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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#51

Post by kgabis »

zokier wrote: post #43
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.

> I think that for now, and foreseeable future, the only reasonable choice for mobile devices are native code based apps and system. So basing a mobile OS on something like Java (or C#/Silverlight) would be completely silly in your opinion?

I don't think it's the best possible option. Afaik WP7's core apps are native, not in C#/Silverlight.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#55

Post by h2s »

You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying.

Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer.

Give me a platform that costs nothing to develop for and lets me use my existing skills. If there's a website version of my application, let me share components between the two versions instead of locking my mobile version up in your platform's chosen systems programming language and development environment. Firefox OS ticks all these boxes.

I just might be the most average developer out there these days: a web developer. If you enable people like me to develop applications for your device without any bullshit, then you automatically have a bigger set of possible contributors than the competition.

That is why I am cautiously optimistic about Firefox OS. If you build it, we will come.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#56

Post by mtrimpe »

cincinnatus wrote: post #52
kayoone wrote: post #10

"Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!" Scary thought ;)

Web standards apps will always have to make bad compromises. We need browser byte code.

JavaScript is browser byte code. Just like Java byte code it's not that great for a lot of cases but, just like Java, eventually the JIT will get pretty decent.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#57

Post by mtrimpe »

cincinnatus wrote: post #52
kayoone wrote: post #10

"Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!" Scary thought ;)

Web standards apps will always have to make bad compromises. We need browser byte code.

JavaScript _is_ browser byte code.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#59

Post by dons »

mtrimpe wrote: post #56
cincinnatus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web standards apps will always have to make bad compromises. We need browser byte code.

JavaScript is browser byte code. Just like Java byte code it's not that great for a lot of cases but, just like Java, eventually the JIT will get pretty decent.

Only by accident. It has terrible semantics for a target assembly.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#60

Post by gjulianm »

zacharyvoase wrote: post #4

> In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript! This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already. [1]: ht…

Gecko will have an awesome performance. I went to Telefónica offices in Madrid a few weeks ago. They showed us a prototype (ZTE phone) running one of the lastest builds of Firefox OS (not the nightly, though). We touched it and it had pretty good perfomance. It was somewhat snappy on scrolling items, but overall a similar performance that you get on a medium-cost Android phone.

Then we asked about that device. It was a crappy ZTE with 600 MHz CPU and with the poorest Qualcomm chipset. This blew out my mind: a non-optimised system was running with acceptable performance on the lowest of smartphones. I can't imagine how will this perform when it's fully optimised on a high-end smartphone. They're doing a great work.

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