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> I started Firefox OS in 2011 because already back then I was convinced that desktops and browsers were dead. Not immediately–here we are 6 years later and bot

> I started Firefox OS in 2011 because already back then I was convinced that desktops and browsers were dead. Not immediately–here we are 6 years later and both are still around–but both are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential going forward. I don't understand this perspective. Browsers are legacy technologies that are not particularly influential? What? I feel like the web dominates our lives more than ever, and everyone uses a laptop or desktop for any actual work they have to do, professional or hobby. While people use their phones for internet access throughout the day as they move about, it must be one in 1000 or fewer who uses their phone or tablet for real work. Does someone see a replacement on the horizon for the supposedly "legacy" laptop/desktop power combo?

fiatjaf 9y ago
The mobile thing is just mass distraction. Everybody says "mobile" is eating the world, but when you look at it, 99 in 100 mobile core users are stupid facebookers who don't even know what is the internet and wouldn't be using the internet at all if it wasn't for Facebook, Instagram or whatever share-your-stupid-life network they may be using.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  ...who cares? Why are your sites so superior and quality for 'proper internet' but these things that people actually use doesn't?
  - Retra 9y ago
    Because the things that tend to be the most valuable to society tend to also be hard to achieve. If you could be a good person by doing what is easy and immediately gratifying, there would be no trouble in the world.
- aerovistae 9y ago
  I have secretly held this opinion for years. 4 out of 5 times that I look over someone's shoulder at their phone on the train, they're rapidly scrolling through a feed of photos, memes, and emote-filled status updates, endlessly. It scares me, to be honest. I wonder where this tendency in people will lead in the very long run, particularly when you consider the ideas suggested by companies like Neuralink. It brings Black Mirror to mind. Will people permanently have an inexhaustible feed of vapid garbage playing in their mind while they ignore most of everything going on in reality, in their actual real life? However, this is unrelated to the original point. Just a side thought.
  - lotyrin 9y ago
    > Will people permanently have an inexhaustible feed of vapid garbage playing in their mind while they ignore most of everything going on in reality, in their actual real life? Is that not already how it is? Each time I've been the new kid at school or new guy at the office, it seems there's nothing for people to talk about if you don't know all the TV shows or all the memes or all the movies or music or the celeb gossip or latest sports happenings or news or video game releases or this weeks anime developments or whatever it is each person chooses to fill their thought process with other than the world immediately around them. It seems it's probably comforting to be consumed by external things over which you have no power, instead of being sober about closer things - some of which you could influence given significant effort, some of which you are powerless to influence with any amount of effort.
  - ashark 9y ago
    > It scares me, to be honest. I wonder where this tendency in people will lead in the very long run, particularly when you consider the ideas suggested by companies like Neuralink. It brings Black Mirror to mind. 15 Million Merits isn't about the future.
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    What do you expect people to be doing on the train? Contributing to emacs?
    - fasquoika 9y ago
      No, he expects them to comment on HN - a proper, respectable website - unlike that Facebook thing the plebs seem so interested in. /s
      - aerovistae 9y ago
        No, I don't. I will concede that I believe there's vastly more to learn from HN than from a social media feed, and I will "concede" that I believe your time is better spent on something educational than something solitary and mildly amusing that just idly passes the time and is then forgotten. But I do not seek to force that perspective on anyone. I just wish people didn't ignore the world all the time in favor of carrying their computer (phone) around with them and staring into it all day long.
- criddell 9y ago
  > 99 in 100 mobile core users are stupid facebookers who don't even know what is the internet and wouldn't be using the internet at all if it wasn't for Facebook, Instagram or whatever And that's precisely why mobile is eating the world. Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms drive a lot of traffic.
flerchin 9y ago
Most people do their banking from their phones.
- nocman 9y ago
  Got any hard data on that (seriously, I'd like to know)? I don't know anyone who does banking on their phone -- it's all desktop. Granted, I haven't taken a formal survey or anything.
  - Sharparam 9y ago
    Maybe regional or depending on what bank you have. Here in Sweden you can do most things from your phone, so there isn't much of a reason to go to the desktop site usually. It's also marginally more convenient to log in on the phone app, as the authentication can be done on the phone. Bills become much easier to pay via the phone, as you can scan the information from the invoice with your camera (for those companies that refuse to make electronic invoices available). Many invoices now use QR codes as well, so you only have to scan one thing to get all the information needed.
  - flerchin 9y ago
    None that I can share, but my source is the major US bank's software that I work on. More than two thirds of our traffic is handled on mobile devices now.
    - solidr53 9y ago
      Can also confirm, worked for two banks and their mobile traffic (apps) surpassed desktop usage.
acchow 9y ago
My phone tells me how much usage I have on it - on very heavy days including using it while commuting about 4 hours. On light days about an hour. I'm usually on a laptop/desktop for 8-10 hours a day.
dkural 9y ago
You read hackernews, which alone suggests you are in the far, far tail of average developed country consumer. Most people hate, and always hated computers. Most people don't even have college degrees, and don't need heavy utility computing to do their jobs. Compare PC sales vs. Mobile.
- Chromus 9y ago
  This made me curious on the percentage of college educated people in the US. Turns out, among people 25 and older, less than 32% have a Bachelor's degree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
- jackmott 9y ago
  man...not sure you can hate computers more than a programmer....who knows the true horror inside.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    So true. I think when I retire I will not have a computer at home.
walterbell 9y ago
> Does someone see a replacement on the horizon for the supposedly "legacy" laptop/desktop power combo? Even on a phone/tablet, communication often includes web hyperlinks. The obsession with mobile is a reflection of business model. If you are in the advertising / surveillance capitalism business, mobile ("sensor phone") devices provide non-desktop signals that can be monetized. Unfortunately, desktop software was hurt by piracy, with a few large ISVs making the most money. Today, Apple makes money on desktop hardware rather than desktop software. Microoft has tilted Windows 10 towards hosted services and data collection, but ISVs cannot abandon the large incumbent Win32 device market. As laptop/desktop security improves, operating sytems could be reducing desktop software piracy and improving the profitability of ISVs. Instead, "app stores" are following two leaders who don't care about ISVs: Apple (hardware revenue, 30% ISV tax = tiny ISVs) and Google (data revenue, "free" apps). We have the security technology and social network/marketing experience to design laptop/desktop software ecosystems that protect data/IP and support new ISVs. If Mozilla/Firefox wants to help, they can make it easier for web/extension developers and content creators to get paid.
- mbrookes 9y ago
  > Today, Apple makes money on desktop hardware rather than desktop software. Uh, App Store? http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/13/revenue-from-apples-app-store-grows-60-to-54-billion http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/13/revenue-from-apple...
  - walterbell 9y ago
    Yes, Apple make money by taxing software, not selling software directly. There is a long list of complaints by Apple software developers about the lack of marketing support that they receive from Apple, in return for the 30% tax that is yielding the app store revenue cited above. Apple can enforce iOS ISV tax because of hardware control. From that article, the top 10 mobile "apps" by revenue can be mapped to the modern equivalent of TV, radio and telecom services. None of these are creative software apps like those from large ISVs on desktops/laptops. Instead we have many mobile ISVs who are not very profitable.
Spooky23 9y ago
You have to make wacky statements like this to pull off the "visionary" schtick. All of the hotshots were talking Post-PC world in 2011. The reality is that computers are still computers. Mobile is the new TV. I run EUC in a large diversified enterprise. We have about 0.05% pure mobile users, mostly iPad based. That is growing quickly, but probably won't exceed 3% in the next 5 years based on the current pipeline. There are exceptions, iirc Comcast has 50k iPads. Other field service orgs are similar. Server based computing is a thing though. There's alot of BYOD and thin clients in our future. Thin clients are approaching $100 and going lower. VDI/Citrix has a positive ROI for me. I think the future looks more like Issac Asimov's multivac.
- walterbell 9y ago
  Do end users get full Windows desktops or only access to selected apps? Assuming a 3-year amortization for $100 thin client desktop hardware, what's the annual cost per user when you include server/cloud hardware & VDI/OS software licensing? Which thin client do you recommend?
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    We do both. Right now it's a split of app and desktop. If you have the leverage on the OEMs, teradici clients are cheapest, but they are at the edge of not having sufficient lifespan for us. There are newer Intel devices that are getting close that we're using on a trial basis. I can't get into specific dollars, but all-in the cost for VDI delivery is about 10% more, and we end up in the black with a longer client device cycle (which basically skips a rollout cycle) and dropping field service contracts -- FedEx is cheaper than a tech. We're big enough that the component makers are willing to discount parts like CPUs for us though. Our pricing is generally 18 months cheaper than the market.
- auggierose 9y ago
  After googling for acronyms, my best guess is "EUC" = "End User Computing"? I wish people on HN would use less unexplained acronyms.
- hoekit 9y ago
cptskippy 9y ago
I installed Chrome on my kid's laptop the other day because the web app they were using in class didn't work in Edge or Firefox. Another time she had tried to open a link to a Word Doc and didn't realize it downloaded it. I showed her where it was in the downloads folder and she proceeded to upload it to Google Drive to open it instead of using Word. Very few functions kids do these days require a specialist app, just a particular browser. Her sister was complaining about having to log into Netflix and I suggested she install the App. Her response was "I don't like Apps, I prefer websites."
- jackmott 9y ago
  >"I don't like Apps, I prefer websites." for netflix, the website has more features, so yeah.
  - kiwijamo 9y ago
    Apps have some features not available on the web. E.g. You can fast forward in Netflix's apps on certain platforms. Not on the web.
geoelectric 9y ago
I was also at Mozilla during the time period Andreas outlines--I worked on the Firefox OS test team, for that matter, almost from the beginning of it graduating from Boot2Gecko as a Labs project until right before it got killed. While my perspective isn't as strategic or metrics-driven as his, I had a lot of time to observe and think as both a community member and Mozilla employee. FxOS also wasn't my baby, so there's that. Note also that I speak for myself here and my own observations and paraphrases--whatever I say that pisses someone off is something I'm saying, not that Mozilla said verbatim. My primary takeaways were twofold: (Long, TL;DR at bottom) 1) I agree with you. Desktop and mobile are two separate markets, period. The first mostly serves a workplace audience and the second a personal audience, but most people with a desk job at the very least will use a web browser as part of their day. Desktop may be a minority of the overall, but it's a minority that won't go away anytime soon and so will continue to influence HTML and standards disproportionate to pure market share. That's important because Mozilla's gambit for preserving the open web was pretty simple (I say was because I think they're just not that focused at this point): Have enough people using your browser that websites absolutely have to support the emerging standards that browser relies on-- and perhaps in doing so make it less attractive for site providers and browser providers to spend time on proprietary tech that isn't significantly better than those standards, thereby making other browsers move to those standards too. Doesn't mean these people have to use it everywhere, or that it has to be a majority share (10%+ was what I commonly heard as "enough") or otherwise "win". But it does have to be enough that people will complain if the website doesn't support their browser and that testers are influenced to test the site against it. (BTW, as a test professional, the fact that Firefox no longer appears in most test matrixes I encounter due to lack of a blip on analytics is very telling, and Firefox has a serious risk growing around site incompatibility or instability in their browser). That brings me to my second takeaway: 2) The grand majority of people don't use a web browser because of the browser itself; they use it for one of a few reasons: a) It's default on their system. You will not win these people over because they're not there for any reason other than it being the easiest or most integrated path. Note that this is pretty much the whole mobile market, and why it was a dire mistake for Mozilla to conflate the two markets, decide mobile was more important due to combined market share, then go tilting at windmills. It's also, any altruistic reasons aside, why the moonshot was to create an OS so Firefox could be the default mobile experience. b) Ethics/Community. This was a relatively small but very vocal part of Firefox's userbase. Probably more people were there "against Chrome" than "for Firefox," but whatever. Firefox succeeded in the first place because of "against Internet Explorer" so it's a valid reason to be there. The nice thing about these people is they pull in more people. Unfortunately, one side effect of Firefox OS as a project was working with proprietary partners who emphasized confidentiality such that you couldn't share with the community in the way Mozilla did before. When Mozilla diverted most of their effort to Firefox OS, it froze out a lot of the community efforts. I think Mozilla-the-org also became less skilled at working with community, both for that shift and perhaps because they brought in a lot of people from the mobile and other sectors who didn't have that background. Whatever the case, this base wasn't well-maintained, and I don't think operates as a core in the same way it might once have, at least for Firefox. c) Customization, and this is really why Firefox (and Mozilla) is where it is today IMO: The add-on ecosystem is the most compelling reason both to start using but especially continue using a non-default browser, and Mozilla chased theirs away. Here's the thing: You have one browser, whose job is to get the hell out of the way of the content and fade into the background, and several installed extensions whose jobs are to solve specific problems you have. 1 browser. Several extensions. 1 invisible, generic browser. Several hand-chosen extensions that make it your own. Which bit are you sticking around for? Probably the extensions. The browser is a platform, a means, not an end--not just for the web but for its own functionality. That's why all the complaints are performance and crashes and things that make you notice the browser, not generally native features or UI. It's the whole rationale behind browser-as-OS efforts in the first place. Syncs and reading lists are nice, but with an ecosystem you can get them after the fact. With no ecosystem, you'd better either really like what you're handed or be trapped into using it a la iOS--and even Apple has figured out they have to be somewhat customizable or people will even switch OSes to get it. That's where Chrome won. Specifically, when Mozilla pretty much cargo-culted Google's rapid release program without first creating a version-independent extension store and add-on API, they seriously fucked up. A ton of add-ons couldn't keep up with release and broke--Firefox's add-on "API" was to either essentially monkeypatch the internals or to create binary extensions, neither of which had any real abstraction from implementation. The need to manually update the compatibility version number and reupload to AMO for every single release froze more out (this was fixed server-side by auto-incing the number but it was just a workaround to a real problem as now extensions might not be really compatible). AMO always had a problem with turnaround on submissions, and this didn't help. In general Mozilla sent the message of being out of touch with the add-on community, and that it wasn't a clear priority. Jetpack/Add-Ons SDK was there as a not-really-mature portability measure to mitigate this, but it wasn't powerful enough to support a lot of the best extensions. It also happened in parallel with the rapid release shift, not before it when it was strategically needed. Then Jetpack kind of died off, probably partially because of the shift in efforts towards mobile/FxOS and partially because Jetpack never really became kick-ass enough to make the type of impact that gets more resources. Meanwhile, right before Firefox stepped into this and never stepped out again, the Chrome Web Store opens in 2010, ready to receive any disenfranchised add-on makers. Talk about right place at the right time. Now Mozilla finally is adopting Chrome's extension API, both because it probably works better with multiprocess but maybe also to get some cross-platform extensions back. I imagine that'll work OK, but maybe too little too late. AMO isn't what it used to be at all. Meanwhile, Chrome's Web Store is phenomenal. Combined with the (yes, unfair) Google Suite integration in Chrome there's a lot of friction to keep people on Chrome as a platform, and short of Chrome making a huge mistake that shakes people off like Mozilla/Firefox did, there isn't much reason to switch browsers for a cross-platform extension that's already on the one you use. And when I look at the blog posts re: Firefox improvements, etc., I keep coming back to "it's a platform, not an app" and wonder if they'll ever take that ground back. Maybe if they somehow completely redefine the browser experience or otherwise stay deeply opinionated (Opera is sort of going this route) but otherwise, it'll just be parity and parity doesn't move people. I'm thoroughly convinced Mozilla won't achieve much impact with Firefox until they understand and execute on building the ecosystem as the vast majority use case and never damage it again. However, that means them also understanding that people came to and left Firefox for any number of reasons other than Firefox itself or its native features, interface, etc., and I don't see that yet institutionally in their execution. Some bright spots: Rust and WebAssembly are both fantastic. In general, I think Mozilla has been great at addressing the developer segment, both with the browser dev tools themselves and especially with MDN. Maybe what'll eventually preserve Mozilla is getting drummed out of the web browser business and into more of a core tech business. Regaining browser relevance is going to be a heck of an uphill for them. TL;DR: Mozilla should never have gone full-tilt at mobile and made a grave mistake in assuming desktop was becoming irrelevant to their mission; and by far the biggest fuckup was alienating the add-on community since customization is the most compelling reason why people would use a non-default browser. It's entirely possible they won't come back from that. Their biggest recent impacts have been peripheral to or completely orthogonal to the browser, and might be their brighter future.
s_kilk 9y ago
Looking back on that era from here (only a handful of years later) it really looks like the desktop-is-dead-all-hail-the-smartphone crowd were just huffing paint. And those fume hallucinations inspired the 'convergence' bandwagon which lead Canonical/Ubuntu, the Gnome project and Microsoft astray for years before they finally started rolling back those dumb decisions. The markets for smartphones and tablets are now at absolute saturation point and, to a first approximation, no-one is abandoning their laptops/desktops en-masse in favour of working off of a 6 inch screen.

fiatjaf 9y ago

The mobile thing is just mass distraction. Everybody says "mobile" is eating the world, but when you look at it, 99 in 100 mobile core users are stupid facebookers who don't even know what is the internet and wouldn't be using the internet at all if it wasn't for Facebook, Instagram or whatever share-your-stupid-life network they may be using.

madeofpalk 9y ago
...who cares? Why are your sites so superior and quality for 'proper internet' but these things that people actually use doesn't?
- Retra 9y ago
  Because the things that tend to be the most valuable to society tend to also be hard to achieve. If you could be a good person by doing what is easy and immediately gratifying, there would be no trouble in the world.
aerovistae 9y ago
I have secretly held this opinion for years. 4 out of 5 times that I look over someone's shoulder at their phone on the train, they're rapidly scrolling through a feed of photos, memes, and emote-filled status updates, endlessly. It scares me, to be honest. I wonder where this tendency in people will lead in the very long run, particularly when you consider the ideas suggested by companies like Neuralink. It brings Black Mirror to mind. Will people permanently have an inexhaustible feed of vapid garbage playing in their mind while they ignore most of everything going on in reality, in their actual real life? However, this is unrelated to the original point. Just a side thought.
- lotyrin 9y ago
  > Will people permanently have an inexhaustible feed of vapid garbage playing in their mind while they ignore most of everything going on in reality, in their actual real life? Is that not already how it is? Each time I've been the new kid at school or new guy at the office, it seems there's nothing for people to talk about if you don't know all the TV shows or all the memes or all the movies or music or the celeb gossip or latest sports happenings or news or video game releases or this weeks anime developments or whatever it is each person chooses to fill their thought process with other than the world immediately around them. It seems it's probably comforting to be consumed by external things over which you have no power, instead of being sober about closer things - some of which you could influence given significant effort, some of which you are powerless to influence with any amount of effort.
- ashark 9y ago
  > It scares me, to be honest. I wonder where this tendency in people will lead in the very long run, particularly when you consider the ideas suggested by companies like Neuralink. It brings Black Mirror to mind. 15 Million Merits isn't about the future.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  What do you expect people to be doing on the train? Contributing to emacs?
  - fasquoika 9y ago
    No, he expects them to comment on HN - a proper, respectable website - unlike that Facebook thing the plebs seem so interested in. /s
    - aerovistae 9y ago
      No, I don't. I will concede that I believe there's vastly more to learn from HN than from a social media feed, and I will "concede" that I believe your time is better spent on something educational than something solitary and mildly amusing that just idly passes the time and is then forgotten. But I do not seek to force that perspective on anyone. I just wish people didn't ignore the world all the time in favor of carrying their computer (phone) around with them and staring into it all day long.
criddell 9y ago
> 99 in 100 mobile core users are stupid facebookers who don't even know what is the internet and wouldn't be using the internet at all if it wasn't for Facebook, Instagram or whatever And that's precisely why mobile is eating the world. Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms drive a lot of traffic.

flerchin 9y ago

Most people do their banking from their phones.

nocman 9y ago
Got any hard data on that (seriously, I'd like to know)? I don't know anyone who does banking on their phone -- it's all desktop. Granted, I haven't taken a formal survey or anything.
- Sharparam 9y ago
  Maybe regional or depending on what bank you have. Here in Sweden you can do most things from your phone, so there isn't much of a reason to go to the desktop site usually. It's also marginally more convenient to log in on the phone app, as the authentication can be done on the phone. Bills become much easier to pay via the phone, as you can scan the information from the invoice with your camera (for those companies that refuse to make electronic invoices available). Many invoices now use QR codes as well, so you only have to scan one thing to get all the information needed.
- flerchin 9y ago
  None that I can share, but my source is the major US bank's software that I work on. More than two thirds of our traffic is handled on mobile devices now.
  - solidr53 9y ago
    Can also confirm, worked for two banks and their mobile traffic (apps) surpassed desktop usage.

acchow 9y ago

My phone tells me how much usage I have on it - on very heavy days including using it while commuting about 4 hours. On light days about an hour. I'm usually on a laptop/desktop for 8-10 hours a day.

dkural 9y ago

You read hackernews, which alone suggests you are in the far, far tail of average developed country consumer. Most people hate, and always hated computers. Most people don't even have college degrees, and don't need heavy utility computing to do their jobs. Compare PC sales vs. Mobile.

Chromus 9y ago
This made me curious on the percentage of college educated people in the US. Turns out, among people 25 and older, less than 32% have a Bachelor's degree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
jackmott 9y ago
man...not sure you can hate computers more than a programmer....who knows the true horror inside.
- ams6110 9y ago
  So true. I think when I retire I will not have a computer at home.

walterbell 9y ago

> Does someone see a replacement on the horizon for the supposedly "legacy" laptop/desktop power combo? Even on a phone/tablet, communication often includes web hyperlinks. The obsession with mobile is a reflection of business model. If you are in the advertising / surveillance capitalism business, mobile ("sensor phone") devices provide non-desktop signals that can be monetized. Unfortunately, desktop software was hurt by piracy, with a few large ISVs making the most money. Today, Apple makes money on desktop hardware rather than desktop software. Microoft has tilted Windows 10 towards hosted services and data collection, but ISVs cannot abandon the large incumbent Win32 device market. As laptop/desktop security improves, operating sytems could be reducing desktop software piracy and improving the profitability of ISVs. Instead, "app stores" are following two leaders who don't care about ISVs: Apple (hardware revenue, 30% ISV tax = tiny ISVs) and Google (data revenue, "free" apps). We have the security technology and social network/marketing experience to design laptop/desktop software ecosystems that protect data/IP and support new ISVs. If Mozilla/Firefox wants to help, they can make it easier for web/extension developers and content creators to get paid.

mbrookes 9y ago
> Today, Apple makes money on desktop hardware rather than desktop software. Uh, App Store? http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/13/revenue-from-apples-app-store-grows-60-to-54-billion http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/13/revenue-from-apple...
- walterbell 9y ago
  Yes, Apple make money by taxing software, not selling software directly. There is a long list of complaints by Apple software developers about the lack of marketing support that they receive from Apple, in return for the 30% tax that is yielding the app store revenue cited above. Apple can enforce iOS ISV tax because of hardware control. From that article, the top 10 mobile "apps" by revenue can be mapped to the modern equivalent of TV, radio and telecom services. None of these are creative software apps like those from large ISVs on desktops/laptops. Instead we have many mobile ISVs who are not very profitable.

Spooky23 9y ago

You have to make wacky statements like this to pull off the "visionary" schtick. All of the hotshots were talking Post-PC world in 2011. The reality is that computers are still computers. Mobile is the new TV. I run EUC in a large diversified enterprise. We have about 0.05% pure mobile users, mostly iPad based. That is growing quickly, but probably won't exceed 3% in the next 5 years based on the current pipeline. There are exceptions, iirc Comcast has 50k iPads. Other field service orgs are similar. Server based computing is a thing though. There's alot of BYOD and thin clients in our future. Thin clients are approaching $100 and going lower. VDI/Citrix has a positive ROI for me. I think the future looks more like Issac Asimov's multivac.

walterbell 9y ago
Do end users get full Windows desktops or only access to selected apps? Assuming a 3-year amortization for $100 thin client desktop hardware, what's the annual cost per user when you include server/cloud hardware & VDI/OS software licensing? Which thin client do you recommend?
- Spooky23 9y ago
  We do both. Right now it's a split of app and desktop. If you have the leverage on the OEMs, teradici clients are cheapest, but they are at the edge of not having sufficient lifespan for us. There are newer Intel devices that are getting close that we're using on a trial basis. I can't get into specific dollars, but all-in the cost for VDI delivery is about 10% more, and we end up in the black with a longer client device cycle (which basically skips a rollout cycle) and dropping field service contracts -- FedEx is cheaper than a tech. We're big enough that the component makers are willing to discount parts like CPUs for us though. Our pricing is generally 18 months cheaper than the market.
auggierose 9y ago
After googling for acronyms, my best guess is "EUC" = "End User Computing"? I wish people on HN would use less unexplained acronyms.
hoekit 9y ago

cptskippy 9y ago

I installed Chrome on my kid's laptop the other day because the web app they were using in class didn't work in Edge or Firefox. Another time she had tried to open a link to a Word Doc and didn't realize it downloaded it. I showed her where it was in the downloads folder and she proceeded to upload it to Google Drive to open it instead of using Word. Very few functions kids do these days require a specialist app, just a particular browser. Her sister was complaining about having to log into Netflix and I suggested she install the App. Her response was "I don't like Apps, I prefer websites."

jackmott 9y ago
>"I don't like Apps, I prefer websites." for netflix, the website has more features, so yeah.
- kiwijamo 9y ago
  Apps have some features not available on the web. E.g. You can fast forward in Netflix's apps on certain platforms. Not on the web.

geoelectric 9y ago

I was also at Mozilla during the time period Andreas outlines--I worked on the Firefox OS test team, for that matter, almost from the beginning of it graduating from Boot2Gecko as a Labs project until right before it got killed. While my perspective isn't as strategic or metrics-driven as his, I had a lot of time to observe and think as both a community member and Mozilla employee. FxOS also wasn't my baby, so there's that. Note also that I speak for myself here and my own observations and paraphrases--whatever I say that pisses someone off is something I'm saying, not that Mozilla said verbatim. My primary takeaways were twofold: (Long, TL;DR at bottom) 1) I agree with you. Desktop and mobile are two separate markets, period. The first mostly serves a workplace audience and the second a personal audience, but most people with a desk job at the very least will use a web browser as part of their day. Desktop may be a minority of the overall, but it's a minority that won't go away anytime soon and so will continue to influence HTML and standards disproportionate to pure market share. That's important because Mozilla's gambit for preserving the open web was pretty simple (I say was because I think they're just not that focused at this point): Have enough people using your browser that websites absolutely have to support the emerging standards that browser relies on-- and perhaps in doing so make it less attractive for site providers and browser providers to spend time on proprietary tech that isn't significantly better than those standards, thereby making other browsers move to those standards too. Doesn't mean these people have to use it everywhere, or that it has to be a majority share (10%+ was what I commonly heard as "enough") or otherwise "win". But it does have to be enough that people will complain if the website doesn't support their browser and that testers are influenced to test the site against it. (BTW, as a test professional, the fact that Firefox no longer appears in most test matrixes I encounter due to lack of a blip on analytics is very telling, and Firefox has a serious risk growing around site incompatibility or instability in their browser). That brings me to my second takeaway: 2) The grand majority of people don't use a web browser because of the browser itself; they use it for one of a few reasons: a) It's default on their system. You will not win these people over because they're not there for any reason other than it being the easiest or most integrated path. Note that this is pretty much the whole mobile market, and why it was a dire mistake for Mozilla to conflate the two markets, decide mobile was more important due to combined market share, then go tilting at windmills. It's also, any altruistic reasons aside, why the moonshot was to create an OS so Firefox could be the default mobile experience. b) Ethics/Community. This was a relatively small but very vocal part of Firefox's userbase. Probably more people were there "against Chrome" than "for Firefox," but whatever. Firefox succeeded in the first place because of "against Internet Explorer" so it's a valid reason to be there. The nice thing about these people is they pull in more people. Unfortunately, one side effect of Firefox OS as a project was working with proprietary partners who emphasized confidentiality such that you couldn't share with the community in the way Mozilla did before. When Mozilla diverted most of their effort to Firefox OS, it froze out a lot of the community efforts. I think Mozilla-the-org also became less skilled at working with community, both for that shift and perhaps because they brought in a lot of people from the mobile and other sectors who didn't have that background. Whatever the case, this base wasn't well-maintained, and I don't think operates as a core in the same way it might once have, at least for Firefox. c) Customization, and this is really why Firefox (and Mozilla) is where it is today IMO: The add-on ecosystem is the most compelling reason both to start using but especially continue using a non-default browser, and Mozilla chased theirs away. Here's the thing: You have one browser, whose job is to get the hell out of the way of the content and fade into the background, and several installed extensions whose jobs are to solve specific problems you have. 1 browser. Several extensions. 1 invisible, generic browser. Several hand-chosen extensions that make it your own. Which bit are you sticking around for? Probably the extensions. The browser is a platform, a means, not an end--not just for the web but for its own functionality. That's why all the complaints are performance and crashes and things that make you notice the browser, not generally native features or UI. It's the whole rationale behind browser-as-OS efforts in the first place. Syncs and reading lists are nice, but with an ecosystem you can get them after the fact. With no ecosystem, you'd better either really like what you're handed or be trapped into using it a la iOS--and even Apple has figured out they have to be somewhat customizable or people will even switch OSes to get it. That's where Chrome won. Specifically, when Mozilla pretty much cargo-culted Google's rapid release program without first creating a version-independent extension store and add-on API, they seriously fucked up. A ton of add-ons couldn't keep up with release and broke--Firefox's add-on "API" was to either essentially monkeypatch the internals or to create binary extensions, neither of which had any real abstraction from implementation. The need to manually update the compatibility version number and reupload to AMO for every single release froze more out (this was fixed server-side by auto-incing the number but it was just a workaround to a real problem as now extensions might not be really compatible). AMO always had a problem with turnaround on submissions, and this didn't help. In general Mozilla sent the message of being out of touch with the add-on community, and that it wasn't a clear priority. Jetpack/Add-Ons SDK was there as a not-really-mature portability measure to mitigate this, but it wasn't powerful enough to support a lot of the best extensions. It also happened in parallel with the rapid release shift, not before it when it was strategically needed. Then Jetpack kind of died off, probably partially because of the shift in efforts towards mobile/FxOS and partially because Jetpack never really became kick-ass enough to make the type of impact that gets more resources. Meanwhile, right before Firefox stepped into this and never stepped out again, the Chrome Web Store opens in 2010, ready to receive any disenfranchised add-on makers. Talk about right place at the right time. Now Mozilla finally is adopting Chrome's extension API, both because it probably works better with multiprocess but maybe also to get some cross-platform extensions back. I imagine that'll work OK, but maybe too little too late. AMO isn't what it used to be at all. Meanwhile, Chrome's Web Store is phenomenal. Combined with the (yes, unfair) Google Suite integration in Chrome there's a lot of friction to keep people on Chrome as a platform, and short of Chrome making a huge mistake that shakes people off like Mozilla/Firefox did, there isn't much reason to switch browsers for a cross-platform extension that's already on the one you use. And when I look at the blog posts re: Firefox improvements, etc., I keep coming back to "it's a platform, not an app" and wonder if they'll ever take that ground back. Maybe if they somehow completely redefine the browser experience or otherwise stay deeply opinionated (Opera is sort of going this route) but otherwise, it'll just be parity and parity doesn't move people. I'm thoroughly convinced Mozilla won't achieve much impact with Firefox until they understand and execute on building the ecosystem as the vast majority use case and never damage it again. However, that means them also understanding that people came to and left Firefox for any number of reasons other than Firefox itself or its native features, interface, etc., and I don't see that yet institutionally in their execution. Some bright spots: Rust and WebAssembly are both fantastic. In general, I think Mozilla has been great at addressing the developer segment, both with the browser dev tools themselves and especially with MDN. Maybe what'll eventually preserve Mozilla is getting drummed out of the web browser business and into more of a core tech business. Regaining browser relevance is going to be a heck of an uphill for them. TL;DR: Mozilla should never have gone full-tilt at mobile and made a grave mistake in assuming desktop was becoming irrelevant to their mission; and by far the biggest fuckup was alienating the add-on community since customization is the most compelling reason why people would use a non-default browser. It's entirely possible they won't come back from that. Their biggest recent impacts have been peripheral to or completely orthogonal to the browser, and might be their brighter future.

s_kilk 9y ago

Looking back on that era from here (only a handful of years later) it really looks like the desktop-is-dead-all-hail-the-smartphone crowd were just huffing paint. And those fume hallucinations inspired the 'convergence' bandwagon which lead Canonical/Ubuntu, the Gnome project and Microsoft astray for years before they finally started rolling back those dumb decisions. The markets for smartphones and tablets are now at absolute saturation point and, to a first approximation, no-one is abandoning their laptops/desktops en-masse in favour of working off of a 6 inch screen.