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News HIghlights -- A New OS / 3D printers — Parallax Forums

News HIghlights -- A New OS / 3D printers

LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
edited 2013-06-22 09:22 in General Discussion
Two items in today's Taiwan news.

Hon-Hai Electronics has announced it will hire 3000 new employees to develop the new Firefox OS with an 'unlimited budget'.

http://www.zdnet.com/foxconn-to-recruit-3000-for-its-software-centre-for-firefox-os-apps-7000017136/

I am sure that is going to add to the mix of Android, Apple, MS, Linux debates.

And...
Makerbot has sold out for $403 million USD

http://allthingsd.com/20130619/makerbot-sells-to-stratasys-for-403m-plus-201m-for-earn-outs-as-3-d-printing-market-explodes/

Comments

  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2013-06-22 01:56
    while I like more OSes .......... any new players better have a good way to market a NOOB to the OS world .

    If apple and Linux are the runts of the OS world .what makes any one think some new kid is gonna out flank the status quo
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-06-22 02:57
    In case anyone has not guessed Hon-Hai is Foxconn who are famous for making the phones for Apple.

    This is all very clever. You see Apple needs Foxconn but Foxconn does not need Apple, well not forever. If FoxConn can get their own operating system and app infrastructure then they can cut out the Apple middleman and get more profit for themselves.

    Whilst they are busy making all those FireFox phones they will have no time bother making any for Apple.

    Bye bye, Apple.


    @Peter
    If apple and Linux are the runts of the OS world .what makes any one think some new kid is gonna out flank the status quo

    Apple may be the runt of the world, Linux certainly is not. Android, hence Linux, holds about 50% of the phone market share. Given the dominance of Linux usage in other areas it can hardly be described as a runt.

    Don't forget that Linux is not an operating system. Linux is only a kernel, the hardware absraction layer, on which many different operating systems can be built.

    Android is Linux at the bottom with a Java run time bolted on top.

    FireFox OS started out as being called "Boot to Gecko" which allready tells you that the idea is to take a Linux kernel, forget all the normal Unix like OS that is normally built on top and have it run just a web browser.

    That web browser will have to be enhanced to allow web apps to access phone features and such and to allow creation of web content that is indistinquishable from native apps. That of course is what has been pushing all those new features into HTML5 in recent years.

    The WebOS idea was much the same.
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2013-06-22 05:01
    ChromeOS is also a Linux variant that boots to a Web browser. Android can run native code, but I've never bothered to try. Java is a decent language and the performance is fine on that platform.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-06-22 05:51
    Peter KG6LSE wrote: »
    while I like more OSes .......... any new players better have a good way to market a NOOB to the OS world .

    If apple and Linux are the runts of the OS world .what makes any one think some new kid is gonna out flank the status quo

    They really don't need the whole OS world to accept them, just the Chinese language NOOB market is vast enough. I suspect that this is going to be generic Linux under-the-hood at its strongest or a Unix fork that has been previously ignored with just browser emphasized as the OS identity.

    ~~~~

    Meanwhile Makerbot... sold out. Wasn't tha supposed to be a company that was committed to open source and grass roots developers? Or were they just great pretenders and a New York sort of business ethic?
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2013-06-22 09:00
    Loopy Byteloose wrote: »
    Meanwhile Makerbot... sold out. Wasn't tha supposed to be a company that was committed to open source and grass roots developers? Or were they just great pretenders and a New York sort of business ethic?

    Their last printer went closed source, so I imagine they were planning this exist strategy for awhile now. But people have to eat and I would do the same thing in their shoes. The question is what happens to Thingverse which they host?
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2013-06-22 09:12
    Martin_H wrote: »
    Their last printer went closed source, so I imagine they were planning this exist strategy for awhile now. But people have to eat ...

    ... Caviar and Dom Perignon.
    Heater. wrote: »
    In case anyone has not guessed Hon-Hai is Foxconn who are famous for making the phones for Apple.

    This is all very clever. You see Apple needs Foxconn but Foxconn does not need Apple, well not forever. If FoxConn can get their own operating system and app infrastructure then they can cut out the Apple middleman and get more profit for themselves.

    ... and copy Apple Intellectual Property with impunity.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-06-22 09:22
    jazzed wrote: »
    ... Caviar and Dom Perignon.



    ... and copy Apple Intellectual Property with impunity.

    Apple are for eating, aren't they? or are we hanging on the forbidden fruit idea?
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