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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#121

Post by cageface »

h2s wrote: post #55

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# simultane…

Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously.

Who does this? The vast majority of mobile developers I know specialize on one platform. A small handful are competent on two. Most companies that care enough to be on more than one platform will hire out to specialists for that platform.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#122

Post by pjmlp »

scriptproof wrote: post #76
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?

"Android has a cost" (Steve Ballmer). And it could increase (Apple)...

Who assures you that this JavaScript OS is safe from litigation?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#123

Post by bornhuetter »

robhawkes wrote: post #21
klausa wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, considering that the same chipset (APQ8060) was also used in some variants of Galaxy S II, I really don't think so that Touchpad hardware was that bad. And the fact that after installing Android 4.0.4 on it, it feels like whole new machine (speed-wise) - I really blame webOS here.

Fx OS on the SGS2 runs BLAZING fast compared to the device in the video. The reason why we don't shout about that? Because we're not launching with that device and it's not right to raise expectations in that way.

Are we going to be able to load Fx OS onto our own SGS2s when it's released?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#124

Post by pkolaczk »

robhawkes wrote: post #87
cs702 wrote: post #77

According to this blog post, Firefox OS is already providing native-like performance in a standard JavaScript+HTML+CSS environment. (By "native-like" I mean fast enough that the application will feel native to users.) If this is true, then I would agree Firefox OS is a game changer, because it means that ALL modern web applications can run unmodified at native-like speeds on mobile devices. The number of apps availab…

JavaScript doesn't run at the speed of native, but it certainly runs fast enough on things like Fx OS (or desktop browsers) to run 'native-like' apps. It really depends what you want to do with it. For example, this is JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread

So how come e.g. www.circuitlab.com which is a simulator written in pure JS is two orders of magnitude slower on Chrome or Firefox than native *SPICE implementations in C? It is actually even much slower than the already pretty slow Falstad's Java applet.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#125

Post by JackC »

robhawkes wrote: post #21
klausa wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, considering that the same chipset (APQ8060) was also used in some variants of Galaxy S II, I really don't think so that Touchpad hardware was that bad. And the fact that after installing Android 4.0.4 on it, it feels like whole new machine (speed-wise) - I really blame webOS here.

Fx OS on the SGS2 runs BLAZING fast compared to the device in the video. The reason why we don't shout about that? Because we're not launching with that device and it's not right to raise expectations in that way.

FWIW, I agree with masklinn that it's a little weird not to mention WebOS in the article. In particular when you wrote "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!" I let that sink in back in 2009 when they announced WebOS. I was pretty excited about it. The way it crashed and burned from internal wrangling, delays, buggy releases and odd marketing was really sad. This is like you're showing up a year after the Hindenburg crashed and saying "Just let this sink in -- we've invented a rigid lighter-than-air flying machine!" That's not where we are in the conversation.

The rest of the article is really exciting, and I really hope you can launch and get some traction. I agree that Mozilla is important in this space for exactly the same reasons Firefox was important when it launched. I just think it would be kind to tip your hat to WebOS along the way.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#126

Post by nemetroid »

pkolaczk wrote: post #124
robhawkes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript doesn't run at the speed of native, but it certainly runs fast enough on things like Fx OS (or desktop browsers) to run 'native-like' apps. It really depends what you want to do with it. For example, this is JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread

So how come e.g. www.circuitlab.com which is a simulator written in pure JS is two orders of magnitude slower on Chrome or Firefox than native *SPICE implementations in C? It is actually even much slower than the already pretty slow Falstad's Java applet.

The term "native-like" means "with a responsive interface" these days.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#127

Post by mhd »

maxerickson wrote: post #110
mhd wrote: post #79

He mentions it being a "hackable dream for developers". I wonder if we're ever going to get something that's hackable by users. Or in other words, bridges the gap between the common user and the elite app-store backed developer… With all its sensors and social and personal applications, there seems to be a high potential for individual customizations and connections, probably more than what your average PC-of-yore of…

Scripting layer for Android if fairly close to what you are talking about: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/ It does not seem to be explosively popular. But it has to be sought out and installed and all that stuff, so who knows.

Well, this allows scripting languages to access the Android runtime APIs, something I'm picturing would require the applications themselves to be scriptable. This would require some integrated hooks, like Apple's AppleEvents or Microsoft's COM.

Or just a standard class interface, if you're scripting in the main application development language, which is why this would be an easy fit for a JavaScript-based system.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#128

Post by woodsier »

_urga wrote: post #31
robhawkes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think out of everyone you've really hit the nail here. It's about starting a movement, and taking the platform in a direction it's been needing to go to for a long time. The collaborative nature of open source should grow around this project as soon as the product arrives, and I really hope it does.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#129

Post by dangoor »

pkolaczk wrote: post #124
robhawkes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript doesn't run at the speed of native, but it certainly runs fast enough on things like Fx OS (or desktop browsers) to run 'native-like' apps. It really depends what you want to do with it. For example, this is JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread

So how come e.g. www.circuitlab.com which is a simulator written in pure JS is two orders of magnitude slower on Chrome or Firefox than native *SPICE implementations in C? It is actually even much slower than the already pretty slow Falstad's Java applet.

Well-optimized C is likely to always be faster than well-optimized JavaScript.

It is also possible that circuitlab is not well-optimized JavaScript.

I will say that it also depends on the problem domain. You can make a fast 3D game in JavaScript because WebGL does hardware acceleration of the graphics. You can also make a fast todo list in JavaScript because, well, it's a todo list :)

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#130

Post by jsnell »

hessenwolf wrote: post #70
h2s wrote: post #55

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# simultane…

"Smartphones live and die by their app ecosystem" Have you got a source on this? I am just curious. I love my smartphone, but I basically use whatsapp and the internetm, mp3, video, and fbreader 99.5% of the time.

a) Your set of 99.5% apps are going to be different from those of other people. You need a lot more coverage than that to make a substantial percentage of people happy.

b) It's often not enough to just have an app for a specific task, it needs to also tie into a specific ecosystem. For example I don't need generic VoIP software on my phone, but I absolutely must have access to Skype. For somebody else it might be WebEX instead.

c) Even when there's no ecosystem lock-in like that, there are very difficult categories of apps for new platforms to get access to. Maps would be a prime example. It's absolutely core to the smartphone experience, and perhaps the second most important function of the device.

The existing mobile web experience for maps is rubbish compared to the native apps even for basic things. But it'll get worse once you get into things like off-line use or turn by turn navigation. So who is going to fix that? Unlikely to be Nokia or Google unless Firefox OS becomes wildly successful. Nobody else really has cost-effective access to good data.

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