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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#31

Post by _urga »

robhawkes wrote: post #26
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #22

I apologise for writing a long post - I have not time to write a short one There is a reason MBAs are taught market analysis. Its important to position your product for maximum effect (usually maximum profit, but that may not be the case here) The arguments for FirefoxOS seem to be 1. It's OSS 2. It's Web-technologies only 3. It's aimed at the "emerging" markets' mobile users 4. It runs on cheaper hardware better tha…

Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it! To be clear, I'm not educated in business so my thoughts are my own (potentially naive) conclusions. However, there are some very sound business decisions behind us chosing to go with Brazil first, and to go with cheaper, low-end devices. I'm sure they know what they're doing more than I do! As an aside, we do have versions of Fx OS running on high-end devices and it ru…

You are right to start with low-end devices:

Get it running brilliantly on cheap hardware. Don't waste anything. Make the OS efficient. Do things in the most direct way possible with a minimum of red tape. Expose the bare metal to Javascript. Put the bare minimum features in the OS and let open source grow around that.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#32

Post by nnethercote »

j_col wrote: post #19

Giving how shockingly similar Firefox OS is to webOS (now also open source), I would have much rather that they support that OS instead of reinventing the wheel. Some strange strategic decisions coming out of Mozilla inc. these days, I would much rather see them focus on their browser instead (and Thunderbird!).

Yes, it's a shame Mozilla has completely halted desktop Firefox development in order to develop Firefox OS instead.

(Wait, what's that? A company/community can work on more than one thing at a time?)

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#33

Post by robhawkes »

kgabis wrote: post #29

This looks like a terrible idea for a mobile OS, where every cycle should count. What about battery life? I think that for now, and foreseeable future, the only reasonable choice for mobile devices are native code based apps and system.

Battery life is very, very good. I can leave this thing on for days and it's still running. Now obviously that's not running too much in the background but there is no reason why a JavaScript phone would have a detrimental effect on battery life.

You should try it out sometime, it's really not 'terrible' when you get hands on. But your opinion is one I see a lot and we're hoping to change it in the future, slowly ;)

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#34

Post by j_col »

nnethercote wrote: post #32
j_col wrote: post #19

Giving how shockingly similar Firefox OS is to webOS (now also open source), I would have much rather that they support that OS instead of reinventing the wheel. Some strange strategic decisions coming out of Mozilla inc. these days, I would much rather see them focus on their browser instead (and Thunderbird!).

Yes, it's a shame Mozilla has completely halted desktop Firefox development in order to develop Firefox OS instead. (Wait, what's that? A company/community can work on more than one thing at a time?)

> (Wait, what's that? A company/community can work on more than one thing at a time?)

But that's the whole point: they're not, at least not in the case of Thunderbird. Firefox OS clearly has a higher priority for them than Thunderbird.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#35

Post by robhawkes »

dmpk2k wrote: post #27

What's the £50 device? I'm not going to buy a Galaxy variant to play with Firefox OS, but £50 is a different story.

It's a ZTE Kis. You can't use it yet because it's a development version but we're working on getting devices available to developers before we launch properly.

The Kis is merely a test device for now.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#36

Post by mmahemoff »

macavity23 wrote: post #8

It's an interesting project, and I'm all for competition, but honestly I don't see the value proposition for an OEM to put this on a phone instead of Android. Rendering JavaScript faster is great, but does that really outweigh all the benefits of the Android ecosystem?

I don't know the stats, but I'm fairly convinced anecdotally there's still a huge segment of users who don't know or care about apps, and don't much know or care about the OS either. They'll use whatever ships with the phone.

If you're an OEM, how would you target these people? As long as you can get a clean, attractive, easy-to-use OS, you'll take an interest in one that's easy for you to customise, and ship with solid default apps, some of which you can monetise on. I think Firefox OS offers that possibility to OEMs, they get to completely control the experience and keep the relationships with customers. And the customisation process - being HTML5 - is arguably simpler and less of a specialised skill.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#37

Post by simonh »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #22

I apologise for writing a long post - I have not time to write a short one There is a reason MBAs are taught market analysis. Its important to position your product for maximum effect (usually maximum profit, but that may not be the case here) The arguments for FirefoxOS seem to be 1. It's OSS 2. It's Web-technologies only 3. It's aimed at the "emerging" markets' mobile users 4. It runs on cheaper hardware better tha…

>1 and 2 are great. And no-one but us cares, except in 20 years when no child >has even seen a line of code because OSS gets wiped out as all PCs are replaced by mobile devices.

While these guys are off saving the world from the evils of proprietary software, is it ok if I just get on with teaching my kids to program using Codea on our iPad?

Edit: Ok, I too wish Apple devices in particular were a little less locked down, but hysterical prognostications about the end of hacker culture don't do the cause any favours.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#38

Post by coffeeaddicted »

robhawkes wrote: post #16
antidaily wrote: post #5

Looks pretty but painfully slow in that demo video.

We have plenty of challenges to overcome but it's nothing that can't be fixed. We're fully aware of some of the frame-rate issues on the really low-end devices (like in the video) and are actively working on improving that (it's a main priority to get 60FPS).

Constant framerate is the thing that matters most to games. 60 fps or just 30 fps doesn't matter as much as that it's constant. You can even play a racer for example at 15 fps, but you fly out the curve the moment a 60 FPS game has a 250ms freeze at the wrong moment.

Just mentioning this as it's something a lot of people not doing games are missing (and maybe one of the main reasons why c/c++ still are dominant in game programming - I mean what's the point of coding in Java when the only way to get a constant FPS is to work throughout with static variables for example?). So if you want games - makes sure you have realtime guarantees.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#39

Post by mike-cardwell »

j_col wrote: post #34
nnethercote wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a shame Mozilla has completely halted desktop Firefox development in order to develop Firefox OS instead. (Wait, what's that? A company/community can work on more than one thing at a time?)

> (Wait, what's that? A company/community can work on more than one thing at a time?) But that's the whole point: they're not, at least not in the case of Thunderbird. Firefox OS clearly has a higher priority for them than Thunderbird.

As far as "total users", Firefox OS has the potential to overtake Thunderbird in a matter of weeks after launch.

I use Thunderbird and have done for many years. I would like to see them continue developing it. But Firefox OS is much, much more important. The World needs a free alternative to Android based on open standards.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#40

Post by rwmj »

robhawkes wrote: post #26
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #22

I apologise for writing a long post - I have not time to write a short one There is a reason MBAs are taught market analysis. Its important to position your product for maximum effect (usually maximum profit, but that may not be the case here) The arguments for FirefoxOS seem to be 1. It's OSS 2. It's Web-technologies only 3. It's aimed at the "emerging" markets' mobile users 4. It runs on cheaper hardware better tha…

Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it! To be clear, I'm not educated in business so my thoughts are my own (potentially naive) conclusions. However, there are some very sound business decisions behind us chosing to go with Brazil first, and to go with cheaper, low-end devices. I'm sure they know what they're doing more than I do! As an aside, we do have versions of Fx OS running on high-end devices and it ru…

Has to be said from experience that I'd never assume business people know what they are doing. Check it yourself.

Marketing isn't that complex. Unfortunately business people do tend to hide behind a facade of secrecy (often for good reasons -- you don't want to reveal your hand to your competitors because someone in your org leaks inside information). But that can also be used to hide poor / complete lack of analysis and bad decision making.

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