Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 153 posts

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#71

Post by SwellJoe »

mkr-hn wrote: post #46
jbigelow76 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a critical mass of AOSP vendors emerge that would convince Android devs to look beyond the Play store. MS shipping their own flavor of Android, along with Amazon and then BB and Jolla offering Android app compatibility could begin to turn that tide. Especially with MS being able to offer some "foundational" type apps (Bing maps, email client, MS Office, Cortana) that could address some of the holes in…

Amazon is already working on the services. My Kindle Fire got a maps app (powered by Nokia Here) in one of the newer updates.

I have a Fire Phone with the Amazon maps app. I find it extremely disappointing after coming from Google Maps. No bike routes and quite clumsy UI. And, unfortunately, even though I've sideloaded the Play Store and installed Google Maps, the text is mangled beyond legibility, so I get lost a lot more often now.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#72

Post by jbigelow76 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #46
jbigelow76 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a critical mass of AOSP vendors emerge that would convince Android devs to look beyond the Play store. MS shipping their own flavor of Android, along with Amazon and then BB and Jolla offering Android app compatibility could begin to turn that tide. Especially with MS being able to offer some "foundational" type apps (Bing maps, email client, MS Office, Cortana) that could address some of the holes in…

Amazon is already working on the services. My Kindle Fire got a maps app (powered by Nokia Here) in one of the newer updates.

It's not just the lack of apps (but any Windows Phone user will tell you that it's a huge drag) but that the ROI of offering an Android app outside of Google Play isn't there.

If it weren't just Amazon's AOSP, but also (for instance) if Microsoft and Firefox also offered their own, and combined they took a respectable share of the Android install base AND their respective app stores could all be targeted by Android devs with a single deployment then we would have something.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#73

Post by Brakenshire »

_jomo wrote: post #29
SwellJoe wrote: post #2

I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML than Java.

I like Android (the AOSP) in itself, but I very much dislike how Google ships it with a lot of their own (proprietary) apps that can't be uninstalled (the usual way). Some of Google's features may be nice, but I don't want them to track me and get all my private data from my phone. I'm using CyanogenMod without all the Google apps. It's nice, but the experience just isn't as nice as you have it with Google-Android. M…

I also use CyanogenMod without Google Apps, albeit using MultiROM so I can boot into vanilla Android if I need to.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#74

Post by jbigelow76 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #68
pjmlp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JavaScript is the path a lot of people want to walk for making mobile apps. Web OS and Windows Phone support for JavaScript are a living proof people don't really want to.

I'm not sure that's the entire story of what's happening. There are a lot of factors that play into whether a new platform succeeds, and it is never just the way one makes apps for it that makes or breaks the platform. Obviously, there are people who will use any technology, no matter how poor, if it means they can make money in a growing market. iOS showed that; while the APIs for iOS are quite well-designed, ObjC i…

I don't know. But, Mozilla has shown itself capable of taking on the biggest companies in the world with open web technologies, and holding their ground tenaciously.

There are zero switching costs associated with a browser. It costs nothing to download and run Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, etc... The switching costs associated with phones is obviously much higher. Mozilla has to win ground in the mobile OS wars before they can even think about defending it.

Not trying to be a downer, I would like a viable mobile OS to break up the current duopoly, especially one that really embraces the web. I just think Mozilla has a hell of a fight ahead of it and it can't win it on merit alone.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#75

Post by dblohm7 »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #70
aubergene wrote: post #54

I was given a Firefox OS phone at Mozfest last year. I lost my other phone earlier this year and so used it exclusively for four weeks. I'm sorry to say it's pretty terrible at this stage. I was using v2 of Firefox OS. The problems are broadly that it was slow, unreliable and poorly designed. It would just become completely unresponsive a couple of times a week, requiring the battery to be removed to restart. There a…

Maybe Mozilla just needs to launch their own Android AOSP implementation and provide developers with a way to build fully native Android apps with JavaScript. Or is AOSP not going to run on the kind of hardware FFOS is targeting?

Mozilla has already developed technology to make web apps appear as native on Android. Go and check out the Firefox Marketplace.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#76

Post by jccalhoun »

lambda wrote: post #43
bla2 wrote: post #31

I'd rather they'd push Firefox on Android more. Firefox OS seems stillborn, but Firefox/Android is a good product and mobile could need more browser competition.

I feel like one thing they could do to promote Firefox OS would be to make it possible to run Firefox OS applications on Android; create an installer/app store that would allow you to install them as if they were native apps, but they would be using a shared runtime. That would really help to make it worthwhile to develop FxOS apps; actually having a large installed base of phones that they could be used on, in order…

as someone else noted you can already run firefox os apps on android. you can go to the marketplace inside firefox and install apps. It seems like a lot of them are non-english which gives me hope that this is taking off at least a little outside the usa (but of course only being fluent in English I can't really tell if these non-english apps are any good or not.)

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#78

Post by jabits »

MichaelGG wrote: post #7
SwellJoe wrote: post #2

I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML than Java.

Android's open enough for me, but what I find unhappy is that Google seems intent on tricking people into revealing more and more information. It often reminds me to turn on history tracking, despite having said no many times. Every time I use the Play store, it tries to get me to enter a phone number. The way it does this is by popping up a dialog, with no buttons except continue . It makes it look like you MUST do…

> And of course, the idiotic permissions system. Want to check to see if a user's on the phone? Gotta also get access to who they call and their IMEI and other permanent identifiers.

This bothers me the most about Android. What is the point of individual Permissions if it's all or nothing!!

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#79

Post by hackuser »

Brakenshire wrote: post #55

I help a lot of middle aged and elderly people who are not all that tech literate, and get asked a lot for recommendations, and I definitely think there is a niche for something between feature phones and smart phones. A lot of people are not interested in putting in the investment of time and money to get up to pace using Android or an iPhone. There's quite a big step to using those devices, for instance in managing…

OT: Do you have any recommendations for elderly users? Any resources would be great, too. I've looked around but it's hard to find current, reliable information on a somewhat unusual topic.

The specs I find myself dealing with are the following, which I think are typical:

* Very little knowledge of mobile computer conventions, or any computer conventions: Icon literacy, swiping, tapping, home screens, etc. Some don't understand what a web host is, or the difference between a browser's search field and its address bar.

* Constrained physical abilities: Vision to see small print, dexterity to swipe correctly, etc.

* Limited ability/motivation to learn more

Post reply on HN