4 ms·

We've made major strides since Firefox OS 1.0, but even with everything we think we can do there, a $25 phone is not going to feel like what you're used to. No

We've made major strides since Firefox OS 1.0, but even with everything we think we can do there, a $25 phone is not going to feel like what you're used to. No one is claiming that it will. To understand why that's OK, imagine that you gave up your hero phone and spent a couple of years using a $50 feature phone over 2.5G. And then picked up a Firefox OS smartphone for about $25 and compared them. We can and will beat the feature phone experience for billions of people who are or will soon be ready to make the leap from feature phones to smartphones and who won't be served by the high cost of iOS and Android devices. They will have access to a comfortable phone with real web browsing, popular apps, an onscreen keyboard, cameras, notifications, etc, and if we're effective, a great experience that's affordable enough to help them move to this modern online era well before they otherwise might have. While the big guys are fighting over upgrades for the 4th and 5th generation smartphone users, we're figuring out how to get the next 4 billion people online with their first smartphone. Maybe we're crazy. I remember a lot of people telling us we were crazy to think we could dethrone Microsoft's browser monopoly. I'm an optimist. I think we're just crazy enough to pull it off. I think the world is counting on us.

Pacabel 13y ago
Users in richer nations upgrading to newer generations of Android and iOS devices has resulted in a huge number of used devices ending up in developing nations. These devices are extremely inexpensive, yet still quite capable. How are Firefox OS and these near-unusable devices supposed to compete with the imported used Android and iOS devices that are far more capable? When somebody in a developing nation can get a 2 or 3 year old device for $25, and it runs Android or iOS, and it gives a pretty good experience, I just don't see why they'd subject themselves to the comparatively poor experience of a equivalently priced Firefox OS device that gives a worse experience. And it wasn't Firefox that "dethroned Microsoft's browser monopoly". It was very clearly Chrome's doing, thanks to the 40%+ share of the market it now holds. Firefox played second fiddle, only ever capturing approximately 30% of the market at its peak. With Firefox likely accounting for less than 20% of all browser users today, it's even more apparent that Chrome is mostly responsible for IE's loss of popularity.
- nnethercote 13y ago
  Whoa. Let's not rewrite history. Firefox deserves all the credit it gets for resurrecting browser competition in the 2000s. To "dethrone a monopoly" you don't have to knock it down to less than 50% market share, you just need to reduce it enough that the monopoly has to react to competition again.
  - camus2 13y ago
    Yet these experiments like Firefox Os are exactly the reason why Mozilla is not what it used to be. And Firefox browser did not came out of the void neither, it wouldnt have existed without Netscape.
- asadotzler 13y ago
  If you'll read what I wrote more carefully, you'll notice that I didn't say Firefox dethroned Microsoft. What I wrote was that Mozilla dethroned Microsoft's browser monopoly. There's a significant difference. To your mostly off-topic point, I'll note that it was actually that toppling that made Chrome possible. Back in the day, the Firefox team included many the guys that would later go on to start Chrome. A couple years earlier Mozilla's team also included the guys that started Safari -- which, you'll remember, emulated Mozilla's rendering and asked for Gecko content in its UA. The other browser back then, Opera, took a different rout and emulated IE user agents and tried tackle most of the IE DOM in both core code and client JS hacks. Look where they are. Apple said "like Gecko" in Webkit's user agent and look how that turned out. That Safari and then Chrome could ship and most sites "just worked" for most users is not some accident. Google did some great work with Search back in those days, but they absolutely did not carve those Web standards paths or even pave those roads. That's what Mozilla spent 1998 to 2004 doing. We moved the Web to standards with our browser effort and made it possible for other players to come to market with a focus on features and performance confident that sites would mostly "just work." Mozilla isn't simply Firefox. When you confuse that as you did above, you miss the most important thing about Mozilla. We exist to improve online life for everyone, not just people using Mozilla products.
pjmlp 13y ago
How does Firefox OS perform against J2ME native applications in terms of performance?
4ad 13y ago
> We've made major strides since Firefox OS 1.0. Great, but I don't care. I still have 1.0 on the ZTE. Sure, it's the manufacturer that won't update it, but it's your fault that you don't force the manufacturer to update it. Yes, it's a socio-political problem, not a technical one, but it's your biggest problem right now and it needs to be solved. Android has this problem too, but at least some devices are kept up to date. > spent a couple of years using a $50 feature phone over 2.5G. And then picked up a Firefox OS smartphone for about $25 and compared them. Funny you mention that, because that's exactly what I did. I had a $50 feature phone. It made calls, it made SMS, it was easy to type using T9. It even had Opera mobile, which sucked; wow, how much that sucked, but I did use maps on it once to find my way. Point is, this dumbphone was very reliable and very easy to use. Now the ZTE open lags horribly even in the most basic usage. The touchscreen is so bad and the software response so slow it's really, really, really hard to type on it. It's way harder to use write an SMS compared to the old phone. Yes, it has a browser, it renders so slowly and lags so much that I will never use it. I'd say the browsing experience is roughly at the dumbphone level quality. Yes, it renders pages better but it takes 5 times as long and then you can't scroll because it takes two seconds for the page to start moving. The GPS won't work except in the widest of spaces, and the maps are so laggy and so slow, that I just gave up. This phone is a scam. You brag about the list of features and how this will enable billions of people to do whatever, but it's not true. It won't enable anything, hardware is just too slow. Please note I did't say anything about the software, which at least in 1.0 was horrible as well. I understand this is not a finished product and I accept the consequences, even if it means sometimes I can't make or answer calls. But this product will never work on low-end hardware.

Pacabel 13y ago

Users in richer nations upgrading to newer generations of Android and iOS devices has resulted in a huge number of used devices ending up in developing nations. These devices are extremely inexpensive, yet still quite capable. How are Firefox OS and these near-unusable devices supposed to compete with the imported used Android and iOS devices that are far more capable? When somebody in a developing nation can get a 2 or 3 year old device for $25, and it runs Android or iOS, and it gives a pretty good experience, I just don't see why they'd subject themselves to the comparatively poor experience of a equivalently priced Firefox OS device that gives a worse experience. And it wasn't Firefox that "dethroned Microsoft's browser monopoly". It was very clearly Chrome's doing, thanks to the 40%+ share of the market it now holds. Firefox played second fiddle, only ever capturing approximately 30% of the market at its peak. With Firefox likely accounting for less than 20% of all browser users today, it's even more apparent that Chrome is mostly responsible for IE's loss of popularity.

nnethercote 13y ago
Whoa. Let's not rewrite history. Firefox deserves all the credit it gets for resurrecting browser competition in the 2000s. To "dethrone a monopoly" you don't have to knock it down to less than 50% market share, you just need to reduce it enough that the monopoly has to react to competition again.
- camus2 13y ago
  Yet these experiments like Firefox Os are exactly the reason why Mozilla is not what it used to be. And Firefox browser did not came out of the void neither, it wouldnt have existed without Netscape.
asadotzler 13y ago
If you'll read what I wrote more carefully, you'll notice that I didn't say Firefox dethroned Microsoft. What I wrote was that Mozilla dethroned Microsoft's browser monopoly. There's a significant difference. To your mostly off-topic point, I'll note that it was actually that toppling that made Chrome possible. Back in the day, the Firefox team included many the guys that would later go on to start Chrome. A couple years earlier Mozilla's team also included the guys that started Safari -- which, you'll remember, emulated Mozilla's rendering and asked for Gecko content in its UA. The other browser back then, Opera, took a different rout and emulated IE user agents and tried tackle most of the IE DOM in both core code and client JS hacks. Look where they are. Apple said "like Gecko" in Webkit's user agent and look how that turned out. That Safari and then Chrome could ship and most sites "just worked" for most users is not some accident. Google did some great work with Search back in those days, but they absolutely did not carve those Web standards paths or even pave those roads. That's what Mozilla spent 1998 to 2004 doing. We moved the Web to standards with our browser effort and made it possible for other players to come to market with a focus on features and performance confident that sites would mostly "just work." Mozilla isn't simply Firefox. When you confuse that as you did above, you miss the most important thing about Mozilla. We exist to improve online life for everyone, not just people using Mozilla products.

pjmlp 13y ago

How does Firefox OS perform against J2ME native applications in terms of performance?

4ad 13y ago

> We've made major strides since Firefox OS 1.0. Great, but I don't care. I still have 1.0 on the ZTE. Sure, it's the manufacturer that won't update it, but it's your fault that you don't force the manufacturer to update it. Yes, it's a socio-political problem, not a technical one, but it's your biggest problem right now and it needs to be solved. Android has this problem too, but at least some devices are kept up to date. > spent a couple of years using a $50 feature phone over 2.5G. And then picked up a Firefox OS smartphone for about $25 and compared them. Funny you mention that, because that's exactly what I did. I had a $50 feature phone. It made calls, it made SMS, it was easy to type using T9. It even had Opera mobile, which sucked; wow, how much that sucked, but I did use maps on it once to find my way. Point is, this dumbphone was very reliable and very easy to use. Now the ZTE open lags horribly even in the most basic usage. The touchscreen is so bad and the software response so slow it's really, really, really hard to type on it. It's way harder to use write an SMS compared to the old phone. Yes, it has a browser, it renders so slowly and lags so much that I will never use it. I'd say the browsing experience is roughly at the dumbphone level quality. Yes, it renders pages better but it takes 5 times as long and then you can't scroll because it takes two seconds for the page to start moving. The GPS won't work except in the widest of spaces, and the maps are so laggy and so slow, that I just gave up. This phone is a scam. You brag about the list of features and how this will enable billions of people to do whatever, but it's not true. It won't enable anything, hardware is just too slow. Please note I did't say anything about the software, which at least in 1.0 was horrible as well. I understand this is not a finished product and I accept the consequences, even if it means sometimes I can't make or answer calls. But this product will never work on low-end hardware.