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Time For a Hobbyist Smartphone?

theodp writes "Over at Scripting News, Dave Winer has a hobbyist phone on his wish list. Innovative phone manufacturers, Winer suggests, should 'make a smart phone with a really great scripting language, with all kinds of scriptable tools on board. Instead of disallowing scripting, disallow apps that can't be scripted. Make a great simple programming environment that runs on desktops or laptops that plugs right in, but it should also be easy to write scripts on the phone itself. Dave concludes, 'We've already seen the Jobs phone. Now it's time for Woz's.' Having ditched App Inventor, it would appear that Google isn't interested. Microsoft Research has the idea, if not the right implementation, with TouchDevelop (video). Any other existing or in-the-works projects that might fit the bill?"

207 comments

  1. Moron by binarylarry · · Score: 2, Interesting

    He forgets that authoring and creating things on Tablets is annoying.

    And I don't mean "get off my lawn" annoying either, they're just poor tools for those tasks. They rock at redditing and slashdoting, however.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    1. Re:Moron by gmuslera · · Score: 1

      Check Scratch for an example of user interface of creating (in particular, for scripting) that could work pretty well in a tablet environment.

    2. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This sort of comment appears often on Slashdot. Having grown up on TI-8x calculators, I find mobile phone screens plenty large to sustain a programming environment even with on-screen keyboards. The magic is in the IDE as it was for TI-8x -- menus with shortcuts instead of typing every character. This wasn't only economical for saving keystrokes -- it also meant you could fit more relevant information on a tiny screen because symbols could be viewed instead of longer language equivalents. It was also familiar to people who had used their calculator as just a calculator -- the menus were the exact same between programming and calculating!

      TI-BASIC didn't support many of the now-common programming paradigms, so I expect there'd have to be adaptation (e.g. flexible menus instead of fixed menus for interface or class based paradigms) but there's been cases where the IDE has turned a rubbish language into a brilliant one. (C++/C# with Visual Studio leap to mind -- I've programmed in C++ in vi for years, but in Visual Studio I'm double speed if not more)

      Oh, and a tablet? Plenty of screen space. ;-)

    3. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From the article: "Make a great simple programming environment that runs on desktops or laptops that plugs right in, but it should also be easy to write scripts on the phone itself."

      Yeah, no one wants to write code on the phone. It might be cool, in a pinch, to make a slight adjustment to your script though if you're out and about. I agree that seems like a high cost / low return feature, but I don't think it warrants a response of "Moron".

    4. Re:Moron by ducomputergeek · · Score: 1

      I think it depends. Most days if I am going to be doing a presentation or any type of coding work, like today, then I want my laptop. But I did buy a waterproof cover for my iPad and have used it to work on presentations in the bathtub or even shower. Although usually this is more revising than actual creation. I can't do much outside of edit text or order of presentation slides. If I need to add video, sound, or fancy images, I'm doing that on the laptop.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    5. Re:Moron by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      He forgets that authoring and creating things on Tablets is annoying.

      The most annoying thing about it is that people just do it instead of listening to your expert opinion.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    6. Re:Moron by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      that's not why he is a moron.

      he is a moron because while you can't do such things on either ios or windows phone you could on symbian.

      but symbian is dead, so why doesn't he get one of these newflangled android phones.. fuck, run the fucking compiler and build chain for full apps on the fucking device if he really wants and anything in between.

      there are other operating systems than ios...........

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    7. Re:Moron by marcello_dl · · Score: 1

      An open smartphone can connect to screens and keyboards and mouse with no problems. The n900 had a VGA output hack going. In fact the n900 is an answer to this slashdot discussion: give nerds root and a GNU userland with the wealth of scripting environments, ruby, lua, newlisp, smalltalk..., see what they come up with. Another answer is a raspberry in a largish smartphone form factor.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
    8. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A smartphone with VGA output would be nice for talks; no need to carry a bulky laptop with you.
      Also HDMI output would be nice in case you have access to a more modern device.
      Add a MicroSD slot as external data storage, and support Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, and you've already got all hardware you need for a low-end Desktop PC.

    9. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "He forgets that authoring and creating things on Tablets is annoying."

      Did you even bother reading the fucking summary before dismissing him as a moron ?
      Here's a cluestick Mr.Fucktard Keyboard Commando "Make a great simple programming environment that runs on desktops or laptops that plugs right in"

      He's not forcing anyone to actually do the scripting on the phone.

      Now, GET OFF MY LAWN !

    10. Re:Moron by ssam · · Score: 1

      Especially with the Neo900 project on the way http://neo900.org/

    11. Re:Moron by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      A netbook would be all that.

    12. Re:Moron by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      They rock at redditing and slashdoting, however.

      Proper Verbs are annoying. Stop browsering and learn some grammar.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    13. Re:Moron by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      Go eat a dick with your asshattery.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    14. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      moreso is saying that non-music things 'rock'. When someone says this, I know I'll never be able to be friends with that person.

    15. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      moreso is saying that non-music things 'rock'. When someone says this, I know I'll never be able to be friends with that person.

      Yeah, I wouldn't be friends with someone whose table has a wonky leg either, whether or not they tell me it rocks.

    16. Re:Moron by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1

      Yeah I tried using Iron7 a while back: (http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/ruby-iron7-free/8a866ec2-461b-e011-9264-00237de2db9e) and it lets you code in Ruby using the phone's keyboard to create simple apps inside of Windows Phone. But it's hard enough to do normal typing on a tiny keyboard let alone non-dictionary words for variables etc.

      Windows 8 is perfectly acceptable though for tablet dev. I've done Unity development on a Windows 8 tablet and it's great because you don't have to transfer the app to the device you just tweak your code, hit run and it's just there ready to interact with. Especially if you hook up a Bluetooth keyboard and plug in a monitor or TV. Develop normally and then do all of your touch interaction and testing on the device with no need for an emulator.

    17. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't stand phones or tablets for browsing the internet. Give me a desktop or laptop any day of the week. I can see the whole page in front of me, all my countless tabs are easily seen spread across the top, I can easily reply to anyone on the big screen with my big keyboard; and all while the computer has grunt to spare so I can watch a video, screw around with code, or play a game at the same time. and before you try and tell me how mobile is so convenient, almost every where I go already has proper computer waiting for me, and when it doesn't it's usually a good chance to interact with the real world (no need to be reading reddit at the pub) if I'm going on a big train trip or overseas then I take a laptop.

  2. ZTE FF !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check the WILD and CRAZY review right here !!

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/13/review_zte_open_firefox_os_phone/

    This DEFINES Open Source as what it is !!

    1. Re:ZTE FF !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, that's too bad. I have one of those older ZTE phones that sold retail for $80 and actually could be had for $40 new. Specs look real similar. You know that Bill Hater and his ads where he can't get a mugger to steal his phone? That's what we're talking about.

      YGWYPF.

    2. Re:ZTE FF !! by spage · · Score: 1

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/13/review_zte_open_firefox_os_phone/ [theregister.co.uk]

      Ouch. I wonder what the experience is like when you build and install Firefox OS on a decent Android 4.x smartphone.

      --
      =S
  3. Android has a few good scripting languages by Joehonkie · · Score: 1

    And you can program them on the phone. Not as easy to build that into apps, though: https://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

  4. Disallow apps that can't be scripted? by Improv · · Score: 2

    Sorry to be the pedant, but that "disallow apps that can't be scripted" line seems kneejerk and fairly stupid. Scriptability is not a yes/no thing, it's a measure for how good an API is. If you just want apps that are minimally scripted, I'm sure you could make a platform where every app accepts a hello() message, and does a popup with that, but that doesn't get you close to being able to do neat things.

    I suspect what we'd really like is more choice in programming languages on the phone and a cleaner split between UI and API.

    I wonder how many people would write apps for such a device for free. I might, and the opensource community might too, but is that enough?

    --
    For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
    1. Re:Disallow apps that can't be scripted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no, it's just that scripting the scripts makes things more scriptable, and if an app is not scriptable you can't script things.

      seriously, did you see the OP?

    2. Re:Disallow apps that can't be scripted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So he wants the Pimp My Ride guy to develop phone OSes?

      Yo dawg! I heard you like scripting. So I put scripting in your scripting language so you can script while you script!

    3. Re:Disallow apps that can't be scripted? by leejor · · Score: 1

      Dave Winer basically invented application scripting on Macintosh when he released Userland Frontier in the late 1980's. This was before Apple's own AppleScript. He also was a key in the creation of XML-RPC and SOAP for creating web API's.

      I read this as a HARD requirement for scriptablity across all applications. If all apps are able to respond to and make scripting API requests, any app would be able to be the "programming" language. Python, Sqeak, C, Photoshop, nginx, OpenOffice could all be equals.

    4. Re:Disallow apps that can't be scripted? by leejor · · Score: 1

      I also remember the early Mac Web Development scene with Frontier & AppleScript which where the glue that built complex web servers using MacHTTP, 4D databases, Photoshop to process images live, etc.

    5. Re:Disallow apps that can't be scripted? by jkauzlar · · Score: 1

      I think that odds are, as with any app-store model, you'll be able to access several repositories. One could be for open-source highly-scriptable applications, one could be for closed commercial stuff. The level of scriptability depends on who manages the app-store.

      But right now this is all already possible on Android (the ability to script apps, and not tightly controlled by an omnipotent god), except I don't know what it takes to open an app store. An interpreted scripting language on an Android device would work, with all the manufacturer software replaced with utilties that have friendly APIs. Most of the remaining work would be up to the community.

    6. Re:Disallow apps that can't be scripted? by tlambert · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dave Winer basically invented application scripting on Macintosh when he released Userland Frontier in the late 1980's. This was before Apple's own AppleScript. He also was a key in the creation of XML-RPC and SOAP for creating web API's.

      I read this as a HARD requirement for scriptablity across all applications. If all apps are able to respond to and make scripting API requests, any app would be able to be the "programming" language. Python, Sqeak, C, Photoshop, nginx, OpenOffice could all be equals.

      That was my take, too. I recognized the name, and more or less translated the idea to "I want PhoneGap for everything".

      This idea will never fly. Dave is old. I understand his perspective, because I lived through that era too: no one writes malicious code because everyone plays nice, and because of the way Apple codes things I don't have libraries to e.g. access my iTunes library as an iTunes library without doing a whole hell of a lot of work so I'd like to be able to ask iTunes to do it for me.

      The reason this will never fly is manifold:

      - There are incredibly sound UI and UX reasons to not allow "skinning" or "themes", or, frankly, even things like the Facebook ban on "Social Fixer". Programmers who like to tweak UI bits, but who either could never write iTunes on their own, or find doing things like that incredibly boring, don't like the lack of tweakability. Users, on the other hand, like to be able to call up a support person and get quick answers to their problems. Having the same icons and application layout everywhere GREATLY helps this. Users also do not like learning curves; having the same "look and feel", and having all applications follow the same HI guidelines, like they all have a "File" menu in the same place, and they all largely have the same items on the menus in the same places GREATLY helps this. It also makes it look like all your Mac apps were written in Cupertino, and all your Windows apps were written in Redmond, which programmers also hate, since it disallows use of trade dress to make their product stand out from the other products that do almost exactly the same thing.

      - It requires reaching across NECESSARY security protection domains. If I can talk to iTunes, and make it do things, there is effectively no more protection domain between myself and iTunes. Same for AddressBook. Same for Email. Same for Safari. Same for GPS info. Same for making phone calls. Make no mistake: there are assholes out there writing code; some do it just to be assholes, while others do it for money, politics, religion, etc.. But there are assholes, and having these Chinese walls between things that operate on data keeps a nice apps data from being accessed by assholes. So no cross-compaartmentalized scripting, unless you want to let the assholes do it too.

      - There just aren't that many programmers out there, and of those, only a fraction really get their rocks off tweaking UIs, and of those, only a fraction like to do their tweaking in a scripting rather than a compiled language. So there's not a lot of MARKET for the idea, and without a market, the idea isn't going to get done. Or it'll get done, and go nowhere, because the company will fail... hence my earlier comment about him feeling free to found a company or three to pursue the idea.

      Really he should be asking for APIs for things, but that's very antithetical to the whole historical Apple worldview that "iTunes databases should be managed by iTunes, and everyone else should keep their damn noses out". That's a pretty big paradigm shift for Dave, and an even bigger one for Apple: it's just not going to happen.

      Most everyone else will also be reluctant to open up APIs to their data, even under Android, even under the misdirection of calling it "making things scriptable". Welcome to the reason that CORBA and OmniORB and other object request broker paradigms are niche market at best and curiousities at worst.

  5. Nokia? by amiga3D · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Too bad Nokia quit making fun phones. The last was the N900. I'd love to have a new phone similar to that with modern specs.

    1. Re:Nokia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a project called Neo900 that's working on a mainboard replacement for N900. For me the N900 never stopped being fun, and soon it won't feel quite so stone-age!

      http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91142

    2. Re:Nokia? by red_dragon · · Score: 2

      I came here hoping to see the N900 listed. Thanks for not letting me down. I still miss my N900, two years after inadvertently walking into the Atlantic Ocean with it in my trunks. If the Neo900 manages to produce something within a reasonable time frame, I'll be able to resuscitate it.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
    3. Re:Nokia? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      Interesting! I'll upgrade mine for sure once the kit is for sale.

      Also came in to post about the N900; beaten.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    4. Re:Nokia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have a look at (soon to be launched) Jolla.
      It's made by the ex-Nokia team who made N9 (and N900?), which isn't that bad either. And, although not officially confirmed afaik, there may be an optional hardware keyboard via the 'other-half' design (likely with wired connection to the phone for communication and power).
      Check some reviews/demos of Sailfish OS on the web too.

      All in all, currently this looks to be the most promising geek phone.

  6. Suer by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

    Because when I code, I always want to use a totally unwieldy UI and no text to do it. It's like when we code for robots, how a hobbyist robot you program by directly writing on the embedded chip, using the robot's sensor's as inputs.

    How about we code on a machine that's usable for coding? I can still design neat things for my phone that way. I promise.

  7. WebOS ? by oneiros27 · · Score: 1

    I never did any WebOS programming, but I loved my Palm Pre -- anyone know if it's scriptable?

    and before you say it's dead ... remember, HP released it into the wild, and then sold it to LG:

    http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/2032236/hp-launches-beta-of-open-webos
    http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/02/25/1747201/lg-acquires-webos-source-code-and-patents-from-hp

    --
    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    1. Re:WebOS ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      webOS is extremely scriptable, at least before the webOS 2.0 rewrite. It's still very hackable and open as evidenced by Preware and webos-internals

    2. Re:WebOS ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WebOS is awesome, since all the "core" control apps are written in essentially JavaScript, you can fire up your favorite text editor and instantly alter the way the phone works. Look at the list of patches for any WebOS device. There are hundreds that improve/alter the way the phone functions. There is no other phone I've ever seen that is easier to customize and alter. Just like Android, it's standard Linux with a GUI on top, but the GUI is superior to anything I've yet seen.

      I still contend it is miles ahead of Android, and is arguably the best tablet/phone OS ever made. If it only had developer support it would rock.

      I still carry a Pre3 as my phone, but sadly, it's getting long in the tooth.

    3. Re:WebOS ? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Well said. It was way ahead of it's time.

  8. All we need is software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are plenty of good devices out there from a hardware standpoint. The difference is that software is tailored by the manufacturer to reinforce their channels, partnerships, etc. (to the detriment of the user).

    Once rooted, these devices get a lot closer to what I think most people are looking for in a hobbyist device. However, that is the trick. Getting root access, and knowledge of the internals so that we can start work on our own.

    We've seen the failures hobbyist devices in the past. I expect the same going forward. If only we had access to the hardware and programming specs, we wouldn't even be having this conversation now. Maybe we can find a way to extort this info from these manufacturers.

    1. Re:All we need is software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9607

  9. Android + QPython3 by Btrot69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I recently defected from iOS and I'm having great fun with an android app called QPython.
    Docs are still a bit spotty, but with a few lines of Python I can do all sorts of things with the Android API.

    1. Re:Android + QPython3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, SL4A (Scripting Layer for Android) and Python are the first two things I get for my Android tablets.

    2. Re:Android + QPython3 by njnnja · · Score: 1

      I am having a lot of fun with pythonista for iOS. It sounds close to what you are talking about - it allows you to write scripts in python but it has its own libraries for the iPhone's display, input, etc. Sadly I don't know of any way to add additional non-standard libraries, but for what it is it's pretty cool.

  10. What an amazing idea!! by realmolo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, wouldn't it be great if someone made a completely developer-friendly, unlocked phone with good specs at a decent price?

    Yeah, no fucking shit it would. The carriers would NEVER allow it on their networks. We won't see a phone like that until we have a worldwide standard for cell networks, so that somebody could make that phone and actually sell it in the US.

    1. Re:What an amazing idea!! by jonbryce · · Score: 2

      There is a worldwide standard for cell networks, and if you get a phone that complies with it, there is a good chance it will work on the AT&T network, though probably not on any of the other networks.

    2. Re:What an amazing idea!! by the_humeister · · Score: 2

      Yes, yes indeed. I just got mine last week!

    3. Re:What an amazing idea!! by the_humeister · · Score: 1

      T-Mobile also uses GSM.

    4. Re:What an amazing idea!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Am I the only one that remembers the free runner?

      http://www.openmoko.com/freerunner.html

    5. Re:What an amazing idea!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      T-Mobile uses bullshit 3G frequencies that nobody supports

    6. Re:What an amazing idea!! by QuasiSteve · · Score: 1

      The carriers would NEVER allow it on their networks

      What do you mean.. 'allow'?

      While I'm unfamiliar with CDMA solutions, you can pick up GSM modules and radio away all day and night long within the limits of the module. That's the only bit they care about. There's hundreds of GSM projects for PIC, Arduino, RPi, etc. out there already, not to mention a bunch of off-the-shelf things like security systems (motion detection) that aren't strictly speaking 'phones' either and no carrier has to approve in advance.

      They'll probably cut you off if you decide to make a script that rings random phone numbers and hangs up after 0.5s so that nobody has time to answer it but random people reach for their phones to try anyway. But that's unrelated to the device.

    7. Re:What an amazing idea!! by jonbryce · · Score: 1

      Their 3G is at 1.7GHz. The rest of the world uses 2.1GHz. Some, such as O2 UK use 900MHz, but that is in addition to 2.1GHz.

    8. Re:What an amazing idea!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Does the Nexus 4 not count? Unlocked pentaband GSM, unlocked bootloader (you can even install Ubuntu on it if you want), last year's top of the line hardware, and $200-$250.

    9. Re:What an amazing idea!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We won't see a phone like that until we have a worldwide standard for cell networks

      you mean like some sort of Global System for Mobile Communications? If your carriers decline to implement it in favour of CDMA or something, then take it up with your carriers being obstinate. Or if they refuse to accept phones not sold by themselves, then either move to another carrier (free market!) or impose regulation requiring carriers to accept communication from devices that correctly interface with their SIM (the sane portions of the world!).

      Don't conflate the US' bizarre anti-competitive mobile phone system with the rest of the world.

    10. Re:What an amazing idea!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd prefer a phone that isn't made by a subsidiary of the NSA.

    11. Re:What an amazing idea!! by ssam · · Score: 1

      and the GTA04 and the Neo900 :-)

    12. Re:What an amazing idea!! by Migraineman · · Score: 1

      Folks seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the phone. It's not for your convenience. The phone is a conduit to connect your wallet to a carrier's bank account. That's why *every* carrier is willing to "give" you a phone for a substantial discount. Allowing you to change the phone's capabilities is equivalent to turning off the money stream.

      Now, if they could get a piece of the action, that's a horse of a different color.

    13. Re:What an amazing idea!! by galiven · · Score: 1

      The old OpenMoko Neo Freerunner did this, the price point is a bit high but you're asking for a very special feature with low demand in the general market, so supply and demand kick in.

      There's a new version with better hardware that just hasn't gone into production because it can't get enough pre-orders to finance a production run. Check it out:
      http://www.openphoenux.org/ (Click the GTA04 link for more info)

    14. Re:What an amazing idea!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9607

      https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9427

  11. Maemo/Meego/Sailfish anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    every time it gets done, or brought up, its instantly dismissed as a "nerd phone", and slammed hard. There seems to be massive resistance in the industry for everything other than infotainment devices hocking whatever crap large retailers and media companies want to sell.

    the n900 fit this role quite well, as it ran standard GNU libraries, and had a good working port of the GNU userland.

    Nokia has discontinued support, but it has been picked up by an active user community at maemo.org which continues to make new releases, and na

    Sailfish, its long lost successor, again, running GNU/Linux, will again fulfill this tool, with its Free(beer and speech), tool chain, that will let anyone program.

    the new Jolla phone should be ready the end of this year.

  12. They already have it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's called: all of them.

  13. Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.

    Programming hasn't changed very much in 50 or so years. And I think it's ludicrous that we're using a language to prgram a computer to do mathematical operations.

    What we really need is a symbolic programming "language" and it would rock on a touch screen.

    Why not go directly from dragging and dropping logic to machine code directly? There is no physcal law that says we have to program computers the way we do now.

    These "verbal" type of programming languages are so 20th century, inefficient and just old fashioned. Their time has passed.

    1. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My knee-jerk reaction was to disagree, but I kind of see where you're coming from. I think the reason we haven't changed is because the current methods work "well enough," so there's no real push to change.

    2. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What we really need is a symbolic programming "language" and it would rock on a touch screen.

      Sounds fun

    3. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by snookerdoodle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You do know this is a True Holy Grail that people have been trying to build for a long, long time, right? Object orientation was, at least partially, supposed to be a step in this direction.

      I think Smalltalk had promise (and still does), but it seems I'm the only person who actually likes it. :)

      I think LOGO kinda sparks people's imaginations. I remember a product called "Object Center" on our Sparcs in the 80s or 90s that was really just a class browser. Then I saw Interface Builder on a NeXT and thought that was gonna be it. But it has turned out to be really, really hard.

      You would be a hero if you developed a working, practical, usable graphical (which I think you mean by "symbolic") programming language.

      Mark

    4. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by tlambert · · Score: 1

      That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.

      This is the same article that gets posted every 6-8 weeks under different names.

      The whole point of these things appears to be to provide a modern day version of a Commodore-64, and get people interested in programming, and get them engaged, by having an environment where it's easy to do small hacks.

      Radical new methods of developing software aren't going to get you employed until they have already been widely adopted, after which they are neither radical nor new. We tried this with 3G computer languages, and then with 4G computer languages, where you ended up linking icons together, and there have been lots of other attempts.

      The OP should feel free to found a couple of companies, and good luck to them in getting their new paradigm adopted.

    5. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by aaronb1138 · · Score: 1

      There have been a couple nice stabs at creating more or less flow chart object based programming and scripting packages based entirely on visual concepts. The missing part for a touchscreen though is still going to be real estate. There just isn't space for the kind of UI which is efficient for this kind of creative content. College students love Google Docs for collaborative work, but you can't produce a properly formatted thesis with it's interface efficiently, similar issues.

    6. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about something like PARTS Workbench?

    7. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Programming hasn't changed very much in 50 or so years.

      So you're still feeding punched cards to your computer?

    8. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.

      Programming hasn't changed very much in 50 or so years. And I think it's ludicrous that we're using a language to prgram a computer to do mathematical operations.

      What we really need is a symbolic programming "language" and it would rock on a touch screen.

      Why not go directly from dragging and dropping logic to machine code directly? There is no physcal law that says we have to program computers the way we do now.

      These "verbal" type of programming languages are so 20th century, inefficient and just old fashioned. Their time has passed.

      I have a box on my shelf. It contains a product named AmigaVision and that's exactly how it worked. It was briefly very popular around 1990.

      It didn't spawn any notable imitators and I doubt you'll find a modern-day version of it. The paradigm remains, but primarily for use by data transformation utilities such as Pentaho DI (Kettle).

      Neither the drag/drop flowchart nor the strung-together filecards programming methods have ever really taken off.

      If there's a more productive way to program than the keyboarding style first seen in the 1950s, we've yet to see it.

    9. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by AJH16 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You mean like the literally DOZENS if not hundreds of flowchart programming languages that have tried it before and failed outright because it simply isn't an easy format for us to follow the logic from when designing complex logic?

      --
      AJ Henderson
    10. Re: Current programming tools suck, that's why. by iamhassi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Already exists. There's a Ubuntu phone in the works that obviously allows scripting. You can hook it up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse to use it as a real computer too. Really that's where Microsoft should be going with Windows 8, the days of a desktop, tablet and smartphone being separate devices are limited, phones already have more CPU power than a 2007 desktop so why are we limiting them to a 4 to 5" screen? Someday soon you'll be able to walk in your office and flick the screen of your smartphone over to your desktop screen and sit at your keyboard and continue to work on whatever you were working on.

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    11. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by alva_edison · · Score: 1

      That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.

      Note this response took too long to compose, so there have already been some good/better answers below, Prograph, LabView, and the comments about APL are all relevant and interesting

      Random idea on how to get around it:

      Starting point: utilize some esoteric language that use a limited symbol set and positional coding, i.e. funges. In this case, the screen would be a scrollable grid (say 3x4, for 12 tiles in view at one time), and you would press on grid locations to set their value, possibly through a sub-menu, possibly by just cycling through choices, or maybe a gesture system.
      Going further, each grid position wouldn't necessarily be limited to a single symbol, it could be a symbol plus inputs selectable by sub-menu. This would allow you to use multiple registers, not just a single stack. Then, you could save sub-programs with defined inputs/outputs as functions to a library. You could possibly even start putting together classes.
      Once you get to the object oriented side, the strict grid might be too limiting, at that level it might be better to view objects as packages, which you can draw connections between. Programming by flowchart/object model.

      You won't excise typing completely, because you will need to put in strings at some point. However, class names/function names/variables could all be custom icons.

      --
      He effected a bored affect.
    12. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by notanalien_justgreen · · Score: 1

      That's pretty much what LabView is. Downside is it really sucks to do any traditional programming in. Also it's really expensive.

    13. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Urkki · · Score: 1

      That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.

      The thing is, there is an enormous amount of exact details even in a small piece of code. You can enter it by typing far faster than in any other way, especially when aided by advanced code completion and other forms of semiautomatic code generation. And the more expressive the language, the more each character counts, and more difficult it is to express same things in some other way.

      Only when we have AIs comparable to humans, we can hope for something different. Except that is not so different after all, it is just the human code monkey replaced by the AI code monkey, taking orders from architects and managers...

    14. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Urkki · · Score: 1

      However, class names/function names/variables could all be custom icons.

      This would work about as well as having icons for people, instead of names...

    15. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...

      You would be a hero if you developed a working, practical, usable graphical (which I think you mean by "symbolic") programming language.

      Hey, wouldn't be heroic even if a decent & thorough & complete specification got produced?

      Aww, but it's much easier to dive in, create a single use-case tool, then find out you're tired of a surprisingly & incredibly complex project. Fail.

    16. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      StateCharts were a graphical programming environment that went directly to machine code.
      You could also get it to generate a 'text' version of the code, but that wasn't the primary editing mode.

    17. Re: Current programming tools suck, that's why. by bondsbw · · Score: 1

      Agreed. As someone who enjoys the fact that Microsoft is innovating and I can see a possible future of really useful devices, Ubuntu has actually come out with a strategy to get us much closer today.

      But unfortunately it's Ubuntu, which means we'll probably be celebrating their reaching 2% tablet marketshare in 2018.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    18. Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I once had a work supervisor who held to the exact antithesis of your conjecture. I prefer modelica over simulink anyday.

  14. on{X} by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft Research has another product to solve this problem:
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.onx.app

    Unfortunately, it only works for Android. I wish they'd made a Windows Phone version too.

  15. Already done, people didn't want it. by Roadmaster · · Score: 3, Informative

    There was already a phone proposed that could have done this with no problem. There wasn't enough interest on it to make it a reality.

    http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge

    And before you go complaining about the cost, please have a look at flagship Android phones and how much they cost *off contract*. The Edge was a pretty good value.

    1. Re:Already done, people didn't want it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Nexus 4 is an unlocked, well-spec'd, completely developer friendly phone that's only $250. It really seems to address the vast majority of the issues being raised here.

    2. Re:Already done, people didn't want it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh come on, Kickstarter and the like are not pre-ordering systems and I wish people wouldn't keep treating them like such. Why would you shell out hundreds of dollars for something that hasn't even been prototyped yet? This isn't $10 down on some indie PC game here.

    3. Re:Already done, people didn't want it. by ssam · · Score: 1

      Because making hardware has massive upfront costs. So either hardware manufacture is restricted to the existing players (and people who can get hold of millions dollar lones), or you use crowd funding.

    4. Re:Already done, people didn't want it. by div_2n · · Score: 1

      I don't think it's fair to judge the failure of the Edge campaign as "people didn't want it".

      I would have bought one or two if I had enough time to save up the money for it. Forking out $700 or $1400 (for two) on a whim isn't something I'm willing to do since I follow a budget. 30 days notice to do so isn't enough time. If there had been sufficient warning of at least two months BEFORE the start of the campaign, I'm betting others besides myself could have saved up the money to buy one.

      Also, there was speculation about whether requiring people to have a Paypal account caused some people not to pledge for one. It's reasonable to suspect at least some people fit in this category.

      Lastly the Edge campaign was an absolute clinic in how NOT to do pricing perks. It would probably take three or four large paragraphs to explain the situation, but to say that it was convoluted and unhelpful would be an understatement. They eventually settled on a single (and attractive) price point which is what they should have had from the beginning.

    5. Re:Already done, people didn't want it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with off-contract phone buying, at least here in The States, is that you still pay the same amount for the service. May as well get a better phone on contract for a 1/3 or 1/4 the price. You're paying the rest off regardless if you get the phone from the carrier or not. The few carriers that allow you to get a cut rate for having your own phone are jokes when it comes to service. It's a nice gimick but no one serious about their phone as a tool is buying into that kind of nonsense.

    6. Re:Already done, people didn't want it. by nogginthenog · · Score: 1

      Nexus 4 $199/£159 (8Gb version). Off contract.

  16. and this is why i'm still using the n900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At this point the the processor is anaemic, the display is scratched, and the infamous usb port seems a little loose, but I still haven't found a good replacement to my n900. No other phone I know of allows bash, standard linux tools, and python ( including pyqt ). Here's to hoping that Jolla sailfish fills the niche this winter.

    1. Re:and this is why i'm still using the n900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good replacement to N900? Neo900 maybe? http://neo900.org/

  17. Scripting uber alles? by Shoten · · Score: 1

    I get the desire to script, on many levels...but to have the ability to write scripts supersede ALL other considerations for an app? I'm sorry, but when I'm playing solitaire on my phone to kill a few minutes, I don't see any particular need to be able to run scripts. This seems idiotic to me. I would hasten to point out the numerous advertisements for everything from web browsers to phones (of different types) to tablets that used "Angry Birds" as an example of what you could do. A phone that can't play games (because let's face it, scripting is not needed in most games) is going to fail horribly.

    --

    For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
    1. Re:Scripting uber alles? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is about a hobbyist smartphone.

      It's like if someone asked about the ideal gamer's smartphone and you complained that all the people are talking about games, although there are so many other things you can do with your smartphone.

    2. Re:Scripting uber alles? by Shoten · · Score: 1

      This is about a hobbyist smartphone.

      It's like if someone asked about the ideal gamer's smartphone and you complained that all the people are talking about games, although there are so many other things you can do with your smartphone.

      Yeah, I understood that part. I'm a hobbyist myself; I've been playing around with Arduino in various forms (Nano and Teensy primarily), and the like. But a smartphone isn't just something you swap out...you have to commit to it for the most part, or you won't get the value from it. They aren't cheap if they're any good, and it's no fun to either carry around two phones for no particular reason, or to have to deal with the added cost of an extra phone each month as well as the question of which phone number to give whom. Oh, and since non-scriptable apps are out of the running, you exclude nearly the entire ecosystem of existing apps which are available today to do even the most crucial and basic things (like read email). You won't get many apps written for it which comply with the requirement, because it's a hobbyist phone...and hobbyists are few and far between, so there's no promise of a critical mass to get large companies to back proactive development so that there'll be a good selection to start out with.

      Writing code is not something a smartphone excels at as a platform; gaming, on the other hand, and many other non-scripting activities are. So it'd be a situation where I'd pay $10 extra a month, plus have to carry two phones, all just so that I could have some scriptable applications on one of the two phones, but not the phone that I would rely upon for most things because there would be almost no apps for it in the first place? I don't get it. I love to tinker, code, and play around with electronics, but this doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. And that's my point.

      --

      For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
  18. ... JavaScript by tomxor · · Score: 1

    Make a great simple programming environment that runs on desktops or laptops that plugs right in, but it should also be easy to write scripts on the phone itself.

    Why re-invent the wheel, JavaScript is the fastest most widely supported scripting language there is. it's easy to use and already exists on every computer that has a browser, it's also pre-installed on every smart phone.

    1. Re:... JavaScript by Ingineerix · · Score: 1

      Already done. See Palm's WebOS.

    2. Re:... JavaScript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You miss the point, the scripting language needs to be integrated at the OS level and be able to control apps. Javascript could be used for this, but on current smartphones it can only be accessed through a web browser and is not able to control apps.

    3. Re:... JavaScript by tomxor · · Score: 1

      You miss understand me. Not a browser on a phone (WebOS let you use HTML and CSS and Javascript .. basically a browser), Javascript runtime on a phone with access to native APIs, and AFAIK that already exists in android.

  19. How is this not the Firefox OS Phone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The entire point is the whole setup is HTML5 with a core runtime. Sounds like exactly what he wants.

  20. Lowering the bar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What this guy is talking about isn't about getting a hobbyist-friendly smartphone, he's talking about lowering the bar so any numpty can create a fart app without learning anything. It's already perfectly possible for any hobbyist to develop for Android, and while you might have to put in a little bit of effort to learn how to do it, it's perfectly within reach of the hobbyist. Anyone can write a song and put it up on youtube, but how many of them are any good? Anyone can write an ebook and self-publish, but the results are mostly excruciatingly bad (I've sworn never to read another self-published book again). Do we really need the same thing in app development?

  21. i don't care if it has "phone" capabilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i don't even care if it's touchscreen.. but this would be cool

  22. Eh... I wanted it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just not enough people wanted it but a shitload did AND voted with their wallets.

    The cost wasn't even that high if you compare it to a top-end phone, which it was going to be.

    But the total amount needed was just to fucking high and in WAAAAY to short a time frame. Hell, people had to cough up the full amount with in ONE month, at least allow people to save up or spend their holiday money or something.

  23. I was aware of APL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But APL is from the keyboard language era with its own symbols - i.e. typed in language. Just look at teh keyboard layout from the link posted. It's still tied to the typing language paradigm.

    I'm talking about pictograms or something. Something beyond what NeXt tried to do in the early 90s.

    And make more intuitive. Meaning, just by fiddling with it, one can learn to program in a matter of minutes. Want to access data? Touch the database picture and drag it over until it "connects" or something.

    Programming computers has been stagnent for decades. There's all this research on human machine interection but nothing on programming - except in robotics.

    That new robot that came out recently, you program it by moving its arms.

    That's it. No coding, no keyboard - it's very intuitive - you "show" the robot how to do what its supposed to do.

    Why not do the same for that accounting, medical, or some other apps

    1. Re:I was aware of APL by AJH16 · · Score: 1

      This has been done numerous times before with various levels of success. Appware was a Borland attempt back in the day that fell flat on it's face, LEGO actually has several such interfaces for programing Mindstorm robots. Microsoft SSIS is probably the most successful platform and is used for DB translation. The problem is always the same however, it is impossible to build any thing of beyond moderate complexity and far too difficult to figure out what you were doing when you come back to it, let alone figuring out what someone else's program is doing.

      Code is written as a human readable language because it is something we naturally understand easily. The typing interface isn't the most natural method of data entry, but we can understand and read it easily when we are looking at it later. The structure and lexical simplicity is key to this and trying to abstract it to a graphical system like you are describing necessarily makes it too difficult to work with. It is possible, with sufficient effort, to write complex and reusable subroutines, but it is far FAR more difficult than doing the same with a typed language. (I have personally done this back in high school when programming an old robotics system with a flowchart language that needed all kinds of complex logic that I had to nest.) It took me months to write what I could have done in days, if not hours, in a standard language.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    2. Re:I was aware of APL by sjames · · Score: 1

      I want to access a list of all employees from the employee table joined on employee number to salary. And sort it please. Got any idea how to express that or a similarly complex idea unambiguously in gestures or pictures?

      Neither does anyone else, that's why our ancestors developed spoken and then written language. And that's why we use written language with computers.

  24. Want could would by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 1

    I want a phone without any high-resolution color display and without a touch screen. It should have a small led display, many sensors (including alitmeter, barometer, thermometer, movement & tilt sensor), should have a little keyboard with a control key, sophisticated power-management with built-in wakeup/alarm routines, would have a battery life of one week or more and needs to be entirely hackable/scriptable in LISP. On the backside, there should be a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

    Alas, it's not going to happen... :-(

    1. Re:Want could would by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      An altimeter IS a barometer and vice versa.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:Want could would by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're right! Which makes me wonder why Casio call their watches "triple sensor"...

      So let's replace the altimeter with a laser range finder, which could be useful for all kinds of measurements.

  25. The death of app inventor is greatly exaggerated. by leuk_he · · Score: 1

    From the leftovers of app inventor as created by MIT you can still make perfectly happy fart button implementation.

    The trouble with most of those graphical environments is mostly the same thing. You can create a nice 60% ready app in a minimal time. However the fine tuning and the doing of special things will require effort that equals hard code coding.

  26. But the FairPhone is coming by Burz · · Score: 1

    Its an open source design, initially intended for the EU.

    http://www.fairphone.com/

    They met their minimum orders already and are getting close to selling-out their initial production run. Delivery date is December.

    1. Re:But the FairPhone is coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hope their phone is better than their web site.

    2. Re:But the FairPhone is coming by galiven · · Score: 1

      The Fairphone is about fairness in the supply chain, not openness or end-user control of the device, for that we have the much smaller OpenPhoenux project: /http://www.openphoenux.org/

  27. diy "phone" by fliptout · · Score: 1

    I've thought about making a custom "phone" in the past with GSM modules, but haven't had the time. Telit sells modules that have a builtin Python interpreter. Might make a fun hobby project. Sparkfun used to carry these modules... http://www.telit.com/en/products.php?p_ac=show&p=7/

    --
    A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
  28. Barriers to enter the market by gmuslera · · Score: 2

    The amount of patents that surrounds anything mobile makes pretty hard to get new players on the game. And if the patents game didn't killed you, you have next the carriers one.

    The best approach so far seem to be the one being done by Jolla with Sailfish, generate enough buzz, get a chinese manufacturer to pledge support (the chinese market is big enough to make this approach profitable), and from there, see how much luck they have in the rest of the world (with preorders at least it worked for them pretty well).

    It could work for existing players, unless it requires deep changes to adapt to that kind of approachs, if so, it must be something new. Or something that could be installed on Android phones very much like Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS are doing, with the core android OS and its drivers.

  29. touchpad on smart phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i wouldn't mind typing a script on a smartphone but I type slowly on a touchpad. I am so used to the old PS/2 keyboards. Even a netbook's keyboard is cramped for me. I had to buy a USB microsoft keyboard to plug into the netbook.

    if someone does create a scripting language for a phone, I will use the desktop version and transfer the code using a usb cable. Or I can create my own Android apps for Android devices.

    also, I wondered what happened to the Windows smartphone or Windows CE I think it is called. I'll go read about Windows for mobile devices.

  30. Replacable parts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Im still waiting for "modular" tablets and smartphones with replaceable parts. need a bigger / better screen, just go buy it and swap in. Need more ram, go buy ram sticks.... Just make up standards for all the parts! it's been done before, with PCs!

  31. Kivy by fliptout · · Score: 3, Informative

    You should check out Kivy- it will let you create a native app in Python for iOS or Android. http://kivy.org/

    --
    A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
  32. Fair phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The phone comes with android but they will make the phone rootable so you can run your own OS. This will be most likely Linux

    http://www.fairphone.com/

  33. Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To me, the Android platform was close enough. It's "just" Java (if you can't figure out Java...), there are no fees required to get the development environment or simulators set up, Android devices and phones are available new for as little as $60 (and cheaper as people upgrade). So...to me, Android IS a hobby-friendly environment.

    1. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by jbeach · · Score: 0

      Except for people who hate java, and don't trust its security at all.

      --
      The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
    2. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does Java's security have to do with developing in it? We're not talking about running it on your desktop, we're talking about applications developed _in_ Java (or, y'know, C++, or really your language of choice at this point) and deployed to Android. There are essentially zero security implications.

    3. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Except for people who hate java, and don't trust its security at all.

      Well, those are the people who are too stupid to figure out Java, like OP stated. Saying you don't trust "Java's security" is like saying you don't trust Python's or Ruby's security. It's a language, dumbass.

    4. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WTF are you talking about, 'zero security implications'??? the Java bytecode is interpreted and JIT'ed by the Dalvik virtual machine and not everybody blindly trusts Dalvik's security.

    5. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      A scriptable phone ...
      And you talk about security?

      Btw: you do know that on Android they only use "Java, the languga" and no byte code or framework or vm which is related to Java?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    6. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by Eddy_D · · Score: 1
      It's not just Java. The Android system is primarily C/C++ compiled services which run as Linux processes. All the apps are Java running under the DALVIK engine. If you are really serious about hacking Android then you are digging into the guts, creating new services that can be available to Java apps via Binder.

      BTW, Here is a good book on the subject (Embedded Android): http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021094.do

      --
      - I stole your sig.
    7. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by msobkow · · Score: 1

      Dalvik uses it's own bytecode.

      It is not JVM compatible.

      Therefore if it has bugs, they are different bugs than the JVM. Except for bugs that are in the source-compatible code, of course.

      p-code machines are not insecure in and of themselves. It is the implementations that are insecure.

      And as a final point, most of the security "holes" for the JVM are in the sandboxing for browsers, not the core engine running in standalone mode. Therefore those bugs are extremely unlikely to be part of Android's Dalvik engine.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    8. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Are you implying that scripting is inherently insecure?

      LOL

    9. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Are you implying Java is inherently insecure?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    10. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I knew all this before, which is why I was specifically talking about Dalvik's security, not JVM. How hard is it to read before posting a reply?

    11. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Obviously not! Go read my post until you understand it.

    12. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Why should I read your posts?

      A few days ago you self proclaimed you where an 10x programmer, rock star programmer and (where/have been) an arrogant asshole.

      That might all be true: except for the "where".

      So, why should I read your post, when you answered to my post? Which post do you mean? Your answer? Or any other post?

      Your post was: "Are you implying Java is inherently insecure?"

      So obviously you believe I implied that. So perhaps you should go back and read my post, and try to understand it?

      Sorry, idiot. I like playing with assholes. Because so smart as they believe they are, they never are ... otherwise they would not spend/waste their time with assholing around or bullshitting other people around.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    13. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Your post was: "Are you implying Java is inherently insecure?"

      That was YOUR post. You wrote that. Not me.

      Are all Germans this stupid, or just you?

    14. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Your post was: "Are you implying Java is inherently insecure?"

      Oh, I copy pasted wrong and you are dump to understand it?

      Oki, I fix it for your peanuts brain:

      Are you implying that scripting is inherently insecure?

      That was YOUR post. You wrote that. Not me.
      And why should I then read your post? (That was your previous answer) Sorry running in circles wont help you.

      Anyway, to bad /. has no ignore list.

      Hint: by repeatedly clicking "parent" you get a list of the previous "conversation".

      Perhaps you need some reading lectures to follow what was written by whom? So you are able to correctly interpret simple mistakes by me AND remember what you actually wrote.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    15. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      So... Are you saying that it's my fault that you can't manage to write a simple post?

      You Germans just love to blame other people for your failings, don't you? Pitiful.

      Oh, you STILL haven't managed to address my original comment. Are you implying that scripting is inherently insecure?

      I don't blame you for avoiding that question. You'll look foolish no matter how you answer. (Not that it will matter much. You should be used to looking foolish by now.)

    16. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      I addressed your "original" comment:
      Are you implying that scripting is inherently insecure?
      with the answer:

      "Are you implying Java is inherently insecure?"

      Very strange, that you missed that. Seems your germanphobia makes you unable to read/comprehend and unable to post coherently.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    17. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      No, I saw that. It just didn't make any sense. It does not in any way address my original comment. As I told you earlier. I neither said nor implied ANYTHING about Java.

      I know Germans are stupid, so I probably shouldn't have expected you to write anything coherent.

    18. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      No, I saw that. It just didn't make any sense. It does not in any way address my original comment. As I told you earlier. I neither said nor implied ANYTHING about Java.
      EXACTLY YOU MORON.
      You answered to a comment of me that was an answer TO SOMEONE ELSE!! And he implied that JAVA IS INHERENTLY INSECURE.

      OTOH your stupid moronic "questiion" if I believe if scripting is inherently insecure is unbelievable stupid. Where and when did I imply that?

      FOR FUCK SAKE use the damn parent / parent / parent link

      I know Germans are stupid, so I probably shouldn't have expected you to write anything coherent.

      That means you are an idiot. Perhaps I make a new project. Angels blog about narcc.
      Every fucking post of you basically ends with "I know Germans are stupid". When you apply for presidentship and it is uncovered who narcc really is such a blog would piss into your coffee quite nicely ...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    19. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      You answered to a comment of me that was an answer TO SOMEONE ELSE!!

      Yes, I know that. Your comment was absurd nonsense, however, which I felt the need to point out!

      I, on the other hand, said nothing about Java. You German pigs are exceptionally stupid!

    20. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Yes, you did not say anything about java, but my parent did.

      So my answer to your moronic inquiry was completely appropriated.

      So what exactly did you want to ask/imply/point out 5 posts ago? That java is no inherently security risk? I pointed that out to my parent already.
      Did you want to point out that scripting is inherently no security risk? Then go ahead and do so. The last half a dozen posts you only run circles and get (besides a copy/paste error by me) contradicted and set straight every single post you do.

      You German pigs are exceptionally stupid!

      I don't know, but most people working with pigs claim they are pretty smart.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    21. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      So my answer to your moronic inquiry was completely appropriated.

      No, it was not. Stupid German pig. My question to you stands alone. Are you embarassed by your comment? If I were a stupid German pig like you, I'd certainly be embarrassed!

      I don't know, but most people working with pigs claim they are pretty smart.

      That's true. Pigs are smarter than the average German.

    22. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Yeah yeah, keep insulting me ...

      Little child. Did a german once break your favorite toy?

      BTW: you still did not answer my question either.

      Obviously you realize now how stupid your question was, or why do you still post in this threat and write gibberish?

      If an asshole like you asks me something stupid, I ask him something stupid back. That is for most peopler enough of an answer to realize how stupid their question was in the first place.

      I for my part I'm rather a "stupid pig" than an asshole.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    23. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by narcc · · Score: 1

      you still did not answer my question either.

      Wrong again you filthy German pig!

      I'd tell you to learn how to read, but that's clearly beyond your inferior German mind.

    24. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by jbeach · · Score: 1

      Well, those are the people who are too stupid to figure out Java, like OP stated.

      Sure, except they're not. I'm talking specifically about people who's living is security, and who don't like the language itself. Whether or not that somehow gives you butthurt. http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/06/03/oracle-promises-secure-java/

      --
      The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
    25. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by jbeach · · Score: 1
      --
      The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
    26. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Without a comment a link is pointless.
      Java onAndroid is just a programming language like assembler, it has nothing to do with Oracles/Suns Java (the platform). There are no inherent security problems on Android, just because the programming language is Java. And Oracle has nothing to do with Java on Android.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    27. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by jbeach · · Score: 1

      I think intuiting the comment is fairly obvious - there are serious difficulties with Java as a language, as it has structural imperfections that encourage exploits.

      If you think a comment is necessary, then consider the above.

      Friends of mine who are very serious about information security are not interested in having Android smartphones for several reasons - but the fact that Android is built on top of Java is a main and important reason.

      You can not like or agree with this if you choose.

      --
      The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
    28. Re:Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Friends of mine who are very serious about information security are not interested in having Android smartphones for several reasons - but the fact that Android is built on top of Java is a main and important reason.

      This is nonsense.

      As already pointed out several times. The Java on Android is just a "language". It has nothing to do with Sun/Oracles Java.

      If there is a security problem on Android, then it is platform wide and and affects with no difference C or any other language used on Android.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  34. Neo900 by wick3t · · Score: 2, Informative

    Too bad Nokia quit making fun phones. The last was the N900. I'd love to have a new phone similar to that with modern specs.

    It seems that you haven't heard of the Neo900 project which aims to deliver just that.

    1. Re:Neo900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Neo900 will hardly have modern specs, it will be like the N900, but with a 1GHz Cortex-A8 instead of a 600MHz Cortex-A8 and 512MB RAM instead of 256MB on the N900, possibly LTE and it may have other minor improvement, but it is based on the Openmoko/OpenPhoenix GTA04 board, which limits the specifications and they also want Maemo 5 compatibility. And because it will only be produced in small quantities (unless lots more people suddenly show an interest in it), it will be quite expensive. I might buy one anyway if it isn't too expensive, but only because there probably won't be anything better as a pocket Linux computer for a while, though I am not likely to use it as a regular phone.

    2. Re:Neo900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For me it seems like quite a modern specs (it will probably have >=1GB additional RAM connected as swap, to overcome 512MB limit). Right, it's not high-end, but still pretty modern and usable.

      It's not meant to be high-end, fastest and greatest device - it's rather going to be feature monster, with lots of sensors and IO, and open documentation and schematics. It's a dream phone for both sw and hw hackers. Basing it on GTA04 adds some limitations, but OTOH it makes achieving that kind of "hackerphone" at some decent price much easier.

    3. Re:Neo900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fast swap isn't the same as RAM, yes it is a hell of a lot better than using flash storage as swap, and within the design constraints it is the best they can do, but I'd rather have 1GB of RAM and 512MB RAM and 2GB of fast swap.

      It is far from modern specs. My new android phone cost me $190* and it features a MTK8589 SoC which has a quad-core A7 (the low-power, but not low performance version of the A9 core) processor clocked at 1.2GHz and a decent GPU, it comes with 1GB of RAM and a 720p IPS LCD screen, performance wise it is comparable to my 2012 Nexus 7 (and because of the crappy flash/flash controller on my N7 it performs better in normal use). The Neo900s specs are pretty much low-end for a smartphone these, and it isn't coming at a decent price. What basing it on the GTA04 makes it, is that it will be achievable at all, I don't think there are the resources available to make a truly modern open N900 replacement at all, because no-one that can afford to fund it is interested in doing so. It will have some compelling features, but those features don't add up to modern specs.

      *After I ordered it I found a supplier (albeit of unknown to me reliability) selling it for $155.

  35. OpenMoko? by Warbothong · · Score: 2

    I'm still getting along fine with my OpenMoko FreeRunner. It's currently running Debian, so it's as scriptable as anything. The "programming environment which runs on desktops or laptops" is whatever you use already; the "plugs right in" part is SSH (and its friends scp, sshfs, etc.).

    So, either you love OpenMoko and hence your wish is fulfilled, or you see it as a total failure in which case it's clear why nobody is doing this anymore.

    1. Re:OpenMoko? by galiven · · Score: 2

      Finally someone mentioned this way way down in the comments. Its sad that such a great project has so easily been forgotten. The remains of the project are still very interesting but there aren't enough people to even finance a production run of the new hardware.
      www.gta04.org

  36. Raspberry Pi by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

    Just Install Asterisk on a Raspberry Pi problem solved :)

    --

    Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  37. Phonebloks might fit the bill by fear025 · · Score: 1

    It seems like the open scripting would fit in great with these folks:

    http://phonebloks.com/

    Unfortunately, I doubt the carriers would ever 'appreciate' this much freedom.

  38. OpenWebOS is still around... by zullnero · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's currently in a second Alpha state (if you're pulling the latest binaries, probably further along) and runs on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus (couple other profiles too). It's fully open source at this point, and even though supposedly LG wants to use it for TVs or something, there's a group that's been working on it for awhile ever since it was divulged from HPs hands. There are also efforts underway to emulate Android apps on the platform. The community also greatly appreciates anyone enthusiastic enough to contribute. You can find everything at webOSInternals. I still use a webOS phone as my daily device mainly because it does the things I need it to do very well (and other platforms come with way too many strings attached for me).

    If you want a hobbyist platform that the big platforms still steal ideas from...there you go. That's the epitome of a hobbyist platform. The scripting is all html/css/javascript using the Enyo framework. It's all open standards and there are plenty of tools that were built by Palm and later HP.

    1. Re:OpenWebOS is still around... by Lispy · · Score: 1

      I wish I had modpoints. Kids today seem to forget about it and it could sure use some manpower.

    2. Re:OpenWebOS is still around... by Ingineerix · · Score: 1

      If they can get a solid Android app emulator on WebOS and get it running on decent hardware, I'm there!

    3. Re:OpenWebOS is still around... by spage · · Score: 1

      The scripting is all html/css/javascript using the Enyo framework.

      It's cool that they open-sourced the webOS calculator, contacts, email, notes, etc., but it's not the complete phone image, I couldn't find the system settings, dialer, etc. The APIs that the published webOS apps use seem disconnected from any standardization efforts, and some apps seem to contact a local nodejs server instead of making simple JavaScript function calls. If it's all HTML/CSS/JavaScript, why is there a copy of Qt in the tree? Google suggests "much of the actual webOS GUI is (in webOS 2) Qt-based". The best explanation of Open webOS development I've found says

      * JavaScript applications with HTML5 and CSS3 using cross-platform Enyo framework
      * PDK for native C++ applications using OpenGL/ES, typically for games
      * JavaScript services implemented with node.js
      * System services implemented in either C++ or Javascript (node.js)
      ** Web access vs. performance
      * Standard applications use Enyo framework
      * User interface is a series of Qt C++ applications, libraries and services with some QML

      That's one way to do it and Tizen is similar, but compared with Firefox OS's everything in JavaScript calling web APIs, it's far more elaborate and less in the "everything scriptable" approach that TFA wants.

      --
      =S
  39. Woz's phone by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    What would that do? Allow free long distance calls? Tell you jokes? Or pull a practical joke on you every time you used it? Can only be operated on a Segway?

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  40. Network Issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem here is that the network providers aren't going to be that keen on a phone connecting to "their" network that could be running any kind of program on it. I can't see it being a comfortable position from their perspective and are unlikely, at least initially, to embrace the idea of a hobbyist phone.

  41. FairPhone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    at least they try to make it open and hackable!

    Not only fair when it comes to ressources.

    currently ownly shipping in europe, but who knows.
    http://www.fairphone.com

  42. Prograph by drerwk · · Score: 2

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prograph
    I loved using this in the mid 90s. I was 5x to 10x productive. But there was no diff available, no way to do SCM, it was hard to come back to code I'd written 6 months before and refresh my memory of what it did. And it was next to impossible to collaborate will a team. I was forced to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_UML using some horrible tools (Kennedy Carter iUML) in the 2005s - same exact problems.
    Now iBuilder or what ever the I tool is in XCode is pretty nice. But building software that works, is maintainable, is extendible, and so on is a hard task - I don't think it is the lack of drag and drop tools.

  43. graphical symbols, not APL! by optikos · · Score: 2

    National Instruments LabVIEW as graphical control-flow (e.g., looping, branching) constructs http://www.ni.com/white-paper/14556/en
    +
    ROOM+ObjecTime (now IBM Rational Rose Realtime) as graphical object-oriented & nested state-machines http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Object-Oriented-Modeling-Bran-Selic/dp/0471599174/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379088665&sr=1-1-fkmr1&keywords=realtime+object+oriented+modeling+objectime

    1. Re:graphical symbols, not APL! by wed128 · · Score: 1

      And labview is a great example of why this sort of thing is a bad idea.

  44. T-Mobile moving 3G to 1900PCS by SIGBUS · · Score: 1

    They're in the process of moving their 3G (UMTS/HSPA+) support to the PCS 1900 band, and then using the AWS 1700/2100 band for their LTE. If you're in an area where T-Mobile has LTE, an unlocked AT&T phone should work on 3G.

    --
    Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
  45. ummm by alienzed · · Score: 1

    It's called javascript and it runs on all phones already. You don't even need access to the phone itself, just a webserver...

    --
    Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
  46. Time For Woz's by RevSpaminator · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't Woz's phone also include an open case design, some empty chip sockets and an expansion bus? You know, in case someone wanted to experiment. :)

    1. Re: Time For Woz's by Eddy_D · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't Woz's phone also include an open case design, some empty chip sockets and an expansion bus? You know, in case someone wanted to experiment. :)

      Don't forget that you occasionally have to give it a smack to get it working again (a-la Apple ][)

      --
      - I stole your sig.
  47. Sounds like a job for Raspberry makers of the Pi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously. This is a tinkerer's dream just like Raspberry Pi. Essentially he is describing a Raspberry Pi with mobile radios, mobile monitor, mobile keyboard in a mobile case. Actually this could all be done without any hardware changes, on an Android phone. Anyone who has done Android development knows that it is a modified Linux environment under the hood; you can even get a shell prompt. And there are a number of alternative Android app stores that are alternatives to Google Play so it should be simple to set up another one. Of course the biggest job of all is not to produce the device but to police the app store so that it does not fill up with malware.

  48. N900 forever by Kludge · · Score: 1

    I'm holding onto my N900 for the forseeable future.
    I would be willing to pay several thousand for one with larger screen, some more up-to-date packages, a faster processor, etc. However, nothing like that exists apparently. The fact that I can make this phone do almost ANYTHING that my desktop computer can (plus make phone calls!) means that I'm not giving it up for a while.

    1. Re:N900 forever by tantrum · · Score: 1

      Ditto.

      I have two working N900s and one nonworking for spare parts. Not going to swap it out before something better hits the market, if something better comes to market that is.

      With the CSSU and some overclocking, it is not _that_ slow compared to other phones/tablets

  49. My dream device.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ..was close to the Nokia N900. I wanted an Linux underpinning with QT on top. I want full controls so that I have some assurance that a large corporation or government wasn't tracking my every purchase, move, image...ect.

  50. Netbooks are discontinued by tepples · · Score: 1

    So what steps should I take next to help get netbooks back into production? Or by "netbook" are you referring to 12" laptops?

    1. Re:Netbooks are discontinued by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      I know, I know. Let's talk about a 11.6" subnotebook instead. Anyway, it does all that the AC above wants.

  51. CDMA or zero bars by tepples · · Score: 1

    If your carriers decline to implement it in favour of CDMA or something, then take it up with your carriers being obstinate.

    Carrier V and its MVNOs: CDMA
    Carrier S and its MVNOs: CDMA
    Carrier A and its MVNOs: The single most hated carrier in the United States
    Carrier T and its MVNOs: Zero bars in too many places

    What do you expect the major U.S. CDMA carriers to say when an individual customer asks to switch to GSM?

    Don't conflate the US' bizarre anti-competitive mobile phone system with the rest of the world.

    How should U.S. residents qualify for legal immigration to escape "the US' bizarre anti-competitive mobile phone system"?

  52. Chromebook is the new Commodore-64 ? by perpenso · · Score: 2

    The whole point of these things appears to be to provide a modern day version of a Commodore-64, and get people interested in programming, and get them engaged, by having an environment where it's easy to do small hacks.

    Get a $200 Chromebook, install a full Linux distro on it. In adjusted dollars that is cheaper than a C-64 alone, not including tape, disc or monitor.

    1. Re:Chromebook is the new Commodore-64 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't need to adjust any dollars to make it cheaper - the Commodore 64 was listed as $595 at the time of arrival, and I don't think that it ever went below $200 in the stores, not even in the early nineties, ten years after its introduction.

    2. Re:Chromebook is the new Commodore-64 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The biggest impediment to C-64-like learning is simply what's possible today versus what was possible back then. Back then, a text-only interface was common and programs typically did a lot less than they do today. That made programming a lot more accessible since you could, in a short amount of time, do something that looked somewhat professional even when it was nowhere close.

      Today, it takes a lot of time investment to produce anything that looks even remotely like the kinds of applications we use. And applications these days are usually the result of the work of many people with a diverse set of skills. It takes more than just programming chops to produce something pleasant to use, there's usually UI/UX and designers/artists.

      I got into programming in TI basic the learning curve to put together something moderately impressive was very short...I had a working pong game in 3 hours with no more than the manual that came with the calculator. By today's standards, that's boring and I probably wouldn't have had the patience to invest the necessary time to get to interesting.

    3. Re:Chromebook is the new Commodore-64 ? by perpenso · · Score: 1

      You don't need to adjust any dollars to make it cheaper - the Commodore 64 was listed as $595 at the time of arrival, and I don't think that it ever went below $200 in the stores, not even in the early nineties, ten years after its introduction.

      I recall paying about $175 for a C-64 circa 1983/84. The price drops from that initial $5xx price tag was incredible. I expect that few C-64 owners bought their machines at the high end of the price range.

  53. For Facebook users only by tepples · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, it only works for Android.

    In addition, from the page you linked: "on{X} beta requires Facebook ID for authentication"

  54. I still use punch cards ... by perpenso · · Score: 1

    Programming hasn't changed very much in 50 or so years.

    So you're still feeding punched cards to your computer?

    I still use punch cards ... as book marks. In my intro to programming class (1980s) the professor had us do our first programming assignment on punch cards. He told us they were obsolete but having used them once we would better understand why some things are the way they are. He then mentioned we would have bookmarks for life so the deck of cards we had to buy wasn't completely useless.

    As I typed the above I realized that I am old not only because I had used punch cards but because I was referring to reading paper books. The punch cards don't help so much when using my paperwhite. :-)

  55. Share one SIM between two phones by tepples · · Score: 1

    or to have to deal with the added cost of an extra phone each month as well as the question of which phone number to give whom.

    This is true if you happen to live in an area where only CDMA2000 carriers that refuse to use CSIM have acceptable coverage. But if you happen to live in, or can move to, an area where T-Mobile or another respectable GSM carrier (or a CDMA2000 carrier that uses CSIM) has acceptable coverage, you can always take the SIM out of one phone and put it in the other phone.

    Oh, and since non-scriptable apps are out of the running, you exclude nearly the entire ecosystem of existing apps which are available today to do even the most crucial and basic things (like read email).

    For one thing, I think excluding applications that aren't scriptable was a joke. For another, plenty of MUAs are scriptable.

    Writing code is not something a smartphone excels at as a platform; gaming, on the other hand, and many other non-scripting activities are.

    For the same reason that most smartphones are poor at writing code, any smartphone that isn't the Xperia Play is poor at some game genres. A platformer like Mega Man, for example, really needs physical jump and fire buttons. When I tried playing a platformer on my Nexus 7 tablet, I kept missing the on-screen buttons with my thumbs because I was looking at the action at the center of the screen, not the buttons at the sides.

  56. Windows Phone 7 and 8 by tepples · · Score: 1

    also, I wondered what happened to the Windows smartphone or Windows CE I think it is called.

    Windows CE got replaced with Windows Phone 7 (a .NET-only platform with an annual fee to run your own code on your own device) and later Windows Phone 8 (a slimmed down version of Windows RT that I think has the same annual fee).

  57. Can't get to all I/O from JavaScript by tepples · · Score: 1

    This was the intent with iOS 1: all non-bundled applications would run inside Safari. But phone browsers have a habit of not exposing most of the phone's capabilities. For example, Safari for iOS couldn't upload files until very recently, and even now it can't upload anything but pictures and videos. Nor does it support WebGL in web pages or ability to use the device's camera and microphone (with the user's permission). Otherwise, there would have been no need for things like PhoneGap.

    1. Re:Can't get to all I/O from JavaScript by spage · · Score: 1

      Unless the phone's system apps are all open source and written in JavaScript, so necessarily there are Web APIs to everything. Firefox OS walks the walk.

      PhoneGap will shrink to be a compatibility shim on decent standards-compliant smartphones; the problem is Apple will always favor native IOS over web apps because Apple Inc. wants the resulting lock-in and can get away with it while they have market dominance.

      --
      =S
  58. It already exists by SCHecklerX · · Score: 1

    But it didn't survive the market well.

    It was called WebOS. Some people still cling to it, but it's a dead platform.

    Didn't like the way things looked or behaved in any app? It's all CSS and Javascript. Patch it. Patching WebOS was a very nice, elegant, and easy way to customise the phone.

  59. Waaa! by coinreturn · · Score: 1

    And I want a pony.

  60. Nothing keeps you from doing your own script apps by MouseR · · Score: 1

    I made a scripting app and it's been on the App Store for a bit more than two years. Its not a mainstream scripting language but rather a forth/postscript -inspired stack based. Its got runloops, shallow inheritance, threads, imports, marginal UI and complete Objective-C bridge. It gets the job done so well the engine is at the core of two other Apps.

    So, whats keeping you guys from making a Python App? Or whatever language you want to use.

  61. Have you Side Loaded a Blackberry Lately? by oxnyx · · Score: 1

    BB side loading would seem to meet the bill is the add "fun" of never being sure if all the required dll from Google Play are their or not.

    --
    Life is like untied shoe laces; it always tripping you up and getting in your way.
  62. Why? by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    OK call me naive but what is the big advantage (that I'm not seeing) of scripting over something that runs natively?

  63. Modularization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The biggest problem I see in the smartphone industry everything is tightly integrated to the point where even batteries are not replacable.

    Half the time it is impossible to install a different operating system if there were even a viable alternative to select. Why is it that operating systems that come with these devices be customized for each device? I can boot a live linux distro off of any x86 computer and it just comes up. Why should a phone be any different?

    If there were some way to modularize devices where one could pick and choose hardware they want there may be some pratical/cost constraints but you could at least offer pluggable baseband modules so people would not have to worry about using device x with network y and it would be isolated in a way that protected the carrier from the end user and the end user from the carrier.

    Having some kind of high level programibility built in would be a lot of fun.

  64. ^ This needs upvotes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The continual stories of people wanting to build this kind of phone is a good indication its time has come, if only they knew it already existed.

  65. duh, Firefox OS by spage · · Score: 1

    Surely Dave Winer can't be that out of touch. Firefox OS nails it.

    In Firefox OS everything is written in JavaScript, the most widely-deployed scripting language that developers already know. Unlike all the other also-rans to IOS and Android, its system applications — calendar, on-screen keyboard, music player, etc. — are likewise written in JavaScript. To permit this, and unlike BBX, OpenWebOS, Tizen, Windows 8, and everyone else saying "Write apps for our failing platform using HTML/CSS/JavaScript", it has Web APIs to most phone features (battery status, Bluetooth, camera, SMS, etc.), all on various tracks towards standardization. Like lots of phones you can run your apps on the desktop in an emulator; unlike lots of phones the Firefox OS Simulator runs in your browser. Unlike any other smartphone many of the apps you write for the phone will also run and install unchanged as apps on desktops (and Android) running Firefox, many will also work as Chrome apps with minimal effort, and anyone can run an app store, you just put an install button for your app on a web page on your site.

    --
    =S
  66. Click on "See Why Its Fair" by Burz · · Score: 1

    It lists what the FairPhone is about, including this bullet point:

    "Open, future-ready design
    Open, update, modify and make it yours – now and in the future."

  67. forget smartphone, want tiny piece of cell com by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    Have you seen the prices of NTP time servers that use CDMA cell communication for time source? The advantage over GPS based (which are also expensive) is that GPS based time source doesn't work so well with antennae indoors or in area surrounded by tall buildings. So I'd just be interested in project that uses CDMA to get time signal (which doesn't require subscription to any provider).

  68. N900 and descendants by dbIII · · Score: 1

    The N900 and descendants had that. There is a startup trying to bring such things back.

  69. Nokia did it already - the N900 by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    Not only was it a good phone, it also could support the major languages already out.

    About the only problem it had was the USB port being a bit loose, but otherwise a solid and presentable "do-anything" box.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  70. What about the OpenMoko Freerunner by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Surely the OpenMoko Freerunner is just such a thing.

  71. AppleScript? by groblewis · · Score: 1

    I'd be thrilled with AppleScript on the iPhone.

  72. the $12 gongkai phone might be a good start... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get Andrew Huang and Zach Smith to put together a prototypes and then make sure that as much as possible of the thing can be printed with some kind of 3D printer. All the the other functionality can come later but being as printable as possible, that is the key part for me.

  73. The Big Question by cundare · · Score: 1
    Why would any manufacturer / carrier offer or support such a product??

    .

    Everybody has the right to masturbate, but if you can't answer that question with some crediblility, this discussion is a waste of time.

  74. Ubuntu phone project is dead. Lots of others are h by DrYak · · Score: 1

    There's a Ubuntu phone in the works that obviously allows scripting

    Well, specifically, the Ubuntu Edge didn't manage to raise enough funds on Indiegogo.
    They were asking quite a lot of money. 32 million and only got around 12 if a remember correctly. That's quite a lot, but at least they were honest with taking into account that they have absolutely NO experience in phone making and that it would probably cost that much ressource to bring the Edge into market while having to learn absolutely every single necessary skill on the way.
    Basically, in order to bring the Ubuntu Edge on the market, Canonical would have had to create its own phone making company from the ground. Hence the high required initial investment.

    Luckily for us, that's far from the only opensource project.

    That includes old classics like the Geekphone, the qtopia Greenphone, or even the OpenMoko's Freerunner (entirely opensource, including design, PCB and firmware on components).
    That includes also several upcoming machines (like some FireFox OS powered phone), and among other the Jolla (done by no less than the former Meego/Maemo team at Nokia, who split after Nokia shut them down and decided to become Microsoft's lapdog).
    Jolla's case is slightly different (specially from iconic phones like openmoko's freerunner or ubuntu's edge), in that it's not done by opensource idealists with little experience who make a first try at an opensource phone hoping to liberate the world of walled garden there (though openmoko got help and partnership with FIC). It's former phone maker with quite some experience and legacy, who decides "Fuck our former boss, let's keep making an opensource phone". They have way much more contacts and experience and will probably iterate through a lot less of hardware bugs iterations.

    (That's the big problem with some of the early "full opensource phones": the maker are quite inexperienced, make quite a lot of hardware bugs [like broken sound], requiring further iteration to fix. By the time the product is stable and final, it's design seem outdated and underpowered for very expensive price, specially compared to the offer from big brands. That's at least one less problem for the Jolla).

    You can hook it up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse to use it as a real computer too. {...} phones already have more CPU power than a 2007 desktop so why are we limiting them to a 4 to 5" screen? Someday soon you'll be able to walk in your office and flick the screen of your smartphone over to your desktop screen and sit at your keyboard and continue to work on whatever you were working on.

    And Ubuntu is far from the only one thinking in that direction. That's already been being done in hobbyist circles (get a 'chroot' running inside android phone which have MHL and/or micro-HDMI, Usb-on-the-Go, Bluetooth HID, etc.). That's advertised as a concept for quite some time by Always Innovating (and given their trend, ASUS has therefor a Padfone in the pipeline). So don't despair.

    You'll either get your dream "programmable smartphone as a desktop" from an opensource company (such a dock is really a nice "Other half" project for Jolla).
    Or simply get a dockable one from the companies copying AI.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  75. Enyo is the key by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It can be used on iOS, Android, Blackberry, modern web browsers, etc. If one wants to build an app, test it on the desktop, and then move it to a mobile device, Enyo does that. Here's a good example: http://www.flashcardstogo.com