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Canoical has made the same mistakes Microsoft did by branding their phone and tablet OS "Ubuntu"... It hurt Ubuntu desktop in the process with Unity. Convergen

Canoical has made the same mistakes Microsoft did by branding their phone and tablet OS "Ubuntu"... It hurt Ubuntu desktop in the process with Unity. Convergence might be the future, but the breakpoints in usability and public imagination just haven't been hit yet. I think Android and iOS have a better opportunity to scale up and meet desktop needs without alienating users than Windows explorer, Gnome 2.0 or KDE have to scale down and take over mobile while keeping true to their core UI patterns.

georgemcbay 13y ago
I don't agree that either the Windows or Ubuntu names are really a negative for the phone brands offered by each. I do think the phone OS market is a tough nut to crack given the extremely wide penetration of iOS and Android, but that persists regardless of OS name. You could call Windows Phone anything you want and it still has all of the same problems with lack of apps, lack of widespread handset maker support, etc, same with Ubuntu Mobile. I'm personally still excited about the idea of Ubuntu Mobile, but I never had an interest in the Edge because I just don't think the crowdfunding model works in the phone space. I have less than zero interest in paying $830 (or even the early $625 price) and receiving a phone a year from now that has very vaguely defined specs at the time I'm paying for it. But when Ubuntu Mobile is more fully baked I'll give it a lengthy try out as my "daily driver" on my existing Nexus 4 (or whatever I may have after the N4 that is also supported, depending upon time frame).
- Alterlife 13y ago
  I don't think that the desktop brand is a negative for the phone. They made compromises to the desktop UI to meet mobile demands in the name of 'convergence' -- justifying the use of the same brand... but as a result, UI experience has suffered on both form factors.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    Ah, yes, I misunderstood the point you were making, sorry. I would agree that the compromises they made for their desktop versions are a negative, at least in the way they did them. They could support both models fairly well (eg. in Microsoft's case with a few tweaks to bring back the proper start-menu and an option to just not see the metro screen for desktop users who really don't want it), but both seem to have adopted the modern "Apple" style of making things as simple as possible with no option for advanced usages, which I think is a mistake lots of companies (including Google) are making these days. The value to me of old Google products, old Microsoft products, and older Ubuntu (which lives on in other Linux distros) was precisely that they weren't Apple-esque in terms of dictating to me how I'm supposed to use it for the sake of ultra simplicity. Now that they are attempting to be Apple-esque they are losing the hearts and minds of people like me, and not gaining much with the other group (AFAICT), because no matter how bad they try to be Apple, Apple is still a much better Apple than they are.
zanny 13y ago
KDE already has a mobile platform: http://plasma-active.org/ http://plasma-active.org/ It is still in development, but the entirety of the plasma development framework is around fixed size apps that on the desktop occupy popups from a widget bar and on mobile run as full applications. Additionally, qt makes it very easy to develop for mobile since it uses a plugin based native toolkit system that skins your app according to the ui conventions of the target. A qtquick 2.1 app on Android looks Holo, on Windows looks Aero, on OSX looks Cocoa, etc. That is probably the reason Canonical picked qt for its sdk. It is very easy in modern qt paradigms to have a qml app that self-manages its scale based on screen size - physical dimensions, that is - so you can have your interface shift to "mobile mode" when the display it is rendered on is smaller than, say, 11" in size, and runs in a window with mouse / keyboard UX above that.
venomsnake 13y ago
How exactly they can meet desktop needs? Android apps are not good at talking to each other and using each other api-s, they are sandboxed. From what I know iOS is the same.
- realrocker 13y ago
  Incorrect. Android Apps talk to each other nbrilliantly usi ng Content provider, Intents and Broadcasts
toble 13y ago
Microsoft's problem was they used the Windows brand on a product that didn't support most Windows' programs. On Linux it's a different matter because there's decades of support for different types of CPUs.

georgemcbay 13y ago

I don't agree that either the Windows or Ubuntu names are really a negative for the phone brands offered by each. I do think the phone OS market is a tough nut to crack given the extremely wide penetration of iOS and Android, but that persists regardless of OS name. You could call Windows Phone anything you want and it still has all of the same problems with lack of apps, lack of widespread handset maker support, etc, same with Ubuntu Mobile. I'm personally still excited about the idea of Ubuntu Mobile, but I never had an interest in the Edge because I just don't think the crowdfunding model works in the phone space. I have less than zero interest in paying $830 (or even the early $625 price) and receiving a phone a year from now that has very vaguely defined specs at the time I'm paying for it. But when Ubuntu Mobile is more fully baked I'll give it a lengthy try out as my "daily driver" on my existing Nexus 4 (or whatever I may have after the N4 that is also supported, depending upon time frame).

Alterlife 13y ago
I don't think that the desktop brand is a negative for the phone. They made compromises to the desktop UI to meet mobile demands in the name of 'convergence' -- justifying the use of the same brand... but as a result, UI experience has suffered on both form factors.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Ah, yes, I misunderstood the point you were making, sorry. I would agree that the compromises they made for their desktop versions are a negative, at least in the way they did them. They could support both models fairly well (eg. in Microsoft's case with a few tweaks to bring back the proper start-menu and an option to just not see the metro screen for desktop users who really don't want it), but both seem to have adopted the modern "Apple" style of making things as simple as possible with no option for advanced usages, which I think is a mistake lots of companies (including Google) are making these days. The value to me of old Google products, old Microsoft products, and older Ubuntu (which lives on in other Linux distros) was precisely that they weren't Apple-esque in terms of dictating to me how I'm supposed to use it for the sake of ultra simplicity. Now that they are attempting to be Apple-esque they are losing the hearts and minds of people like me, and not gaining much with the other group (AFAICT), because no matter how bad they try to be Apple, Apple is still a much better Apple than they are.

zanny 13y ago

KDE already has a mobile platform: http://plasma-active.org/ http://plasma-active.org/ It is still in development, but the entirety of the plasma development framework is around fixed size apps that on the desktop occupy popups from a widget bar and on mobile run as full applications. Additionally, qt makes it very easy to develop for mobile since it uses a plugin based native toolkit system that skins your app according to the ui conventions of the target. A qtquick 2.1 app on Android looks Holo, on Windows looks Aero, on OSX looks Cocoa, etc. That is probably the reason Canonical picked qt for its sdk. It is very easy in modern qt paradigms to have a qml app that self-manages its scale based on screen size - physical dimensions, that is - so you can have your interface shift to "mobile mode" when the display it is rendered on is smaller than, say, 11" in size, and runs in a window with mouse / keyboard UX above that.

venomsnake 13y ago

How exactly they can meet desktop needs? Android apps are not good at talking to each other and using each other api-s, they are sandboxed. From what I know iOS is the same.

realrocker 13y ago
Incorrect. Android Apps talk to each other nbrilliantly usi ng Content provider, Intents and Broadcasts

toble 13y ago

Microsoft's problem was they used the Windows brand on a product that didn't support most Windows' programs. On Linux it's a different matter because there's decades of support for different types of CPUs.