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Ubuntu Phone OS Unveiled
Today Canonical announced Ubuntu for phones. The new operating system is designed to provide easier access to apps and content than is provided by current mobile OSes. They do this by relying on swipe gestures from the edges of the phone's screen. "Every edge of the phone is used, letting you move faster between apps, settings and content. A short swipe from the left edge of the screen is all it takes to reveal your favourite apps. Page either left or right from the home screen to see the content you use most. A full left-to-right swipe reveals a screen showing all your open apps, while a swipe from the right brings you instantly to the last app you were using. ... A swipe from the right edge takes you back to the last app you were using; another swipe takes you back to the app you used before that. It’s natural to keep many apps open at once, which is why Ubuntu was designed for multi-tasking. ... Swiping up from the bottom edge of the phone reveals app controls." The Ubuntu phone OS is built to work well on low-powered devices. Canonical will be at CES next week working on raising interest from manufacturers. As far as software goes, they have this to say: "Web apps are first class citizens on Ubuntu, with APIs that provide deep integration into the interface. HTML5 apps written for other platforms can be adapted to Ubuntu with ease, and we’re targeting standard cross-platform web app development frameworks like PhoneGap to make Ubuntu ‘just work’ for apps that use them." (In the attached video, the phone OS discussion starts at about 6:37.)
Here's the keynote. Skip to about 6:35 sec for the new bits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpWHJDLsqTU
Direct link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpWHJDLsqTU&feature=player_detailpage#t=401s
First thoughts:
2014 is a long way away and a whole year is an eternity in mobile space.
It kind of looks like Unity in portrait mode but without the dock.
What does it bring new to developers that isn't there in Android? Firefox OS's USP is web apps with native bindings(same as WebOS').
It says it uses the Android kernel and drivers to be compatible with the hardware, so will OEM(s) shipping devices with this OSes fall foul of Google's anti-fork rules[1] for Android? Or does that apply only to the Android SDK/Dalvik VM?
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57512418-94/alibaba-google-forced-acer-to-drop-our-new-mobile-os/
This space for rent.
I hate the way iOS has gradually made it harder and harder for me to interact with the app I have open rather than the OS. Dragging from screen edge, tapping with the wrong number of fingers... All sorts of things get eaten by the OS, so I end up doing something other than interacting with the app.
Now, in their own tragically quite imitable style, Canonical appear to have decided that the problem with the intrusion of the OS into the app's UI is that it does not go far enough.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
This sounds very similar to the way the current (OS 2.1) on the RIM Playbook works, not a bad thing as it works well.
K Man
I liked other elements of it, but gad, the finger dragging from top to bottom. Don't like it.
No, please no. No more "innovation" from Canonical. Stick to screwing up Ubuntu.
What is the market for this? What manufacturer would jump from Android or even Windows Phone for this? What incentives do carriers have to add support for this? How is Ubuntu Phone OS going to gain consumer mindshare? How could they possibly build a developer community for this when developers already grumble about having to support Android as well, especially given that would-be Ubuntu phone users would be even more spending-averse than Android users.
There is just no viable business plan here. So, you know, business as usual for Canonical.
Windows 8 has been such a mind blowing success that we just have to get that swiping stuff into Ubuntu. Apparently.
Copying other people's ideas is not necessarily a bad thing. Claiming the ideas as your own, without crediting the sources is So, how about crediting the ideas to the right people?
I seem to recall that this is the phrasing the late Steve Jobs used during the keynote where he first displayed an iPhone.
While HTML5 has advanced a lot (and Apple certainly did their bit although they werent perhaps quite the driving force they would like to be thought of as) I'm still not entirely convinced. I use a lot of web apps, they improve constantly, but theres a lot to be said for local code running fully independently of connectivity.....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I used to do something like that to get decent functionality out of the SMS app on the iPhone.
That nonsense is why I defected to Android.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
But I'm seeing two benefits:
1) If Canonical can get traction with the OEMs, maybe there will be more diversity in the type of hardware available. Might open up the "mobile OS hacking" subculture even further, allowing people to come up with novel, mobile GNU/Linux distributions.
2) Allowing devs to write/ship mobile applications in something other than ObjC (iOS) and Java (Android). I don't think it's possible or viable today, for example, to write a full Python mobile application and ship it. Sure, there are some pet projects out there that will, with some effort, let you kindasorta run things like Perl or Python on Android, but anything other than ObjC/Java are second-class citizens, currently.
Perhaps having Ubuntu begin to carve out even a little space here might help open the market a bit to more interesting and useful approaches to mobile operating systems?
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Canonical is dedicated to fixing problems in Unity to the point of having a dedicated team doing just that. Turns out, though, that making Unity work like a clone of Microsoft's Windows XP is just not in the cards, no matter how much Gnome2 used to try. Sorry.
It looks in many ways like what I have on my Nokia N9 with MeeGo Harmattan. The Linux for mobiles that was doomed before it was finished.
The swipe functionality is really great and one reason I still love it, even though it does have its own set of problems, which is mostly because it didn't get the time to mature. When I for example sometimes have to for many seconds and up to minutes before something happens, doesn't make me a happy camper.
Another good part is the keyboard designs, which is very clear with the Japanese keyboard on the N9. Pres one key and swiping up, down, left or right gives you other options. Thereby you can have larger initial buttons, but with several options popping up, and when you learn the keyboard it is really fast for such a small screen/keyboard.
Again, the swipe functionality is a great way to interact with a touch screen device, and is a step in the right direction from just having pinch-to-zoom.
TFA alludes to the idea that your phone becomes a full blown PC when you dock it. OK, so Ubuntu doesn't have a good track record with UI, and there is no reason to believe that this phone UI is any better than what they've done to the Linux desktop. But the idea of my phone being my computer is very appealing to me. I dock my phone at the office, and immediately get to use a full display, keyboard, mouse/trackpad, etc. Same thing when I take it home. It's a real Linux OS, with a CLI and everything if I want it. That is very appealing to me.
I definitely don't want this if the OS is owned by the cellular carrier. I want to install my own OS on a commodity phone, and I'm the root user on the system, not Sprint or Verizon or AT&T.
... I thought that "Ubuntu Phone OS Unveiled" on /. ... leading to
... meant that I was going to encounter an actual operating system or some evidence that someone, somewhere, has this working. And by "working," I don't mean has an artist's mockup set up on a demo.
"Ubuntu Now Fits on Your Phone"
It's amusing to me that some people seem to be taking this seriously. There's a good chance that it'll never ship, IMO, but even if it does, hardly anybody will use it. What an amazing waste of time and resources.
So there's no phone? Dude don't be wasting your time on "keynotes". Start knocking on and groveling in front of 100 OEM doors and hope that 5 will give you the time of day and put this thing on 10 of their products and maybe you'll get a chance to scoop up 0.05% of Android's market share... oh the humanity.
> What do you think you are doing to Debian?
Bathing it, shaving it, dragging it out of the cellar, exposing it to sunlight and getting girls to play with it.
The website shows what I assume are mockups of Ubuntu's mobile OS running on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I do hope they'll release some images, I'd reflash my Galaxy Nexus and take Ubuntu Mobile for a spin if I could.
Professional Genius
In the video, shuttleworth goes on about how ubuntu is this revolutionary way to have the same software on your phone and desktop. Umm, did he miss the memo about windows 8? I mean I know Windows 8 sucks and all, but ignoring the big gorilla in the room just makes him seem out of touch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXWnMTm7We8
Pretty laggy, but it's still in alpha...
For the rest, I didn't see any feature that would make me switch from Android, but I wait to see it on actual phones before judging.
This looks a lot like what the guys at Jolla are doing, which is based of the N9/MeeGo.
WebOS algo had a bit of this as well, although only on one edge.
Looks like it took a couple of years before everyone started becoming interested in edge-swiping, but this isn't new at all. I've been using compiz with move-mouse-to-corner-X-to-do-Y for plenty of years, yet people still prefer using using a taskbar instead of proper window switching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmvdeNa67E
Must be his half brother ...
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
So...they copied BB10?
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
Looking at their approach here something occurs to me: the ui is almost self-consciously different from iOS. The layout of Android's ui has many parallels with iOS and partly for this reason Android phone makers are haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs' lawyers. Of course, many of those elements are perfectly obvious to any ui designer working when smart phones were taking off (e.g. let's put icons in a grid pattern). Looking at this Ubuntu phone ui, especially some of the stranger elements of it, I can't help but wonder whether the design is different for the sake of being different, i.e. different for the sake of being competitive in a world where superficial resemblance can have a product banned from import. Were I a smartphone manufacturer, knowing all Samsung et al. have gone through with Android, an OS which had a very different ui (with, et al., no slide to unlock, a different approach to gestures, and no home button requirement) might be worth careful consideration for those reasons alone.
If the answer is "no" to both these questions then this whole concept is going to fail.
I have an android phone - I can install chroot ubuntu but no GPU support means it's limited.
If the source code is open source it means we can install it on existing devices or ideally run in parallel with ICS or Jellybean.
If they only going to release the Ubuntu Phone OS with hardware (e.g. "..9 to 12 months time..") then this will go the same way as WebOS.
They are going to build some kind of traction with the community first.
Wouldn't it be more about having the common userland, and a suitable way to interact with apps designed for touch-based UIs. Without the latter, one may as well be trying to control Excel from a Nintendo game pad.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
...It is just one tab over from "Ubuntu for phones"
They're talking about being open, yet they haven't released "Ubuntu for phones" in any product or any source.
Ubuntu for phones would be great 5 years ago, but there are already too many Android apps / games out there the people will want.
I don't want Ubuntu for phones, I want it for Android like they advertised a year ago.
Perhaps these two ideas will merge at some point. People will want to run Android applications.
Isn't that what PPAs are for? I agree not as elegant as it should be, but it's also irrelevant to Unity.
The way I see it, it will come down to Android in favor of iOS unless Apple loosens up the control a bit.
Lately, I have observed many mobile phone users dumping their iPhones for Androids simply because they are able to do more of what they want and that the cost in terms of access to applications lost is between "0" and "negligible." What I mean by that is initially, the quality of iPhone apps was far greater than the quality of Android apps and that the frequency of exclusively iPhone apps was fairly high. This is changing. What's more, people are more enabled with Android than they are with iPhone. There are fewer limits, for example, on what a user can do with his Bluetooth interface under Android than under iOS. There are fewer limits on external display technologies and more as well.
Apple would choose to limit the release of each new idea so that it can be a "killer feature" of the next version of the iDevice. Other makers of great ideas aren't willing to wait for Apple to do it first and so they are heading straight for Android to implement. And the proof is everywhere. For example, before I even thought about it, car stereo makers are using Android to create car computers which do everything their phones and tablets do but in a car-context meaning they can integrate with OBD2, Bluetooth devices, controls on steering wheels, heads-up displays and more.
Innovators aren't willing to wait for Apple. And since Apple fans and Apple both agree all "real innovation" begins and ends with Apple, they will go the way they went in the personal and business computer market. The word is "niche."
And what happens when it's all Linux? Well, we will see a lot of cross-platform compatibility where apps will work with the intended OS/UI but also, compatibility layers, libraries and the like will also emerge. The most unobtrusive OS/UI will win out over those which impose their idea of how things should work on the user because that will have a rather direct impact on emulated/simulated compatibility with apps meant for other OS/UIs.
I'll just sit back and wait for blowback from Apple fans now. If you are an Apple fan, please don't quote to me who is the leader in the past or present. Don't tell me about who is the most profitable company in the history of the planet earth (though I think the east india trading company might actually have been better in its prime) Speak to me of what matters to people who are presently dumping iDevices in favor of others. I have to say, I have never heard of anyone dumping Android in favor of iDevice though I am sure it may have happened in the past, but certainly not recently.
Died of old age, waiting for the it to stop randomly rebooting itself? ;)
Listen, people do not need another minimal operating system; they need one reasonable operating system to perform work on. If Unity was everything you touted, why make yet another OS?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Easy. For example, to do SUM(A:B), at the Excel splash screen enter: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, Start. The rest is no less intuitive than Win8 Metro.
I actually know a few people having dumped Android for an iPhone. And a bit more the other way, but recently (say in the last 4 month) I've seen more android to iPhone migrations.
Both platforms have their strength. Both have their weaknesses. Or can't you see it?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
With the Hitchhiker's Guide mark II in Douglas Adams' fiction he tried to show us the way of the light -- The "best" user interface in this or any Universe.
"And can you hear me when I say this?" it said, this time in a sepulchrally deep voice. .", [She] gestured helplessly off into the distance.
"Yes!"
There was then a pause.
"No, obviously not," said the bird after a few seconds. [...] Now. How many of me can you see?
Suddenly the air was full of nothing but interlocking birds. [...] It was if the whole geometry of space was redefined in seamless bird shapes.
[The user] grasped and flung her arms around her face, her arms moving through bird bird-shaped space.
"Hmm, obviously way too many," said the bird. "How about now?"
It concertinaed into a tunnel of birds, as if it was a bird caught between parallel mirrors, reflecting infinitely into the distance.
"Well you're sort of . .
"I see, still infinite in extent, but at least we're homing in on the right dimensional matrix. Good, No, the answer is an orange and two lemons.
"Lemons?"
"If I have three lemons and three oranges and I lose two oranges and a lemon, what do I have left?"
"Huh?"
"Okay, so you think time flows that way, do you? Interesting."
And on CLIs Adams has this to say:
Don't imagine you know what a computer terminal is. A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a type writer in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.
Don't you see? The "OS" of the HGv2 came with no assumptions whatsoever of the way you would perceive to use it. After a brief initialization period it had collected the temporal ordering, number of perceivable dimensions, mater vs antimatter (read: left or right handed 3D coordinate system), mode of communication, etc. CLIs remained as an important fall back, despite advances in UI.
The problem with today's UI design is ignoring that everyone is different and assuming that anyone truly knows anyone else, or especially the gestures they'll want to make. Sure, humans have some physical limitations which dictate certain UIs: Keyboard and Screen being a prime example of optimal textual IO; However, when it comes to symbolism and gestures this is the realm in which the humans are most differentiated, it is what defines them. Being primarily symbol interpretors themselves capable of imbuing deep meaning to the simplest of glyphs or gestures, the humans are so varied in terms of gesturing and symbolism that any non-prescient design is a restriction placed upon the very essence of a human. For example: If I make a full left to right gesture on this phone UI it will show me all the open apps. If I make the approximate same gesture with a finger (my thumb) across my neck it means "Kill 'em dead", such disparities are inevitable. Scratching ones head would have been a much better gesture to trigger display of all open apps...
Sane defaults that are Customizable is the only acceptable UI solution.
To the UI designers of the world, especially to those of Apple, Microsoft, Gnome and Ubuntu I suggest you fully read all of Mr. Adam's works, especially Mostly Harmless. Thereafter you may be able to extract the true meaning of this one simple gesture I wish to convey to you:
Only the 3rd digit on both hands fully extended, both hands extended in your general direction, and shaking with intensity.
2013, year of the Linux deskt..... wait, what?
The strength of iPhone is that the things it does, it does EXTREMELY well. And for people who just want to use what they have now and do not want new future things, iPhone is perfect.
I probably should have acknowledged that fact in the previous comment.
I see two possible future for Ubuntu mobile using Android kernel:
1) Google is happy with this and allow manufacturers to release Ubuntu phones on same hardware released for Android phones. While this can look a bit odd for Google at first, this is not necessary bad for them. To be pragmatic, no OS will ever gain a total monopoly. So it's better to live with a friendly alternative to push higher pressure on the unfriendly alternatives. I suspect that a such move - to be friendly - will be extremely positive in the actual context where each OS fight each against the others. For the manufacturers, this is the same hardware, so this do not change so much there business.
2) Google is unhappy with this and he will quickly find a way to prevent Ubuntu phone install or make it so unpleasant that only a few will do it. Ubuntu phone will then be an another phone OS in the growing list of phone OS that have tried to gain acceptance but will finally failed.
I hope that Google will soon publicly announce 1). This will be a major move.
Yeah, I was only kidding. I'm an Android user but rather like some of the Windows Phone features.
This seems to have gotten buried in the press release, but Canonical has already done some demos in this regard. Basically, when you get into the office you dock your quad-core cell phone and get a full Ubuntu desktop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzc0uMXGFBY
They have been shopping this with their Ubuntu for Android solution, but a full mobile OS might enable them to get a "superphone" to market faster. Too bad it's >1 year out...
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
As a developer there's really only two platforms - Android and iOS. Perhaps 3 platforms: Android 2.x, Android 4.x+, and iOS 5+. Tizen is dead. Ubuntu is over a year out and will be DOA. Firefox OS is stupid and will never ship in any meaningful quantity. Windows Phone has not impressed consumers. RIM and Symbian are both about to die off entirely.
I love that companies are willing to try and bring competition to the phone space, but so far they aren't very successful.
at the fact you have zero I repeat zero mod points
for this, what in fact is by far the most insightful
comment of this whole run.
In fact, he has for some time been trying to emulate Steve Jobs.
The thought goes like this: people attributed genius and insight to Steve Jobs,
Steve Jobs had a beard -- I'll grow a beard, I'll be viewed as having insight and
genius.
I can't wait to load the Ubuntu Phone OS onto my phone so that I can experience the wealth of services Ubuntu will bring to the table. Ah, who are we kidding. If you want to be a successful mobile OS you need great services or a cult following with a degrading distortion reality field. Unless you are a hard core Ubuntu/Linux user you would be a fool to leave all of the free Google services and the wealth of apps for an Ubuntu powered phone. The Ubuntu Phone OS doesn't have a chance because no OEM would be irresponsible enough to take a chance with it.
So we'd now have a non-Android Linux on phones. Incidentally, will Ubuntu be using GNU userland or its own? I think Ubuntu can go far if they can get the Chinese to put their OS on phones. Of course, nowhere near challenging Android or iOS, but definitely can beat Windows RT.
I think most platforms - particularly the Linux based ones - will do what they can to have compatibility for Android apps, while BSD based phone OSs, if any, would try to build iOS compatibility into it. I would like to see Plasma Active to be supported as well, but doubt that it will be. Actually, if applications can support both Plasma Active and Tizen - both based on Qt, that would be a good thing. Oh, and while at it, I'd like to see a Minix 3 based phone or tablet OS as well.
How can they destroy it? On the desktop, those disgusted w/ Unity have gone over to Mint. On the phone & tablets, people simply won't move away from Android. On servers, Canonical won't touch Debian, RedHat or CentOS. The Linux ecosystem is fine. Only thing - they need one that's either at GPL2 or different, since most GNU userland has moved to GPL3, which makes GNU/Linux a lot less appealing.