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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#251

Post by hessenwolf »

jsnell wrote: post #174
hessenwolf wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, but have you got a source for that? As fun as my anecdotal evidence versus yours is...

No. Do you seriously dispute any of the claims I made, or are you just being argumentative? It was mostly reasoning from common knowledge, not generalizing from my own anecdotal experience. Of course there's never going to be a totally authoritative source for this kind of thing. You're not going to be able to do a double blind trial of the market success of two smartphone platforms with everything being equal except…

Yes, I seriously dispute the claims you make, but purely based on my own sample of, say, ten users that I have discussed this with. Hence, I have a completely different opinion, but I don't have a large sample.

I'm trying not to be argumentative, but you're tempting me :).

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#252

Post by [deleted] »

jsnell wrote: post #174
hessenwolf wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, but have you got a source for that? As fun as my anecdotal evidence versus yours is...

No. Do you seriously dispute any of the claims I made, or are you just being argumentative? It was mostly reasoning from common knowledge, not generalizing from my own anecdotal experience. Of course there's never going to be a totally authoritative source for this kind of thing. You're not going to be able to do a double blind trial of the market success of two smartphone platforms with everything being equal except…

[deleted]

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#253

Post by simonh »

jmathai wrote: post #243
simonh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 d…

> 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? If it weren't for these guys we'd be much worse off than we are today. Firefox single handedly dethrowned IE. It's philosophical but in the same way that IE was at one time the best browser and quickly became the worst - it's not unimaginable that iOS…

I completely agree, but spreading blatant FUD that anyone can see just isn't true, isn't the way to do that.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#254

Post by [deleted] »

j_col wrote: post #41
mike-cardwell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The World already has it: http://www.openwebosproject.org/

[deleted]

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#255

Post by mike-cardwell »

j_col wrote: post #41
mike-cardwell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The World already has it: http://www.openwebosproject.org/

WebOS had its chance and failed. Firefox OS has a much better chance of succeeding, simply because it's backed by Mozilla.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#256

Post by flyinRyan »

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #224
omarqazi wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the video. That's not native performance. It will never be native performance, because there will always be the layer of the rendering engine between your application and device. The best they'll ever do is "close enough to native that you don't notice", and they're certainly not there yet. And the number of apps is already in the millions? Give me an example of one app out there that's in the same ballpark of…

never say never. Technology evolves and in time hardware improves to a point where the performance difference between native code and something that runs through an intermediate layer is not noticeable in a user interface (although there will always be a difference, it just wont be be relevant any more).

And at that point, native would still be faster....

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#258

Post by oneandoneis2 »

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…

"Firefox OS is based on the same concepts as WebOS so it's doomed"?

Isn't that a bit like saying "OS X is based on BSD so it will only be of interest to hackers"?

Execution is important - just because somebody screwed up an idea before doesn't mean that nobody else can make it work.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#259

Post by lifeisstillgood »

simonh wrote: post #253
jmathai wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? If it weren't for these guys we'd be much worse off than we are today. Firefox single handedly dethrowned IE. It's philosophical but in the same way that IE was at one time the best browser and quickly became the worst - it's not unimaginable that iOS…

I completely agree, but spreading blatant FUD that anyone can see just isn't true, isn't the way to do that.

I see simonh as a respected and long time member of HN and hope that my reply can be constructive and beneficial to that community.

Anyway, my first home computer was a Sinclair zx80 that booted into a minimal shell and needed you to read the manual before anything worked.

So to use a pc I was forced to program. And RTFM.

But that was ok because there was a whole popular culture surrounding learning to use these new devices - I learnt basic and z80 assembler from magazines I bought in my small town newsagents, and watched prime time tv shows on using the BBC micro (way too expensive for us).

In short the devices were unlocked, the culture was encouraging and the prevailing expection was the devices were to be used for programming and put no blocks in the way (other than it was a z80 with plastic keyboard)

I cannot say for sure I would have found my way here otherwise, but it seems unlikely. So based on my one personal data point, I can say that a future where it is harder to program your devices to do what you want than it was for a kid in the 80's, is then likely to be a future that produces less programmers than my past.

if that is FUD then I must accept that. I am trying to start a after hours coding club at my local school, my nephew gets put onto Mac's term everytime I go round. But a country where most of our children are discouraged from learning to program will be a future that our country is at a competitive dis-advantage. That does sound like FUD I admit. But it also sounds like logically inevitable FUD.

Edit for clarity.

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