There is only one vendor and they do not have a locked bootloader so what motivation do you have for bringing such an irrelevant thing up?
It isn't irrelevant at all, Jolla intends for other OEMs to make Sailfish phones and if OEMs that lock bootloaders on Android phones start making Sailfish phones they could do the same thing there so Sailfish is no better from that perspective. But ultimately that niche of an updatable phone that you think this serves is already served by the multitude of bootloader-unlocked Android phones from Samsung, HTC and the Nexus line so that niche gets no advantage by going with Sailfish and they would have to put up with paying more money for inferior hardware.
You would be far better off with a Nexus5 as it is cheaper, it is far superior hardware, it is unlocked and it can run Sailfish OS if you want.
Even then, if updates are so important then why are you evangelizing N900? It hasn't had any updates in years.
They object to how the only way to download those DRM-free tracks is with that annoying proprietary bloat-ware, iTunes.
That is really lame, if you're ultra-paranoid just run it in a VM and delete it once the tracks are downloaded. The upshot is you can get DRM-free music and not be beholden to Apple at all.
They didn't mention, but the DRM-free tracks from Apple are also patent-encumbered AAC and violate your privacy, by including your account details in the file.
Being DRM-free you can convert those tracks to whatever format you want. I do understand them not endorsing such products due to the process to get the media but the fact that the media is DRM-free and therefore can easily be converted to any format you want means the result is achievable and desirable.
I can see what they're getting at but every single choice there is only better if you value "software freedom" above all else, and even in some cases they seem to be acting deliberately obtuse. For example you can install GNU/Linux on a Macbook Pro and not only will you have far superior hardware than the thinkpenguin solution but you have the choice to use whatever OS suits you for a particular task. Then there's Google Drive, sure it's free and your data is accessible to Google but if you want "cloud storage" you can't guarantee that data will always be private no matter who you host it with and if need further protections you will obviously encrypt it anyway. And what does mediagoblin vs youtube have to do with "gift giving"?
The idea that most people will value software freedom above all else is idiocy so instead they need to focus on making good products, products that appeal to most people and compete with non-free products. At the moment many (not all) things in that list are examples of free (as in freedom) resulting in a crappier product. "Free" needs to result in an equal or better product in comparison but also have the advantage of being free.
They really aren't trying very hard. Seriously who is actually going to prefer an FSF membership over an iTunes giftcard? You can download DRM-free music that you can play anywhere from iTunes so how is it the FSF is so opposed to that? I'd prefer a donation be made in my name to The Human Fund than an FSF membership.
I hope you do realize that you pay much more than that if you buy the phone sim-locked? The way this works is that if I pay full price for the phone, i can choose whichever operator i wish with minimal costs.
But why would you pay for the Jolla phone when you can get the unlocked Nexus 5 - which is far superior hardware - for much less cost? Especially when their 'Android compatibility' means you could run Sailfish on it anyway.
I don't see a bunch of developers clamoring to port Unity to RHEL or FreeBSD, or OSX for that matter
So? If you want it then you do it. It's getting pretty pathetic if you're going to claim you're locked in just because you're too lazy to learn a different UI, a UI which could be ported to other platforms if anybody actually wanted to do it.
Because it's not locked down and you can boot it with something other than the original software, just like the N900
and just like most of the major Android phones like the Nexus devices and devices from Samsung and HTC. But those OEMs that do have locked bootloaders for Android would also be able to have locked bootloaders for Sailfish anyway so it would be no different.
All those android phones that need to be cracked just to install some apps and are fixed on a specific version (sometimes quite an old one on a new phone) do not have such flexibility.
No, not all of them do, and for those that do even if they had Sailfish on them instead of Android they would still have exactly the same problem. Locked bootloaders or lack of driver updates is not a problem of Android, it's a problem of OEMs and would be no different with Sailfish.
Can I run Unity on BSD or Windows? I didn't think so.
How is the inability to run Unity on BSD or Windows locking you in? You can't operate without Unity? The code for it is open anyway so you're hardly "locked in".
This proposes to fill that niche of an updatable phone so that you don't want a new phone every two years.
But do you need a device more updateable than the average Android phone? Given your comment about usage of the N900 I would say the answer is probably 'no', and if OEMs get on board why would you expect the update schedule for Sailfish to be any different?
When the native apps are better or just simply faster?
It's unlikely they would perform any different than they do an Android device, sure a native app is likely to be faster still but if you can get the same experience on Sailfish as you can on Android by targeting just Android then why explicitly target Sailfish? Better to spend that effort on more established platforms to get a larger audience.
many, or most apps on the google store break, even if you try to simply copy them over, as the platform services are not open source.
That's probably the most telling part of the plan, the proprietary Google Play Services gives the opportunity to have 'Google Play Services' applications rather than just 'Android' applications and the more they advance the features of that over the features of Android the more appealing it is to developers and the less appealing non-Google Android devices will be to end users.
Funny you suggest the Q10/Q5. I checked with my mobile provider. They don't have any Q10s and the Q5s are selling for a much higher price than.... well almost any other phone in their market.
Probably because hardware keyboards on smartphones are unpopular, you pay more for niche product particularly when it involves additional hardware.
I could get a Z10 or a new quad-core Samsung Galaxy for less than the Q5.
But they don't have hardware keyboards, so less hardware along with economies of scale due to their target audience makes them cheaper.
But is this going to be particularly useful to people? The issues with gesture-based OSes (Meego Harmattan and Blackberry 10 in particular) is they are not discoverable and the spatial awareness problem is tricky, add to that the fact that swiping from the edges gets in the way if you are playing games - which is the key reason Apple had to add the ability to turn off the iOS Control Center swiping gesture. But most importantly the gesture based interface doesn't really add anything of value.
But what if AMD's next chip kicked ass! Remember the Athlon and the later AthlonXPs were the fastest x86 chip you could buy a decade ago?
It could theoretically happen, but the Athlon's success was as much about AMD coming up with a decent architecture as it was Intel simultaneously dropping the ball with the Netburst architecture.
And a ShittyPhone with a dual-core 1.8GHz each and no optimisations for battery life whatsoever.
That is an incredibly ignorant statement. iOS has been since the beginning chock full of battery life optimizations, with many API's oriented to help developers get the best battery life possible from the system, including very advanced battery consumption measurement tools shipped with XCode...
He obviously wasn't talking about iOS, firstly because of the clear battery life optimizations that have always been in iOS and secondly the fact that no iPhone ever used a dual core 1.8GHz CPU so your only link between them is that ShittyPhone somehow equals iPhone, why would you make that link? Does he specifically have to call out that the second device is Android or Meego or Windows Phone or something just so you don't take offence to it by automatically assuming that because he is criticizing something he must be criticizing iOS in spit of the fact that his description doesn't even match iOS at all?
Then again I'm one of those super-human freaks who can see a difference between 1080 and 4k
Yet somehow you ignore the fact that that statement is utterly meaningless without specifying the PPI and viewing distance (not to mention the type of display, ie pixel layout). If it's on a 3.5" screen then you almost certainly can't at any viewing distance, if you're 2 feet away from a 50" screen then just about anybody would be hard pressed not to be able to tell teh difference.
I have tried Win 8 and I loathe using it. Every time my roommate asks me how to do something in Windows 8, I tell her how to do it in Win 7 and it's won't work. So she has to look it up on Google. She asked me to change her background. Right-click didn't work is all I know.
Rubbish, it works exactly as it does on Windows 7, I even provided a link demonstrating it, are you really that retarded? What does right-click do then? If nothing then her mouse is probably broken.
She asked me to add a printer because she couldn't find the "Control Panel". But you are so blinded by facts that you are willing to discount anything that goes against your love of Win 8.
No, I have no love for Windows 8, you only assume that because I disagree with you. Control Panel is there, you just have to search for it, then it works just as it did on Windows 7. The problem is clearly not that you couldn't find Control Panel, it's that you didn't look for it, you lack the mental capacity to do anything if it isn't staring you in the face.
Wow, you are dense. My point was things take the full screen in Win 8 for no reason. Why do settings need to take the ENTIRE screen? You only confirmed my point.
Obviously for tablet form-factors, but they don't have to take fullscreen as you can snap them side-by-side or alternatively change settings just as you would in Windows 7 through Control Panel. Yes getting to it is a bit different, but why are you acting as though that is the end of the world?
EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM I OPENED ON HER MACHINE USED THE ENTIRE SCREEN.
Example? You still fail to provide any example. There is no Windows 7 application that will take up the entire screen on Windows 8, that is a fact but you are so angry you try to refute facts anyway. So again, what programs were you using on Windows 7 that take up the entire screen on Windows 8?
She made no changes to settings. So you retort that your machine does it differently most likely because you've tweaked it.
Wrong again, in your case it is simply PEBKAC, I linked to a page detailing how to do it and it's the same as Windows 7, your inability to follow simple instructions or repeat the actions of doing it on Windows 7 on Windows 8 is your failing.
Is that runtime pre-installed ? No, it is not, but the browser is. This is an important part of the reason why web technologies are adopted.
And is the implementation consistent across those platforms? No, it is not. In fact there is not even any consistent mechanism to even tell what level of compliance with what level of the standard the implementation is at.
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There is only one vendor and they do not have a locked bootloader so what motivation do you have for bringing such an irrelevant thing up?
It isn't irrelevant at all, Jolla intends for other OEMs to make Sailfish phones and if OEMs that lock bootloaders on Android phones start making Sailfish phones they could do the same thing there so Sailfish is no better from that perspective. But ultimately that niche of an updatable phone that you think this serves is already served by the multitude of bootloader-unlocked Android phones from Samsung, HTC and the Nexus line so that niche gets no advantage by going with Sailfish and they would have to put up with paying more money for inferior hardware.
You would be far better off with a Nexus5 as it is cheaper, it is far superior hardware, it is unlocked and it can run Sailfish OS if you want.
Even then, if updates are so important then why are you evangelizing N900? It hasn't had any updates in years.
They object to how the only way to download those DRM-free tracks is with that annoying proprietary bloat-ware, iTunes.
That is really lame, if you're ultra-paranoid just run it in a VM and delete it once the tracks are downloaded. The upshot is you can get DRM-free music and not be beholden to Apple at all.
They didn't mention, but the DRM-free tracks from Apple are also patent-encumbered AAC and violate your privacy, by including your account details in the file.
Being DRM-free you can convert those tracks to whatever format you want. I do understand them not endorsing such products due to the process to get the media but the fact that the media is DRM-free and therefore can easily be converted to any format you want means the result is achievable and desirable.
If it doesn't exist, then they could have developed it; probably would have cost much less than this did.
With the ridiculous budget blowouts on government technology projects i highly doubt that.
I can see what they're getting at but every single choice there is only better if you value "software freedom" above all else, and even in some cases they seem to be acting deliberately obtuse. For example you can install GNU/Linux on a Macbook Pro and not only will you have far superior hardware than the thinkpenguin solution but you have the choice to use whatever OS suits you for a particular task.
Then there's Google Drive, sure it's free and your data is accessible to Google but if you want "cloud storage" you can't guarantee that data will always be private no matter who you host it with and if need further protections you will obviously encrypt it anyway.
And what does mediagoblin vs youtube have to do with "gift giving"?
The idea that most people will value software freedom above all else is idiocy so instead they need to focus on making good products, products that appeal to most people and compete with non-free products. At the moment many (not all) things in that list are examples of free (as in freedom) resulting in a crappier product. "Free" needs to result in an equal or better product in comparison but also have the advantage of being free.
They really aren't trying very hard. Seriously who is actually going to prefer an FSF membership over an iTunes giftcard? You can download DRM-free music that you can play anywhere from iTunes so how is it the FSF is so opposed to that? I'd prefer a donation be made in my name to The Human Fund than an FSF membership.
I hope you do realize that you pay much more than that if you buy the phone sim-locked? The way this works is that if I pay full price for the phone, i can choose whichever operator i wish with minimal costs.
But why would you pay for the Jolla phone when you can get the unlocked Nexus 5 - which is far superior hardware - for much less cost? Especially when their 'Android compatibility' means you could run Sailfish on it anyway.
I don't see a bunch of developers clamoring to port Unity to RHEL or FreeBSD, or OSX for that matter
So? If you want it then you do it. It's getting pretty pathetic if you're going to claim you're locked in just because you're too lazy to learn a different UI, a UI which could be ported to other platforms if anybody actually wanted to do it.
Because it's not locked down and you can boot it with something other than the original software, just like the N900
and just like most of the major Android phones like the Nexus devices and devices from Samsung and HTC. But those OEMs that do have locked bootloaders for Android would also be able to have locked bootloaders for Sailfish anyway so it would be no different.
All those android phones that need to be cracked just to install some apps and are fixed on a specific version (sometimes quite an old one on a new phone) do not have such flexibility.
No, not all of them do, and for those that do even if they had Sailfish on them instead of Android they would still have exactly the same problem. Locked bootloaders or lack of driver updates is not a problem of Android, it's a problem of OEMs and would be no different with Sailfish.
But the average Android phone is NOT upgradeable and eventually gets locked out of the newer apps.
Is that really the average though?
Given your comment about the N900, does that even matter?
Why would it be any different with Sailfish than Android?
Can I run Unity on BSD or Windows? I didn't think so.
How is the inability to run Unity on BSD or Windows locking you in? You can't operate without Unity? The code for it is open anyway so you're hardly "locked in".
This proposes to fill that niche of an updatable phone so that you don't want a new phone every two years.
But do you need a device more updateable than the average Android phone? Given your comment about usage of the N900 I would say the answer is probably 'no', and if OEMs get on board why would you expect the update schedule for Sailfish to be any different?
When the native apps are better or just simply faster?
It's unlikely they would perform any different than they do an Android device, sure a native app is likely to be faster still but if you can get the same experience on Sailfish as you can on Android by targeting just Android then why explicitly target Sailfish? Better to spend that effort on more established platforms to get a larger audience.
many, or most apps on the google store break, even if you try to simply copy them over, as the platform services are not open source.
That's probably the most telling part of the plan, the proprietary Google Play Services gives the opportunity to have 'Google Play Services' applications rather than just 'Android' applications and the more they advance the features of that over the features of Android the more appealing it is to developers and the less appealing non-Google Android devices will be to end users.
Ubuntu seems to be trying to lock users in with many of its recent changes, but has just succeeded in pushing users away.
What changes are locking users in?
Can't you just switch the DM to Gnome?
Funny you suggest the Q10/Q5. I checked with my mobile provider. They don't have any Q10s and the Q5s are selling for a much higher price than .... well almost any other phone in their market.
Probably because hardware keyboards on smartphones are unpopular, you pay more for niche product particularly when it involves additional hardware.
I could get a Z10 or a new quad-core Samsung Galaxy for less than the Q5.
But they don't have hardware keyboards, so less hardware along with economies of scale due to their target audience makes them cheaper.
But is this going to be particularly useful to people? The issues with gesture-based OSes (Meego Harmattan and Blackberry 10 in particular) is they are not discoverable and the spatial awareness problem is tricky, add to that the fact that swiping from the edges gets in the way if you are playing games - which is the key reason Apple had to add the ability to turn off the iOS Control Center swiping gesture. But most importantly the gesture based interface doesn't really add anything of value.
But what if AMD's next chip kicked ass! Remember the Athlon and the later AthlonXPs were the fastest x86 chip you could buy a decade ago?
It could theoretically happen, but the Athlon's success was as much about AMD coming up with a decent architecture as it was Intel simultaneously dropping the ball with the Netburst architecture.
And a ShittyPhone with a dual-core 1.8GHz each and no optimisations for battery life whatsoever.
That is an incredibly ignorant statement. iOS has been since the beginning chock full of battery life optimizations, with many API's oriented to help developers get the best battery life possible from the system, including very advanced battery consumption measurement tools shipped with XCode...
He obviously wasn't talking about iOS, firstly because of the clear battery life optimizations that have always been in iOS and secondly the fact that no iPhone ever used a dual core 1.8GHz CPU so your only link between them is that ShittyPhone somehow equals iPhone, why would you make that link? Does he specifically have to call out that the second device is Android or Meego or Windows Phone or something just so you don't take offence to it by automatically assuming that because he is criticizing something he must be criticizing iOS in spit of the fact that his description doesn't even match iOS at all?
Then again I'm one of those super-human freaks who can see a difference between 1080 and 4k
Yet somehow you ignore the fact that that statement is utterly meaningless without specifying the PPI and viewing distance (not to mention the type of display, ie pixel layout). If it's on a 3.5" screen then you almost certainly can't at any viewing distance, if you're 2 feet away from a 50" screen then just about anybody would be hard pressed not to be able to tell teh difference.
The Nexus is an outlier, as comes with a near-zero profit margin for Google; that's not sustainable.
Of course it is, it's just that the profit is not made on the hardware. Why do you think Google spend so much money developing Android?
Fandroid Reality Distortion field, meet reality: a retail 16 gig Nexus 5 has the exact same price as a 16 gig iPhone 5C.
I would be very interested to see the sources of this assertion.
I have tried Win 8 and I loathe using it. Every time my roommate asks me how to do something in Windows 8, I tell her how to do it in Win 7 and it's won't work. So she has to look it up on Google. She asked me to change her background. Right-click didn't work is all I know.
Rubbish, it works exactly as it does on Windows 7, I even provided a link demonstrating it, are you really that retarded? What does right-click do then? If nothing then her mouse is probably broken.
She asked me to add a printer because she couldn't find the "Control Panel". But you are so blinded by facts that you are willing to discount anything that goes against your love of Win 8.
No, I have no love for Windows 8, you only assume that because I disagree with you. Control Panel is there, you just have to search for it, then it works just as it did on Windows 7. The problem is clearly not that you couldn't find Control Panel, it's that you didn't look for it, you lack the mental capacity to do anything if it isn't staring you in the face.
Wow, you are dense. My point was things take the full screen in Win 8 for no reason. Why do settings need to take the ENTIRE screen? You only confirmed my point.
Obviously for tablet form-factors, but they don't have to take fullscreen as you can snap them side-by-side or alternatively change settings just as you would in Windows 7 through Control Panel. Yes getting to it is a bit different, but why are you acting as though that is the end of the world?
EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM I OPENED ON HER MACHINE USED THE ENTIRE SCREEN.
Example? You still fail to provide any example. There is no Windows 7 application that will take up the entire screen on Windows 8, that is a fact but you are so angry you try to refute facts anyway. So again, what programs were you using on Windows 7 that take up the entire screen on Windows 8?
She made no changes to settings. So you retort that your machine does it differently most likely because you've tweaked it.
Wrong again, in your case it is simply PEBKAC, I linked to a page detailing how to do it and it's the same as Windows 7, your inability to follow simple instructions or repeat the actions of doing it on Windows 7 on Windows 8 is your failing.
Their blog links to this page of the Open Source Hardware Association providing a definition.
Is that runtime pre-installed ? No, it is not, but the browser is. This is an important part of the reason why web technologies are adopted.
And is the implementation consistent across those platforms? No, it is not. In fact there is not even any consistent mechanism to even tell what level of compliance with what level of the standard the implementation is at.