I like the idea of Firefox tablets running this, but not so sure about telephony. Not that it isn't an awesome or commendable effort, it's just going to be tough to succeed where the likes of WebOS failed. A differentiator would be going after lower end tablets and more WiFi centric devices. Same deal with Opera. Like the Chromebooks, but in tablet form.
Moreover, I don't see what Firefox OS brings that Android cannot do...
Well, it has a decent WebView, for a start. It's damn near impossible to make a responsive webapp on Android, the WebView is awful. iOS isn't perfect, but is order of magnitudes better. Why Apple and not Google are pushing this, I have no idea. Google are supposed to be all about the web.
Not true. Since last year, the reason Google is paying them so much money for search engine placement is because there was competitive bidding from Bing.
Can you imagine a "smartphone" mobile platform without AAA game titles?
Absolutely. When the iPhone came out it had no AAA game titles- the major publishers held off until they saw what the market was like. I remember my first purchase (and addiction) being some sort of tank-shooting game that was little more than a glorified QBasic Gorillas.
Don't get me wrong, they'd need AAA games eventually, but everything has to start somewhere.
Everything has to start somewhere. Unfortunately, this starting point has moved since the iPhone first came out. Microsoft learned this with Windows Phone; there is reasonable (but low) adoption, unfortunately due to missing features that developers and users consider to be standard, the ecosystem is still missing a few apps and some of the existing apps are/were (things have improved a little since 7.5) lower-featured than those same apps on other platforms. Windows Phone 7 would have been the best thing ever invented if it was released in 2007. Firefox OS would be as well. Windows 95 would have been magic when it was released in 1985.
Everything has to start somewhere. But where it ends up is highly dependent on how far it was when it was released.
True, but being the open project it is, Firefox OS doesn't have the same kind of market pressure that WP, for example, does. They haven't even launched (in any consumer-facing sense), so it might be a little early to judge the platform.
Words with Friends, Draw Something, Angry Birds, etc.
None of these are AAA titles. All of these are, or were, hugely popular with their players.
If you cannot imagine a smartphone mobile platfrom without AAA game titles then the failure isn't as a result of that platform; the failure is your imagination.
I think you underestimate the speed of modern JS compilers. Minecraft is running in Java, so it's already GC'd which is the major failing of Javascript as a AAA game development language.
webOS was Webkit based, and I suspect that switching over to Gecko would be a huge effort- and as an organisation, I suspect that it isn't worth supporting two entirely separate engines in the long term.
I guess it depends on how far that work has come--if what they have after a year is as good or better than webOS then OK, but if not, webOS worked pretty well for all its rough edges.
I guess it pains me for two reasons--I'm a big webOS fan (still use an old Pre 2), and I hate seeing smart developers spending time reinventing the wheel. Though in this case nobody could have predicted the path webOS would have taken so it's not like Mozilla had a choice until very recently.
Firefox OS uses the same code base as desktop Firefox, so they don't have to hire all new developers to work on a project that won't integrate with their main product at all. Just makes absolutely no sense for them to adopt WebOS. WebOS never had the same goals as Firefox OS, for one, their goal was simply to use a platform that many devs are already familiar with and using, as a way to gain adoption. It didn't work; turns out devs go where the users are, not where their skills are.
WebOS didn't fail due to its web roots; it failed due to lackluster hardware, being late to market, and an untimely power shift at HP. Users not caring about the underlying technology cuts both ways; with better marketing and a couple more years of iteration, it could have become a real contender.
