Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by erikpukinskis 3283 days ago
They should've just made the phone boot directly into the browser, and then focus all energy on making the browser better. One app. No screens, widgets, dialer, anything. Add all of that as open web APIs as users demand them. Don't bother with UI beyond proof of concept, let the web optimize it.

You sacrifice the best things about a web OS if you wrap it in a traditional OS UI.
2 comments
eropple 3283 days ago
The implication that "a web OS" is what people want raises some question marks. I use the web a lot on my phone--for reading documents. I use applications for interacting with services because, still (and this is years after FirefoxOS), the experience of using a mobile web app, especially for integrating with hardware, is awful. There may be something of a chicken-and-the-egg problem here, but at the same time--if it's awful, it's awful, and so going towards real applications is the only thing that makes sense unless you want to make devices that are awful. Nobody wants to make devices that are awful.

Letting "the web optimize" your dialer, though, is perhaps the most dangerous idea I've heard in a while. Core applications under no circumstances should be optimized by the web because that's how you get malware masquerading as those core applications. No bueno.

link
taneq 3283 days ago
> the experience of using a mobile web app, especially for integrating with hardware, is awful

I think the implication is that if FirefoxOS had focused on making it not awful, they would have done really well.

It'd be awesome to have a phone for which app development is all done in HTML / CSS / JS while still remaining fast and efficient.

link
eropple 3283 days ago
Lots of things would be awesome. You have to have something that is not awful to get people invested in pulling something off.
link
scarface74 3283 days ago
Palm - we are going to build a device that will let you build apps using web technologies. Developers rebel, Palm releases a native SDK.

Apple - you don't need native apps you can build great web apps. Developers and users rebel, a native SDK is introduced 9 months later.

Blackberry - you can build apps using Adobe based web technology. You get the picture...

link
erikpukinskis 3282 days ago
None of those examples are what I described. Palm came closest, but still was web-like apps, not actual web apps.
link
scarface74 3282 days ago
That's just the point. Every mobile platform that come out has tried to tell the "you don't need native apps you can build web apps story" at some point besides Android.

Instead of web apps, Google stuck the world with a sub optimal Java implementation that they spent years trying to optimize.

link
erikpukinskis 3279 days ago
None of those platforms told that story. None of those platforms released with web apps only.
link
scarface74 3279 days ago
Apple only allowed web apps at first. Palm's first SDK for WebOS was based on web technologies. BlackBerry's first SDK was based on Adobe Air.
link