Mozilla Partners Up With LG To Combat Apple and Google 163
MrSeb writes "At Mobile World Congress, which begins in three days, Mozilla will finally take the wraps off the Mozilla Marketplace and allow developers to submit their open web technology (HTML5, JavaScript, CSS) apps. While the Marketplace will play an important role in keeping Firefox in step with Chrome, these apps will actually play a far more important role: Boot to Gecko (B2G), Mozilla's upcoming smartphone and tablet OS, will also use the Marketplace. For B2G to succeed it must have apps, and to create apps you need developers. That's why, at MWC, according to a source close to the matter, Mozilla will also be announcing that it has partnered up with LG to make a developer-oriented B2G-powered mobile device. Even more interestingly, Brendan Eich, Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer, says that it will unveil other partners at MWC as well — probably carriers, who are eager to use the open B2G and its Marketplace to escape the huge control that Apple and Google currently exert in the smartphone space."
I hope this is true opensource. (Score:3)
Dear Mozilla,
I have been a tester from mozilla M18.
I hope this is true opensource and a good product.
Sincerely,
I hope it's actually something that makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope it makes sense and is well done. I guess the sign of it becoming real is when google applauds it at the same time as apple/microsoft sue Mozilla. So, 6 months? Again, how it is designed is going to be important. Anyone can clone the whole smartphone layout as it exists but they're going to need to do something *different* for it to be worthwhile.
I should also point out that apple and google are considered competition, but Microsoft is not (as microsoft is not relevant in the smartphone market). Quite a telling point.
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Google probably will applaud it publicly but this is absolutely a big threat to Android. Google has been paying lip service to "open" claims for a long time while Android becomes more & more proprietary. It has never been developed in the open, which has been a sticking point for many since its inception.
So now we have B2G and WebOS, two truly open OSes
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Google probably will applaud it publicly but this is absolutely a big threat to Android.
It's mainly a big threat to hubris, arrogance and certain nascent elements of evil at Google. Hard to complain about that.
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Now Google and Apple are oppressing us. What a joke.
No joke. In the end, the customer is king.
Barcode scanner app (Score:3)
Re:Barcode scanner app (Score:5, Informative)
Mozilla is building a WebAPI open standard along with B2G so you can access hardware from html / javascript. Check this out http://arewemobileyet.com/
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Good luck decoding barcodes from images in real time with Javascript.
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It's just feels wrong to watch the growing fragmentation in browser-based web technologies.
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Let's just add inline asm to JavaScript and we're good to go.
Yes. Or magic pixie dust.
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I have no idea how well that nudity detector works. But the demo is taking about 4 seconds to process a frame on my laptop. Realtime would would process 25-60 frames per second. Your example Javascript app is at least 100 times too slow to be real time.
You just underlined my point.
And don't think scanning barcodes from video is an easier problem, unless you've tried it.
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You are not understanding my point and it looks like you are not paying attention to what the OP is saying.
It takes under a second for the sample images to be scanned on my machine. It's fast. It's pure client side HTML/JavaScript.
What are you not understanding? Analysing one frame per second is not real time for video. Analysing 25-60 frames a second is real time.
If you look on the same page that I linked to then you will see that it can also process video in JavaScript doing the same checks.
Aagin, what are you not understanding? I ran the demo and it does about 1 analysis every 4 seconds. Far from real time.
Now, you might be prepared to throw away 100 to 200 frames for every frame you analyse when looking for porn. I don't know. But you can't do that for real time analysis of bar codes.
If you think analysing 1 frame every 1 to 4 seconds is good enough for rea
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Sorry didn't quite finish answering.
Further more, barcode scanning algorithms are plentiful and are not nearly as complex as other processing we are already doing in JavaScript.
Once again, not in real time. Do you understand what those words mean?
The bottom line is that a barcode scanner application is technically and practically possible.
You don't know what you are talking about. Real time analysis of video for barcodes is challenging for C. The only way it's going to be done in Javascript on a mobile device, is with a few more cycles around Moore's Law.
Now I'm not going to comment on the difficult
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Real time analysis of video for barcodes is challenging for C. The only way it's going to be done in Javascript on a mobile device, is with a few more cycles around Moore's Law.
I was under the impression that the existing Android barcode scanner app was written in pure Java, and that both Java and JavaScript were running in a JIT VM nowadays.
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At the risk of repeating myself, the question is not whether you can decode a barcode using Javascript. It's whether you can do it fast enough to call it real-time. Unless you are analysing every frame of video, live, then it's not real-time.
I'm not an Android user, so I don't know specific barcode scanners. But a search on Android barcode scanning gave me this:
http://shopsavvy.mobi/developers/ [shopsavvy.mobi]
It promises to do bar code scanning on iOS and Android. On Android though, to get the speed up, they do some of th
20+ fps not needed (Score:2)
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You've been at a self service checkout? Scan your own grocery items. Sometimes you get a barcode and it won't get recognised. You need to straighten it out, hold it at various angles, etc. and then after a few seconds you've held it just right, and it gets recognised.
That's using laser scanning, hundreds of times per second. Laser means there's no focus issues. No fuzzy edges, except for if the barcode itself is badly printed.
With video, you're dealing with mostly out of focus images. And you need to try ma
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It's called w3c.
Excellent. So after about twenty years of political bickering and bureaucratic deadlock, we'll have a half-written standard for camera access whose capabilities will be twenty-five years out of date to what everyone will be actually using at the time and won't be adopted by anyone but the most frothing and hardcore of open-source zealots who will be in a constant state of bewilderment as to why nobody wants to adopt this new "standard"? I can't wait!
Re:Barcode scanner app (Score:5, Funny)
Flash can do that and more. Maybe HTML5?
Oh yay, another market place. Just what I wanted. Apps for my apps. Or apps for the plugins of my apps.
Re:Barcode scanner app (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Barcode scanner app (Score:5, Funny)
I can't stand incorrect usage of your/you're. Which pub are you going to? Perhaps we can meet up.
Re:Barcode scanner app (Score:4, Informative)
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I can't stand the term apps.
Why? It's just shorthand for "applications" and I, for one, prefer monosyllable words to multisyllable words (which I would have used just now if I could have thought of a synonym for "monosyllable").
Are you as annoyed by the word "docs" as well?
Re:Barcode scanner app (Score:5, Informative)
Device APIs are a key part of the B2G effort. Mozilla is making those APIs [mozilla.org] and getting them standardized [mozilla.org].
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Excel has teh functionality built inside it. You can with a Windows 8 tablet with a scanner hooked into the usb port
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well.. you would have api's. manufacturer specific at first, with manufacturer specific bugs. oh wait that's where html5&css apps on mobiles have been for years.
in this regard LG would be creating javascript api's to access those devices, just like samsung already did..
http://developer.bada.com/help_2.0/topic/com.osp.webapireference.help/symbols/WAC.Camera.html [bada.com]
for nokias I couldn't find a camera api off the bat(it might not exist, I don't remember seeing it anyhow), but this is where that would be anywa
Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
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What's with the new share link next to the "Reply to This"?
It now hides the obnoxious twitter / facebook / whatever things unless you click on the link. It's not as good as simply not having them at all, but it's better than having them visible on every post.
Well, there's a new marketplace (Score:5, Funny)
I think a company announcing they're NOT doing a marketplace would probably get bigger headlines these days.
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How about a marketplace that efficiently clears?
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Just wait until I launch my Marketplace Marketplace, where you can browse for Marketplaces through one streamlined, friendly interface.
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that's pure genius! many mods for you!
Winner, winner chicken dinner (Score:2)
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I think a company announcing they're NOT doing a marketplace would probably get bigger headlines these days.
SCO, a well-know leader in the software field, is just about to announce theirs. They only have one app so far, and it costs $699.00.
Wish (Score:3)
I just wish I could open up a wormhole, and send this headline to the version of myself who existed 10 years ago. That would be one confused sonofa...
App providers can pull apps (Score:2)
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Why on earth would we need marketplace for AppCache Apps?
To give developers a way to feed their families while developing applications.
You simply navigate to the site and cache whatever the manifest says
But if you use the application while online and the browser discovers that the application has been deleted from the site, then the application ends up deleted from your device.
upto the AppCache size is limit
Which poses problems for games, which might quickly exceed a limit of 5 MB per origin.
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Do you have an iphone, an iPad or Android device?
I don't own an Android phone or an iPhone because smartphones cost a hefty chunk of change per month.
A native app
The article is about an alternative to native apps. Native apps can use only the Web Storage API, which is likewise limited to a quota that is as small as 5 MB on some devices.
I suspect you've never done mobile development
You suspect correctly.
and therefor don't understand the supreme advantages over native apps vs limited browser sandbox apps.
The big disadvantage of native apps is more difficult deployment. With iOS, you have to pay just for your beta testers to be able to run your pre-release app on their devices. And then you have to get the app and
Free and Fragmented? (Score:2)
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They do install crapware that can't be deleted by normal means (like the Sprint only apps like Sprint NASCAR, or Sprint TV), you either have to root it or install another flavor of Android to get rid of it, not something a lot of people feel comfortable with. And I know of someone that has to routinely go through the "delete all exercise" when his cheapie Android phone resets itself, reinstalls all of the crapware by default (the kind that can be deleted by normal means) and takes up all of the storage spac
I think it's more accurate to say... (Score:4, Interesting)
Mozilla has found another source of income in addition to Google. With LG's money, Mozilla will be able to add features that counter Chrome's increased share in the browser marketplace. I assume FirefoxOS will counter ChromeOS and webOS more than Android and iOS.
Wether or not this adversely affects Mozilla's ability to increase user satisfaction with FireFox being used as a browser remains to be seen. I hope and wish them the best, but am concerned that they will lose focus on their core product which should be a web browser people would actually like to use (or in my case continue to use).
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Actually, the bookmark syncing between your desktop(s) and mobile devices is a great browser feature. Firefox navigation on Android is way superior to the stock browser, too. The only thing currently missing is Flash - it was scheduled to happen in Q1 this year. If they manage to do that, I'll use Firefox exclusively on my Android phone.
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I disagree; ChromeOS is dead, it has been superseded by Android, particularly after the launch of the Transformer and now Chrome itself [telegraph.co.uk]. Sergey Brin had already said in 2009 that the two would likely converge at some point in the future and in my opinion, that's mostly done.
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After I elliminated ChromeOS as a possible competitor, I just found that ChromeOS is being updated soon to solve a WiFi problem, Samsung is still pushing the newest Chromebook, and there are features being developed in the dev and beta branches of the OS. Apparently ChromeOS and Chrome share much of the same source code (makes sense).
Anyway I place ChromeOS back in the arena.
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Mozilla's core product should be (and is) a free and open web.
In 2004 that meant a web browser. And perhaps more to the point, that was all Mozilla had the resources to do at the time.
Today that's not enough. And, importantly, it's been done. Users have a pretty wide choice of web browsers. Improving Firefox is still important, but is no longer sufficient. In fact, overfocus (needed at the time due to resource constraints) on Firefox in the past has led to some of the issues that Mozilla is now facing
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)
Windows Phone 7 is peering through a window to watch the fight, eyes welling with tears.
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And when you get home (Score:1)
Your tablet will be out of date
LG? (Score:2)
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I have to agree with this. The last LG phone I owned was back in 2003. It was a horrible piece of crap. I was so happy to get a new phone, I took the old LG out in the back yard and smashed it to bits ala Office Space. It is the last LG product I will ever own.
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Same here. I owned exactly ONE LG product, a phone, around 2005ish. Piece of shit crashed often, the screen would display backwards or upside down, all sorts of crazy stuff like that. I sent it back under warrantee and the new one was even worse. I think they were running Windows 3.1 on it...
And? (Score:2)
I have heard of old people and REALLY poor people using LG phones because they're cheap. The old people don't want the gadget phones and LG makes some with big buttons. The poor people just want a phone and you couldn't just reach into the telephone recycling boxes in the past, so you bought an LG.
Wait a minute . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, am I right in thinking this will give carriers more control over my phone?
From TFA, "Basically, Apple and Google have so much control over the smartphone landscape that carriers have effectively become nothing more than retailers. Worse than that, their infrastructures have been reduced to that of a dumb pipe, where it is Apple and Google who ultimately decide how the network will be used."
I don't know about other countries, but the last thing I would ever do in the US is give a mobile carrier more control over my phone. It that is the case, I'll pass.
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That's exactly the point, but not really the way you're thinking. TFA says that Apple and Google basically control, more or less, how the phones using their OSes are used. Mozilla doesn't want to give carriers more control over your data or freedom. Rather, they want to give carriers more freedom to make something unique that can give them a potential advantage over competitors. Whether or not a carrier will use that to allow an open device is besides the point.
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going with a platform locked to html5 apps is not a path to freedom.
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They're a non-profit company trying to find other revenue streams than Google, especially since Google is now a heavy hitter in their current primary arena. By latching on to hardware manufactures and pipe maintainers for revenue they can create a product that allows those entities more leverage in a space that is currently dominated by interests whose only real interest is keeping you in their walled garden so that they can mine your data.
There is a potential that pipe maintainers, using their new found in
Geeks can be amusing (Score:2)
Compete not Combat (Score:2)
Look LG & Moz aren't doing this to fight some evil in the world. They are doing this because they have a product (and/or services) they want to sell. I am not saying this isn't a good thing, but this is good old fashioned competition, not a holy quest.
Huh? (Score:2)
You're saying they have a product. I see it more as not having a product and slapping some shit together hoping what they poop out will become a product.
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But again, that is Competing not Combating. I am complaining about the strange word choice. Nothing you said casts the events in a way that justifies the word.
Boot 2 Gecko (Score:2)
Will it also save you 15% on your car insurance?
Re:too bad i switched to chrome....... (Score:5, Interesting)
Give me a call when Chrome has NoScript and isn't developed by a company that has grown notorious for its privacy issues, user web tracking, and targeted ads.
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NoScript is not that big of a deal as it once was. It was mainly used for XSS filtering and cross domain scripting protection. All the major browsers do this by default now in their javacript engines and security features without it.
I used to install NoScript and simply disabled it, which left it open to run AJAX but blocked global cross domain scripting. Now I do not need to do this.
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No doubt. I would switch in a second if it wasn't for that. Firefox is so tedious though. It crashes once a day on my computer (apparently it's some problem specific to this type of laptop graphics card driver on Windows 7). Nonetheless all the other browsers seem to work without crashing...
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I accidentely modded you down...
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they hacked my safari to steal my data against my explicit decisions for them not to do so.
Google "hacked" Safari? I'm intrigued. Please explain.
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you asked for examples of goog privacy violations. there you go. my safari was set (by me) for a specific privacy setting, but goog exploited HTML hacks to get around this setting.
Can you explain in more detail what exactly Google did?
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lmgtfy http://bit.ly/AwgQMK [bit.ly]
I knew what you were referring to... my suspicion is that you don't.
Were you logged into a Google account? Because if you weren't, then Google didn't do anything.
If you were, then Google worked around the Safari restriction to show you what you had asked to be shown. The degree of "invasion of privacy" is really debatable here. You had basically expressed two opposing requests, one to Safari and one to Google. Google fulfilled your request to Google in spite of the fact that you'd given opposite inf
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I agree that given conflicting requests, the best thing to do is to respect the most conservative. Even better would be to find some way to highlight to the user that Google's +1 button isn't going to work properly on various sites because of the Safari privacy setting so the user understands the nature of their choice and can make an appropriate decision.
I think this situation was the result of a decision to follow the lead of Facebook, which is clearly not what Google should be doing, but it's somewhat
Re:too bad i switched to chrome....... (Score:5, Informative)
same here, but then I switched back sometime around FF10. Much happier with it than back in the 3.x days. I now go back and forth without much concern.
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Does it still freezes up every few seconds? I know it uses less resources.
Even IE 8 is feels faster and more responsive than FF 3.6. FF had some bad releases
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Not as often as your grammar checker does.
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Yes because One year is such a short time in software developement nowadays...
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Apparently you can't be touched by irony and/or you don't like making sense.
I meant to say (to be clear) that 12 months is a very long time considering how fast browser tech advances nowadays, which you seemed to disagree with, but you provided a example that was 100% backing my view.
So Again : FF 3.6 OLD SLOW BAD. FF10 NEW FAST GOOD. Got it ?
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Could be time to switch back for the same reasons.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/macbook-air-chrome-16-firefox-9-benchmark,3108-18.html [tomshardware.com]
Re:too bad i switched to chrome....... (Score:5, Informative)
When did you last use FF ? v3.5 ?
I use both right now, on win7, Linux Mint and CrunchBang. My FF always has 20-30 tabs opened, it's my main browser, I only use Chrome when have no browser opened and I don't want to wait for FF to start with my 30 opened tabs.
Based on my experience, FF 10 isn't bloated at all. It's as fast as Chrome and has way more useful plugins.
On an unrelated note I trust mozilla a gazillion times more than I trust google.
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My FF always has 20-30 tabs opened
What size and resolution is (are) your monitor(s)? Is it usable, or do you have to [ctrl]+[tab] between all your tabs so much that by the time you get the tab you want, the day is over?
Besides this, I HAVE TO use FF10 for work, and it is a pity to start it up in the morning. Takes so long that I have time to grab a coffee. Otherwise, it's pretty fast for browsing once it's started.
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Dude, you need grouped, colored tabs on the side instead of the top. Like the parent, I always have 20+ tabs open, often peaking at 80+ when doing research. (E.g. open children from a search - those tabs now in a collapsible group. repeat.) And yes, I ctrl+tab a lot for switching back and forth between a small subset of tabs.
Use this for 3.6.x : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-kit/ [mozilla.org]
This for 4.x+ : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabkit-2nd-edition/ [mozilla.org] (not nearly as feature co
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On my laptop (Core 2 duo P8600, 2GB RAM, aka crap) FF10 with a fresh session (0 tabs) opens in a little under 2.5 seconds under win7.
So either you run pretty fast, or your PC is full of bloatware/very slow.
Then again that would be so surprising, the same laptop boots to CATIA V5 in less than 10 seconds, but it takes my university's Quad Core XEON with 16GB RAM over a minute to start the same application.
Also to consider, when you see the desktop screen of win7, the boot process isn't
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I love you.
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Right now, it often requires 1GB of RAM dedicated to Firefox with Firebug running -- and that with only one page open!
Dude, you have something wrong with your computer. I watch TV on mine, in Flash, fullscreen, with three more tabs open with radio stations ready to play (also in flash) while ripping a CD and copying files from the notebook -- and it's only got 750 megs of memory.
Are you using Windows? That may be your problem right there. Kubuntu runs FireFox just fine with no problems at all. Try a differe
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Well he is right. ... however he fails to mention all browsers will use a gig of ram when running Firebug or some intense developing app with loads of jquery or some bloated ajax library.
Responsive wise for kicks I installed and played with FF 3.6 from last year. WOW, is it a dog compared to IE 8, IE 9, Chrome, and future versions of itself. Smooth and faster scrolling and less bloat have helped in later releases. I am still not running the later versions of FF as I do not trust htem nor agree with Asa's re
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The important thing is the Internet, not the Web. As long as we have interconnected networks, everybody can use them for whatever they like, be it the HTTP protocol or some other alternative.
Only if "there's an app for that".
Second, the usability of the web apps simply sucks, because the web wasn't designed for them.
It wasn't designed to let you read emails, view videos, listen to music, consult maps, play games, talk to your friends, buy books, either.
But since it was designed to be open and extensible, it was improved over the years and now you can do all that stuff pretty well. Can't see why this process of extension and improvement should be halted now, and left to proprietary architectures.
My Windows 8 Tablet runs them all (Score:2)
How about a device which runs them all and if you need one, run that one. If you need another, run the other instead.
Oh.... sorry. Forgot, these days we're support to have some sort of compatibility between browsers by using standards and stuff. But still.. my tablet run Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OS X or a pile of other
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FYI, some "apps" are just customized web browsers restricted to a custom web site and only are presented to look like a native app. They still waste considerable resources; simply putting a bookmark to an "optimized" website would be better.
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Lately? (Score:2)
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Apple wasn't doing great at that time, but they had 6 billion in the bank from what I recall.
What really saved Apple, was the return of that **** Jobs. He killed the clones off ( Which would have been the death of Apple outside of software. ) and focused completely on consumers for the first few years of his return;
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