Two Ubuntu Phones Coming In 2014, Aiming For Top 50 iOS/Android Apps 141
An anonymous reader writes "Mark Shuttleworth just had a conference call with the press where he announced Canonical has partnered with BQ in Europe and Meizu in China to manufacture Ubuntu phones that will ship in 2014. By the time devices ship, the hope is to have ports of the top 50 Android and iOS apps available on Ubuntu."
Mark Shuttleworth notes "The mobile industry has long been looking for a viable alternative to those that reign today. Ubuntu puts the control back into the hands of our partners and presents an exciting platform for consumers, delivering an experience which departs from the tired app icon grid of Android and iOS and provides a fluid, content-rich experience for all."
Fuck you, Shuttleworth! (Score:5, Insightful)
That, right there, makes everything about these new smartphones, and Ubuntu in general, entirely worthless. The entire point of all this is to put control in the hands of the USERS, not "partners!"
Re:Third-rate devices (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm curious which apps they mean. Okay, Angry Birds and Facebook, but the most popular apps are things like Google Maps and Now/Siri. It's all very well to have an alternative open OS but I doubt many people care what the underlying system is, they just want their proprietary apps on a reasonable phone.
Freedom in the OS.. but what about the apps? (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet most of the popular apps are front-ends to private services like f...book, google, pictures sharing services, $streaming_service etc. which invariably collect your data and try to lock you in. I question the value of a Free and Open Source OS, and of the front-end apps themselves even if they're Free and Open Source, when all the "cloudy" back-end is where the interesting stuff happens and it is locked, out of control and may be working against your interests.
Even as a desktop linux user I'm suffering from this already, what with all the tracking when browsing the web.
If we want Freedom on the mobile OS we're going to need Free back-ends to go with it (i.e. if you store private data on the web/internet, you should have the option of doing it on your own server, like installing the back-end software easily on a small VM that you pay a couple dollars per month for).
We need more chat apps, sharing apps etc. using open and universal protocols (like e-mail, IRC, XMPP) rather than made solely to be one customer of a single one company.