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> programmable mobile phone with crypto chip and starlink carrier for recurring revenue when/if google and Apple ban Twitter app from their walled gardens This

> programmable mobile phone with crypto chip and starlink carrier for recurring revenue when/if google and Apple ban Twitter app from their walled gardens This would be a world-class feat of engineering, which would also require that Twitter hire a set of engineers entirely different than the ones they have. It's difficult to see how they'd pull this off successfully.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Man, I was wondering about this myself, as a guy with 10 years in the phone firmware business I don't think Musk has any realistic chance of competing with Apple. Apple has been poaching from the best of the best in every level the phone industry for over a decade now. He could quickly and effectively crank out an undifferentiated Android phone for sure, but I'm not sure what he'd do with it or how he'd convince anyone to buy it. His phone would be more expensive to make than the ones out of Moto, Huawei, etc, and it wouldn't work as well. Maybe if he hired aggressively or borrowed people from Tesla somehow he could make a good Android phone, but I don't see why anyone would buy it. I actually thought that by now we wouldn't really be bothering with apps so much, and computers would be more like the one on Star Trek. I don't think Musk could just toss that together any time soon though, haha.
- willmadden 4y ago
  People won't buy it because it has a fifth vestigial camera or whatever the latest gimmick is. Smart phones are a commodity at this point. They'll buy it because 1) they don't want transnational ESG digital hall monitors spying on them and curating what apps they can install, and 2) it would have global cell coverage. That's more than enough to compete with Google and Apple at this point. People are fed up, I think you underestimate just how many people.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    There's no way he'll be able to get global cell coverage IMO. Even if he pulled it off, that's a feature for fancy rich people. Most people don't travel regularly. I don't think the privacy angle is going to help at all either. If anyone actually cared about privacy or control we'd all be using the same weird open source pocket computer as Stallman. That said, I wish him the best of luck

Firmwarrior 4y ago

Man, I was wondering about this myself, as a guy with 10 years in the phone firmware business I don't think Musk has any realistic chance of competing with Apple. Apple has been poaching from the best of the best in every level the phone industry for over a decade now. He could quickly and effectively crank out an undifferentiated Android phone for sure, but I'm not sure what he'd do with it or how he'd convince anyone to buy it. His phone would be more expensive to make than the ones out of Moto, Huawei, etc, and it wouldn't work as well. Maybe if he hired aggressively or borrowed people from Tesla somehow he could make a good Android phone, but I don't see why anyone would buy it. I actually thought that by now we wouldn't really be bothering with apps so much, and computers would be more like the one on Star Trek. I don't think Musk could just toss that together any time soon though, haha.

willmadden 4y ago
People won't buy it because it has a fifth vestigial camera or whatever the latest gimmick is. Smart phones are a commodity at this point. They'll buy it because 1) they don't want transnational ESG digital hall monitors spying on them and curating what apps they can install, and 2) it would have global cell coverage. That's more than enough to compete with Google and Apple at this point. People are fed up, I think you underestimate just how many people.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  There's no way he'll be able to get global cell coverage IMO. Even if he pulled it off, that's a feature for fancy rich people. Most people don't travel regularly. I don't think the privacy angle is going to help at all either. If anyone actually cared about privacy or control we'd all be using the same weird open source pocket computer as Stallman. That said, I wish him the best of luck