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Comment by newishuser | Hacker News Reader

Heres why this is awesome:

  - The name Unity finally makes perfect sense
  - Phone can expand into a tablet can expand into a desktop
  - larger form factor can run smaller form factor apps
  - app switcher is slick
  - Canonical finally learned how to use all the bull shit 
    motivational words that apple uses to inspire people
  - OS level tie ins to social services
  - Still open source

I'm excited to use it, and I'm excited to help. Personally I think this could be a big win for user rights and an awesome mobile OS.

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Yes, it's great for all the reasons you said and more. But I wouldn't say it's a big win for user rights yet. It might end up even more locked down by carriers and OEM's because it's open source (and of course because Canonical will allow that to happen to gain some market share):

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/19/4005514/ubuntu-phones-2014...

Plus, don't forget all the deep Amazon integration, and who knows what else in the future, so they can monetize it. It might be that the whole OS will watch your behavior to target better content at you or something. I don't know how that will end up versus privacy there, so we'll see.

I hope Google implements Samsung dual-view idea in stock Android, though, as it would solve 90% of Android's "tablet app problem", as you can use two "phone apps" side by side, so scalability is not such a problem anymore as it looks like the app on a 6" or 7" device, which isn't too bad, and it also gives you the ability to use 2 apps at once, which should be better than just using one in most cases.

Usually I would agree. But as long as it's open source and you can install it yourself on any nexus device. Then you can solve that yourself.

That is no excuse. Using that logic why don't you modify android to behave like ubuntu phone does and be done with it? After all android is open source too.

I'm not sure if that sentence means what you think it does. I do think android following a similar route with android for the pc would be a nice move on their part and add a little more competitiveness to the osx/windows/linux wars.

In my case, because I don't enjoy programing in Java.

Open-source software is open for careers too and for everybody else. That's just the nature of the beast.

For all the complaints about Android, compared with iOS and Windows Phone, it's still the only one with the source-code available, it's still the only one that allows installation of software from third-party sources and it's still the only one that has Cyanogenmod.

>Phone can expand into a tablet can expand into a desktop

I wonder how this will play out in the light of what KDE's Aaron Seigo has said recently [1]:

"Unity currently does not use QML at all; Ubuntu Phone is pure QML. So, no, it is not the same code, it is not the sort of seamless cross-device technology bridge that they are purporting."

[1] https://plus.google.com/107555540696571114069/posts/HSL2C21D...

He is talking like you can't run QML apps on desktop. Actually you can and they are developed currently on desktop without any simulator/emulator/real device (I'm volunteering on Ubuntu Phone OS calculator app, as well have some experience writing QML apps for different platforms/devices).

I love the transformations that the OS goes through based on device, very much like responsive web design.

My favorite feature is running phone apps on the side with the Windows8-like split view, great idea. I wonder how that translates to portrait.

If they ape the Windows 8 snap view completely, it won't work in portrait.

It will be interesting how they deal with installing phone apps on the tablet. They might just allow carte blanche or might require a developer to opt in to avoid issues with phone specific apps being unusable on the tablet.

What issues would they have with phone-specific apps, other than possibly lacking a microphone and cell plan? If their security model makes the developer list what sensitive APIs (like voice and location) they use, then they already have enough information to disable apps that depend on having a microphone.

If you mean having apps work on bigger screens, it looks like side stage lets them keep phone apps at a reasonable phone size. They might require opt-in to make phone apps fullscreen - that seems reasonable. (Although it sounds like one of their goals with QML is to make it easy to write apps that grow with screen size, so they're hoping that almost all apps will be able to do it.)

With Skype around, I'd imagine that microphones are actually pretty standard on tablets nowadays? And it's not terribly uncommon to see tablets with HPSA+ connections (or even LTE), right? Tablets and phones are rapidly becoming one in the same, just with different screen sizes.

I still think Samsung has the best idea for such multi-tasking with "Dual-View":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ3krff1JCE&feature=yout...

It's not limited to only one column, like in Ubuntu and Windows 8, it splits the apps even, so you can use them fully, and you can even expand or contract one over the other. I think that's a much better implementation.

But Ubuntu's idea for using the phone apps on the side is not too bad either, but that secondary app seems to be meant more as a "companion" app rather than another full app that you want to use in the same time, and give it equal share of the screen (especially on larger screens).

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