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Canonical Seeks $32 Million To Make Ubuntu Smartphone
nk497 writes "Canonical has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to raise $32 million in 30 days to make its own smartphone, called Ubuntu Edge, that can also hook up to a monitor and be used as a PC. If it meets its funding target on Indiegogo, the Ubuntu Edge is scheduled to arrive in May 2014. To get one, backers must contribute $600 (£394) on the first day or $810 (£532) thereafter. Canonical will only make 40,000 of the devices."
The problem is that the 'enthusiasts' who would be contributing to this have just recently had several slaps to the face from Canonical in the form of window buttons, unity, unity & unity. And amazon shopping lenses. 'This is not a democracy' is still rings in the ears. Now Canonical realise that they need the enthusiasts, who's toes they stepped on, to help with this venture into the mobile space.
To be honest, I hope they succeed. I think the concept of a phone that doubles as a desktop could very well be the future of the desktop computer for many people. The hardware also looks very nice (which is a necessity to tempt anyone off android/ios) - I agree with Shuttleworth that mobile screen resolution is getting out of hand, and I'd much rather the colourful OLED displays than the ridiculously high res LCDs (which then look laggy because the graphics can't keep up - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmywUhu2Pus) and a sapphire glass screen sounds interesting (though will it be as strong as gorilla glass - I doubt it).
I wonder how many of us would have paid up if Nokia had done this with the N950?
Posted without sarcasm:
1. Maybe there won't be the quid pro quo of all of your private information so you can use the "free" apps
2. Perhaps your carrier won't be able to dive into your phone and change any old setting they desire
3. With luck, maybe your apps won't have obscene data needs that can be sold on the open market for bigdamndata engines
4. And maybe we can have apps that just do something, rather then the crippled-til-you-pay model.
But Canonical hasn't guaranteed anything, and the carriers won't love them unless Canonical allows them to feed their shareholders, so it's unlikely as a result that carriers will want the devices to market in the first place.
Oh, wait.....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
They already hit the first million in just a few hours since the story hit the big media. Refreshing a few times, they seem to do about 200k$ per hour right now, so I guess they might easily sell the first 5000 phones at the reduced price. It was probably a good idea to trigger some people into a quick decision by lowering the price on the first day, so that they can realease a press release tomorrow saying they hit their first target. It will be hard to keep the same pace in the next 30 days, though ...
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Not to mention that with a device based on a more "standard" Linux, booting other "standard" Linux platforms should actually be a fairly painless step.
As a corporate overlord to well-meaning young hippie-leaning techies, Canonical has always been a bit odd. I recall their early versions came bundled with video samples of Nelson Mandela. That sort of bald-faced symbolic sales pitch to the young and idealistic was cleverly successful even if it now seems a bit easier to criticize them for their recent decisions. If it's a walled garden they're building, I suppose it'll have lots of flowers in it.
Is it still a walled garden when each line of code is easily accessible? Is it still a walled garden when I can shut off any of the shitty features Ubuntu has implemented (Amazon results, install alternate desktop using packages Canonical itself provides.) Can you say that about Google, Apple, MS?
People keep riffing Shuttleworth and Canonical as villains within the OS/Free Software world. They don't contribute back to upstream enough and shit. Leaving out the part about how the code is right there for people to take and use as they see fit. Which really, is something the OS/FS crowd constantly bullies new users over "The code is right there, DIY."
I think the haters are really just pissed off that Canonical has done a better job at selling Linux than they ever did.