The First Real Alternative to iOS and Android - Mashable
mashable.com/2012/12/02/here-comes-the-first-...Posted Dec 3, 2012, 6:53 PM UTC
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mashable.com
With all this soft drink mentions on the post I hope this OS doesn't turn out to be just New Coke or Vanilla Coke.
I hope they do well but dang the GUI looks a lot like WP7 and iOS/MIUI had a baby.
The only main thing that caught my eye with the report is the link to how badly Windows 8 RT is doing, I haven't taken notice of it nor have any real interest but damn it looks like another WP7 kind of flop. I suppose the Nexus 7 , Nexus 10 and maybe iPad 4/Mini are really taking their toll on the Windows 8 RT market (not that there was one).
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GUI looks a lot like WP7 and iOS/MIUI had a baby.
I have some friends working there and I was able to get my hands on the prototype at some stage (a bit earlier then those on the video ) and to be honest I do not see any wp7 there. It still kinda remind me N9 (as it originate from that phone )
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Maybe it's because of their use of tiles/widgets that made me think of WP7.
Just look at the video.
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I know what you mean. But this view is very similar to n9. There you had minimized view of the apps. here they add option of interacting with them (in N9 you could kill and switch app just like in android when you hold home button)
Edit : the only picture I could find quickly with mentioned feature
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From a video I saw of it on another subreddit, the UI looked to me almost exactly like BlackBerry OS 10 and even seemed to function almost exactly like it too.
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Man I want some of that QNX love, Shame it's a little too late now.
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I'm never against competition, but what really makes this one stand out? Seems pretty generic to me. Looks clean, but I wasn't wowed at all.
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openness, full blown linux distro. Standards-based QT environment. android app support with alien dalvik.
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So...MeeGo/Harmattan? The N9 is the greatest phone I've ever used, but this has been done before.
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Yeah, it was done and then quickly abandoned even though it got rave reviews. So what's the problem if someone else tries?
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Because the title of the article is the first real alternative when it's not even the first iteration of the alternative they're selling.
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It looks interesting, but they definitely need first time buyers. Just guessing based off the video, but it doesn't seem to offer the end user much more than Android. Android supports widgets which are slightly different than what the video showed, but accomplish the same thing. Although I loved the gradual transparency effect, I'm not sure if that has practical applications. It sure looked pretty though!
I'm more interested in the third party application opportunities. What language will they be written in? Are the apps sandboxed? If they are sandboxed, is it complete or can they access certain info from other apps? Maybe they can differentiate themselves that way from iOS, Android, and Windows. I wish them well as it's a tough market, especially for a newcomer!
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What language will they be written in?
Platform is QT based. So either c++ or javascript.
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I didn't see where it said it was based on QT. Thanks!
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I don't know much about third party apps(on Sailfish), but I do know that they are doing what blackberry did with the playbook and building the Dalvik engine into their OS so most android apps will work without additional coding. I find this a bit upsetting since developers who already have a working app won't take much interest in taking advantage of these new ui concepts.
Edit: vagueness
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I am a massive android fan, and if google ever creates a full desktop os, with real power and the ability to play most games (Kind of like Ubuntu but with the power of full google support) I'd but it. But why does everyone ignore Windows Phone. Almost everyone I know who has one absolutely loves it. The only reason I didn't buy one myself is because the new Lumia wasn't out when I got my phone and the lack of apps is devastating.
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Meego on the Nokia N9 was amazing. Why did Jolla ruin it to create this? Sailfish adds nothing in efficency or usability over the N9's Meego OS.
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ruin it? The N9 is a nokia product... Jolla isn't Nokia.
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I see you didn't read my post.
Meego on the Nokia N9 was amazing. Why did Jolla ruin it to create this? Sailfish adds nothing in efficency or usability over the N9's Meego OS.
Meego was the operating system on the Nokia N9. The exact version of Meego on the Nokia N9 is what was given to Jolla to make Sailfish. They chose to alter it to the current Sailfish version. I don't like their alterations, but it's still based on the Meego version developed previously (by the same people who now run jolla) for the Nokia N9.
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Jolla didn't just take the Meego that was on the N9 and do alterations for the sake of alterations. The N9 used Meego but with their own Swipe UI on top of it. Swipe UI was not open source and Nokia decided to keep it themselves rather than give it to Jolla, so Jolla had to develop Sailfish UI themselves from scratch. Nokia had much more people working on Swipe vs. the 50 or so at Jolla so it doesn't surprise me which one turned out better.
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I will defer to highcroft's answer.
EDIT: Just wanted to add that we don't know which one will turn out better because we haven't actually used both.
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lol it funny because this whole OS could be implemented as a launcher replacement or full on shell/skin.
Yes and no. Both Sailfish and Android are Linux based systems. So obviously those systems are close. But application stack is totally different here. Sailfish is QT based and Android is Dalvik centric (although Jolla have plans to bring Android app to their OS).
So they call Android a technological dead end, yet they want to piggyback off its success?
It's just marketing. What else they can say? Android is great but invest in us? And everybody tries to same thing. RIM tried to get Android apps to their tablet. AMD is trying to bring same apps to windows8. Microsoft offers some tools to migrate data from iOS and Android to wp8. Your smartphone is as smart as the apps.