Unity Desktop ot Not
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne May 07, 2012 6:57 PM EDT |
This is cool. |
| montezuma May 07, 2012 8:30 PM EDT |
Yeah this is a smart move by Canonical no doubt about it. |
| lcafiero May 07, 2012 8:54 PM EDT |
OK, admittedly I don't have time to watch the video (I'm at work), but just by reading the article, I have to wonder aloud: "Why would I have LibreOffice on my phone and why would I have a LibreOffice document on it?" Maybe if that could be explained, I could understand the coolness of this, but at the moment all I have to say is, "Well, LIbreOffice + documents on a smart phone? That's pretty ridiculous." |
| Fettoosh May 07, 2012 9:04 PM EDT |
Exactly what I imagined and said it in many posts the first time I saw the Atrix from Mototola. I think this demonstration should convince many of the people who still doubt that tablets and little smart phones can't be used as occasional desktops. |
| gus3 May 07, 2012 9:04 PM EDT |
It isn't only "smart phones" that run Android. My brother's Asus Prime tablet runs Android and has an add-on keyboard, and he uses them together as his primary laptop. So, LO4Android could be a real win for him. |
| Fettoosh May 07, 2012 9:35 PM EDT |
Quoting:"Why would I have LibreOffice on my phone and why would I have a LibreOffice document on it?" @lcafiero, It is not only Libreoffice, but all applications that come with Ubuntu desktop. The impressive thing shown in the demo was when the phone was disengage to receive a call or do something else, the document/application left running resumed where it was left off when the phone was engaged again. Now for what purpose? I believe it will enable many people who are on the go to use the phone as an occasional desktop while traveling to make presentations or conduct other business functions without having to carry a huge laptop (relatively speaking). |
| tracyanne May 07, 2012 10:42 PM EDT |
Now that my partner and I are Gyspies, we live in a motor home and travel around Australia. This type of technology is exactly the sort of thing we need. |
| Steven_Rosenber May 07, 2012 11:55 PM EDT |
I often view and do light edits to Google Docs (now Google Drive) documents in Android. I suppose the LO thing will be similar. It does come in handy. |
| r_a_trip May 08, 2012 5:26 AM EDT |
I believe it will enable many people who are on the go to use the phone as an occasional desktop while traveling to make presentations or conduct other business functions without having to carry a huge laptop (relatively speaking). True. Now they just need to lug around a docking station, keyboard + mouse and a screen (or lend a screen) for the phone. I have a hard time believing that Ubuntu for Android "Workstations" will spring up like free Wifi hotspots around places where people travel. Or you get the Atrix/Padphone situation, where the phone is your motherboard in an otherwise pretty standard laptop/netbook. I don't think having a few dedicated processors in a laptop/netbook add significantly to it's size or weight, so using your phone as its motherboard doesn't really make sense. Synchronising files between an Android phone and a netbook is a breeze with Airdroid. Combine this with the persistent rumors that Android 5.0 Jelly Bean will add a docking desktop mode to android itself (highly likely since Google's Aura Window Manager experiment on ChromeOS) and it becomes clear Ubuntu for Android is a niche solution in search of a problem and, dare I say, a mobile platform of it's own. Is Ubuntu for Android cool? Yes, from a geeky, technical perspective it is. Is it more than a short lived gimmick in light of Android developments? Probably not. |
| Fettoosh May 08, 2012 10:42 AM EDT |
Quoting:True. Now they just need to lug around a docking station, ... I didn't say it has to be Ubuntu did I? It was the general idea of the technology I was talking about but citing this demo. Lugging necessary peripherals won't be necessary and it is just a matter of logistics that can be taken care of in business offices just like an overhead projector and such are taken care of. Another option, which is probably going to be more impressive is KDE Plasma Active in general and Vivaldi tablet in particular [edited] where engage/disengage & lugging anything won't be necessary either. |
| jhansonxi May 08, 2012 12:43 PM EDT |
M$ is pushing Office on WP7/8, even on ARM. |
| skelband May 08, 2012 12:50 PM EDT |
I can see a need for this for sales people and others that have no single base. If you have a hot-desking setup and various sites, then I can see that this is a cool idea. As Fettoosh said, if you are doing a demo at a customer and they have a projector handy in the boardroom (like we do here), then this is ideal. |
| Khamul May 08, 2012 1:46 PM EDT |
This doesn't sound like a good idea to me. For one thing, CPUs are cheap compared to the rest of the hardware needed to properly work (either monitors or projectors). For another thing, phones get dropped or lost all the time. If your critical data is all on your phone, and you lose it, you're SOL. Isn't this why "the cloud" is being pushed? With your data remotely hosted, you don't have to worry about such things. Obviously, this doesn't make sense for data kept within your company's walls, but for remote stuff it does. Finally, what's wrong with good old-fashioned laptops? Business people who travel use these all the time, they're not as easily lost as phones, and they actually have keyboards and usable monitors for editing documents. You have to carry a bunch of other stuff with you when you travel anyway, so the laptop isn't adding that much extra weight. What kind of sales person doesn't have a laptop? And hot-desking doesn't make any sense if you're a salesperson anyway: you can't count on your customer to have hardware that's compatible with your own (or any hardware at all in fact). This might work if you travel between your own company's sites a lot, but not to customer sites. |
| Fettoosh May 08, 2012 2:01 PM EDT |
@Khamul, All what you cited might be valid and true, but there are solution for them. I am sure quite a number of people would probably want to use this new technology no matter how hard you try to knock it. |
| r_a_trip May 08, 2012 4:38 PM EDT |
I don't think this is about knocking the technology. It's about being realistic about the applicability of such a setup. Phone as desktop is a cool idea, but current technology doesn't make it as convenient as it could be. If the whole thing could be made wireless in combination with something like Google Glass. Right now it's a more inconvenient form of netbook. |
| Fettoosh May 08, 2012 5:31 PM EDT |
Quoting:Phone as desktop is a cool idea, but current technology doesn't make it as convenient as it could be. If the whole thing could be made wireless in combination with something like Google Glass. It's just a start, who knows what direction it would lead to? |
| r_a_trip May 09, 2012 4:15 AM EDT |
It's just a start, who knows what direction it would lead to? True. The idea is intriguing. If picked up by the right visionaries it could lead to something revolutionary. Combine this with an HMD (head mounted display), WiDi, NFC, portable compact keyboard with touchpad (with extra integrated solid storage?) and it could make computing really personal and portable. Smartphones would need to shift to more general purpose computing though. Standardised ways of interacting with the hardware (standardised bootloader, standardised partition schemes, etc). The way they are now, with the OS practically turned into firmware, is too cumbersome. The problem here is that I need to separate the idea from the company making a fuss about it. I have serious doubts about the long term viability of Canonical and Ubuntu. From the outside it looks like Canonical has no clear plan for long term sustainability. They are pushing in all directions at once in the hope to find a profitable niche. Ubuntu for Android shows a glimpse of a possible future, but the product itself doesn't wow me. Canonical is trying to graft their desktop to Android, but that can only be a losing strategy. Android itself is rumoured to branch out in desktop territory with Jelly Bean. LibreOffice is busy working on a web version. So where does that leave UfA in the future? Why put UfA as a middle layer between Android and major applications, when both Android and those applications will be available in the imminent future without UfA? |
| lcafiero May 10, 2012 12:57 PM EDT |
Could it be remotely possible that Khamul and I agree? :-) I'm not sure it's intriguing or revolutionary. It's throwing something up against the wall to see if it will stick, which is part of the whole Post-PC zeitgeist (and something that Canonical does a lot of lately). Let's see how well this works, or not. |
| BernardSwiss May 10, 2012 5:43 PM EDT |
Even if it doesn't stick, it's good advertising -- and free publicity. |
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