Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

E.g. phones with small/portable docking stations which actually launch a full desktop when docked in.

It's a dream that has been revived many, many times.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Never!

10 chars ...

1. Meego is not dead. It may be crimpled, but its still alive!
2. SailfishOS can live longer (I read the IRC logs) because it has the kind of people behind it that knows why Meego is now crimpled.
If Jolla dies, as a company, I still believe it can live (yes, the Android support is problematic, but I dont want that).

I applause that a few guys had the guts and madness to try!

Why did it fail ?
As said by others, the real market for the Jolla device are developers and Geeks. Not end-users.
A 'final' product should have emerged much faster. Even being on the low-end side.
Perhaps if SailfishOS had continued (or rather started) from a known hardware, and build on that - N9 does come to mind here.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

N900 could pull this off (QtCreator worked, not sure if anyone tried Android IDEs, probably too old libc/glibc and all the rest), but as a 'developer device' where you can write android apps on it on the bus, redeye, other long journey, or a quick fix? Jolla can do it (QtCreator works), no android phone can thanks to bionic

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I disagree there. Almost any device can certainly run Eclipse or whatever latest IDE. ... in a chroot.

This is not a differentiating factor these days.

On the other hand -- at least for me -- a differentiating factor is that the APIs used in Sailfish were more or less tha same APIs I use on desktop linux. No useless Java layer, no ObjC layer.

So actual desktop linux programs have an higher "integration" with the rest of the phone.

This was not much the case in Sailfish, though...

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Would love to see that, the 'mini-eclipse for your phone' apps are not only paid in google play store but have thousands of downloads (and thousands of comments that they're sh... why would people bother with that and PAY for it I wonder), quick YT search for 'eclipse on phone' has no videos that would show that actually being demonstrated, which would be strange due to bragging rights for starters

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Yeah, I've heard my share of rumours about it: such as utilizing libmeegotouch ;). But it certainly accelerated matters: allowing Ubuntu Touch to be able to present a quite decent tech demo @ MWC that year.. and then take quite a long time to bring product to market.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Another thought: smartphones are dead.

Many of us have been here, on this very forum, for quite a long. Even before the iPhone was introduced.

I've been through a period where I could mention "oh, and I have a smartphone" and that would virtually guarantee me a job. Then a period where you'd say "smartphone developer" and they'd fight for your attention -- the shitton of free devices I have is from that era . Then a long period of calming down. Maturing, etc.

And today... well, the smartphone market looks like a dead sea. At least when looking back.

Tomorrow's smartphone market leader will be dictated by how cheap and mass-produced their devices are.

Trying to "disrupt" the smartphone market is equivalent to trying to disrupt the PC sound card market. It just makes no sense.

I guess that's why Stskeeps was careful in saying "the mobile market", and not the smartphone market.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Or a massive 10000mAh battery: http://qz.com/411330/the-mystery-of-...ng-over-ghana/

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Hmm. Honestly, it just feels to me like this is asking the question backwards. Whenever you state that you can create mobile device X to serve purpose Y using an OS based on AOSP, I get the feeling that I could already point to an existing mobile device X serving purpose Y that runs Google Play-based Android. Or, at the very least, I could produce such a device. And in doing so, I'd avoid all the costs of creating a new OS, and still be able to sell to users who already have experience (and infrastructure!) running standard Android devices.

If, instead, what you are trying to sell is the OS itself, I think you need to look at the concept of the OS in a new way. The Solu guys are a good example here; they are (bizarrely in my opinion) still tying themselves to a specific hardware device, but their OS is instead mostly cloud-based, and allows you to perform tasks that straddle devices (and the internet itself). In short, they do something that iOS and Android don't do (or, at least, don't do well).

You can't just have a reason why the user would want to use your OS; you've gotta have a reason why the user would use your OS instead of iOS or Android. I don't think you can beat them on usability alone; they are both quite usable for the average consumer. You've gotta have a different argument -- run on older / smaller / stranger hardware than they do, work in ways they cannot, perform tasks they cannot. The privacy argument is good, but privacy isn't a task; there has to be something concrete that the user can do with the device that will cause them to feel the need to purchase it.

Anyway, apologies for the long rants here. :)

tl;dr: Competing directly OS-to-OS with iOS/Android ain't gonna work. Better to first build up an infrastructure where iOS/Android aren't competing, before trying to go mano-a-mano with them.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Why didn't sail and Ubuntu work together in this parallel universe of fiction?