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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#261

Post by podperson »

neutronicus wrote: post #145
podperson wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's an alternative to Android that doesn't let Carriers "add value" then it's an alternative they won't use . Open Source, in this case, becomes a race to the bottom in every respect. We need carriers to be dumb pipes we buy data plans from; then this entire class of problem goes away. Until then, any platform that doesn't let carriers charge us different amounts for bits from different places is going to die on…

How is owning infrastructure anything other than a low-margin hot-potato if you let yourself be turned into a dumb pipe?

Why should owning infrastructure be anything other than low margin?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#262

Post by podperson »

pezz wrote: post #117
podperson wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's an alternative to Android that doesn't let Carriers "add value" then it's an alternative they won't use . Open Source, in this case, becomes a race to the bottom in every respect. We need carriers to be dumb pipes we buy data plans from; then this entire class of problem goes away. Until then, any platform that doesn't let carriers charge us different amounts for bits from different places is going to die on…

So how do we curb this voracious appetite of needing to get into every bit (data, apps, ads, other value adds) of being a telco? I agree with what you're saying, but how do we get to a state where we can have "dumb pipes", yet have an open, privacy driven and easily user controllable OS on a device? Is there an alternative to always needing to "add value"? Isn't earning our coin off carrier charges, data etc enough?

I think the fundamental problem is the carriers' vertically integrated business model -- Verizon and AT&T want to sell you the phone, the phone service, the data service, the TV service, etc. etc.. From the consumers' point of view we need the actual pipes to be infrastructure then we buy devices that use the pipes, and pay for services that send us stuff over the pipes. But how to get there? Massive government intervention of some kind is probably the only option. Left to the market we'll simply get the biggest most monolithic monopolies that the government allows to form.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#263

Post by fzzzy »

ilaksh wrote: post #244
fzzzy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already works.

How do you do it? And on Android as well as iOS? And its the same installation and launch process? That wasn't working last I checked.

Sorry, I should have said that this already works on Firefox OS. It may also work on Firefox for Android, but Apple would have to add support for Open Web Apps to Safari on iOS for it to work there (and the same with Google and the standard Android browser or Chrome)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Apps/Getting_Starte...

It's being proposed as a standard, so hopefully Apple and Google adopt the API, but these things take time and politics.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#264

Post by stcredzero »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #208
stcredzero wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Firefox OS says we are not as good as iOS then thay are squarely putting themselves in the middle of the market. That's only if people actually perceive feature phones as the same "market" as smartphones. I very much doubt this is true. 2nd hand smartphones are already widespread in 3rd world markets. Having a "real smartphone" will have considerable cachet, functionality notwithstanding. tl;dr - "mobile phone"…

I really struggle with that - it's the app that counts. Having a web browser is probably the main dividing line, but having sms networjs that really allow your business to trade over SMS means to me that the functionality counts - it would be nice to buy an iPhone but if a LCD SMS device will allow me to sell my goods each week, then high end and low end are far wider than we presume

> allow your business to trade over SMS means to me that the functionality counts

Sure, if functionality were everything, Palm would still be ruling the world with Treo phones. Functionality is not everything. People are status and style conscious, even in the 3rd world.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#265

Post by goldfeld »

flyinRyan wrote: post #256
TwistedWeasel wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

At some point, native would still be faster in the same sense a curve approaches the x-axis but never quite touches it.

The mobile web rendering performance might never hit the 0-grade latency standard where we put native, but it will eventually get so close to it as to not make any difference whatsoever to anyone but cold-hearted scientists the likes of whom whish they could keep their science drinks at absolute zero chilly bins.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#266

Post by Evbn »

azakai wrote: post #181
pkolaczk wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Two orders of magnitude? That can't be explained by the difference between C and JS. There must be some other difference, like which algorithms are used, or that the C one relies heavily on inline assembly or such. The expected difference between C and JS should be more like one order of magnitude in the worst cases (and much better in the best).

Just swap base e for base 10, and boom, twice the orders of magnitude.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#267

Post by Evbn »

goldfeld wrote: post #265
flyinRyan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At some point, native would still be faster in the same sense a curve approaches the x-axis but never quite touches it. The mobile web rendering performance might never hit the 0-grade latency standard where we put native, but it will eventually get so close to it as to not make any difference whatsoever to anyone but cold-hearted scientists the likes of whom whish they could keep their science drinks at absolute zer…

HTML hit practically 0 latency 10 years ago then we added DHTML, CSS, encryption, Ajax, 3D, multitasking, 2x DPI and 4x screen size, background syncing, ... When will we stop adding functionality to soak up the hardware power?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#268

Post by Evbn »

jff wrote: post #227
_urga wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Addendum: Don't fall into the Linux trap. Don't start off being "great on old hardware!" but eventually grow so huge as to need the same specs as modern Windows (my i7 laptop with 4 GB of RAM runs like crap, thanks Debian). Do things in a straightforward way, but in such a way that you can expand without tacking on loads of extra code.

Is Debian your problem, or GNOME?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#269

Post by Evbn »

jff wrote: post #227
_urga wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Addendum: Don't fall into the Linux trap. Don't start off being "great on old hardware!" but eventually grow so huge as to need the same specs as modern Windows (my i7 laptop with 4 GB of RAM runs like crap, thanks Debian). Do things in a straightforward way, but in such a way that you can expand without tacking on loads of extra code.

Is Debian your problem, or GNOME?

My phone runs Linux, and it has 512MB RAM and a 1GHz ARM processor.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#270

Post by jsnell »

hessenwolf wrote: post #251
jsnell wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :).

Ok. Given the depth of your argumentation, I still have no idea of what exactly you don't believe or find convincing. But I'll try to expand on these:

a) The list of the apps you use basically exclusively is completely missing most of the most used categories of apps. No games (used by 67% of smartphone users), weather (65%), social networking (60%), maps (55%), and news (42%). You do have music (45%) there, so that's fine. These numbers are from Nielsen Social Media Report Q3 2011 (I have no reason to trust these number particularly, it's just the first non-anecdotal data I found with a search).

Both the lack of overlap with your list, and the the low usage numbers for even the most popular categories of apps (let alone specific apps), should make it completely obvious that people's usage scenarios are completely different.

b) If you seriously dispute the presence of ecosystem lock-in that means apps in the same category are not fungible, there's no point in having a discussion. Even your own list has WhatsApp that can't be substituted to by any other instant messaging app. Its utility depends purely on your contacts using the app too. Something like iMessage, or BBM, or Google Voice might be in a similar category of usage, but they can't replace WhatsApp for you.

Another example you had was an ebook reader. Again, for a lot of people a generic ebook reader is of little use, since they're already tied into the Kindle ecosystem. While presumably for you the Kindle app is of no use as well.

The prime example of this is InstaGram. Yes, anyone could build a camera app with a fake polaroid filter. But 50 million people wouldn't install it. All of the value of the app was in the ecosystem.

And the list here is seemingly endless.

The harsh reality is that these apps are not getting ported over to every single platform. Can FxOS become an important enough platform that it warrants porting to? Maybe. But it almost certainly needs to become an important platform first. And becoming a major platform without having the apps is tough. Hell, even getting a good review for a device without the apps is going to be tough. See e.g. reviews for the Nokia N9, Lumia 900 (and we're talking WP7 here!), any Android tablet.

c) Let me turn this around. Where do you think a good mapping solution for FxOS is going to come from?

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