Solu - Social Computer
solu.co
solu.co
I guess the formula is: tablet(-ish) computer extensible to desktop mode × subscription model × offline-enabled cloud apps × SDK with revenue sharing. It's not terrible, but a huge list of hurdles and unanswered question come immediately to mind.
Here are the tech specs, fwiw:
Screen - 1440 x 1440, 450ppi with an edge to edge touch
External display - support for up to 4K monitors
Processor - 2.3GHz NVIDIA 4-Plus-1™ quad-core ARM® Cortex™-A15 CPU™
Graphics - NVIDIA Kepler™ GPU with 192 NVIDIA CUDA® cores
RAM - 4GB LPDDR3
Cache capacity - 32GB
Connectivity - Dual-band 2x2 MIMO WiFi (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0 and USB Type C
Battery - 1200mAh
Dimensions - 102mm (4.02in) x 102mm (4.02in) x 13mm (0.512in)
Operating System - SoluOSIt doesn't come with wood trimmings, though.
Also, am I wrong in feeling like 1200mAh is small for a mobile computer battery?
Disclaimer: I work for Solu.
The main problem with this project is that the SoluOS itself is mainly a UI/UX innovation, but for some reason they had to provide HW and OS too. Why can't I install this on my Mac/Linux laptop ?
the main idea in SoluOS is that apps, files, etc. should be organized in "projects" instead of them all just being there in the same Applications folder and files in Documents or whatever. It makes switching between projects easy - imagine having "project environments" where all the correct files and apps are easy to reach.
ps. I'm not affiliated with them but being Finnish and in Comp. Sci. I kinda couldn't have gone without noticing these guys in the tech scene over here :)
I wonder if the whole hardware part might be just a marketing thing. Tangible, pretty-looking products are easier to get people enthusiastic about and preorder than "we're offering a new kind of cloud service you can run in your browser". Possibly they mainly just intend to use this to generate a bunch of publicity and hype. Then after a while unveil their browser interface that you can use on any device, and get to market that separately as something new and totally exciting that opens up the system for more people, pulling off another hype wave that might work better than if they'd gone with the software-only approach right from the beginning.
Regarding third-party devs, this is what they say on the Kickstarter: As an added benefit we're providing talented developers with the opportunity to make a living out of their great apps by sharing a portion of the monthly fee with them.
I take that to refer to third party devs, and not their own developers (presumably they consider those talented), although that would be pretty funny.
I'm thinking of something like a return to the Unix philosophy. Piping together stuff from grep to cat to whatever is pretty great, but mostly only useful if you're dealing with text-ish files. We don't have much in the way of small tools that would be similarly designed for being chained together, but which would work well for say video files. In part because you'd want better OS-level support for that kind of information sharing (though maybe on 'nix you could just pipe stuff from one application to another?), but also to a large part because you'd need to have people making tools that didn't do much by their own and then convince users to download them and build stuff out of them. And telling people to "download this program which doesn't do much by itself, but which is useful if you download some other programs and then combine them" is hard. People want to minimize the amount of hassle, so mostly people bundle lots of different features into a single application that you can just download once.
On the other hand, if you had a platform where everything ran in the cloud, and there was no need to separately buy, install, or download things... if any application could call any other application made for the platform, then you could just start making your little specialized programs and making them available for anyone else to use. Any user might chain several of them together, or a programmer making their own application could use them as part of their application, maybe as easily as calling a library. That could open up huge possibilities. With the revenue sharing, there would even be a financial incentive for people to make small tools that were maximally useful for everyone, even if they mostly remained invisible for normal end-users.
That said, I'm seeing nothing in Solu's public presentation suggesting that they'd have thought of this angle, or would be invested in it. Which is a pity.
IMHO they are selling hype and not a computer, as evidenced by the fact that all technical details are vague and buried.
The more I read the more I doubt this is even real. All development is done behind closed doors, even their forum is hidden and accounts manually activated so you can't see what's going on.
Here's a very critical review from a BBC report who was at the launch: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34549042
Well ,these folks are bold, at least.
Good luck.
For the intended purpose, it seems like a terrible idea. An entirely new ecosystem bootstrapped by an unknown new player with very vague marketing-speak all over the site. A subscription based computer with no community, developer ecosystem or ability to anything people want to do that couldn't be done better on existing platforms.
>For a fixed monthly fee, you, as a Solu user get all the storage and apps you need
This, along with what's said in the video, is sort of saying to me that the only apps available on Solu will be those made by Solu itself, or those made for free, as the video implies 3rd party developers are not able to sell software for Solu? I'm assuming the OS is walled in.
It may be DOA for many people if 3rd party developers can't release their own software.
EDIT: Seems it runs Android underneath the slick shell, from the kickstarter:
>We are working with a number of development houses to bring their collaborative tools to Solu, but we also support legacy Android apps.
I'd rather have open software slowly and even ungracefully get phone functionality merged into it, but that's basically not possible, so instead we've been forced to go the other way, laboriously, slowly, and largely unsuccessfully trying to open hardware and software up that is starting from a position of totally proprietary.
This is one of the most frustrating development to me of the past ten years. We've made huge strides towards proprietary, locked-down hardware, because of cell phones, even in systems that don't use them. I'd love something like the Ubuntu phone, at least in principle, but it's swimming upstream against some very strong currents.
This is their killer feature: A computer where you don't have to do backups, don't have to set up a new system when you upgrade, don't have to worry about losing any of your data? Just buy a new machine, login and BAM! You have the same environment you had on your other machine? Yes, please!
But, I do have concerns. Chiefly, I don't see how this product could ever generate a profit. Storing every user's data on the company's servers at all times can't be cheap. That's a lot of data to store per user. The subscription fee would have to be massive to cover the overhead. And then there's the apps. The lack of individual app pricing isn't going to make developers eager to make apps for this device. It also cuts out a potentially lucrative source of revenue for the company.
I think they should release more details of the OS. Is it Linux with some Android runtime like Jolla, or AOSP fork?
I just don't personally know if I could stomach a UI that looks like a shroom trip, but maybe it feels good when you're actually using it. At least it's different
I saw another cloud based android phone recently, Robin - http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/09/ex-android-and-htc-.... Call me old school but I am not sure I want cloud as the only storage option, definitely not from a new company who might not be around in a years time.
Seriously, what does this even mean? It is absurdly blatant, generic, and cliche marketing-speak. It sounds like they just covered a raspberry-pi with pretty lights and connected it to facebook.
Some of these things might be interesting, but I'm not sure how they'll manage to market it and who would be the target market.
I'm very curious about the project but at the same time a bit sceptical based on the information they currently provide about the project.
PS. soluos sounds is very close to solusos - old linux distro that was maintaining legacy gnome2.0?
PPS would love to run a linux on a tiny portable device like that.
I totally agree with you on the lack of concrete info. From what I've seen/heard the OS itself is built on top of Linux and Android and apps can be developed with the HTML5 stack (and I suppose with Android's tools ?).
To be honest even after seeing some private technical demos, I was still left quite confused...
The main problem with this project is that the SoluOS itself is mainly a UI/UX innovation, but for some reason they had to provide HW and OS too. Why can't I install this on my Mac/Linux laptop ?
All I can see is a mind-map like interface and a montly subscription cost to use "any" application in their store/eco-system.
* cloud
* social
* on-demand
* social
what is it good for? What's the point? Was hard to find any real information on this beautiful website.
They claim to support Android legacy apps. What if you need to use Photoshop? Or some other Windows-based application like Excel? Can you install open-sourced apps like GIMP? Or Roll up a VM? Is there a shell? What kind of applications does it come with natively?
They really don't give much information at all. I'm not sure who their target market is but I am guessing it's geared towards people who just browse the internet, watch videos, stream music, send emails, etc. Why would you pay a subscription for that? I can't imagine large numbers jumping on for this kickstarter other than someone looking for a new toy to burn some money on.
I think they're trying to solve way too many problems at once. Seems like they're trying to create an entirely new ecosystem amongst the likes of Windows, OSX, or Android, but they're eons behind in that race.
The UI seems pretty neat, I wish they had more examples of usage.
The concept kinda reminds me of Ubuntu for Android [0], except for running a custom OS on quasi-artisinal custom hardware.
The fact that "developers get monthly revenue based on app usage" sound like an exciting twist, but how will Solu avoid the pitfalls of this model (exemplified by artists on Spotify and alternatives)?
The project environments sounds really intriguing to me, as task focused design and interfaces is something I'm currently working on in different forms (terminal, web browsers, OSes) myself. If anyone knows of any other good examples of this (applications, papers, whatever), please let me know!
Nitpick: the quote "Solu’s UI [...] mimick[s] the functionality of your brain" sounds pretty dubious.
I fail to understand what this means (after all it does sound like promoting some kind of schizophrenia) - does it mean it's just another kind of agenda or todo-app? I kinda like the device in general but I'm not sure anyone is waiting for this. I might be wrong though. Also the wording is a bit weird - at first sight 'splitting your life into projects' sounds feasible but I'm not really buying it. I think my life is one big project and doubt that will change. And yes there might be subprojects (dunno, say wife/sports/hobbies/job/diferent projects at the job/friends/family/...) but I just don't see how I could split this up to 'manage' them (which is what I suppose the phrase means?) as they are entwined and tend to overlap both in time and space. Or maybe I am just overthingking it :]
Up until now, developers have been forced to either charge huge fees from a handful of enterprise clients or ask for pennies from individuals. We replace these outdated business models by charging all users a small monthly fee"
And split the money how? This solves nothing.
For example, if money is given based on how much people use the different apps, there is a large incentive to do very simple apps that have a high ratio of people using them vs. short time to dev the app.
So maybe trivial mobile games like 2048 and the like will flood their store and complex software like Photoshop won't ?
Does this mean that there was a lot of resistance from investors and beta-testers?
I say this neutrally, describing both the possible positive and negative outcomes of the move. I have insufficient information about the product in question to have a specific opinion on which outcome is more likely, beyond the observation that this is high risk in the general sense.
And except that there is nothing new about this product (but that has already been pointed out in many comments already).
That's Finnish for "organic cell".
Next up: Breathing as a service.