
Jolla’s Sailfish OS has reached release 1.0 - piokuc
http://www.jollausers.com/2014/02/press-release-sailfish-for-android-special-otherhalves-and-a-lot-more/
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Zigurd
Among the new entrants to the mobile market Jolla and Sailfish have the best
chance of success based on the team's experience, the capital behind them, the
maturity of the software, and the technological approach of not relying on Web
apps, having a Qt-based native app stack, and Android app compatibility.

~~~
Touche
I disagree, I see not relying on web apps as a big minus for Jolla. There's
probably not room in the market for 3rd native platform, and there's
definitely not room for a 4th. Jolla is fighting a current they can't keep up
with.

The web is guaranteed to continue to exist and keep getting better, albeit
perhaps slower than we would like. The speed in which it gets better is
dependent on the number of platforms backing/hedging it.

~~~
Zigurd
This is a bit OT, but I have a theory about the Web being a loser for phones
and tablets: There is some empirical evidence that the Web-as-app-runtime
works best on bigger devices that are stationary or have large batteries, and
that have screens that are a bit too far away to touch.

Chromebook is a winner. WebOS on LG TVs is great. Both of these can have
larger memory and batteries and more-powerful and power-hungrier GPUs. They
also both have pointing devices. They're not trying to drag the Web into a
touch UI.

~~~
leoedin
Empirical evidence or simply history? The web started as a platform on bigger
devices which were stationary and a bit too far away to touch - of course it
still works best on those platforms.

However, "The web" is simply a stack made up (at the client end) of HTML/CSS
for layout and javascript for logic. Nothing more, nothing less. Both of those
technologies are entirely screen resolution, power source and interaction
method independent (with the exception maybe of the aspects of javascript
which relate to mouse pointers).

There's no reason that websites can't be built from the ground up for mobile
devices. The reason that "the web" (according to your empirical evidence)
doesn't work for mobile devices is because the vast majority of the web wasn't
designed for mobile devices. Mobile browsers are still mostly dealing with
sites designed for 4x the screen size and designed with very little thought
for client side execution time. Many popular "native" apps use web
technologies (HTML/CSS and javascript) in a way which you wouldn't even know
wasn't native - the reason it works is because the markup and JS are targeted
towards mobile devices rather than desktop browsers.

~~~
Zigurd
> _There 's no reason that websites can't be built from the ground up for
> mobile devices._

This is true in principle, so let's see if my theory holds up when generalized
to other pre-touch stacks:

Windows? Failed at repeated attempts to touchify.

Linux/BSD? Only systems where the whole app runtime was replaced succeeded at
being touchified.

I think that points to a future where, if the Web is to work on touch mobile
devices, there has to emerge a consensus around a manageable handful of
frameworks with common UX conventions, and apps have to use one of those
frameworks.

But even then, native mobile platforms are evolving ahead of Web frameworks.
Android's Fragment and ActionBar classes enable UIs to "fold up" and "unfold"
across a range of screen sizes. That's part of the expected Android UX now.
Capturing that, or creating an alternative UX accepted by the same user base,
in any cross-platform system is going to be difficult.

~~~
leoedin
You clearly have very little understanding of the technologies you're
discussing. HTML/CSS is a presentation layer which describes a way of drawing
things on a screen. Nothing more. To compare it to Windows is tenuous, and to
suggest that "Linux" even has a standard "app runtime" suggests a clear
misunderstanding of the Linux ecosystem.

Web technologies are a layer below what Android or other mobile platforms
expose to developers. They're a platform upon which frameworks can build. I
agree that a few frameworks providing UI widgets and allowing easy layout will
emerge (as they have in, for example, Bootstrap). I disagree that you can in
any way generalise by saying "the web is for desktops" simply because of the
history it has.

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SmileyKeith
> Downloadable Android Launcher is also coming to Play Store apparently, and
> it will allow the Android users to test out how Sailfish looks like and
> feels like before flashing their devices into it...

That is a great idea.

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rahimnathwani
Press release:
[http://jolla.com/media/documents/MWC_Jolla_announcement_FINA...](http://jolla.com/media/documents/MWC_Jolla_announcement_FINAL.pdf)

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01Michael10
I am seriously thinking of installing Sailfish OS on my Nexus 5 to reduce my
dependance on Google.

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rbanffy
Can I sideload it on a Nokia X?

