Comment by shinratdr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shinratdr | Hacker News Reader

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> Also this is version one.

Windows Phone was version 7 and it didn't seem to make a difference. It's pretty safe to say that at this point, you need to make a splash or you're going to end up an afterthought. You can't just stumble in, you need to offer something compelling enough to convince others to get on board. Slow, evolutionary growth is fine for some things. It's not OK for a mobile OS launching in the year 2013.

Call it bullying the new kid all you want to rally support, we're just being realistic. When the vast majority of mobile phone users really couldn't care less about how "open" their phone OS is, FFOS brings little to the table except catering to amateur developers. Considering what is holding back OSes like Windows Phone isn't lack of apps from amateur developers, quite the opposite. They have those, but lack the heavy hitters.

I haven't heard "No thriving development environment for small developers" once when covering the downsides of Windows Phone. I have heard "No Instagram" about a thousand times. Maybe it's just me but I don't really remember an instance of any OS becoming popular by catering to small devs. It's a part, but it usually comes AFTER enticing users to come aboard. People didn't develop for iOS because Apple made it painfully easy for them, they developed for iPhone because millions of users bought them, said "Isn't this so cool, but I wonder if it could do <blank>?" and the rest is history.

Likewise, developers weren't chomping at the bit to go messing about in Eclipse, but millions and tens of millions of Android phones ended up in users hands. Suddenly, there was a market and then the popular apps came.

No, Windows Phone 7 is version 1 of Windows Phone.

Windows CE 6 was the predecessor and it's nothing like Windows Phone. Completely separate products sharing only a kernel. And Windows Phone 8 doesn't even share the kernel.

FFOS brings three things to the table that noone else has and they are:

1. Price. They are dirt cheap. Most people out there can't afford to throw out what $600-800 on a handset. The only thing that is keeping these phones afloat is the telco contract that is subsidising the handset cost. Apart from the US, the rest of the world is pretty much handset and/or phone i.e. you can choose. I ALWAYS buy non locked handsets in cash and use cheap contracts. This is almost standard in Europe and the East. The only way paid up handsets can go is down and that's going to simply fuck up the market for high end devices. Giffgaff in the UK is demonstrating that - people are paying virtually nothing and buying cheaper WinPhone (620 is cheap!!) and budget Android handsets these days.

2. HTML. Yes HTML+JavaScript. Every monkey can knock out apps for these, much like you could with MIDP2 / J2ME. You don't have to be an expert on reference counting in Objective-C (iOS), navigate thousands of pages of SDK documentation (Android/WinPhone) or have to own a Mac to push apps out (iOS). You also don't have to subscribe to some massive store model and subscription development model (WinPhone/iOS). Just a second hand laptop ($100-200) text editor ($0) and a cheap ($79) handset and you're throwing out apps.

3. Reuse. A lot of apps can easily be repurposed for this development model. They can also be upscaled to web sites as well.

Hell, this is the scariest thing out there: cheap, easy with the potential to reuse stuff out there.

These WILL be ubiquitous.

As for: "no instagram". Instagram is a fad. It's not going to be around for years and years. If it pissed off tomorrow, noone would cry. Hell most people forget about it after a few days.

As for the iPhone's "isn't it cool" comment, hell it's a piece of shit to develop for, especially when the SDK documentation and publishing platform buggers off for a month and they treat their paid up customers like crap...

These will start at the bottom of the market (like Android) and will push upwards.

Dude, most people would cry if you took their Instagram from them, and they won't forget it about it tomorrow. You're shoving the realities of the market under the table as if they didn't matter. Go ask someone who pays for apps to tell you what Instagram is.

That may be true for people who can't see past our current consumerist bubble. I admit that this is probably a large percentage in the developed world. But we need to have a global and long-term perspective.

That is precisely the global and long-term perspective for it. Funny how you say current consumerist bubble when the bubble has been up for longer than you or I have been alive. The issue was that software hadn't been able to provide a real consumer-quality experience.

Now that it has, and people are starting to buy it, I don't think they're suddenly going to want less of what what they are paying for.

> But we need to have a global and long-term perspective.

Wouldn't a global and long term perspective include other "not developed" countries entering the "developed" category and this "consumerist bubble" you mention?

They might cry for a day or two, but they will forget it soon. Instagram is not a necessity, it is just another cool app, that's all. It is not email, it is not SMS, it is not voice or browser, or car key finder etc. People will find some other site/app for their photos.

I don't have a car key finder, I don't use SMS, I could care less about my computer talking to me. Honestly, I could dispense with email and just talk on facebook really, because most of my inbox are ads nowadays. Just like my mailbox outside. So all of these needs you have told me are not really anything I need at all. So how is it that we have too completely different experiences?

Remember Maslow? Look at the hierarchy. Instagram is meeting the need of community, the photo sharing is a tool to meet that need. Same thing as Hacker News. We're both here to talk about this stuff, even though forums are a solved problem right?

The world is not just about solving problems. That's actually the part people care the least about. Hence why you can solve the problem of writing code to make an app and get paid peanuts and why the 'Yet Another Photo Sharing App" is paying you to do it.

Really? We're talking about necessity in a conversation about smartphones? You know what truly isn't a necessity?

The topic of this conversation.

Yeah I know all about instagram.

It's turd polish around an already solved problem that's been solved a million times over.

Again, no one really cares about getting their problems solved. There is a FAR bigger market in meeting needs. Instragram is more about meeting the need of people finding a community and giving them tools to do that.

The kind of life that ya'll are espousing, this I hole myself in the ground, I run the cheapest shit I can buy, to use low-quality apps that don't let me have any fun, to most people, is actually a very boring way to use the internet and computers in general, and something no one is willing to pay for, hence why no one but those weird few that use computers this way, and the occasional post talking about how they spent all day setting up their mail servers because data privacy ya'll that no one gives a damn about.

How does unpolished turd which does not even provide polished turd solve anything?

You do realize that this doesn't help your point in the slightest, right?

It's been solved countless times, and yet Instagram is indescribably more popular than the other options.

In other words, it really doesn't matter if some dev can throw it together in a couple hours because of HTML/JS. What matters is the polish, followed by the users. Notice none of that includes "make it easy for the developer".

  > 1. Price. They are dirt cheap.

So are iPhones of the earlier generation. Which run fast and have a plenty of apps available.

  > 2. HTML. Yes HTML+JavaScript. Every monkey can knock out apps for these, much like you could with MIDP2 / J2ME.

Yup. And they will crawl, not run. And if you want at least to make the walk, you will need to learn many more trick than reference counting (which you don't really use any more since ARC came).

  > Hell, this is the scariest thing out there: cheap, easy with the potential to reuse stuff out there.

Nothing scary in the stuff that barely works.

  > These WILL be ubiquitous.

Is it a year of Linux desktop yet?

> No, Windows Phone 7 is version 1 of Windows Phone.

But years of combined development experience. My point being they've had 7 chances to execute and still manage a very distant 3rd. I feel like the "it's only version 1" argument holds little water in a market that has thrown out even evolved OSes.

As for the rest, I simply disagree and did in my original post. I'm not disagreeing that they have those advantages, I just disagree that they have any real effect on consumer pickup.

> As for: "no instagram". Instagram is a fad.

Just like Facebook and mobile phone apps right? Everything is a fad to someone, that doesn't mean it's not critically important to a significant group that doesn't include them.

> As for the iPhone's "isn't it cool" comment, hell it's a piece of shit to develop for

Which for the record was my point if you had actually read my comment. Not easy to develop for, higher barrier to entry and developer unfriendly. I don't actually agree with those points but that is how iOS appears to you which helps my argument.

All those downsides, and where are the most apps, most developers and most money made? Right. So apparently, those advantages really aren't as important to most as they are to you.

Contrary to Windows Phone, FxOS is not aiming to be competing against the high end Android or iOS devices. Nor will it be appealing to current consumers who have a smartphone in their pockets. It's targeting consumers that currently hold feature phones (mostly Nokia) that can either not afford a smartphone, or just a very low-end Android that performs terrible. FxOS is not here to be the ultimate OS for developers, but to bring a fully featured smartphone experience to Latin America, South East Asia, Balkans, etc.

Windows phone pretty much competes against everything from feature phones to high end devices and the user experience is pretty much the same. The Lumias have damn good hardware as well.

You can get a Lumia 520 in the UK for £79 and it gives a better experience than an android for twice the amount or any Asha feature phone.

well, maybe not the Asha 501. It's like some baby N9.

I understand that, but I see Android improving or hardware becoming cheaper before FFOS catches on. It's a noble goal, but the app ecosystem is with Android.

Windows didn't get better and Linux didn't move fast enough. Hardware just got cheaper and people went where everyone else went, and Windows is dominant. I foresee the same thing happening with FFOS and Android.

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