361–370 of 583 posts
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Most people do their banking from their phones.
Got any hard data on that (seriously, I'd like to know)? I don't know anyone who does banking on their phone -- it's all desktop. Granted, I haven't taken a formal survey or anything.
A rather toxic read which I wouldn't expect from a former CTO.
The entire article he didn't take any ownership for this failing and then goes on to mention how he is heading up another company.
> All browsers work pretty well, and being slightly faster or using slightly less memory is unlikely to sway users.
I call BS. When Chrome came out it was a lot better experience than Firefox. That is IMO how chrome got so much velocity. Chrome was more stable and faster. Now that may not be true now but it was the early technical failure of Firefox that caused a great deal of uptake of chrome.
But once you make it to the top these days even after failure you still get funding and get to to lead another company.
Andreas is rightfully very impressive but maybe he shouldn't be an executive.
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Everybody lost the mobile OS war. Apple lost it by getting boxed into a market share corner by android. Google lost it by losing control over android. Android OEM's lost it by getting stuck in a cutthroat competition. Microsoft lost it by being microsoft. Users lost it by having no good choices left (either go with the golden cage iphone, or go with the privacy and security mess android).
>> Apple lost it by getting boxed into a market share corner You mean the corner where they are the premium smartphone vendor, taking 90% share of global profits? That's a great corner to be boxed into :)
Firefox took marketshare from IE when that was impossible. It could do it again with Chrome, if things change a bit. Some problems with Mozilla are that they don't do community management well any more. In the old days, there were amazing grassroots-driven projects like spreadfirefox.com. It is not like that any more. Grassroots supporters have trouble participating, even if they try. For example, I tried to create a…
Firefox took marketshare from IE because Microsoft abandoned it for several years (IE6) then did an half-assed update with IE7. It was a big pile of poop and Firefox succeeded not because it was a great product because because it was the right product at the right time. For Chrome on the other hand, its near-monopoly situation is worrisome but it's actually a pretty good product. So there is no pragmatic reasons to l…
If Firefox can deliver near-Chrome features with better battery life, I'll switch and never look back.
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The only sites I've seen that only work on Chrome are generally due to the developers being lazy and only targeting the top platform. It's similar to many games only being available on iOS a few years ago, or many programs only being available on Windows. Now with the web, it's much easier to make something work across all platforms, except at the bleeding edge, which is generally where you'll find those sites. Almos…
Like Google Hangouts?
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I know that HN loves Rust and at the risk of being burned at the stakes, i'd say Rust is overrated. Lets get real, it doesn't have that many users, its not even on top of TIOBE. If you are going to start a career in Rust, good luck finding any jobs. I saw maybe one or 2 in the past, and it requires knowledge of C/C++ anyways. You might say, "its new language give it a break" but I bet Kotlin will overtake it by the e…
> Servo is an "experimental" browser engine. While Chromium is cranking out features, servo is yet to reach version 1.0. This would be a more convincing point if any of memory safety, parallel styling, parallel layout, retained mode rendering as suggested by the GPU vendors, and so forth were on Chromium's roadmap.
Servo is a nice goal and a technological feat but its a big business risk for Mozilla without clear return of value.
Firefox took marketshare from IE when that was impossible. It could do it again with Chrome, if things change a bit. Some problems with Mozilla are that they don't do community management well any more. In the old days, there were amazing grassroots-driven projects like spreadfirefox.com. It is not like that any more. Grassroots supporters have trouble participating, even if they try. For example, I tried to create a…
Maybe, but they're getting rid of extensions instead, so they're effectively committing suicide.
> I started Firefox OS in 2011 because already back then I was convinced that desktops and browsers were dead. Not immediately–here we are 6 years later and both are still around–but both are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential going forward. I don't understand this perspective. Browsers are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential? What? I feel like the web dominates our lives…
You have to make wacky statements like this to pull off the "visionary" schtick. All of the hotshots were talking Post-PC world in 2011. The reality is that computers are still computers. Mobile is the new TV. I run EUC in a large diversified enterprise. We have about 0.05% pure mobile users, mostly iPad based. That is growing quickly, but probably won't exceed 3% in the next 5 years based on the current pipeline. Th…
Thanks for this. It summarizes succinctly my uneasy observations of large numbers of mobile users.
For desktop power users, however, the mobile is somewhat an extension of their desktop.
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The Mobile OS war can still be continued. Mozilla should join forces with Lineage OS instead of wasting time with their own. Do the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy with Android. Secure messaging is also still a hot topic. Join forces with Signal or Wire or Matrix or XMPP. For example, Wire intends to open source their server code and enable federation [0]. Voice control requires some weight for an Open Source so…
I don't know a single Android user that even knows what Lineage OS is all about.