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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

#301

Post by digi_owl »

rimantas wrote: post #66
digi_owl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. From what i am seeing, Apple and Google are busy rearranging UI deck chairs. The major problem of FirefoxOS though was trying to pitch the whole "everyone can (re)write apps" to a market that is all about user lock-in. Every OEM and carrier wants to be the landlord of the phone "owner", taking a bite out of everything the user does with the device. But if every app is a web page, and all the code is out in t…

> But if every app is a web page, and all the code is out in > the open, it is quite easy for the user to disable and > strip out rent extraction code. No. There should be more than a billion smartphones/tablets sold, what do you think is the ratio of those who can do what you told to those who have no idea? And what is the ratio of those who can willing to do it instead of just using the app? And there is also the i…

Even if they themselves do not know, they know where to find someone that knows. I am pretty much the go to tech support of family and friends, for example.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#302

Post by newscracker »

I was waiting for a Firefox OS phone with great hardware, but that didn't seem to materialize (AFAIK). Making both high end and low end phones together, perhaps in different volumes, could have helped. Focusing only on the extreme low end with poor hardware was probably a mistake.

While I'm unhappy that Mozilla is not going to focus on Firefox OS smartphones, I do consider this as an experiment that organizations like Mozilla ought to do. I'm sure there were a lot of things accomplished (like some mentioned in the comments for phone APIs) and a lot of things learned. These will in turn help other initiatives.

Now, please put Thunderbird back on the development track with the same priority as Firefox. :) And while you're at it, we want Persona too! :)

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#303

Post by ocdtrekkie »

criddell wrote: post #298
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with forking Android is that all of the apps will be developed for Google's flavor of Android. Which generally means you need to try to remain compatible with it, with ends with "you have to follow Google's development direction". And Google's development direction, of course, is selected by Google's business interests.

> Which generally means you need to try to remain compatible with it, with ends with "you have to follow Google's development direction" You certainly don't need to do any of that. Amazon didn't do that and they have a pretty successful line of tablets. Even their crappy phone was far better than the Firefox OS phone. Firefox could fork AOSP, break compatibility (if they want), rename it, and never look back. If they…

Amazon DOES have to do that. Each version of their OS is based on a version of Google's version of Android. And they have to follow Google in re-implementing every Google API as an Amazon API as quickly as possible so they don't lose compatibility with apps.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#304

Post by criddell »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #303
criddell wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which generally means you need to try to remain compatible with it, with ends with "you have to follow Google's development direction" You certainly don't need to do any of that. Amazon didn't do that and they have a pretty successful line of tablets. Even their crappy phone was far better than the Firefox OS phone. Firefox could fork AOSP, break compatibility (if they want), rename it, and never look back. If they…

Amazon DOES have to do that. Each version of their OS is based on a version of Google's version of Android. And they have to follow Google in re-implementing every Google API as an Amazon API as quickly as possible so they don't lose compatibility with apps.

Good point.

Still, any AOSP fork needs to track Google's version only if they want to run applications built for Google's version of Android.

The first iteration of Firefox's mobile OS didn't run any Android apps so it would be no loss if their fork of AOSP also didn't run Android apps. That's why I would suggest renaming so that people don't think they can install Android apps.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#305

Post by [deleted] »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #303
criddell wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which generally means you need to try to remain compatible with it, with ends with "you have to follow Google's development direction" You certainly don't need to do any of that. Amazon didn't do that and they have a pretty successful line of tablets. Even their crappy phone was far better than the Firefox OS phone. Firefox could fork AOSP, break compatibility (if they want), rename it, and never look back. If they…

Amazon DOES have to do that. Each version of their OS is based on a version of Google's version of Android. And they have to follow Google in re-implementing every Google API as an Amazon API as quickly as possible so they don't lose compatibility with apps.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#306

Post by wooger »

gsnedders wrote: post #113
johansch wrote: post #44

Most of you are probably not aware that Opera Software (where I spent a decade on Opera Mini/Mobile) went down the same rabbit hole around 2002-2006, spending many many man-years building a web-based (pre-smartphone) phone UI platform using web technologies. The product name was "Opera Platform". Here are some screenshots: http://imgur.com/on4gHdi It failed for the same, predictable reasons: Yes, there are many web d…

To be fair, the "low-end" devices Firefox OS were targeting were miles more powerful than what Opera Platform targeted a decade prior, and JS VMs are far quicker than they were a decade prior… I'm not sure it's so obvious that low-end devices doomed it to failure (of course, you actually worked on this stuff unlike me!). I think it's worthwhile to remember at the time Firefox OS launched much of Android ran on the Da…

Opera platform was not running modern mobile touchscreen apps a decade ago.

The problem is that the phones currently dominating the market in developed countries have native apps, with slick interfaces - enabled by mid to high end SoCs.

Trying to produce vaguely similar experiences with low-end SoCs is going to be very hard, even without the additional handicap of doing everything with web technologies.

If anything, the only way that could've worked in the current market is on ultra high-end phone hardware, and with a focus on privacy & security to attract the rich & technically savvy end of the market.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#307

Post by rockdoe »

criddell wrote: post #294
rockdoe wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the apps ecosystem is getting more and more locked into Play Services, which are not part of AOSP.

And how is the app ecosystem on other open source mobile operating systems?

The internet is pretty fine, except for a prevalence of webkit only sites on mobile.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#308

Post by rockdoe »

bronson wrote: post #158
steveklabnik wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more accurately described as an employee all-hands, with some volunteers invited too. 1200 employees, ~200 volunteers, not really people developing things on Mozilla platforms.

Twelve hundred employees??? And they couldn't find one or two of them to port Thunderbird to Qt.

What would be the point of doing that? They just ported it to GTK3, which is what the major distros actually ship.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#309

Post by bronson »

rockdoe wrote: post #308
bronson wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twelve hundred employees??? And they couldn't find one or two of them to port Thunderbird to Qt.

What would be the point of doing that? They just ported it to GTK3, which is what the major distros actually ship.

To get rid of XUL of course, which is a big reason the memo says it's being canceled. (Might be the biggest reason, since it's mentioned first, but the memo wanders around and is pretty vague on exactly what the problems are)

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#310

Post by l_stover »

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