Mozilla Document Shows Firefox OS Tablet, TV Stick, Router, Keyboard Computer 78
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month, Mozilla announced that Firefox OS smartphones would no longer be sold via carriers. Because the company refused to talk about what's next for Firefox OS, aside from saying it will experiment with "connected devices," many were left simply to speculate as to what could be in the pipeline. Today, we have a leaked document, which Mozilla confirmed is legitimate. My favorite of the concepts is a Raspberry Pi-based keyboard.
Keyboard computer (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all reverting back to what we had decades ago with the Commodore 64, Color Computer 2, Atari ST, Amiga 500, etc.
Re: (Score:1)
Brendan Eich had a lot worse stuff that was about to come to light. Mozilla let him get out of there with a cover story.
Not Understanding (Score:1)
Why is Mozilla branching out to these markets? They don't seem to jive with the company's primary products and since they don't really sell anything, that's a big deal.
Re: (Score:3)
And which products do you think are Mozilla's core? Their browser which has a steeply declining market share? If they don't branch out to something else, they're going to close up.
Re: (Score:3)
How about making their core product suck less instead of more, so it stops declining in market share? (I say this as someone who is still using FF as my primary browser, as I personally think it sucks the least of the available options... but for the past couple years, every version closes that gap just a little bit more...)
Re:Not Understanding (Score:4, Interesting)
And that's mostly because most Android users just use the default Chrome installed and do not know any better or just don't care.
You will notice Safari usage increasing as well during the increase of mobile usage.
Mozilla has lost its way. (Score:2, Troll)
I'm sorry, but I installed Firefox on my phone just to have browser options and support Open Source, but it sucked so bad, I knew I would never use it, and was afraid its extreme suction would implode my phone. Thus I uninstalled it.
Mozilla has lost its way.
Branching out has only made things worse for them! (Score:1)
Mozilla's core is made up of whatever products have the most users. Traditionally, that has been Firefox and Thunderbird, with Bugzilla a distant third.
Bugzilla is ancient history now.
Mozilla has basically tossed Thunderbird into the trash.
So all they really have left is Firefox. Yes, Firefox's share of the market is dropping, but it's because of what Mozilla has done to it, and to its users, for several years now.
They've made one fucking dumb change to Firefox after another, again and again.
The dwindling n
Re: (Score:2)
They've made one fucking dumb change to Firefox after another, again and again. The dwindling number of remaining Firefox users scream out in pain, yelling, "NO! DON'T DO THAT! WE DON'T WANT THAT!", yet Mozilla goes ahead and does it anyway.
So true, sigh.
Borrowing a line from Blackadder, I've been longing to send the following telegram:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Firefox Phone, the only phone less popular than Windows Phone.
So unpopular, even Firefox abandoned it! Mozilla's problem is that they went from innovation to copying everything in sight. Chrome looks a certain way - gotta copy it. Everyone else is coming out with their own OS - Mozilla needs it's own as well. Others are inventing languages - we gotta do that too.
Seriously, routers? Not gonna happen - too much competition, and Firefox would have to farm out the design and manufacturing anyway. Keyboard Raspberry Pi? Niche product at best, with no margins. Firestick? W
Re: (Score:2)
Not true! Windows Phone beat Sailfish and BB10. Not that that is anything to brag about.
Re: Not Understanding (Score:2)
They're doing well so far. Using Ubuntu Math, FirefoxOS already has over a billion users. This lags behind the 6.5 billion Firefox users, but it's a good start.
Just when I thought Mozilla had hit rock bottom.. (Score:2, Insightful)
More shit no one wants...
Re: (Score:2)
I think a lot of people would like to get one of those Raspberry Pi keyboard computer.
I'm not saying they'd stay with Mozilla OS though, but the hardware would certainly sell.
Re: (Score:2)
But...well....hmm...darn...
Wish AC was incorrect.... But seriously who is steering this company now? Capt. Peter âoeWrong Wayâ Peachfuzz?
Re: (Score:1)
Even I couldn't mess up this bad.. :)
An idea for Mozilla... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always wanted a lightweight browser with fast JS and page rendering, good memory management, and a well audited code base. Maybe Mozilla can work on something like this?
Re: (Score:2)
Modern browsers are staggeringly complex beasts. Video, Audio, Applications, storage. You name it. Don't ask how well the bear dances, it's impressive that it dances at all.
How cross-platform are native applications? (Score:2)
If I want to use an application, I want to use a real desktop application!
How are you going to do that if the desktop application that you want to use happens not to be ported to the operating system that runs on your device? The advantage of web applications is that one application can run on a Windows PC running Edge, a Mac or iPad running Safari, an GNU/Linux PC running Firefox, an Android tablet running Chrome, or even a PlayStation or Nintendo device running NetFront. Good luck even becoming an authorized developer on all those platforms, let alone porting your app and getti
Not everyone owns a Mac + Parallels + Windows (Score:2)
You appear to have replaced your computer with a Mac (starting at $500 from Apple.com) and bought a copy of Parallels Desktop ($80 from Parallels.com) and a copy of Windows ($200 from Microsoft Store) for this Mac in order to be able to run all native apps. But you and others who chose to spend upwards of $780 on a Mac + Parallels + retail Windows are in the minority. Native apps are superior only for this minority case who doesn't have to worry about application platform incompatibility. The rest of us do
Re: (Score:2)
So they choose a stupid solution (web apps) instead of the best solution (native Mac apps).
Very few websites can charge their subscribers or advertisers enough to buy a Mac for each visitor.
Re: (Score:2)
For one thing, sometimes i argue different positions [wikipedia.org] in comments to different stories to prevent the discussion from becoming an echo chamber [wikipedia.org].
For another, only the developer has to have the Mac, Parallels, and Windows, not all users. If you write a native app for Mac, all your users will have to buy a Mac, and unless they were already using a Mac, they'll likely have to buy Parallels and Windows in order to keep running their existing native apps. But if you write a web app, users will be able to run it no
Users per unit of developer effort (Score:2)
They're not your users in the first place if the application doesn't run on their system.
What good is an application without users?
So as we continue to clarify the metrics that a developer may consider optimizing, let me rephrase: The potential number of users that can be reached per unit of developer effort is greater with web apps than with native apps.
Re: (Score:2)
Who said the application ran on no platforms and had no users?
I didn't mean literally no users as much as an insignificant number of users compared to the number of users that would be possible with a web application.
Prove it.
Native apps from "garage" developers: zero users on Wii U. Web apps from "garage" developers: greater than zero users on Wii U. Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo has said in the past that the company doesn't want amateur developers on its platform, that developers working in a "garage" exhibit negative qualities associated with contestants on American Idol [wired.com]. T
Re: (Score:2)
You're not genuinely trying to argue that the Wii U is a significant application platform, are you?
I'm using it and other set-top devices as an extreme example from which to argue inward.
You haven't provided evidence for your claim that web development with all its current limitations, with all the vagaries of differences between browsers is more efficient or productive than native cross platform application development.
Here's some evidence, albeit imperfect: Why did Stack Overflow the web app precede Stack Overflow the native app? Why is there still not an official native app for participating in discussions on Slashdot? And even if there were day-one native apps, it's often easier for a user to gain permission from the administrator of the computer he is using to use a web application than to install a native application.
Welcome to professional development. And as you said yourself it's the same deal for web development. What, you got your Wii U for free in a box of cereal or something?
One can test
Re: (Score:2)
You know that Chrome can do all that, too? An operating system that even has their own OS...
If Firefox is bloated, then so is the competition.
And they said Thunderbird was a distraction? (Score:2)
These are the assholes who said that maintaining the only good GUI open source mail client was a distraction / waste of time.
Now we find out they're working on half a dozen hardware projects? And an entire goddamn OS?
Step up their game (Score:2)
Mozilla needs to step up their game.
The smartphone situation wasn't much of a success because they did it backwards in my opinion. I understand where they were coming from, and it was noble indeed (if you don't follow, they started selling "affordable" phones in developing countries). If they had gone the other way and shot for the moon and announced a superphone in North America, and did a good job of it, they would be in a better position today in my opinion.
In my experience people want the best specs for
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Performance wasn't an issue for me on their developer phone, the Flame. (dual core Cortex A7 with 1GB RAM)
So I would imagine it would be quite swift with the specs you crave. Unfortunately it was only ever marketed to developing world markets to compete with 'burner' feature phones and with some really underpowered hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
I did have a Gingerbread 2.3.x phone and I'd prefer the Mozilla experience any day.
But I suspect, oh Anonymous Coward, that you've never tried Firefox OS 2.5
Re: Step up their game (Score:2)
What I am saying is the general population wants impressive specs so they can brag to their friends about how awesome their phone is. People like my older brother who will spend 3x more on a phone to have one marginally better than mine, even though they will /never/ utilize the device to the fullest.
This is the market Samsung markets to with their S-line of phones. This strategy works because they shove their marketing babble down your throat at every possibility.
If Mozilla was serious about breaking into
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla needs to step up their game. The smartphone situation wasn't much of a success because they did it backwards in my opinion. I understand where they were coming from, and it was noble indeed (if you don't follow, they started selling "affordable" phones in developing countries). If they had gone the other way and shot for the moon and announced a superphone in North America, and did a good job of it, they would be in a better position today in my opinion.
How many iterations of Android did that take Google? FirefoxOS 1.0 was competing against Android 4.2.2, after almost five years of user feedback and continuous improvements. Actually, they need to step down their game and stop believing they can wave the magic open source wand to compete with the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft. The only reason they beat Microsoft once is that IE6 was intentionally kept archaic and broken to stall the development of web apps. Firefox would have had a hard enough time j
Re: Happy so far with Pale Moon (Score:2)
Until it diverges even further from Firefox, making it less accepted on the web, have fewer and fewer extensions, and die entirely in any practical sense.
I used to love Pale Moon. On a philosophical level I still do. But it's just Moonchild and a few others. The real heavy lifting has been the Firefox code base, with Moonchild et al just extending, tweaking, reverting, and removing some of it.
No, it's not just a clone of Firefox, but it's nowhere near the complete standalone project that PM fans seem to bel
Re: Happy so far with Pale Moon (Score:2)
Nope, haven't missed the point at all. I made it clear I like what Pale Moon was, and still is, but that Pale Moon's policies make it near-impossible for PM to thrive on its own.
I did so in a reply to someone saying they were switching to PM on all their PCs, as a warning to why that wasn't going to be a long-term successful strategy.
I agree there is a great browser still somewhere inside Mozilla-originated Firefox, even though that greatness is not within Mozilla itself anymore. But Pale Moon, as good a Fi
Re: Happy so far with Pale Moon (Score:2)
I'm obviously totally writing off any possibility of Mozilla itself ever coming to their senses. Too far gone. It ain't happening within that broken organization.
Previous HDMI stick attempt (Score:1)
Seeing the conceptional models... (Score:2)
Seeing the conceptional models... given their coloring and font, it's pretty clear that Mozilla is aiming to be acquired by Tonka.