Firefox OS on the ZTE Open [LWN.net]

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Posted Sep 6, 2013 16:37 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Firefox OS on the ZTE Open by tdz
Parent article: Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

I admit that my comment was tongue-in-check, but it's serious, too. It's very bad idea to release version 1.0 (or 2.0, or 5.0) of something only to turn around and "introduce a new user interface with new concepts and paradigms". KDE4 and GNOME3 fiascos are most well-known, but all organizations which tried that have suffered (yes, even Apple… twice: it lost huge amount of users in Apple ][ to Mac transition and then almost went bankrupt in the MacOS classic to MacOS X transition… all the changes since then were piecemeal even if internals were radically changed… that's when it grew to juggernaut it is today). Heck, look on Microsoft which went from 12% of market share (which it had with Windows Mobile 6.x) to 4% (with Windows Phone 8) and which didn't repeat this fate on desktop with Windows 8 only because it has pretty solid monopoly there (but still it's disaster worse then Vista).

If you wanted to introduce some kind of radically "new user interface with new concepts and paradigms" then it should have been done before release 1.0, not after!

I seriously hope you've just overhyped the size of promised overhaul and it'll be more like Android2 to Android3 to Android4 transition (with some improvements and may be even new features but without too many new "concepts and paradigms"), otherwise problems with lags will be the last of your problems: you will be hated by your own users!

If you don't believe me and do not want to learn from others' mistakes… well, that's your baby, not mine, you've created it, you can kill it — but it'll be pretty sad to see it killed because of such a simple mistake.

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Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Posted Sep 6, 2013 17:55 UTC (Fri) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]

Actually I'd say your arguments are the reason they SHOULD do any major changes now. Now they only have a few early adopters and few real customers. They have two futures:

1. They never get real installed base. Who cares if they change anything, dead is dead, so we can ignore this future.

2. They do get a toehold somewhere. At that point your argument would apply, pushing any major change all at once would be a bad idea.

So don't be confused by the 1.0 version number, this is still a developers release now, if they have a hankering to get a big change that didn't make it onto the 1.0 hardware now is probably the last chance, six months from now would be too late, either way.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Posted Sep 6, 2013 19:44 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Actually I'd say your arguments are the reason they SHOULD do any major changes now. Now they only have a few early adopters and few real customers.

Good point. Well, now (as in: right now, basically in the next few weeks or may be a month) will be a good time, you are right. And indeed, if your creation is not popular then it may be good idea to release something "with new user interface with new concepts and paradigms" (Microsoft is famous for making few mediocre versions of anything before creating a hit).

But this idea raises the question: if you can not create something which will be popular and you know that (otherwise why plan for the next version "with new concepts and paradigms" from the start) then why such product was released in first place?

If they have a hankering to get a big change that didn't make it onto the 1.0 hardware now is probably the last chance, six months from now would be too late, either way.

On that we can agree, too. I actually feel that now it already too late (IMHO critical point was "half of the phones sold are smartphones" and this point has passed already already), but, well, it's very close to critical time and they still have small chance of jumping on the bandwagon of the last car of a departing train… but as time goes on chances are becomes more and more imaginary.