android 外文翻译,Android系统外文翻译

附录1： 外文原文

What Is Android?

It can be said that, for a while, traditional desktop application developers have beenspoiled. This is not to say that traditional desktop application development is easier thanother forms of development. However, as traditional desktop application developers, wehave had the ability to create almost any kind of application we can imagine. I amincluding myself in this grouping because I got my start in desktop programming.

One aspect that has made desktop programming more accessible is that we havehad the ability to interact with the desktop operating system, and thus interact with anyunderlying hardware, pretty freely (or at least with minimal exceptions). This kind offreedom to program independently, however, has never really been available to thesmall group of programmers who dared to venture into the murky waters of cell phonedevelopment.

For a long time, cell phone developers comprised a small sect of a slightly larger group of developers known as embedded device developers. Seen as a less “glamorous” sibling to desktop—and later web—development, embedded device development typically got the proverbial short end of the stick as far as hardware and operating system features, because embedded device manufacturers were notoriously stingy on feature support. Embedded device manufacturers typically needed to guard their hardware secrets closely, so they gave embedded device developers few libraries to call when trying to interact with a specific device.

Embedded devices differ from desktops in that an embedded device is typically a “computer on a chip.” For example, consider your standard television remote control; it is not really seen as an overwhelming achievement of technological complexity. When any button is pressed, a chip interprets the signal in a way that has been programmed into the device. This allows the device to know what to expect from the input device (key pad), and how to respond to those commands (for example, turn on the television). This is a simple form of embedded device programming. However, believe it or not, simple devices such as these are definitely related to the roots of early cell phone devices and development.

Most embedded devices ran (and in some cases still run) proprietary operating systems. The reason for choosing to create a proprietary operating system rather than use any consumer system was really a product of necessity. Simple devices did not need very robust and optimized operating systems.

As a product of device evolution, many of the more complex embedded devices, such as early PDAs, household security systems, and GPSs, moved to somewhat standardized operating system platforms about five years ago. Small-footprint