For those wondering, this is a successor of the Nokia/Intel MeeGo project which was sidelined a few years ago.
It's hard to see how yet another mobile OS will make traction. Perhaps the Android runtime will make it compatible enough that developer-types will use it.
How about rejecting a new thing because it lacks the backing necessary to succeed? Both Firefox OS and Ubuntu are backed by organisations with larger pockets, and Firefox at least has agreements with phone providers.
Sailfish has the backing of China's largest mobile phone retailer D.Phone Group, with 2000 stores and 150 million customers. That can be much more valuable to get the OS in the hands of real customers than a good brand name in other IT sectors.
I agree with you. Too bad HP did not. WebOS was really fantastic and just a bit ahead of its time performance wise. I feel like I'm one of the few users that "got it".
It is good to see another opensource OS step into the arena.
True, but there is an argument that could be made that mobile ecosystems have become heavily relient on a strong third party development community which is likely to be almost non-existent on a new OS. As well expectation have been raised as far as what a mobile OS does and the level of polish.
There is certainly things wrong with Android and iOS and I'm not saying that a new popular mobile OS is not possible but there are certainly a lot more challenges that need to be over come then even a couple years ago. I am pretty sure that Android and iOS v1 would not have been overly successful if they had been released into the mobile OS landscape that currently exists.
Current mobile ecosystems definitely have become heavily reliant on 3rd party apps. That doesn't mean it's the only way a mobile OS (or any OS) can succeed, nor does it imply that you need to hit a critical mass of app developers for it to be successful.
I think the Ubuntu phone will run regular Ubuntu apps and the Firefox OS treats web apps as first class citizens. Those two are leveraging pre-existing applications.
Aside from that, the only apps I use on my phone are the browser, google maps, and google voice. Who's to say the massive 3rd party application pool is even needed for an OS to really be successful? What if Sailfish just had very few really well-written and privacy-respecting apps that they sold for like $20?
I'm not disagreeing with the fact that taking a different approach to a mobile OS could be successful, simply that there is a certain expectation that people have about mobile and if you are not following that then you will have to convince people that this way is better.
Is this possible? of course, if its better it will win out. But this is definitely a hurdle that needs to be over come. Convincing people that they way they are use to is worse then an alternative is often a difficult task, especially for a device that pretty much never leaves someone's side. I even notice that people often have a lot of difficulty switching between Android and iOS if they have used one for a significant period of time, and most of the differences between these two platforms are fairly minimal.
being skeptical isn't being dismissive. There's alot of software that simply never takes off for one reason or another, so an air of skepticism is reasonable.
It looks nice, but simply being "nice" or a small amount better won't amount to much.
While that's a fair statement, an OS--mobile or otherwise--doesn't really need to be among the top few in terms of adoption to be valuable. Lots of people still use their N900 and N9 phones and want something to be a successor to them. This is likely the way I'll be going next.
I'm surprised there are not more viable OSs. The domination of computing by mobile devices is still in early days. There is definitely room for improvement versus both iOS and Android.
Among the would-be competitors, the Jolla team is best equipped to mount a challenge.
I'm not surprised. Mobile OSs are faced with an enormous challenge, which is hardware support.
The PC platform (while there are variances) is relatively uniform environment compared to the current crop of SoCs (system on chip) used by phones and tablets. There is hardly any standardization on things like power management, security, and other on-chip peripherals.
Each port for an OS is a lot of effort, so only the most popular OSs (sometimes only one of them) is supported by the manufacturer of the SoC.
MeeGo was pretty great at running a lot of Linux binaries, wasn't it? I never had a phone with it or played with it, but it always seemed it was a big step closer to a mobile OS that allowed your phone to do most anything your desktop could do. If that's the case, I hope it takes off. Being able to run most BackTrack tools on my phone could be nice.
The N9, which only runs a Meego instance, i.e. provides the Meego API on Maemo (the biggest difference is likely that the package manager is dpkg rather than rpm as for Meego proper) can do pretty much everything the desktop can do, modulo the missing keyboard, libraries and architecture. Really, it’s mostly like any other Linux distribution with a little weird hardware.
If i'm remembering correctly, it's not entirely the meego successor. Sailfish is a new project from the people who worked on meego, but the actual meego project turned into Tizen.
N9 'meego' was Harmattan, the direct descendant of Maemo 5, planned before the link-up with Intel to create Meego 'proper'. Harmattan had some backported compatibility pieces to make it nominally Meego compliant, but it was really Maemo 6.
Tizen came from the Meego proper project, which was more Moblin than Maemo.
This is what happens when you let marketing... do anything.
It's hard to see how yet another mobile OS will make traction. Perhaps the Android runtime will make it compatible enough that developer-types will use it.