Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

groups.google.com

221–230 of 342 posts

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#221
post #3

This outcome should have been obvious to everyone involved. The fact that it wasn't raises serious doubts about the Mozilla leadership. You can't compete with Android by being slower, less responsive, and ship with less features.

The leadership from the Firefox OS era is all gone, FWIW.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK at this point the dumb TVs all have worse displays.

Which is why I just ignore the smart stuff and use a capable STB instead.

emodendroket is stating that "ignoring the smart stuff" means disregarding high-quality imaging available on the top-of-line products.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#223
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this a poor, skewing argument always made by at least one person here. For most FF is very responsive and there are no problems what so ever. And FF is not FF-OS.

If you think FF is responsive, there are two options: 1) you haven't compared it to Chrome/WebKit/Edge, or 2) you don't run heavy applications such as TweetDeck on it. And FF-OS was a complete OS that ran on Gecko, so yes, if Gecko (FF) is slow, the entire FF-OS is slow.

A direct Firefox to Firefox OS comparison is not reasonable. For one, FxOS was a greenfield ecosystem, so it was built with multiprocess from the start, whereas the e10s project moves relatively glacially toward a multiprocess world so that nothing gets broken.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#224
post #166

Number 1 reason why I didn't pick up an Panasonic 4K TV, because i knew Firefox OS will be dead some day. And number one reason why I REALLY want an APPLE TV Set rather then Apple TV STB. Most of the Smart TV on the market today are total piece of Junk. They are what "Smart"phones were before the iPhone came out. As a matter of fact, SmartTV from China are pretty good on the software front, and lacking ( price cuttin…

All I want is a high-quality, instant-on 55" IPS LCD panel with four HDMI inputs, proper support for HDMI CEC (ARC, power on/off, and input changing), and maybe an ambient light sensor.

I don't want smart features, a fancy remote with two dozen buttons, TV tuning, or anything. I'd be happy with a thin TV but I don't need one.

Just give me a way to put my PS4 on the wall and I'll be happy as a clam.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#225
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's it? The product category of "smartphone OS" is now so well-defined that the possible improvements are evolutionary at best, not revolutionary, and hence there's also no space for a new entrant to provide a big enough improvement over the incumbents to gain significant attention? Firefox OS promised to make app creation easier through web technologies, but "not enough apps" isn't the problem with Android…

Yeah but a year for 70 more emojis? Come on now. With all the good engineers they have.. There always must be a good idea in the span of a year..

Well, even at a tech conference, "we eBPF'd and ASLR-ized your app sandboxes even more and now you have even less risk of getting pwned" might draw a "meh" reaction. In very real terms it helps close the device security gap between Android and iOS, but it probably just can't hold people's attention.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are political avenues to explore. Just as Microsoft was hit hard by a number of anti-monopolistic EU decisions regarding Internet Explorer, Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space. But this is the kind of thing that requires citizen action. Also, expecting the EU commission to be the only political consumer protection for multinational corporations is not ideal, there ought to be more…

>Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space Android's market share in Europe is 75%. Google's search market share is over 90%. Any action against Apple would be completely counter productive when it comes to fighting monopolies. Also, you need to take into account that the Web is a third mobile platform for all intents and purposes, and Windows still dominates the desktop. So the case for any…

Not against Google, it's not :)

I think that the conditions that Google impose on handset manufacturers are something that probably should be investigated by the Commission. The travel search thing, not so much.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former long-time user of Windows Phone, it's not "unaddicting" in a way that's boring. There are plenty of apps to waste your time with. It's just that you don't need to. When I used Windows Phone, I didn't need to open an app to see the weather, or to see my text message, or to see my email. The live tiles made sure I could see all of that from the home screen. One glance across the screen and I knew everything…

As far as I know, you can do all that with homescreen widgets on Android. Or am I misunderstanding you?

You can to an extent. If the app supports widgets, and the widgets are the right size to fit together on your screen, you can fit a small number of widgets. That doesn't mean they look good though. Android widgets look like widgets, Windows Phone tiles are just the interface. That's what it looks like, it was designed to be that and only that and nothing else.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#228
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Servo is mature enough yet.

However, WebKit and Chromium are. They are already experimenting on an Electron based browser called Tolfino and on iOS Firefox is built using the WebView.

1) Tofino (which has now ended) was just an experimental testbed for trying some new browser concepts. It was easier for them to use Electron than to contend with Gecko's ossified embedding APIs. Hopefully positron (https://github.com/mozilla/positron) will allow us to use Gecko in the future.

2) Firefox iOS uses WebView not by choice, but because of Apple's App Store restrictions.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#229
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want the Tizen project to succeed. It's tragic that this doesn't even run on mainstream Samsung devices. Talk about faith in their own work!

I wonder if Samsung is holding that one close just in case Google irks them with Android. Right now, it probably makes more sense monetarily for Samsung to stay with Android.

Tizen has one of the same problems that Firefox OS had - no real foothold with users. I have a Samsung Gear, Samsung TV, Samsung phone, and 0 Samsung apps, other than what ships with the devices. My apps are all Google based, and the only two apps on my TV that get used are Netflix and Youtube, everything else gets served by the computer connected (and Netflix and Youtube get used there more frequently since I have a full keyboard there).

Google and Apple both rely on ecosystems to attract and retain users, and Samsung doesn't have a competitive (or compelling) ecosystem.

I don't know if Samsung has the same problem in other markets, but I know that Firefox Marketplace does/did.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#230
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course. I don't remember the last time I made a voice call, so I don't care at all about that functionality. Really, all I care about is receiving SMS.

This looks like a rehashed Casiopeia. (Actually the Casiopeia looks considerably sleeker in comparison.) This is the clunkiest-looking device I've seen in a long time. At some point can we acknowledge that shrinking a laptop to be palm-sized doesn't make for a good form factor? A tiny keyboard and a resistive 720p 5" touchscreen sounds like a terrible experience. The picture shows it literally rendering a standard de…

A full Linux desktop screen wouldn't be used for long periods of time. The ideal situation is that we, as hackers, can build our own mobile UI free from the clutches of Apple and Google, and that you can just plug it into HDMI anywhere you are and get a full computer, which is something you can't do with any phone currently.

To your question regarding SMS, there are already people working on it. A Vim plugin sounds especially delicious.

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/how-to-send-receive...

Post reply on HN