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We'd finally have been free from the shit Google and Apple keep pulling. I'm afraid the mobile train is so long gone that it's impossible to get on board now. E

We'd finally have been free from the shit Google and Apple keep pulling. I'm afraid the mobile train is so long gone that it's impossible to get on board now. Even Microsoft, armed with a solid polished product could not make a dent.

imron 9y ago
> it's impossible to get on board now To be fair people said the same thing thing to Apple when they decided to enter the phone market
- nasredin 9y ago
  The "smartphone" was still in its infancy back then. Today the technology is mature enough, so it's more about the (small) gimmicks like fingerprint scanners.
  - pletnes 9y ago
    Fingerprint scanners changed the game again for me. Saves countless times of typing the pin code over and over.
  - imron 9y ago
    All the innovations the iPhone had were also called gimmicks by industry leaders at the time.
m1sta_ 9y ago
Solid base product. Terrible browser and poor store management were are problem for too long.
gregknicholson 9y ago
I don't think you necessarily need a large market share. You just need your alternative to be viable for individuals to choose to use. Then if it's better, you'll gain users. Firefox itself needs large market share, as a bulkhead against sites that work only in {IE6|Chrome}. Mobile OSes need large enough market share because you have to persuade the proprietors of important services to make their services available on the OS — if those services aren't available, your OS won't have enough utility for most users. But it is possible to get a large number of services working on an unpopular mobile OS — if there's a common standard that unpopular platforms can make use of, which is good enough for most users — such as web apps. (For example, DuckDuckGo can succeed or fail on merit, because it's a viable alternative. In the Linux bubble, most apps don't specifically target unpopular distros, but they can make use of the same source code or the same packaging formats.) So if we want better mobile OSes, we should support interoperability of apps.

imron 9y ago

> it's impossible to get on board now To be fair people said the same thing thing to Apple when they decided to enter the phone market

nasredin 9y ago
The "smartphone" was still in its infancy back then. Today the technology is mature enough, so it's more about the (small) gimmicks like fingerprint scanners.
- pletnes 9y ago
  Fingerprint scanners changed the game again for me. Saves countless times of typing the pin code over and over.
- imron 9y ago
  All the innovations the iPhone had were also called gimmicks by industry leaders at the time.

m1sta_ 9y ago

Solid base product. Terrible browser and poor store management were are problem for too long.

gregknicholson 9y ago

I don't think you necessarily need a large market share. You just need your alternative to be viable for individuals to choose to use. Then if it's better, you'll gain users. Firefox itself needs large market share, as a bulkhead against sites that work only in {IE6|Chrome}. Mobile OSes need large enough market share because you have to persuade the proprietors of important services to make their services available on the OS — if those services aren't available, your OS won't have enough utility for most users. But it is possible to get a large number of services working on an unpopular mobile OS — if there's a common standard that unpopular platforms can make use of, which is good enough for most users — such as web apps. (For example, DuckDuckGo can succeed or fail on merit, because it's a viable alternative. In the Linux bubble, most apps don't specifically target unpopular distros, but they can make use of the same source code or the same packaging formats.) So if we want better mobile OSes, we should support interoperability of apps.