Hello,
I find it worrying to see firefox fail so badly after a half-baked effort.
Firefox OS lags behind Android and iOS, and expectedly so, because of
the relative maturity of these operating systems.
My interest in Firefox OS stems from both a philosophical and a
developer point of view.
While Mobile Computing is taking a massive shot at desktop computing,
the diversity of operating systems is extremely limited on mobile,
with a strong reliance on closed market places. Both Google Android
and iOS app markets impose the 30/70 split on mobile software
developers / service providers [1] [2] [3].
With Firefox OS, and their software distribution model, things can be
different [4].
I use the word can rather than “might have been” because the project
is not dead, the smartphone business model is (at least by Mozilla)
[5].
The other nice thing about Firefox OS, is that since it can actually
work at all on very low-end devices, at some point it could have been
the OS to use when someone's phone becomes unsupported (no more
possible Android updates) – like installing lxde on a low-end desktop.
Anyhow, for those interested, you can have the Firefox OS “experience”
on Android as a homescreen launcher (no separate OS). It is slightly
laggy on my phone though [6].
[1]
https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html
[2]
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622
[3]
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
[4]
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Marketplace/Options/Introduction
[5]
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/08/mozilla-will-stop-developing-and-selling-firefox-os-smartphones/
[6]
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/2.5/
Regards,
Yusuf
On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 7:31 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com> wrote:
> Hi Shane,
> At 18:05 08-12-2015, Vy-Shane Sin Fat wrote:
>>
>> This article just popped up on my radar this morning: Mozilla Will Stop
>> Developing And Selling Firefox OS Smartphones [1].
>>
>> It's sad to see a platform die, but I always thought that they had set
>> themselves up with a very difficult technical challenge: Using web
>> technologies on entry level hardware. Web technologies currently struggle on
>> flagship level hardware, so it wasn't a surprise when reviews panned the OS
>> for its poor performance.
>>
>> From a technology point of view, it would have been far more interesting
>> had Mozilla used their own Rust [2] language for developing applications for
>> the platform. A systems language seems better suited for the specific
>> challenge of eking performance out of low performing hardware. I guess that
>> Mozilla decided to use the popular HTML5/JavaScript combo to try and get web
>> developers interested. God knows there are many of them. However, there's a
>> precedent for this: Palm tried to do the same thing with WebOS and failed.
>
>
> Firefox OS was in direct competition with Android. Why use web technologies
> on entry-level hardware when the performance would be poor? That puts the
> product at a disadvantage. Did Mozilla rely on the brand name to drive
> sales? There weren't web developers behind that brand or else there would
> been a lot of apps available on Marketplace.
>
> Was FirefoX OS a toxic asset [1]?
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
>
> 1.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/technology/hewlett-packards-touchpad-was-built-on-flawed-software-some-say.html
>
Received on Sat Dec 12 2015 - 21:12:04 PST