvious vertical integration play to make an operating system for the hardware you manufacturer. I’d like to see an AR/VR first OS/UI.
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- WatchDog 7y agoAndroid privacy is bad enough as it is, I can't imagine how horrible a facebook operating system would be.