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Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

engadget.com

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Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#31

Post by vibrunazo »

Here's their developer site: http://developer.ubuntu.com/get-started/gomobile/

From what it looks like, I'd need to redesign my apps from ground up using QML. They could have leveraged Android apps ecossystem, like Amazon, OUYA and even BB10 are doing. But chose not to. Out of nothing other than greed. And for that one reason, I predict dead on arrival.

Edit: Just had an Ubuntu community manager answer my question on their official g+ hangout. And confirmed that indeed. You'd have to redesign apps for it from scratch in QML. Nor are they planing to make Android apps compatible, nor easy to port in any way. Oh well, I'm certainly not gonna waste my time developing for yet another platform. Goodbye.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#32

Post by bamdadd »

vibrunazo wrote: post #31

Here's their developer site: http://developer.ubuntu.com/get-started/gomobile/ From what it looks like, I'd need to redesign my apps from ground up using QML. They could have leveraged Android apps ecossystem, like Amazon, OUYA and even BB10 are doing. But chose not to. Out of nothing other than greed. And for that one reason, I predict dead on arrival. Edit: Just had an Ubuntu community manager answer my question on…

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Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#33

Post by zanny »

pajju wrote: post #29

"now web applications are first class citizens on phones too" - wow. This made my day, my year.

Firefox is already doing this on Android with the marketplace though. They are providing abstraction layers on the marketplace to let web apps take first class citizenry rolls on the current market leader. So it isn't a very persuasive argument for adoption.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#34

Post by StavrosK »

vibrunazo wrote: post #31

Here's their developer site: http://developer.ubuntu.com/get-started/gomobile/ From what it looks like, I'd need to redesign my apps from ground up using QML. They could have leveraged Android apps ecossystem, like Amazon, OUYA and even BB10 are doing. But chose not to. Out of nothing other than greed. And for that one reason, I predict dead on arrival. Edit: Just had an Ubuntu community manager answer my question on…

How could they? This isn't Android, it's an entirely different OS. If it ran Android apps, it might as well be a custom launcher instead.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#35

Post by yesimahuman »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #21
mtgx wrote: post #2

Swiping from the edges is exactly what I was hoping Google would do with Android, instead of wasting screen space with buttons. I think all Android's buttons could be repurposed into "edge actions", although they'd have to make them intuitive enough for people to get it quickly.

Swiping from the left and right edges on phones is prone to get confused with the swiping inside apps, that's the reason that none of the big mobile OSes have it. I am curious to see whether that's taken care of here.

This is already a problem with Chrome for iOS. It makes building apps in the browser difficult when swiping on the left and right edges triggers a "tab" switch.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#36

Post by zanny »

clauretano wrote: post #25
mtgx wrote: post #2

Swiping from the edges is exactly what I was hoping Google would do with Android, instead of wasting screen space with buttons. I think all Android's buttons could be repurposed into "edge actions", although they'd have to make them intuitive enough for people to get it quickly.

Tough to make invisible things intuitive, but you can always force a quick intro tutorial like webOS and Windows 8. Trouble is, hand your device to someone else and they might have no idea how to operate it. Jolla is really pushing edge gestures in their interface, and in the demo videos that have floated around in the last couple months it looks like a joy to operate.

In Phobuuntu's defense, you just need to know that the app quickmenu is on the left, status bar on the top, previous thing on the right, and application options on the bottom.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#38

Post by jxdxbx »

mtgx wrote: post #2

Swiping from the edges is exactly what I was hoping Google would do with Android, instead of wasting screen space with buttons. I think all Android's buttons could be repurposed into "edge actions", although they'd have to make them intuitive enough for people to get it quickly.

Edge actions and gestures are great as shortcuts for advanced users. I'm starting to think that "no chrome" UIs will never be suitable for ordinary users. Especially because they, practically speaking, will never be standard.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#39

Post by zanny »

I really want to give a "fuck yeah" for using qt as the app backend. I think qt5 is amazing and hope it can really take off. Especially with Necessitas you can port Ubuntu native apps to Android easily, and then porting to the desktop is trivial. I don't think they talked enough about how you can easily write a qt5 app that can run on everything but ios (and even that is seeing some traction).

I wonder how this is going to conflate with their ongoing focus on the desktop towards python + gtk apps. Also, Plasma Active is already targeting mobile and I don't like how once again the GNU stack is fragmenting in approaching mobile into 3 camps (plasma active, gnome, ubuntu).

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#40

Post by TylerE »

zanny wrote: post #30
jonknee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The desktop market is going away in the consumer space. Unless you're targeting business, it's past the time to become relevant in desktop computing.

Bullshit, people still need to make things. Make emails, edit videos, edit photos, write documents. These aren't business class activities, but touch screens are insufficient for that function. I don't see people lugging around a laptop anymore, but I easily see people plugging their phone into a display, throwing a bluetooth or usb keyboard + mouse on, and expecting a productivity environment from that device. The h…

> If I were to do that with an Ubuntu phone, though, I'd have access to much more mature productivity software built for the desktop.

Sure you COULD, but serious productivity software is written to make maximal use of input devices. Keyboard shortcut usage is often not optional. That isn't going to translate to a touchscreen, or even a slide-out microkeyboards.

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