On 2013-08-30, at 04:25, Casey Ransberger casey.obrien.r@gmail.com wrote:
I just caught this:
http://androidcommunity.com/olpc-xo-tablet-retail-availability-expands-20130...
This is not the XO-3 tablet and it was not developed by OLPC engineers and the software was neither written by OLPC nor its open-source community. OLPC licensed the name "XO" to third-party companies. Notice that the actual product name is "XO Kid's Tablet" with no mention of OLPC.
Note this does not necessarily mean it's a bad device for kids: I have not seen it myself, but the "Dreams" UI looks compelling, although its goals appear to be less far-reaching than OLPC's. It certainly seems more thought-out than what else is sold as "kids computers" these days.
Do we have the VM working sufficiently under Android to consider deploying to this platform? (I'm aware that we aren't touch-UI ready yet, and I'm specifically asking about the VM Etoys uses.)
Given that Dr. Geo is in both Apple's and Google's app stores I'd say it does work sufficiently. The latest version uses Eliot's Stack interpreter which requires a Cog-compatible image, so for use with the current Etoys image we'd have to put back the regular interpreter (which was used in Andreas' original Android port; Dmitry updated it to the more performant Stack VM). Also, incorporating Tim's BitBlt speedups would be worthwhile.
The XO Tablet ships with many existing Android apps, so if there was a well-working Etoys for Android it would not be unlikely to be included in the future.
I guess I had assumed it would use a Fedora variant like the XO laptop. Which suddenly has me wondering if the laptops will start shipping with Android at some point.
Even though the current OLPC XO-4 laptop has a touch screen in addition to its touchpad and keyboard, I doubt that.
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