Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
What would interest me more in B2G is whether the Linux base underneath it is fully functional. And not just a slightly advanced "bootloader" for B2G. A fully functional, mostly free GNU/Linux system that gets widespread adoption, even just as a smartphone OS, would be a great blessing to the efforts of the Free Software community.
Ouch.
It's another step away from general purpose computing
Not if the web platform itself is taking enormous strides towards general purpose computing, particularly in the mobile realm of B2G:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5#New_APIs
In fact, in my opinion the web stack is becoming The Greatest Programming Toolkit Ever Built:
http://blog.arturadib.com/the-greatest-programming-toolkit-e...
It works for incredibly simple things. But that's it.
Depends on what you mean by "incredibly simple". If you look at the most popular apps besides games, it's hard to imagine why they can't be implemented in HTML5.
As for games, stay tuned. Folks are working hard on it:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/AreWeFunYet
TL;DR: I disagree. The web stack is becoming the greatest general-purpose toolkit ever built. Already it's a great platform choice for building an entire "app" ecosystem on top of, and it's only getting better.
DISCLAIMER: Although I'm not in the B2G team, I work for Mozilla. However, the above is strictly my personal opinion.
Browsers are increasingly become a dynamic language runtime attached to a powerful graphics rendering library. Make the runtime faster, provide better graphics widgets, and get past this "remote everything with shitty local caching" thing and you've got yourself one hell of a toolkit.
The only reason the web is considered the end-all-be-all is because people want to reach "average users" who can't handle installing native software and don't want the inconvenience of maintaining their computers' software. They never will, but that doesn't mean that the future of computing should be decided by the least common denominator of end-users.
The current trend in "web technologies" is to implement a wrapper for every native technology. When we finally finish, we'll end up with what can't possibly work better than what we had before, and it'll have taken incredible amounts of effort for programmers to optimize it enough that it's even usable for real jobs (see javascript engines at large). If all that programmers want is a standard software interface, they should construct one, but the browser as an environment has too much cruft from its history as a /content navigation tool/ to be an effective programming environment.
Other than than I don't see any program which is used by ordinary people today that you couldn't put on the net. Most of them properly already should have been.
Why would I want to? I really don't see the point of trying to run a real time industrial automation control from a javascript engine inside fire fox. It might be a fun hack but I fail to see any real use.
This is about making mobile phones and tablets that have the ability to run web browsers, not replacing all computers with web browsers.
The web isn't everything - no perfect solution exists for every problem. But you go way too far in the other direction. Modern web browsers can run very complex code at very high speeds. Saying the web can only do incredibly simple things is like saying Java can only do incredibly simply things (which people did say, several years ago).
> What would interest me more in B2G is whether the Linux base underneath it is fully functional. And not just a slightly advanced "bootloader" for B2G. A fully functional, mostly free GNU/Linux system that gets widespread adoption, even just as a smartphone OS, would be a great blessing to the efforts of the Free Software community.
The problem is that such an OS cannot easily get widespread adoption, because it would have no apps. That is the problem of every new phone OS today, people develop for iOS and Android, and that's it.
That's what makes it so hard for Bada and Windows Phone and WebOS to get any traction - developer attention is all on the top two mobile OSes, and users buy those OSes to get those apps.
So inventing a new development platform is incredibly hard, and that's what using Linux as a development platform would get us. The only real way to get around that is to leverage an existing development platform. The best existing such platform is the web - it's open, has multiple compatible implementations, is royalty-free, and a lot of effort is going into it (look at recent advances in web browsers).
That's why B2G, WebOS and Tizen are all using the web as their development platform. It's the only approach that has a chance.
They are all also using Linux underneath - it's the best OS for that. But it's not the best app development platform.
So true. And that's what I base my assumption that there will be no enthusiast-phone on the market in the future (today we have Maemo/meego and that's it).
But, an enthusiast OS running linux could, in theory, run android apps and that could be a loophole. I know work was put in to doing this on Maemo but it never got mature (or else I should have heard about it).
The same goes for the web. It might suffice for the average Joe but for those doing "real" work on their machines or want more control of their machine will suffer.
In this evolution I truly hope that the mainstream-focus doesn't get all the attention. An App/OS doesn't have to be dumb to be beginner-friendly, an advanced application doesn't have to be beginner-unfriendly and please for the love of god realize that beginner friendliness IS NOT the same as easy to use. Those are completely separate topics and today when people talk about user-friendly interfaces they only talk about beginner-friendly and actually making them very hard to use but easy to learn.
There are experts everywhere. Ten-year-olds that utilized every obscure shortcut available on the old phones without for that matter being interested in tech or even phones have no parallel today. They just learned how to use their phone effectively but today there is no room for growth on our dumb devices (thanks apple).
A good interface is an interface that is easy to use and depending on the target audience relatively easy to use up front (or very easy to use up front) and sports advanced features and room for growth.
A bad interface is one that is easy only because it is dumb.
You could also see it as giving up control over your local cache of (photos, mails, apps, etc) in exchange for ease of use. This could replace "I want to play Angry Birds, so I download it and then run it" by "I want to play Angry Birds, so I click this button". Then, your device could download the app, if it was not already cached on your device, and run it.
For example, consider a browser with local storage that allows for running locally stored apps (written in SVG + JavaScript, Flash, NaCl, whatever). Such a device could run games, word processors,cetc, without a network connection.
Wait a second.. they think it's a good thing that the carriers can create their own walled gardens with this new OS? That's the most absurd thing I have ever heard. While Google/Apple have their own barriers they are nothing compared to what the phone industry had in place pre-iPhone. Before the iPhone/AppStore/Android you could not even use the GPS that was built into your device unless you paid $10 per month, any apps that even remotely affected carrier revenue were blacklisted (Free SMS etc..) Sorry but I would rather deal with Google or Apple's walled gardens than the prisions we were in before.
This is a bad thing how? As far as I can see, carriers have far too much control over the devices that are used on their networks. I can't imagine consumers opting for devices where carriers have EVEN GREATER control!
It's consumers who buy the device, not carriers.
It seems like a much better position as a consumer to be able to pick an operator based mainly on the line-rental charges and included data, minutes, etc.
I don't know if this is a consequence of laws around unlocking phones or simply because the operators in the UK pretty much match each other in coverage. Most built up areas have even coverage from them all so there is little to lock a buyer into one network or another.
Of course nothing is perfect. Just interesting as a contrast.
Concerns about 'browser as an OS', web apps only, and carrier control are way premature-- wait until we have seen the thing. For me, the fact mozilla are behind it trumps these concerns-- i know it will be truly open and consumer oriented.
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If i had to guess, i would say that it would ship with carrier modification, but that this could be easily reverted with a simple, freely available 'add-on' (think ad-block-- no rooting, jailbreaking etc required), and that gecko would provide the default UI[1], with the option for native web apps to share the same front-end, and the linux backend would be available too.
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1. Since the web is the only 100% cross-platform environment, and all smartphones are going to have a browser rendering engine loaded a lot of the time, this makes a lot of sense to me.
Also Ubuntu is making some strides towards mobile touch based interfaces. I really, really hope they succeed.
Metacomment (about the article): The author created a fake photo for the article based on the dialer and app screens and photo of two young girls, presumably to draw the eye and get clicks (or for lack of any actual applicable images). I have a couple of issues/questions:
1: Is it reasonable for a tech blogger to create fake images of a product and lead the article with them? (It says in the title attribute that the image is fake but I don't make a habit of hovering over each image to find out if it's fake.)
2: I know that using sexualized pictures of women to draw readers is a common practice that isn't going away (see Wired, Psychology Today, every other magazine), but these girls look peripubescent. I'm annoyed by the practice in all cases, but it seems especially poor taste to use images of such young girls in this context. (If someone wants to make the case that I'm imagining the role sexuality plays in this practice, I'm happy to hear it, but I'm highly skeptical.)
They do look a bit young for booth babes, IMO."
From the comments - http://www.extremetech.com/computing/119571-mozilla-partners...
Conversely, taking power away from someone is usually why you keep the system closed.
What do users want? Something that's cheap, easy to use and unlimited.
What do the carriers want? Something that's branded to them and customised so they can upsell features. (Which requires an ecosystem they can customise, such as BtG.)
What do the platform vendors want? Ecosystem control so they can be the gatekeeper selling apps and ads.
I hate to say this as a long-term Mozilla fan with a strong distaste for iOS, but the most user-friendly model appears to be tied to platform vendors, not carriers. They are the ones with an incentive to maximise service; carriers, OTOH, have demonstrated a very noticeable tendency to salami-slice everything. Want your apps? Sorry, got to go through your network's app store. (And devs, you now have to negotiate with hundreds of vendors, each with different rules.) Want to use more than Facebook and YouTube? Sorry, that's the 'enhanced web' package. (Some have already done this.) Want tethering? Sure, that'll be £30 per month. And, once the carriers have the ability to have their own branded and locked-down smartphoens, just wait to pay a surplus to use an 'unsupported device' like an iPhone.
The carrier-controlled model has been tried before, and found wanting. Returning control to them could set the market back five years in one fell swoop.
The main thing is B2G is COMPETITION!
Much in the same way that Firefox rocked the IE boat, B2G should hopefully offer a sound alternative to iOS/Android.
> Basically, B2G is just a cut-down version of Linux that automatically loads Firefox; basically, it’s like Chrome OS, but lower tech.
How is it "lower tech"?
(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla on Boot2Gecko.)
I agonized about leaving in that 'lower tech' bit. Basically, B2G is built on the Android kernel. Chrome OS has a ton of security features that aren't present in Android. By 'lower tech', I mean that B2G won't have Chrome OS's verified boot, double sandbox, and other tweaks like that.
(Though I suppose B2G could have those eventually!)
Chrome OS was about building (a desktop computer) around the web as it exists today whereas B2G is about building (a mobile phone) around the web as it will (hopefully) exist in the future.
I don't think you can compare Android to B2G. But yeah, perhaps I should say 'simplified' rather than 'low tech' :)
This has always been and will always be a factor with open source. Open source means that anyone can use the code for any purpose.
North Korea can use Linux, for example, but that doesn't make Linux evil.
Since when being fully open source and easy to hack is a bad thing? The argument of operators crippling the phone with their apps is another problem. And I don't think Mozilla would approve distributing an OS which seriously limits the user freedom.
Just like China can ship a Linux distro that's locked down and full of spyware, someone could ship a device based on Boot2Gecko that's insanely user-unfriendly. However, that's part of the point: you're free to do what you want with the OS, and that cuts both ways. The same freedom that allows people to do amazing things with their hardware is what could allow evil people to ship a horrendously locked down phone. Do I think it's likely to happen? No.
(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla on B2G, but obviously this is just my own personal opinion and I don't speak for the company, etc etc.)
"Basically, Apple and Google have so much control over the smartphone landscape that carriers have effectively become nothing more than retailers. Worse than that, their infrastructures have been reduced to that of a dumb pipe, where it is Apple and Google who ultimately decide how the network will be used."
THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE MOBILE CARRIER INDUSTRY IN ITS HISTORY. And somehow you find this a bad thing? Jesus christ people can be thick.
Oh come on that's just not true. Phones 10 years ago barely had color displays and 0 apps other than contacts,phone and maybe music and I don't even think java games were there yet.
As far as I know, getting contacts synced between your phone and computer meant buying some huge palm or blackberry and hooking it up to your computer with a special cable. No Real time over the web syncing of contacts between your email client and phone like you have today.
Really java made the phones less real-time, but it was 10 years ago that one of the first Java phones in the US was sold by Sprint. Nextel I85s came out in 2001, and the Sanyo SCP-4900 (with 12-bit color!) came out in 2002.
All those apps and games and syncing? Means diddly squat if the god damn phone is locking up from apps clogging the CPU and preventing me from pressing the "Pick up" button when i'm receiving a call. Phones today are (in general) overrated, overpriced, hardly usable pieces of shit.
Real-time as in real-time computing isn't as big a selling point today as it was pre-iphone. RIM is making that mistake. QNX is awesome for what it does but I don't think people care about it's strong points as much as they do with the strong points of Android and iOS.(And that's what I meant when I twisted the definition of real-time to fit my syncing example. It's a different unrelated concept to what you were implying.)