Time For a Hobbyist Smartphone? 207
theodp writes "Over at Scripting News, Dave Winer has a hobbyist phone on his wish list. Innovative phone manufacturers, Winer suggests, should 'make a smart phone with a really great scripting language, with all kinds of scriptable tools on board. Instead of disallowing scripting, disallow apps that can't be scripted. Make a great simple programming environment that runs on desktops or laptops that plugs right in, but it should also be easy to write scripts on the phone itself. Dave concludes, 'We've already seen the Jobs phone. Now it's time for Woz's.' Having ditched App Inventor, it would appear that Google isn't interested. Microsoft Research has the idea, if not the right implementation, with TouchDevelop (video). Any other existing or in-the-works projects that might fit the bill?"
Moron (Score:3, Interesting)
He forgets that authoring and creating things on Tablets is annoying.
And I don't mean "get off my lawn" annoying either, they're just poor tools for those tasks. They rock at redditing and slashdoting, however.
Current programming tools suck, that's why. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.
Programming hasn't changed very much in 50 or so years. And I think it's ludicrous that we're using a language to prgram a computer to do mathematical operations.
What we really need is a symbolic programming "language" and it would rock on a touch screen.
Why not go directly from dragging and dropping logic to machine code directly? There is no physcal law that says we have to program computers the way we do now.
These "verbal" type of programming languages are so 20th century, inefficient and just old fashioned. Their time has passed.
Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do know this is a True Holy Grail that people have been trying to build for a long, long time, right? Object orientation was, at least partially, supposed to be a step in this direction.
I think Smalltalk had promise (and still does), but it seems I'm the only person who actually likes it. :)
I think LOGO kinda sparks people's imaginations. I remember a product called "Object Center" on our Sparcs in the 80s or 90s that was really just a class browser. Then I saw Interface Builder on a NeXT and thought that was gonna be it. But it has turned out to be really, really hard.
You would be a hero if you developed a working, practical, usable graphical (which I think you mean by "symbolic") programming language.
Mark
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That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.
This is the same article that gets posted every 6-8 weeks under different names.
The whole point of these things appears to be to provide a modern day version of a Commodore-64, and get people interested in programming, and get them engaged, by having an environment where it's easy to do small hacks.
Radical new methods of developing software aren't going to get you employed until they have already been widely adopted, after which they are neither radical nor new. We tried this with 3G computer languages, an
Chromebook is the new Commodore-64 ? (Score:3)
The whole point of these things appears to be to provide a modern day version of a Commodore-64, and get people interested in programming, and get them engaged, by having an environment where it's easy to do small hacks.
Get a $200 Chromebook, install a full Linux distro on it. In adjusted dollars that is cheaper than a C-64 alone, not including tape, disc or monitor.
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You don't need to adjust any dollars to make it cheaper - the Commodore 64 was listed as $595 at the time of arrival, and I don't think that it ever went below $200 in the stores, not even in the early nineties, ten years after its introduction.
I recall paying about $175 for a C-64 circa 1983/84. The price drops from that initial $5xx price tag was incredible. I expect that few C-64 owners bought their machines at the high end of the price range.
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That's pretty much what LabView is. Downside is it really sucks to do any traditional programming in. Also it's really expensive.
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That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.
Programming hasn't changed very much in 50 or so years. And I think it's ludicrous that we're using a language to prgram a computer to do mathematical operations.
What we really need is a symbolic programming "language" and it would rock on a touch screen.
Why not go directly from dragging and dropping logic to machine code directly? There is no physcal law that says we have to program computers the way we do now.
These "verbal" type of programming languages are so 20th century, inefficient and just old fashioned. Their time has passed.
I have a box on my shelf. It contains a product named AmigaVision and that's exactly how it worked. It was briefly very popular around 1990.
It didn't spawn any notable imitators and I doubt you'll find a modern-day version of it. The paradigm remains, but primarily for use by data transformation utilities such as Pentaho DI (Kettle).
Neither the drag/drop flowchart nor the strung-together filecards programming methods have ever really taken off.
If there's a more productive way to program than the keyboarding
Re:Current programming tools suck, that's why. (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like the literally DOZENS if not hundreds of flowchart programming languages that have tried it before and failed outright because it simply isn't an easy format for us to follow the logic from when designing complex logic?
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That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.
Note this response took too long to compose, so there have already been some good/better answers below, Prograph, LabView, and the comments about APL are all relevant and interesting
Random idea on how to get around it:
Starting point: utilize some esoteric language that use a limited symbol set and positional coding, i.e. funges [wikipedia.org]. In this case, the screen would be a scrollable grid (say 3x4, for 12 tiles in view at one time), and you would press on grid locations to set their value, possibly through a sub-me
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However, class names/function names/variables could all be custom icons.
This would work about as well as having icons for people, instead of names...
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That's true for current methods of developing software. Which is typing in code.
The thing is, there is an enormous amount of exact details even in a small piece of code. You can enter it by typing far faster than in any other way, especially when aided by advanced code completion and other forms of semiautomatic code generation. And the more expressive the language, the more each character counts, and more difficult it is to express same things in some other way.
Only when we have AIs comparable to humans, we can hope for something different. Except that is not so different after all, i
Prograph (Score:3)
I loved using this in the mid 90s. I was 5x to 10x productive. But there was no diff available, no way to do SCM, it was hard to come back to code I'd written 6 months before and refresh my memory of what it did. And it was next to impossible to collaborate will a team. I was forced to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_UML [wikipedia.org] using some horrible tools (Kennedy Carter iUML) in the 2005s - same exact problems.
Now iBuilder or what ever the I tool is in XCode
graphical symbols, not APL! (Score:3)
+
ROOM+ObjecTime (now IBM Rational Rose Realtime) as graphical object-oriented & nested state-machines http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Object-Oriented-Modeling-Bran-Selic/dp/0471599174/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379088665&sr=1-1-fkmr1&keywords=realtime+object+oriented+modeling+objectime [amazon.com]
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And labview is a great example of why this sort of thing is a bad idea.
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This has been done numerous times before with various levels of success. Appware was a Borland attempt back in the day that fell flat on it's face, LEGO actually has several such interfaces for programing Mindstorm robots. Microsoft SSIS is probably the most successful platform and is used for DB translation. The problem is always the same however, it is impossible to build any thing of beyond moderate complexity and far too difficult to figure out what you were doing when you come back to it, let alone
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I want to access a list of all employees from the employee table joined on employee number to salary. And sort it please. Got any idea how to express that or a similarly complex idea unambiguously in gestures or pictures?
Neither does anyone else, that's why our ancestors developed spoken and then written language. And that's why we use written language with computers.
Re: Current programming tools suck, that's why. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. As someone who enjoys the fact that Microsoft is innovating and I can see a possible future of really useful devices, Ubuntu has actually come out with a strategy [ubuntu.com] to get us much closer today.
But unfortunately it's Ubuntu, which means we'll probably be celebrating their reaching 2% tablet marketshare in 2018.
Ubuntu phone project is dead. Lots of others are h (Score:2)
There's a Ubuntu phone in the works that obviously allows scripting
Well, specifically, the Ubuntu Edge didn't manage to raise enough funds on Indiegogo.
They were asking quite a lot of money. 32 million and only got around 12 if a remember correctly. That's quite a lot, but at least they were honest with taking into account that they have absolutely NO experience in phone making and that it would probably cost that much ressource to bring the Edge into market while having to learn absolutely every single necessary skill on the way.
Basically, in order to bring the Ubuntu Edg
I still use punch cards ... (Score:2)
So you're still feeding punched cards to your computer?
I still use punch cards ... as book marks. In my intro to programming class (1980s) the professor had us do our first programming assignment on punch cards. He told us they were obsolete but having used them once we would better understand why some things are the way they are. He then mentioned we would have bookmarks for life so the deck of cards we had to buy wasn't completely useless.
As I typed the above I realized that I am old not only because I had used punch cards but because I was referring to re
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I think it depends. Most days if I am going to be doing a presentation or any type of coding work, like today, then I want my laptop. But I did buy a waterproof cover for my iPad and have used it to work on presentations in the bathtub or even shower. Although usually this is more revising than actual creation. I can't do much outside of edit text or order of presentation slides. If I need to add video, sound, or fancy images, I'm doing that on the laptop.
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He forgets that authoring and creating things on Tablets is annoying.
The most annoying thing about it is that people just do it instead of listening to your expert opinion.
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that's not why he is a moron.
he is a moron because while you can't do such things on either ios or windows phone you could on symbian.
but symbian is dead, so why doesn't he get one of these newflangled android phones.. fuck, run the fucking compiler and build chain for full apps on the fucking device if he really wants and anything in between.
there are other operating systems than ios...........
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An open smartphone can connect to screens and keyboards and mouse with no problems. The n900 had a VGA output hack going. In fact the n900 is an answer to this slashdot discussion: give nerds root and a GNU userland with the wealth of scripting environments, ruby, lua, newlisp, smalltalk..., see what they come up with. Another answer is a raspberry in a largish smartphone form factor.
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Especially with the Neo900 project on the way http://neo900.org/ [neo900.org]
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Netbooks are discontinued (Score:2)
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They rock at redditing and slashdoting, however.
Proper Verbs [urbandictionary.com] are annoying. Stop browsering and learn some grammar.
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Go eat a dick with your asshattery.
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Yeah I tried using Iron7 a while back: (http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/ruby-iron7-free/8a866ec2-461b-e011-9264-00237de2db9e) and it lets you code in Ruby using the phone's keyboard to create simple apps inside of Windows Phone. But it's hard enough to do normal typing on a tiny keyboard let alone non-dictionary words for variables etc.
Windows 8 is perfectly acceptable though for tablet dev. I've done Unity development on a Windows 8 tablet and it's great because you don't have to transfer th
Android has a few good scripting languages (Score:2)
Disallow apps that can't be scripted? (Score:3)
Sorry to be the pedant, but that "disallow apps that can't be scripted" line seems kneejerk and fairly stupid. Scriptability is not a yes/no thing, it's a measure for how good an API is. If you just want apps that are minimally scripted, I'm sure you could make a platform where every app accepts a hello() message, and does a popup with that, but that doesn't get you close to being able to do neat things.
I suspect what we'd really like is more choice in programming languages on the phone and a cleaner split between UI and API.
I wonder how many people would write apps for such a device for free. I might, and the opensource community might too, but is that enough?
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I think that odds are, as with any app-store model, you'll be able to access several repositories. One could be for open-source highly-scriptable applications, one could be for closed commercial stuff. The level of scriptability depends on who manages the app-store.
But right now this is all already possible on Android (the ability to script apps, and not tightly controlled by an omnipotent god), except I don't know what it takes to open an app store. An interpreted scripting language on an Android device wo
Re:Disallow apps that can't be scripted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dave Winer basically invented application scripting on Macintosh when he released Userland Frontier in the late 1980's. This was before Apple's own AppleScript. He also was a key in the creation of XML-RPC and SOAP for creating web API's.
I read this as a HARD requirement for scriptablity across all applications. If all apps are able to respond to and make scripting API requests, any app would be able to be the "programming" language. Python, Sqeak, C, Photoshop, nginx, OpenOffice could all be equals.
That was my take, too. I recognized the name, and more or less translated the idea to "I want PhoneGap for everything".
This idea will never fly. Dave is old. I understand his perspective, because I lived through that era too: no one writes malicious code because everyone plays nice, and because of the way Apple codes things I don't have libraries to e.g. access my iTunes library as an iTunes library without doing a whole hell of a lot of work so I'd like to be able to ask iTunes to do it for me.
The reason this will never fly is manifold:
- There are incredibly sound UI and UX reasons to not allow "skinning" or "themes", or, frankly, even things like the Facebook ban on "Social Fixer". Programmers who like to tweak UI bits, but who either could never write iTunes on their own, or find doing things like that incredibly boring, don't like the lack of tweakability. Users, on the other hand, like to be able to call up a support person and get quick answers to their problems. Having the same icons and application layout everywhere GREATLY helps this. Users also do not like learning curves; having the same "look and feel", and having all applications follow the same HI guidelines, like they all have a "File" menu in the same place, and they all largely have the same items on the menus in the same places GREATLY helps this. It also makes it look like all your Mac apps were written in Cupertino, and all your Windows apps were written in Redmond, which programmers also hate, since it disallows use of trade dress to make their product stand out from the other products that do almost exactly the same thing.
- It requires reaching across NECESSARY security protection domains. If I can talk to iTunes, and make it do things, there is effectively no more protection domain between myself and iTunes. Same for AddressBook. Same for Email. Same for Safari. Same for GPS info. Same for making phone calls. Make no mistake: there are assholes out there writing code; some do it just to be assholes, while others do it for money, politics, religion, etc.. But there are assholes, and having these Chinese walls between things that operate on data keeps a nice apps data from being accessed by assholes. So no cross-compaartmentalized scripting, unless you want to let the assholes do it too.
- There just aren't that many programmers out there, and of those, only a fraction really get their rocks off tweaking UIs, and of those, only a fraction like to do their tweaking in a scripting rather than a compiled language. So there's not a lot of MARKET for the idea, and without a market, the idea isn't going to get done. Or it'll get done, and go nowhere, because the company will fail... hence my earlier comment about him feeling free to found a company or three to pursue the idea.
Really he should be asking for APIs for things, but that's very antithetical to the whole historical Apple worldview that "iTunes databases should be managed by iTunes, and everyone else should keep their damn noses out". That's a pretty big paradigm shift for Dave, and an even bigger one for Apple: it's just not going to happen.
Most everyone else will also be reluctant to open up APIs to their data, even under Android, even under the misdirection of calling it "making things scriptable". Welcome to the reason that CORBA and OmniORB and other object request broker paradigms are niche market at best and curiousities at worst.
Nokia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad Nokia quit making fun phones. The last was the N900. I'd love to have a new phone similar to that with modern specs.
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Neo900 (Score:2, Informative)
Too bad Nokia quit making fun phones. The last was the N900. I'd love to have a new phone similar to that with modern specs.
It seems that you haven't heard of the Neo900 project [neo900.org] which aims to deliver just that.
N900 forever (Score:2)
I'm holding onto my N900 for the forseeable future.
I would be willing to pay several thousand for one with larger screen, some more up-to-date packages, a faster processor, etc. However, nothing like that exists apparently. The fact that I can make this phone do almost ANYTHING that my desktop computer can (plus make phone calls!) means that I'm not giving it up for a while.
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Ditto.
I have two working N900s and one nonworking for spare parts. Not going to swap it out before something better hits the market, if something better comes to market that is.
With the CSSU and some overclocking, it is not _that_ slow compared to other phones/tablets
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Interesting! I'll upgrade mine for sure once the kit is for sale.
Also came in to post about the N900; beaten.
Suer (Score:3)
Because when I code, I always want to use a totally unwieldy UI and no text to do it. It's like when we code for robots, how a hobbyist robot you program by directly writing on the embedded chip, using the robot's sensor's as inputs.
How about we code on a machine that's usable for coding? I can still design neat things for my phone that way. I promise.
WebOS ? (Score:2)
I never did any WebOS programming, but I loved my Palm Pre -- anyone know if it's scriptable?
and before you say it's dead ... remember, HP released it into the wild, and then sold it to LG:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/2032236/hp-launches-beta-of-open-webos [slashdot.org]
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/02/25/1747201/lg-acquires-webos-source-code-and-patents-from-hp [slashdot.org]
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Well said. It was way ahead of it's time.
All we need is software (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of good devices out there from a hardware standpoint. The difference is that software is tailored by the manufacturer to reinforce their channels, partnerships, etc. (to the detriment of the user).
Once rooted, these devices get a lot closer to what I think most people are looking for in a hobbyist device. However, that is the trick. Getting root access, and knowledge of the internals so that we can start work on our own.
We've seen the failures hobbyist devices in the past. I expect the same going forward. If only we had access to the hardware and programming specs, we wouldn't even be having this conversation now. Maybe we can find a way to extort this info from these manufacturers.
Android + QPython3 (Score:5, Informative)
I recently defected from iOS and I'm having great fun with an android app called QPython.
Docs are still a bit spotty, but with a few lines of Python I can do all sorts of things with the Android API.
Kivy (Score:4, Informative)
You should check out Kivy- it will let you create a native app in Python for iOS or Android. http://kivy.org/ [kivy.org]
What an amazing idea!! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, wouldn't it be great if someone made a completely developer-friendly, unlocked phone with good specs at a decent price?
Yeah, no fucking shit it would. The carriers would NEVER allow it on their networks. We won't see a phone like that until we have a worldwide standard for cell networks, so that somebody could make that phone and actually sell it in the US.
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There is a worldwide standard for cell networks, and if you get a phone that complies with it, there is a good chance it will work on the AT&T network, though probably not on any of the other networks.
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T-Mobile also uses GSM.
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Their 3G is at 1.7GHz. The rest of the world uses 2.1GHz. Some, such as O2 UK use 900MHz, but that is in addition to 2.1GHz.
T-Mobile moving 3G to 1900PCS (Score:2)
They're in the process of moving their 3G (UMTS/HSPA+) support to the PCS 1900 band, and then using the AWS 1700/2100 band for their LTE. If you're in an area where T-Mobile has LTE, an unlocked AT&T phone should work on 3G.
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Yes, yes indeed [google.com]. I just got mine last week!
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What do you mean.. 'allow'?
While I'm unfamiliar with CDMA solutions, you can pick up GSM modules and radio away all day and night long within the limits of the module. That's the only bit they care about. There's hundreds of GSM projects for PIC, Arduino, RPi, etc. out there already, not to mention a bunch of off-the-shelf things like security systems (motion detection) that aren't strictly speaking 'phones' either and no carrier has to approve in advance
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Now, if they could get a piece of the action, that's a horse of a different color.
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and the GTA04 and the Neo900 :-)
CDMA or zero bars (Score:2)
If your carriers decline to implement it in favour of CDMA or something, then take it up with your carriers being obstinate.
Carrier V and its MVNOs: CDMA
Carrier S and its MVNOs: CDMA
Carrier A and its MVNOs: The single most hated carrier in the United States
Carrier T and its MVNOs: Zero bars in too many places
What do you expect the major U.S. CDMA carriers to say when an individual customer asks to switch to GSM?
Don't conflate the US' bizarre anti-competitive mobile phone system with the rest of the world.
How should U.S. residents qualify for legal immigration to escape "the US' bizarre anti-competitive mobile phone system"?
Already done, people didn't want it. (Score:4, Informative)
There was already a phone proposed that could have done this with no problem. There wasn't enough interest on it to make it a reality.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge [indiegogo.com]
And before you go complaining about the cost, please have a look at flagship Android phones and how much they cost *off contract*. The Edge was a pretty good value.
But the FairPhone is coming (Score:2)
Its an open source design, initially intended for the EU.
http://www.fairphone.com/ [fairphone.com]
They met their minimum orders already and are getting close to selling-out their initial production run. Delivery date is December.
Click on "See Why Its Fair" (Score:2)
It lists what the FairPhone is about, including this bullet point:
"Open, future-ready design
Open, update, modify and make it yours – now and in the future."
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I don't think it's fair to judge the failure of the Edge campaign as "people didn't want it".
I would have bought one or two if I had enough time to save up the money for it. Forking out $700 or $1400 (for two) on a whim isn't something I'm willing to do since I follow a budget. 30 days notice to do so isn't enough time. If there had been sufficient warning of at least two months BEFORE the start of the campaign, I'm betting others besides myself could have saved up the money to buy one.
Also, there was specu
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Because making hardware has massive upfront costs. So either hardware manufacture is restricted to the existing players (and people who can get hold of millions dollar lones), or you use crowd funding.
Scripting uber alles? (Score:2)
I get the desire to script, on many levels...but to have the ability to write scripts supersede ALL other considerations for an app? I'm sorry, but when I'm playing solitaire on my phone to kill a few minutes, I don't see any particular need to be able to run scripts. This seems idiotic to me. I would hasten to point out the numerous advertisements for everything from web browsers to phones (of different types) to tablets that used "Angry Birds" as an example of what you could do. A phone that can't pla
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This is about a hobbyist smartphone.
It's like if someone asked about the ideal gamer's smartphone and you complained that all the people are talking about games, although there are so many other things you can do with your smartphone.
Yeah, I understood that part. I'm a hobbyist myself; I've been playing around with Arduino in various forms (Nano and Teensy primarily), and the like. But a smartphone isn't just something you swap out...you have to commit to it for the most part, or you won't get the value from it. They aren't cheap if they're any good, and it's no fun to either carry around two phones for no particular reason, or to have to deal with the added cost of an extra phone each month as well as the question of which phone num
Share one SIM between two phones (Score:2)
or to have to deal with the added cost of an extra phone each month as well as the question of which phone number to give whom.
This is true if you happen to live in an area where only CDMA2000 carriers that refuse to use CSIM have acceptable coverage. But if you happen to live in, or can move to, an area where T-Mobile or another respectable GSM carrier (or a CDMA2000 carrier that uses CSIM) has acceptable coverage, you can always take the SIM out of one phone and put it in the other phone.
Oh, and since non-scriptable apps are out of the running, you exclude nearly the entire ecosystem of existing apps which are available today to do even the most crucial and basic things (like read email).
For one thing, I think excluding applications that aren't scriptable was a joke. For another, plenty of MUAs are scriptable.
Writing code is not something a smartphone excels at as a platform; gaming, on the other hand, and many other non-scripting activities are.
For the same reason
Want could would (Score:2)
I want a phone without any high-resolution color display and without a touch screen. It should have a small led display, many sensors (including alitmeter, barometer, thermometer, movement & tilt sensor), should have a little keyboard with a control key, sophisticated power-management with built-in wakeup/alarm routines, would have a battery life of one week or more and needs to be entirely hackable/scriptable in LISP. On the backside, there should be a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Alas, it's
diy "phone" (Score:2)
I've thought about making a custom "phone" in the past with GSM modules, but haven't had the time. Telit sells modules that have a builtin Python interpreter. Might make a fun hobby project. Sparkfun used to carry these modules... http://www.telit.com/en/products.php?p_ac=show&p=7/ [telit.com]
Barriers to enter the market (Score:3)
The amount of patents that surrounds anything mobile makes pretty hard to get new players on the game. And if the patents game didn't killed you, you have next the carriers one.
The best approach so far seem to be the one being done by Jolla with Sailfish, generate enough buzz, get a chinese manufacturer to pledge support (the chinese market is big enough to make this approach profitable), and from there, see how much luck they have in the rest of the world (with preorders at least it worked for them pretty well).
It could work for existing players, unless it requires deep changes to adapt to that kind of approachs, if so, it must be something new. Or something that could be installed on Android phones very much like Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS are doing, with the core android OS and its drivers.
Isn't the Android platform hobbyist-enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, the Android platform was close enough. It's "just" Java (if you can't figure out Java...), there are no fees required to get the development environment or simulators set up, Android devices and phones are available new for as little as $60 (and cheaper as people upgrade). So...to me, Android IS a hobby-friendly environment.
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A scriptable phone ...
And you talk about security?
Btw: you do know that on Android they only use "Java, the languga" and no byte code or framework or vm which is related to Java?
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Are you implying that scripting is inherently insecure?
LOL
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Are you implying Java is inherently insecure?
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Obviously not! Go read my post until you understand it.
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Why should I read your posts?
A few days ago you self proclaimed you where an 10x programmer, rock star programmer and (where/have been) an arrogant asshole.
That might all be true: except for the "where".
So, why should I read your post, when you answered to my post? Which post do you mean? Your answer? Or any other post?
Your post was: "Are you implying Java is inherently insecure?"
So obviously you believe I implied that. So perhaps you should go back and read my post, and try to understand it?
Sorry, idiot. I
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Dalvik uses it's own bytecode.
It is not JVM compatible.
Therefore if it has bugs, they are different bugs than the JVM. Except for bugs that are in the source-compatible code, of course.
p-code machines are not insecure in and of themselves. It is the implementations that are insecure.
And as a final point, most of the security "holes" for the JVM are in the sandboxing for browsers, not the core engine running in standalone mode. Therefore those bugs are extremely unlikely to be part of Android's D
OpenMoko? (Score:3)
I'm still getting along fine with my OpenMoko FreeRunner. It's currently running Debian, so it's as scriptable as anything. The "programming environment which runs on desktops or laptops" is whatever you use already; the "plugs right in" part is SSH (and its friends scp, sshfs, etc.).
So, either you love OpenMoko and hence your wish is fulfilled, or you see it as a total failure in which case it's clear why nobody is doing this anymore.
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www.gta04.org
Raspberry Pi (Score:2)
OpenWebOS is still around... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a hobbyist platform that the big platforms still steal ideas from...there you go. That's the epitome of a hobbyist platform. The scripting is all html/css/javascript using the Enyo framework. It's all open standards and there are plenty of tools that were built by Palm and later HP.
Re: (Score:2)
I wish I had modpoints. Kids today seem to forget about it and it could sure use some manpower.
Re: (Score:2)
It's cool that they open-sourced the webOS calculator, contacts, email, notes, etc. [github.com], but it's not the complete phone image, I couldn't find the system settings, dialer, etc. The APIs that the published webOS apps use seem disconnected from any standardization efforts, and some apps seem to contact a local nodejs server instead of making simple JavaScript function calls. If it's all HTML/CSS/JavaScript, why is there a copy of Qt in the tree?
Woz's phone (Score:2)
ummm (Score:2)
Can't get to all I/O from JavaScript (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless the phone's system apps are all open source [github.com] and written in JavaScript, so necessarily there are Web API [mozilla.org]s to everything. Firefox OS walks the walk.
PhoneGap will shrink to be a compatibility shim on decent standards-compliant smartphones; the problem is Apple will always favor native IOS over web apps because Apple Inc. wants the resulting lock-in and can get away with it while they have market dominance.
It already exists (Score:2)
But it didn't survive the market well.
It was called WebOS. Some people still cling to it, but it's a dead platform.
Didn't like the way things looked or behaved in any app? It's all CSS and Javascript. Patch it. Patching WebOS was a very nice, elegant, and easy way to customise the phone.
Waaa! (Score:2)
Nothing keeps you from doing your own script apps (Score:2)
I made a scripting app and it's been on the App Store for a bit more than two years. Its not a mainstream scripting language but rather a forth/postscript -inspired stack based. Its got runloops, shallow inheritance, threads, imports, marginal UI and complete Objective-C bridge. It gets the job done so well the engine is at the core of two other Apps.
So, whats keeping you guys from making a Python App? Or whatever language you want to use.
Why? (Score:2)
OK call me naive but what is the big advantage (that I'm not seeing) of scripting over something that runs natively?
duh, Firefox OS (Score:2)
Surely Dave Winer can't be that out of touch. Firefox OS nails it.
In Firefox OS [mozilla.org] everything is written in JavaScript, the most widely-deployed scripting language that developers already know. Unlike all the other also-rans to IOS and Android, its system applications [github.com] — calendar, on-screen keyboard, music player, etc. — are likewise written in JavaScript. To permit this, and unlike BBX, OpenWebOS, Tizen, Windows 8, and everyone else saying "Write apps for our failing platform using HTML/CSS/JavaScr
forget smartphone, want tiny piece of cell com (Score:2)
Have you seen the prices of NTP time servers that use CDMA cell communication for time source? The advantage over GPS based (which are also expensive) is that GPS based time source doesn't work so well with antennae indoors or in area surrounded by tall buildings. So I'd just be interested in project that uses CDMA to get time signal (which doesn't require subscription to any provider).
N900 and descendants (Score:2)
Nokia did it already - the N900 (Score:2)
Not only was it a good phone, it also could support the major languages already out.
About the only problem it had was the USB port being a bit loose, but otherwise a solid and presentable "do-anything" box.
For Facebook users only (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it only works for Android.
In addition, from the page you linked: "on{X} beta requires Facebook ID for authentication"
Windows Phone 7 and 8 (Score:2)
also, I wondered what happened to the Windows smartphone or Windows CE I think it is called.
Windows CE got replaced with Windows Phone 7 (a .NET-only platform with an annual fee to run your own code on your own device) and later Windows Phone 8 (a slimmed down version of Windows RT that I think has the same annual fee).
Re: (Score:2)
Ouch. I wonder what the experience is like when you build and install Firefox OS [mozilla.org] on a decent Android 4.x smartphone.