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Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

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Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#201

Post by StavrosK »

click170 wrote: post #196
StavrosK wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my impression as well. A friend and I created a pastebin as a fun weekend project this weekend ( https://www.pastery.net/ ) and we used Persona for auth, since it's so damn convenient. The only problem is that it loads a bunch of files on every request, and my questions about lazy-loading went unanswered. I really wish Mozilla would change their mind and start developing this again. It feels like they expected…

With Thunderbird at least, the repo is open and available. Does the same stand for Persona? Perhaps instead of asking Firefox to do the legwork we should be contributing some of our own time to the projects we want to see succeed.

How is that relevant? Are you saying that Persona failed because they didn't get enough pull requests from other users?

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#202

Post by MawNicker »

dragonwriter wrote: post #163
MawNicker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the Universal Windows Platform will have a significant impact. Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS.

> Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS. From a software perspective, Android has supported this forever. From a hardware perspective, there've been Android devices where accompanying docking solutions was heavily ma…

Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV. You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost. The lynchpin is user-experience and Microsoft is chasing it directly. Android is just trying to be everything for everyone. The docking stations were pimped by the OEMs without support from the ecosystem. I suspect Microsoft is more aggressively preparing for the death of the laptop/desktop. If only to save themselves from the Innovator's dilemma.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#203

Post by garrettr_ »

gedrap wrote: post #16

It was interesting to follow this experiment but have to admit it was against the odds since day 1 (and it's especially easy to say so in retrospective). In terms of regular users, there are tons of dirt cheap chinese no-name android devices that more or less work. For 100 euros, you can get an acceptable Android phone from a major manufacturer (LG, etc). FirefoxOS was competing in a similar price range, however offe…

Agreed, my favorite thing about Firefox OS was always the "blank-slate" approach to writing apps for it, based on web technologies. Of course, that was good and bad - there was more room for experimentation, but you had to do more work to get the widgets and smooth animation that come for free from iPhone/Android SDK.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#204

Post by spinchange »

striking wrote: post #65
spinchange wrote: post #43

I always wondered why they didn't try a tablet first. Like the Chromebooks, but in tablet form, heavy on Firefox branding. Maybe this too is something that would've been an 'also-ran' or market failure, but I still want one even as I type this.

What would that solve that a Chromebook wouldn't? Chromebooks already run Linux when so coerced, and are the most bulletproof computing platform for education and business. What could be special about the FirefoxBook? Perhaps, instead of expending that much effort to engineer a new tablet entirely from scratch, find an Android tablet and put a Mozilla sticker on it.

Literally nothing except a different form factor. FWIW, I wish there were Chrometablets too. The Pixel C is headed this way in form, but unfortunately toward Android and native apps instead of ChromeOS and the Web.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#205

Post by dragonwriter »

spinchange wrote: post #204
striking wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would that solve that a Chromebook wouldn't? Chromebooks already run Linux when so coerced, and are the most bulletproof computing platform for education and business. What could be special about the FirefoxBook? Perhaps, instead of expending that much effort to engineer a new tablet entirely from scratch, find an Android tablet and put a Mozilla sticker on it.

Literally nothing except a different form factor. FWIW, I wish there were Chrometablets too. The Pixel C is headed this way in form, but unfortunately toward Android and native apps instead of ChromeOS and the Web.

> The Pixel C is headed this way in form, but unfortunately toward Android and native apps instead of ChromeOS and the Web.

The web -- though not Google's non-standard Chrome apps through the browser, as yet -- works quite well on Android.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#206

Post by citruspi »

click170 wrote: post #196
StavrosK wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my impression as well. A friend and I created a pastebin as a fun weekend project this weekend ( https://www.pastery.net/ ) and we used Persona for auth, since it's so damn convenient. The only problem is that it loads a bunch of files on every request, and my questions about lazy-loading went unanswered. I really wish Mozilla would change their mind and start developing this again. It feels like they expected…

With Thunderbird at least, the repo is open and available. Does the same stand for Persona? Perhaps instead of asking Firefox to do the legwork we should be contributing some of our own time to the projects we want to see succeed.

It does - https://github.com/mozilla/persona

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#207

Post by citruspi »

StavrosK wrote: post #201
click170 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Thunderbird at least, the repo is open and available. Does the same stand for Persona? Perhaps instead of asking Firefox to do the legwork we should be contributing some of our own time to the projects we want to see succeed.

How is that relevant? Are you saying that Persona failed because they didn't get enough pull requests from other users?

I think they're saying that even if Mozilla may not decide to actively develop Persona anymore, Persona users and fans would be able to contribute to and further develop the project if the repo is "open and available."

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#208

Post by StavrosK »

citruspi wrote: post #207
StavrosK wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that relevant? Are you saying that Persona failed because they didn't get enough pull requests from other users?

I think they're saying that even if Mozilla may not decide to actively develop Persona anymore, Persona users and fans would be able to contribute to and further develop the project if the repo is "open and available."

That's not happening, unfortunately. Sometimes you need someone with weight to throw around, or with technical knowledge, or both.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#209

Post by niutech »

gedrap wrote: post #25
mootothemax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a counterpoint, I regularly saw Firefox os+phone ads on giant billboards in central Warsaw. If there was to be any market interest, I thought their targeting and marketing efforts like this were pretty spot-on.

Oh yeah, I've read about them targeting some specific countries (Spain, Brazil, Poland, etc). So it might be that the parent commentator lives elsewhere and didn't get targeted :)

They were targeting developing countries like Central Eu, South Am, Asia, rather than North Am. The market there is huge.

I live in Poland and I was lucky that I could easily find a cheap FxOS phone, which actually I am using now. This is the only truly private phone available here. It is a pity that Mozilla abandoned it. Bigger pity is that people do not give a sht about their privacy and open standards.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#210

Post by dragonwriter »

MawNicker wrote: post #202
dragonwriter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS. From a software perspective, Android has supported this forever. From a hardware perspective, there've been Android devices where accompanying docking solutions was heavily ma…

Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV. You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost. The lynchpin is user-experience and Microsoft is chasing it directly. Android is just trying to be everything for everyone. The docking stations were pimped by the OEMs without support from the ecosystem. I suspect Microsoft…

> Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV.

And most people don't want to dock their computing device to their TV as a monitor; there are uses for TV-as-output device, and they're well-covered by things like Google Cast and similar technologies.

> You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost.

Only if I already own peripherals; i.e., if I already have a desktop or a laptop that I use with external peripherals instead of just the built-in interface. And, I only need a "docking station" if those peripherals are wired, rather than, say, Bluetooth.

Which might be the case for the monitor, sure, but you can already do that. HDMI dongles or cables -- the only one-plug docking station you need in a world with Bluetooth mice and keyboards -- are readily available and not expensive for existing, non-Windows mobile devices.

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