Good article
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| montezuma Jul 25, 2013 3:10 PM EDT |
The writer with the Guardian has actually tried some of the scenarios proposed by Shuttleworth and is rightly sceptical about whether his hardware has a market or not. I don't understand what Mark is playing at here. He may well get the crowd source funding but it is clear this product will not set the world on fire. It adds too little from a functional point of view. This is a real shame since Ubuntu is a great distro with a lot of potential. I just wish Mark had a bit more real vision like (dare I say it) the old Steve Jobs. |
| tmx Jul 25, 2013 4:25 PM EDT |
I don't even know why he it compared the Atrix which is a terrible locked down phone with poor updates and its a Motorola no less, which tends to suck up to Verizon, the last choice you would go to for software freedom. How about comparing to a Nexus that is 3G pentaband, bootloader and sim unlocked? Or the Asus Fonepad? The reason the Ubuntu desktop hybrid thing didn't work for Motorola because their concept of Webtop was poorly designed, limiting the experience, and they only used it as an excuse to force people to buy expensive accessories. The Webtop Dock was like $500 when it came out. The Ubuntu Edge need to come with a free dock, with open port. Just by volume, I think this is similar to the Ouya, I don't think its meant to compete with HTC or Samsung. I think having newer hardware make a lot more sense to attract the mass, this is a step up from the current crops of hardware, especially if they can do something with the battery life, rather than gimmicky features by Samsung S4 which is essentially is almost no change whatsoever from the S3 on a fundamental level. I don't know if the Ubuntu Edge will be a success, I just know the kickstarter will be sold out and a lot of smartphone enthusiast will get it. If Ubuntu allow it easy to develop for, there will be a community for it, and hopefully not repeat some of the mistake by the Ouya team. For me personally, I like the idea of dualbooting and looking forward to Ubuntu Touch OS to see if I can get an alternative to Google. I have trimmed down the Android OS on my phone to use only Google Maps to and its Google Service Framework to lessen the amount of data sent to Google. |
| jazz Jul 25, 2013 8:52 PM EDT |
They ask $830 for a computer less powerful than a Pentium 4. For this money you can buy today an iCore7 with 8GB of RAM. I have no idea how are they going to sell this thing. |
| slacker_mike Jul 26, 2013 9:11 AM EDT |
While the idea of running desktop apps from a phone seems sort of cool I can't imagine actually doing it. At home I use my desktop or laptop for working with desktop apps, and if traveling I use my company laptop. I can't foresee having some other location where I could create an ad-hoc workstation with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. |
| jdixon Jul 26, 2013 9:35 AM EDT |
> I can't foresee having some other location where I could create an ad-hoc workstation with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I can see higher end motels providing that service to their customers, at least in certain rooms, and definitely in the rooms where they currently provide kiosked computers and a printer. |
| TxtEdMacs Jul 26, 2013 10:31 AM EDT |
j.d. You are entirely missing the most salient point, i.e. once they have blown their bank balances on this barely functional device there will be no cash for up scale motel lodgings (even for business). More likely future stays will be in Motel 12 1/2*, where they can share their tears with bugs both electronic as six legged. A sad, sad tale ... YBT * Half as good as Motel 6 at three quarters the price. |
| jdixon Jul 26, 2013 2:25 PM EDT |
Oh, I don't think it'll be Ubuntu devices they'll be providing the service for, Txt. :) But I think it's only a matter of time at this point till someone does offer something that will fill that need. |
| slacker_mike Jul 26, 2013 5:03 PM EDT |
Quoting:I can see higher end motels providing that service to their customers, at least in certain rooms, and definitely in the rooms where they currently provide kiosked computers and a printer. I think such high end clientele will be using iphones, ipads, macbook airs, or ultraportable laptops issued by the company they work for. |
| mbaehrlxer Jul 26, 2013 9:36 PM EDT |
just use this keyboard (that could be built into the phone) and then we just need a very small projector... what i am wondering though is the battery lifetime of this device. i'd like a phone that i don't have to recharge every day. i don't think this device will allow me to do that. greetings, eMBee. |
| CFWhitman Jul 29, 2013 8:33 AM EDT |
I'm not going to predict a success for the Ubuntu Edge. However, I think that it's short-sighted to point to the Atrix and say, "See what a failure this idea is." I think that is rather like pointing to Windows tablets in 2009 and saying, "See how much of a dead end tablets are." The Atrix docks were extremely overpriced, and they barely offered anything of real value thanks to how messed up the software stack was. It was obvious that they would fail. That doesn't mean that the idea executed correctly couldn't be a success. I also think that it's rather silly to point to tablets and say, "We can do this better already." If tablets didn't have their downsides, desktop computers and laptops would already be obsolete. I have a tablet; I have a laptop; I have a desktop. Believe me, the laptop comes a lot closer to making desktops obsolete than the tablet does at making laptops obsolete. Tablets don't even come close. However, there is the potential that eventually (probably not with the Edge, but I can't be certain) there will be a phone sized device that can become your desktop/laptop computer in a true sense and still be your phone. The potential isn't something to be realized as a secondary system that travelers take on business trips. The potential will only be realized if and when you use such a device as your primary system wherever you happen to be. That is, you dock the phone on your desk at home. You dock it on your desk at work. Perhaps you have a lapdock that you can use on trips as well. You have your computer wherever you go. Of course, for this to happen, the device needs to have the power and the software to fulfill this function. The Atrix certainly didn't have that. No phone or tablet that I have seen has had that. This device comes as close as any I've seen so far, but that's not saying that much. |
| jdixon Jul 29, 2013 9:19 AM EDT |
> However, there is the potential that eventually (probably not with the Edge, but I can't be certain) there will be a phone sized device that can become your desktop/laptop computer in a true sense and still be your phone. I agree that it's inevitable. The continually increasing power/size ratio pretty much guarantees that we'll eventually have phone sized computers that surpass our current desktops, and current desktops are far more powerful than most people need. All that's left is a standard docking system and a standard software stack that meets people's needs in all environments. Those will come. There will probably always be a place for desktop systems, but they'll probably be relegated to storage and entertainment, and control systems for the home. They may even operate without a display and be accessed only via web browser from whatever system you happen to by using. |
| CFWhitman Jul 29, 2013 10:26 AM EDT |
There is one wrinkle in this that I haven't mentioned. The wrinkle is something I will call multi-purpose device interference. That is, things we are all familiar with, like, Do you want a device that is your phone to have it's battery used up listening to music or watching videos? Can you answer the phone while an intensive task is ongoing? There are measures that can be or have been taken to compensate for these issues, but will they be enough? Sometimes you have two devices for a reason. |
| mbaehrlxer Jul 31, 2013 6:14 AM EDT |
one of my customers is experimenting with using a microsoft surface tablet as a desktop replacement. if we ignore for a moment that this is running windows, really what matters in order to replace laptops and desktops is running a standard OS. this could obviously work with linux too, as long as the device supports an external monitor at high resolution. greetings, eMBee. |
| gary_newell Jul 31, 2013 7:59 AM EDT |
I think the article is complete FUD. The guy clearly has an issue with open source in general and as far as I can tell completely missed the point. Ubuntu will run on both the phone as a phone and the desktop as a desktop. The Android bit is there because it has a huge back catalog of apps and it would be foolish not to have that as an extra selling point. I like the concept. I hope it works. |
| jsusanka Aug 01, 2013 2:02 PM EDT |
If I could combine my desktop with my phone I am all in. Just looking at the specs of the device I think it could double as a desktop. |
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