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Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

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Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#31

Post by mladenkovacevic »

polshaw wrote: post #24

I really hope this survives, IMO we need a truly free mobile OS since meeGo died. Concerns about 'browser as an OS', web apps only, and carrier control are way premature-- wait until we have seen the thing. For me, the fact mozilla are behind it trumps these concerns-- i know it will be truly open and consumer oriented. .. If i had to guess, i would say that it would ship with carrier modification, but that this coul…

meeGo became Tizen as far as I know. I hope somebody does something with that. https://www.tizen.org/

Also Ubuntu is making some strides towards mobile touch based interfaces. I really, really hope they succeed.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#32

Post by polshaw »

adam-a wrote: post #21
codeka wrote: post #5

> their infrastructures have been reduced to that of a dumb pipe This is a bad thing how? As far as I can see, carriers have far too much control over the devices that are used on their networks. I can't imagine consumers opting for devices where carriers have EVEN GREATER control! It's consumers who buy the device, not carriers.

I'm frequently surprised by how much power the US carriers seem to have. Here in the UK they are mostly reduced to dumb pipes. There are (almost) no operator exclusive phones, except for the cheapo own-brand ones, which few people would choose a network for. On top of that any phone you buy can be legally unlocked and switched to any other network. It seems like a much better position as a consumer to be able to pick…

You paint a rather rosy picture of UK carriers. Whilst you are right with regards to phone availability, while contracts and PAYG are still centred primarily around voice minutes and text messages, we are far from 'dumb pipe' territory.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#33

Post by eftpotrm »

gcp wrote: post #19
PLejeck wrote: post #14

The part that scares me most is the thought that Mozilla is willing to give any power back to the carriers. I do not want this, not in a million years. I'll take Apple's walled garden over AT&T's heap of shit, any day of the week.

Giving power back to the carriers is unavoidable with an open system. Conversely, taking power away from someone is usually why you keep the system closed.

Which is the advantage (to users) of the self-appointed benevolent dictator for life model.

What do users want? Something that's cheap, easy to use and unlimited.

What do the carriers want? Something that's branded to them and customised so they can upsell features. (Which requires an ecosystem they can customise, such as BtG.)

What do the platform vendors want? Ecosystem control so they can be the gatekeeper selling apps and ads.

I hate to say this as a long-term Mozilla fan with a strong distaste for iOS, but the most user-friendly model appears to be tied to platform vendors, not carriers. They are the ones with an incentive to maximise service; carriers, OTOH, have demonstrated a very noticeable tendency to salami-slice everything. Want your apps? Sorry, got to go through your network's app store. (And devs, you now have to negotiate with hundreds of vendors, each with different rules.) Want to use more than Facebook and YouTube? Sorry, that's the 'enhanced web' package. (Some have already done this.) Want tethering? Sure, that'll be £30 per month. And, once the carriers have the ability to have their own branded and locked-down smartphoens, just wait to pay a surplus to use an 'unsupported device' like an iPhone.

The carrier-controlled model has been tried before, and found wanting. Returning control to them could set the market back five years in one fell swoop.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#34

Post by falling »

Someone wrote: post #9
slowpoke wrote: post #7

As much as I appreciate the efforts to build a successful, truly open mobile OS, the "browser as an OS" approach is an incredibly dumb idea. It's another step away from general purpose computing, and I don't like this direction one bit. Some people here on HN might not really want to hear this, but web apps aren't the future . You just fundamentally cannot put everything on the web. It works for incredibly simple thi…

"Browser-based" does not have to be synonymous with "web apps". You could also see it as giving up control over your local cache of (photos, mails, apps, etc) in exchange for ease of use. This could replace "I want to play Angry Birds, so I download it and then run it" by "I want to play Angry Birds, so I click this button". Then, your device could download the app, if it was not already cached on your device, and ru…

How does that have anything to do with using a browser or not? Surely you could do the same thing on any other OS.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#35

Post by daeken »

oliwer wrote: post #28

Is it just me or the author of the article did everything he could to make Boot to Gecko look bad, even if we know very little from it yet. Since when being fully open source and easy to hack is a bad thing? The argument of operators crippling the phone with their apps is another problem. And I don't think Mozilla would approve distributing an OS which seriously limits the user freedom.

> And I don't think Mozilla would approve distributing an OS which seriously limits the user freedom.

Just like China can ship a Linux distro that's locked down and full of spyware, someone could ship a device based on Boot2Gecko that's insanely user-unfriendly. However, that's part of the point: you're free to do what you want with the OS, and that cuts both ways. The same freedom that allows people to do amazing things with their hardware is what could allow evil people to ship a horrendously locked down phone. Do I think it's likely to happen? No.

(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla on B2G, but obviously this is just my own personal opinion and I don't speak for the company, etc etc.)

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#36

Post by adam-a »

polshaw wrote: post #32
adam-a wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm frequently surprised by how much power the US carriers seem to have. Here in the UK they are mostly reduced to dumb pipes. There are (almost) no operator exclusive phones, except for the cheapo own-brand ones, which few people would choose a network for. On top of that any phone you buy can be legally unlocked and switched to any other network. It seems like a much better position as a consumer to be able to pick…

You paint a rather rosy picture of UK carriers. Whilst you are right with regards to phone availability, while contracts and PAYG are still centred primarily around voice minutes and text messages, we are far from 'dumb pipe' territory.

Yes, I see your point that the pricing of the pipes is still weird and uneven. What I mean is that I can pick my network based mainly on the price of their pipe, not the availability of some handset or because it's the only one available in a certain area. This seems to be the theme of US carriers: driving people to buy the service not because of the service itself, but because of the other details. But then I suppose coverage is a service, especially in the large and sparse fields of the US.

Of course nothing is perfect. Just interesting as a contrast.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#37

Post by gue5t »

slowpoke wrote: post #7

As much as I appreciate the efforts to build a successful, truly open mobile OS, the "browser as an OS" approach is an incredibly dumb idea. It's another step away from general purpose computing, and I don't like this direction one bit. Some people here on HN might not really want to hear this, but web apps aren't the future . You just fundamentally cannot put everything on the web. It works for incredibly simple thi…

You're completely right. I don't understand why everyone thinks we need to standardize on the web browser as the one true computing platform either. The sheer overhead involved is so upsetting when you see simple canvas/etc. demos that just chug when running on incredibly powerful computers and see people applauding the effort. Native compilation is too sweet a prize to give up; -webkit-box-shadow, the fucked box model, , , and friends are no substitute for a real, efficient software stack that isn't incredibly bloated and underperforming. The sooner HN at large realizes this, the sooner it can get to working on things that are actually new and interesting.

The only reason the web is considered the end-all-be-all is because people want to reach "average users" who can't handle installing native software and don't want the inconvenience of maintaining their computers' software. They never will, but that doesn't mean that the future of computing should be decided by the least common denominator of end-users.

The current trend in "web technologies" is to implement a wrapper for every native technology. When we finally finish, we'll end up with what can't possibly work better than what we had before, and it'll have taken incredible amounts of effort for programmers to optimize it enough that it's even usable for real jobs (see javascript engines at large). If all that programmers want is a standard software interface, they should construct one, but the browser as an environment has too much cruft from its history as a /content navigation tool/ to be an effective programming environment.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#38

Post by alexgartrell »

arturadib wrote: post #25
slowpoke wrote: post #7

As much as I appreciate the efforts to build a successful, truly open mobile OS, the "browser as an OS" approach is an incredibly dumb idea. It's another step away from general purpose computing, and I don't like this direction one bit. Some people here on HN might not really want to hear this, but web apps aren't the future . You just fundamentally cannot put everything on the web. It works for incredibly simple thi…

is an incredibly dumb idea Ouch. It's another step away from general purpose computing Not if the web platform itself is taking enormous strides towards general purpose computing, particularly in the mobile realm of B2G: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5#New_APIs In fact, in my opinion the web stack is becoming The Greatest Programming Toolkit Ever Built: http://blog.arturadib.com/the…

I don't work for Mozilla, don't use Firefox, and am not a front-end developer (I write C). That said, I agree 100% that Apps of the future will be delivered over HTTP to general purpose runtimes that will essentially be browsers (maybe they'll drop the need to wrap everything in chrome, or something).

Browsers are increasingly become a dynamic language runtime attached to a powerful graphics rendering library. Make the runtime faster, provide better graphics widgets, and get past this "remote everything with shitty local caching" thing and you've got yourself one hell of a toolkit.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#39

Post by peterwwillis »

Oh great. It wasn't bad enough that Android lacks a real-time user interface, now all my apps will be in JavaScript and HTML5, making everything even slower and crappier. It's so funny how phones made 10 years ago were more real-time than those today. On top of that I get the bulkiness of a Mozilla product combined with the security vulnerabilities of a Mozilla product.

"Basically, Apple and Google have so much control over the smartphone landscape that carriers have effectively become nothing more than retailers. Worse than that, their infrastructures have been reduced to that of a dumb pipe, where it is Apple and Google who ultimately decide how the network will be used."

THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE MOBILE CARRIER INDUSTRY IN ITS HISTORY. And somehow you find this a bad thing? Jesus christ people can be thick.

Re: Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

#40

Post by nkassis »

peterwwillis wrote: post #39

Oh great. It wasn't bad enough that Android lacks a real-time user interface, now all my apps will be in JavaScript and HTML5, making everything even slower and crappier. It's so funny how phones made 10 years ago were more real-time than those today. On top of that I get the bulkiness of a Mozilla product combined with the security vulnerabilities of a Mozilla product. "Basically, Apple and Google have so much contr…

"It's so funny how phones made 10 years ago were more real-time than those today."

Oh come on that's just not true. Phones 10 years ago barely had color displays and 0 apps other than contacts,phone and maybe music and I don't even think java games were there yet.

As far as I know, getting contacts synced between your phone and computer meant buying some huge palm or blackberry and hooking it up to your computer with a special cable. No Real time over the web syncing of contacts between your email client and phone like you have today.

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