Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

A modern Psion Series 7 would be nice as long as it majors on a long battery life and being able to be charged from fairly low output USB (0.5A) so you could charge it from solar/bicycle.

The main problem I had with the n900 was it wasn't big enough and the battery life was shocking for a portable computer. I also thought it was rubbish as a phone compared to the n9 but you pitch your compromises in different places.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Start where it hurts the most, what are key features missing in iOS and Android? Enterprise grade security with publicly audited code. For that you need to release all software with a 3-way-license. What software and services are key to such effort and what would be a gamechanger? Make the OS a client with offline capabilities. In an ideal setup, I just login to a new or random phone, it syncs with my own service-server or Jolla-server(for $user required) and after the sync I have everything I had on my lost phone, including but not limited to certificates, pgp-keys, networks, vpn and other settings. Additionally you may add content like video/audio/pictures. The most sane ways I see as a solution are either default full device encryption or have all security relevant data in a container that is read once after boot and as is synced to a server - it might even be on sdcard or synced publicly as it is encrypted. Plain settings and services are some xml and size is not a factor as long as regular files are either separated or already in the base system. For that all installed (security) software needs to follow strict rules.

Also services like secure texting and filetransfer are a must have, sure it will need another server infra + clients for android and iOS and the others, but as it is open-source anyone can port it to whatever platform (desktop clients are always asked for), or you could use something already existing.

From what we have now, this is getting thevault to become a service instead of a settings feature. Everything else can or should be implemented around said service.

A second layer of security can be added on top later, like NFC yubikeys or authentication service with Jolla for recovery purposes.

I can go on and on about what way it could go after that but for now, I see a fire and forget approach a good idea, people do not want to have themselves look after their devices, they never do - so that is what I would start with, attack the service flaws.

And drop android support, it is a security flaw and prevents developers from porting with notes like "my android version works fine"

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

@chemist Sounds an awefull much like any Android

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

The day Jolla drop Android support is the day I walk away and never come back. The Sailfish browser just isn't good enough and if you remove the ability for me to use the Opera apk, that makes the phone unusable.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Living proof that support for Android actually hurts the Sailfish ecosystem.

No incentive at all to fix the Sailfish browser.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Trackpoint! Trackpoint!

As I was saying this is one of the things the microPCs got right. It is surprisingly usable one-handed (for anything other than a right click), even for pointing into microscopic sized web links (where capacitive screens suck at or required two hands). I even made a small X program that would scroll the current active focused window if you tried to move the mouse past the edge of the screen.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

:) Yeah, I can just see me trying to write code on an iPhone. But in any case, the thing I value with my n900 is that, if I need to take my work with me, I can edit text in vim on my mobile device. Not a vim-like app, not a cut-down, finger-painting-optimized version of vim; no, the full-blown desktop version of the program. And, with a hardware keyboard and a high-resolution stylus, I have no trouble doing real work with it.

Apple really is making every effort to integrate their iPod / iPhone / iPad experience with their OS X experience, and I give them credit for that. But yeah, iOS is its own weird system, not the same as OS X, with different apps and a different UI.

Man, why does it have to be different? Why do I have to give up my desktop applications? (This is a question for Sailfish as well, I guess...)

I guess I don't have anything personal against using the cloud myself. However, I also don't see any need for the cloud to be sticking its nose into my business if it doesn't need to. ;) I've got plenty of local storage on my desktop machines, and can easily connect my mobile devices to my desktop machines, given that I'm sitting right next to them most of the time...

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I'd not second that, in fact, I'd almost go the opposite way and suggest instead to include an iOS compatibility layer (opensourced) .

I do not believe that not having Android support would have improved SFOS's status more than having it..

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I'm not sure what to do if Jolla drop Adroid support. on one side I would be sad, because there are some apps which I really don't want to miss: Offline wikipedia, Proper Offline Navigation and it gives you some flexibility. So yes, as long as the ecosystem isn't really big I would defintely miss the Android support. Walking away could be the solution. But where to go? Android itself? Nope! BB10? Is dying! IOS? Just kidding!

I for myself doesn't miss to much on sailfish (besides the thr things told above). I use Android apps. But just from f-droid. The sailfish-Browser isn't that bad. Just missing copy and paste. And there is also WebPirate...

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I think the Sailfish Browser is the best part of the system actually (excluding the UI, that is). Its very fast, yes it has its quirks, and yes it has it's problems, but compared to other browsers I had experience with (including webpirate, sorry guys) it still is better.
All in all, it's a great example of how OpenSource can work.