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Foxconn Betting Big On Firefox OS
jfruh writes "Foxconn is firmly identified in the public mind as the company that manufactures iPhones and iPads. But the company is looking to forge its own identity, and sees Firefox OS as the means to do so. To that end, Foxconn is hiring thousands of developers to help work on the open source phone OS and Foxconn's own suite of cloud services."
I hope they succeed!
-Sent from my iPhone
that had (at least on paper) thousands of devs that didn't go anywhere. funded by people like Intel, too.
actual devices to shops or gtfo.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
More open is good for the user.
New things are always on the horizon
HTML5 supports offline apps, how about your CloudOS ?
New things are always on the horizon
by being asian
I'm sure you can store a snapshot of your system at any time. To run an app offline, simple view the snapshot in an image viewer.
signature is pants
How about a Cloud OS? A VM OS that lives in the cloud and sends screens (instead of data) to your PC, tablet, phone, etc. It will have blazing fast network access, can add cores, RAM, disk space with a click. If you are a geek, you can probably do this, but there are so many details to work out and it violates the terms of service for many hosting places. Make it cheap and easy for the masses. The tech is there, but it isn't mainstream.
yeah everything is would be fast except actual interaction! brilliant!
https://www.google.com/search?q=cloud+desktop have fun.
I don't understand how you think it violates terms of hosting places though.. it doesn't. you might need a license on the os you run in there though of course. but you would just end up using android on your desktop if you went this route since if the same stuff and programs are streamed to all of your devices, you're going go by the shittiest device and not the best.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Firefox OS: made in China.
Good-bye security and trust.
Mozilla has such a (well-deserved) squeaky clean image. Considering the slight damage the Foxconn fiasco did to Apple's brand, I pray nothing happens to tarnish Mozilla's good name. Considering this is a partnership, it may prove difficult, if not, impossible to pull out if things start to go wrong. I wish them all the best.
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How about a Cloud OS? A VM OS that lives in the cloud and sends screens (instead of data) to your PC, tablet, phone, etc. It will have blazing fast network access, can add cores, RAM, disk space with a click.
I believe it's called a mainframe.
Its hard enough getting 3 developers working together to produce quality software, let alone 3 THOUSAND. How exactly do they plan to manage this?
From the article, I gather that this is not 3,000 developers working on the OS or its elements, but rather, 3,000 developers spread across many separate projects to develop apps for the brand-new OS. This could be projects consisting of 1, 2, or 10 developers each.
This is actually a really novel approach and I bet Microsoft are now kicking themselves that they didn't think of it. In a matter of weeks, or at most a few months, a fully-populated app-store can be made available. With this approach, they'll be probably ranked #3 straight out the gate in terms of apps. Bravo.
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Its hard enough getting 3 developers working together to produce quality software, let alone 3 THOUSAND. How exactly do they plan to manage this?
WTF do they need 3000 developers for? I would think 1/10th that number would be more than enough.
Because the world really needs another mobile phone operating system.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
How do you ensure "blazing fast network access" and latency? Mobile networks are terrible for latency. Your post is an example of putting the cart before the horse.
This space for rent.
The day may come when Apple is just the distribution arm of Foxconn. Apple needs Foxconn more than Foxconn needs Apple.
This is probably one of the best ways of doing that. They'll a face for the workforce that isn't just manual laborers. They can't do lot to reduce the suicide rates because they are more or less in line with national averages. I think I read somewhere the head honcho was also considering opening up US factories, but he was afraid that he would be litigated to death.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It would be great to see Mozilla's name on my machine, I look forward to seeing what they come up with.
The world is now on auto-pilot.
So, Firefox OS wirr be rereased in Engrish?
The parent basically mentioned VNC, RDP and called it CloudOS. That didn't make a lot of sense to me.
New things are always on the horizon
I imagine the labor laws are rather lax in the places where they have their offices. I don't think they're committing to hiring a person for N number of months straight off the bat. Those 3000 could be tried out and laid off continuously until they have ~300 good developers that they can spread out across ~50 projects at any one time.
It's not the number of (non-game) apps that matters, it's the quality and coverage. There are 'only' a couple of hundred good non-game apps out there for Android and iOS anyway.
Chain them to a steel table with a water bucket and a pee bucket the way all bosses want to treat their developers. It is China.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Is this subtle sarcasm, cleverly pointing out the parallel to windows 8? Or is it pure self assured ignorance? Many times I observe people who assume that the new realization they just had is too brilliant for Microsoft to come up with on it's own. Sure, Microsoft has made some colossal blunders. But they aren't as stupid as some people think. In this case, one of the destiguishing features of windows 8 is that it splits enterprise application develpement from casual user application developement. The casual side uses the "app store" concept. Clearly the intent is to attract thousands of independent developers. Of course the implementation of the change is part of what people despise about windows 8, and why many are considering it a failure... and Microsoft can attract developers by its name alone (and repel them as well, I know).
Is this subtle sarcasm, cleverly pointing out the parallel to windows 8? Or is it pure self assured ignorance?
Yes!
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It will have blazing fast network access
The only thing "blazing fast" about a mobile operating system built around access to an application server through VNC or OnLive is how fast it'd eat up your monthly data cap.
Presumably the same way OnLive works: a pile of blades in the carrier's datacenter.
Yep, hopefully the Firefox phones won't secretly log our GPS co-ordinates (Apple) or have back-doors that allow the manufacturer to crack the phone's security lock (Apple) or combine all our call / text / email / web surfing information in massive databases (Google).
With 3000 devs going nuts on this OS, they'll be up to version 21 in a few weeks - oh wait!
How do you ensure "blazing fast network access" and latency?
By replacing the retina display with a 7-segment LED display.
Sure, it wont fix latency, but the bandwidth available would make their phones display those numbers fast.
John
From TFA:
"the company is increasing investments in research, including developing robots for manufacturing. In March, the company said it wanted to hire 5,000 people in Taiwan with skills in hardware, automation, and robotics.
On Thursday, Foxconn said it was looking to hire between 2,000 and 3,000 people in order to bolster its research into software. It's looking for software engineers with skills in HTML5 operating systems, HTML5 apps, and cloud computing, the company said.
It intends to design Firefox OS reference models that will cover smartphones, tablets, laptops and TVs.
Taken together, Foxconn is gearing to build what it hopes will be the next iPhone replacement. After all, why settle for a scrap of the profits when you can have it all?
Firstly, I think they got Nokia to do most of the heavy lifting making apps for Win 8.
They also offered developers US$100 for every app in their store
They could have of course taken it one step further and hired them to make the apps, but that would have been monumentally expensive and I think they underestimated the lack of developer interest in Win8.
As somebody that has had some contact with the new FFOS SDK, user's might be interested to know it as yet, has no secure storage (think Keychain), where apps can store your passwords. On top of that, apps are written in HTML and Javascript so potentially, malware could scrape your email and passwords from insecure storage if an app stores your username and password for subsequent logins, and, even if the app developer attempts some level of security with encryption keys embedded in the app code, it's JS, which the malware could also grab (it's just a file on the device afterall), and relatively easily scrape out the encryption key and algorithm used.
Isn't it like that in any jurisdiction that allows at-will employment?
In Ohio, at least, the rule of law is basically as such:
Q: "Will I have a job tomorrow?"
A: "Maybe!"
or from the other side of the fence:
Q: "Can I get rid of this employee who is useless to me?"
A: "Of course."
*shrug*
Kid-proof tablet..
Given how, at least as was the opinion of two month's ago, China is taking all trade secrets on a scale that America under King George could not have imagined, perhaps the parallel to China is America, side stepped off a century or so. What does that mean for the relationship between Apple and Foxconn? Your turn. By the way, when the USSR stole American trade secrets down to the blueprints for factories, Russian engineers were not allowed to be creative. They were so stifled it must have made them numb-er than mudbloods.
/.is against patents.
It was pretty much inevitable that after being taught how to make world class devices by Apple, Foxconn would eventually question why a bunch of foriegners living off in the States should get a cut of their hard work. This means that Apple's big advantages will be:
1. Hardware patents: How easy it will be for Foxconn to get around these to sell to the US and Europe I'm not sure, since I'm no lawyer. If they have to do their own redesigns or are even completely stymied by overbroad patents they may have a limited market for their devices.
2. Software (and Software patents): Foxconn can now make world class hardware, no mistake about that. However, I don't know how well they will do with software, since that isn't part of their core competencies. Also, they'll have the same software patent issues that Android devices have.
I'm not a fan of Foxconn's horrible labor practices, but it will be interesting to watch this develop.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Don't underestimate the impact of how the news of the NSA-Big American Tech orgy is playing out abroad. The Snowden leak has confirmed the most cynical suspicions of most mainland Chinese, and the pressure in that billion+ market for products unstained by NSA influence will become a major tech driver in the near future. In fact, for most people in the world, the only spying they dislike more than being spied on by their own governments is being spied on by the USA. Unless Microsoft, Google, and Apple can put together a successful Hail Mary marketing campaign to salvage their images, alternatives like Firefox OS are very likely to see surprising growth in their market share.
In other words, what Foxconn is doing may not be Open Source altruism. More likely, they are positioning themselves to ride an anti-NSA wave, particularly in mainland China.
For chip production agreement between the two companies rumors have been circulating for several years, and this time, we finally see some concrete details. The news comes from Digitimes, TSMC and its integrated service partner GUC (Global UniChip) reportedly will be based on 20nm, 16nm and 10nm process nodes to produce the A-series chips. Reported that TSMC will begin in July this year, 20nm A8 chip limited trial production, and volume production is expected to start in September this year. The so-called A8 chip equipped Apple device is expected to come out in 2014.easybuybest.com