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We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

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Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#81

Post by jankeromnes »

fpgeek wrote: post #58

Think about the type of deep integration that Apple-owned Siri has on iPhones, or Google-owned Gmail has on stock Android phones, for instance. Those apps operate much more contextually and fluidly, and far more powerfully, on those phones than 3rd-party apps downloaded from an app store would. While I understand the point about Siri, Gmail (of all the Google apps) seems like a terrible example of the same thing on t…

I think a better example for Google's deep integration into android is the "Google Search app" (previously "Google Now") that is sort of a Siri-equivalent: you can talk to it, it can manage your phone, send emails, create new alarms, manage your calendar, assist your transit, even change the temperature at home if you have Nest.

Worth noting that this type of deep integration is totally possible with the Web: you can use many APIs like voice recognition, alarms, etc. "3rd-party apps" from the web can very well integrate deeply with your device, if you allow them.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#82

Post by pjc50 »

jarcane wrote: post #16
msturgill wrote: post #4

Windows Phone is not that bad. Google has done a good job trying to starve WP users of their services, but I think we can all survive without Hangouts (Telegram, etc) and Google Voice (who cares anymore) at this point.

WinPhone8.x is a fantastic mobile OS. The interface is great. I've dealt with some bugs since switching to the developer preview, but that's to be expected, and my experience running production code was always rock solid. But the app situation is abominable, and getting worse. The Xbox program seems to have been all but abandoned. Microsoft seems to have largely given up even monitoring the app store; half the top/ne…

Indeed; my wife has a Windows phone and loves it, especially the built in approach to organisation / calendars / contacts / unified social media view. She uses almost zero third-party apps on it.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#83

Post by zak_mc_kracken »

andybak wrote: post #40

My biggest hope is that breaking the duopoly makes it essential that someone cracks the nut of cross-platform development - and hopefully forces the focus back onto web apps or a similar open technology. Firefox saved us from an Internet Explorer world. This time round it seems that we need more than just one caped crusader.

And Android saved us from an iOS only world.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#84

Post by pjc50 »

bsbechtel wrote: post #62
amirmc wrote: post #61

He's asking for innovation in the wrong place. The OP conveniently ignores all the other mobile OSs out there such as Windows, Firefox, Ubuntu and also people like Fairphone. It's pretty lazy to just claim we need more, when what he really wants is one more (open) winner . I say that he's looking in the wrong place because to "democratize the mobile operating system" is to ignore a critical part of what makes mobile…

>>There should be no real reason I can't point my iOS device at my own infrastructure to co-ordinate sync, backup and sharing of all my stuff (instead of iCloud). I want this as much as you and everyone else who upvoted you, but the problem is there is no obvious business model in it. Sure, techies will pay (app.net?), but the general population doesn't care enough to put out money for this.

Yeah, this is kind of a serious problem. People want to use popular, or at least well-advertised platforms. People also don't want to pay any money if they can help it. So we end up with advertising-funded spy-clouds and addiction-funded IAPs as dominant business models.

What I'd like to see, and hardly anyone is talking about, is the cooperative model for this. Servers run by a community of interest; paid staff to manage the things which really require central clearing (anti-spam and anti-abuse in particular) and develop the system; users paying on an ongoing basis and being given a voice and a vote in the way the system is run. Federation with similar systems.

Bits of this exist already, but only on a very small scale and with the political/organisational infrastructure - basically individuals running Minecraft servers and the like.

I suppose I could gather thousands of recruits for something like this if I said "blockchain" a lot, but in truth it's the opposite: a system that requires users to trust individual other humans.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#85

Post by IkmoIkmo »

asdkl234890 wrote: post #45

The web is your 3rd mobile OS. Sure the developing world still needs very cheap phones, and they require software close to the hardware. But in the developed world phones and tables get closer to a full PC every day. They basically are tiny PCs. And exactly how the web made Windows and OSX, and Linux less interesting, so it will make the mobile OSs less interesting. Because even if you can't get close to the hardware…

Yeah it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but two things seem true:

1) Native apps were better than web apps because of native performance was better.

And as you say, we're seeing smart phones become mini PCs. I'm actually typing this on a PC I built years ago on which I still play the latest football and strategy games, but my girlfriend's smartphone has 1 gigabyte more RAM (3gb Nexus), twice as many cores at a similar speed and a 50% higher resolution, for a quick anecdotal example. I know it's apples and oranges technically but smartphones are becoming insanely powerful. And with the web evolving (things like GPU driven CSS animations being commonplace now) the majority of non-game apps are going to run just fine on PC-like hardware on phones in the next years with no performance difference from native. And with WebGL becoming the standard, one can say the same for many games now, too.

2) Native always had more access to the hardware. Things like the contact list, photos, file system, social accounts etc.

Here too we're seeing the web evolve, but we're also seeing hybrid frameworks like Cordova or Ionic become very sophisticated which allow plugins to deal with native features using web technologies. Of course this hybrid app still goes through the app store in which Apple/Google are all powerful. But even on the web we're seeing tons of integrations for the core functionality like accessing the camera.

I think 1) will be a no-brainer, native won't be much better than web. 2) will see a difference for quite some time, but here the difference is shrinking, too. Things like the camera or geolocation have been possible for quite some time.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#86

Post by bko »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #30
franciscop wrote: post #18

> "For OEMs/handset makers, choice means the ability to do more with software" Please no, this would only yield to more bloatware. The move of Google is smart, moving the OS away from OEMs. [Most] manufacturers have demonstrated again and again that they cannot be trusted with software, since they only care about profit and putting more and more useless apps into the OS. We might need more mobile OS, but not for this…

Yep. The thesis of this essay is that choice is unequivocally good for users, handset makers, everyone. Experience doesn't play that out. The experience of a curated, pruned garden vs. a wild west scammy bazaar isn't a good one for users. Here's what happens when you search facebook on Windows Store: http://imgur.com/QDHcpG0 Choice is great! You can "choose" to install a scam app or the official one. Incompetent OEMs…

I'm not sure when that screenshot was taken but its probably an exaggeration.

Actual search results: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=facebook...

You do have a point about a free for all. There was this great blog post about a month ago about someone installing the top 10 free downloads from download.com and the mayhem that ensues.

http://www.howtogeek.com/198622/heres-what-happens-when-you-...

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#88

Post by zanny »

amirmc wrote: post #61

He's asking for innovation in the wrong place. The OP conveniently ignores all the other mobile OSs out there such as Windows, Firefox, Ubuntu and also people like Fairphone. It's pretty lazy to just claim we need more, when what he really wants is one more (open) winner . I say that he's looking in the wrong place because to "democratize the mobile operating system" is to ignore a critical part of what makes mobile…

> There should be no real reason I can't point my iOS device at my own infrastructure to co-ordinate sync

Well there is a real reason, you never own the iphone you have. You never have control of the device, Apple does. They have final say in what can be built to run on it, what can run on it, what you can install, what OS you can run, whether you get updates, and what the phone does. You have no control over it, at all.

So don't act surprised when Apple takes advantage of absolute power to screw you over.

At that, I know owncloud exists for iOS, so you could just use that, at least for the bullet points you mentioned, not so much for the sensors-aware network of devices.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#90

Post by soylentcola »

franciscop wrote: post #18

> "For OEMs/handset makers, choice means the ability to do more with software" Please no, this would only yield to more bloatware. The move of Google is smart, moving the OS away from OEMs. [Most] manufacturers have demonstrated again and again that they cannot be trusted with software, since they only care about profit and putting more and more useless apps into the OS. We might need more mobile OS, but not for this…

That's just it. People can talk about how we "need" an OS that isn't dependent on Apple or Google services but there are already other options out there that OEMs could (and occasionally do) use and none has seemed to gain much traction or support. Even now can't an OEM fork Android or use AOSP as a base without any Googly stuff while providing their own replacements for gapps?

I honestly don't see a lot of interest in this from the OEMs other than maybe Amazon (which isn't exactly a great example). I'd imagine they don't want to invest the extra resources into that sort of development when they can stick to skinning and questionable add-on software while letting Google or whoever handle the rest.

And as a user, even if I didn't really want the Play Store or whatever, does anyone really expect HTC or Samsung to do better? Best case scenario you end up with questionable Samsung or HTC services instead of Google services. And Google makes their money from software and attached services instead of hardware so at least they have some level of interest in running those services. Everything I've seen so far tells me that OEMs are even worse than the software companies in terms of developing/maintaining an OS or a fork of an existing one.

It would be interesting to see a company that makes their money from hardware getting into the OS space but so far, Apple is the only one that seems to have the resources and interest to do that fairly well while the software companies like Microsoft and Google live and die by convincing OEMs to license their platforms and bring in more customers for associated services.

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