Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm pissed that now the only option for a viable open source mobile OS I have is Google. https://www.ubuntu.com/mobile
Viable.
Well, then you're mourning for that which never existed.
The Story of Firefox OS
31–40 of 87 posts
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#32I think this slightly understates the "business development" problems with developing a new OS, and a mobile OS in particular. It turns out that there are certain apps that, if they are not available on your platform, are immediate deal breakers for huge numbers of consumers (to the extent that they will ask for them by name in stores and return devices that won't run them). Often these apps lack web frontends (for n…
Yeah. I live in South Korea, which is dominated by a local instant messenging platform, KakaoTalk. Anyone who cares to be social is on KakaoTalk. Text, photo, video, files, appointments, notifications, polls, payments, booking a hairdresser ... the list of things that are done through Kakao is long. A phone without a KakaoTalk client is useless.
I guess his response would be that the web-based approach changes the pitch from "make a version of KakaoTalk for our mobile OS" to "make a web version of KakaoTalk, which also runs on our mobile OS" along with "and you don't even need to talk to us for deployment".
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#33I think this slightly understates the "business development" problems with developing a new OS, and a mobile OS in particular. It turns out that there are certain apps that, if they are not available on your platform, are immediate deal breakers for huge numbers of consumers (to the extent that they will ask for them by name in stores and return devices that won't run them). Often these apps lack web frontends (for n…
WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support.
In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway project to run Flash content. If that worked well enough, maybe WhatsApp would become interested. It did actually kinda work, but the project did not proceed for a number of reasons. Also, j2me.js was renamed "PluotSorbet", due to trademark concerns:
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#34I think this slightly understates the "business development" problems with developing a new OS, and a mobile OS in particular. It turns out that there are certain apps that, if they are not available on your platform, are immediate deal breakers for huge numbers of consumers (to the extent that they will ask for them by name in stores and return devices that won't run them). Often these apps lack web frontends (for n…
WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support. In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway proj…
As best i understand, Whatsapp's support for anything but iOS is "poor" to put it nicely.
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#35>My main hope in documenting all of this is that Firefox OS is remembered as more than just a footnote in tech history which says “a failed mobile OS from Mozilla”. I got one of the Mozilla Flame phones back when they came out and loved that device. I'm pissed that now the only option for a viable open source mobile OS I have is Google. But unless there is some unlikely comeback, that is exactly what it will be remem…
I don't know how it compares with the suggestions in the sibling posts, but Tizen?
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support. In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway proj…
As best i understand, Whatsapp's support for anything but iOS is "poor" to put it nicely.
Works really well on my Android.
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#37The post doesn't say anything about ongoing community development, I guess because there is basically none? Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I see very little activity in https://github.com/mozilla-b2g or https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/b2g-os-participati... or https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos ... am I looking in the wrong places?
I'm sad FxOS didn't carry on and really appreciate the writeup!
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#38I don't understand why they decided that Firefox OS would be a good fit for low-end hardware, when they had empirical evidence of how poorly webOS performed.
Firefox OS and webOS are essentially the same concept. Palm built theirs for 2009 top-end hardware, and it turned out that the hardware just wasn't quite enough to run a browser engine for the entire UI... And then Mozilla goes ahead and tries to do the same thing on low-end hardware that was worse than the Palm Pre.
What was the rationale here? I can only imagine this choice was imposed by the hardware partners they could round up. If so, it's a classic example of how engineering and business development manage to undermine each other to destroy a product.
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#39> [biggest Achievements] Product — Successfully launched 20 devices in over 30 countries, mobilised the Mozilla community to help run launch parties and created slick branding and marketing campaigns Therein lies the rub. The products were all mediocre-specced handsets from little known manufacturers. So, right from the outset Firefox OS felt like a down-market 'landfill Android' type product. I'd have bought a Firef…
It seems like to get your mobile OS into the door, you need to have your foot into two doors- competitively priced, cheap phones to snap up underserved demographics (in this case, developing world markets), but also a flagship device to enthrall the upper tier of the market and get name recognition.
Seems like Ubuntu Touch is also facing such struggles ticking both boxes (they still don't have a flagship product, especially after the failure of the Ubuntu Edge campaign), and Windows Phone had some impressive Lumia phones with fancy cameras but I don't recall that they ever tried to fight Android on the lower end of the market.
Re: The Story of Firefox OS
#40As mobile hardware becomes more commoditised it would be trivial today to find white label hardware on which to run our software. There’s also a real desire from OEMs to loosen their dependence on Google and differentiate themselves.
Is there a Moore's Law for every type of physical constraint? As with cheaper and more abundant microprocessors, broadband, storage, etc., it seems like previously unfeasible produces and services become unlocked, the business ideas now feasible. FFOS did not arrive at the right time to reap in the benefits of the rise of Chinese smartphone OEMs, and the growing push-pull between Google and OEMs over Android.