<story><title>PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder</title><url>https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-linux-smartphone/?v=0446c16e2e66</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amelius</author><text>The point was: if it doesn&amp;#x27;t change the duopoly then who will write apps for the open platform? Not banks. Not governments. They will keep on developing only for Android and iOS.&lt;p&gt;And people with a pinephone will have a great phone with a great OS, but with a shitty selection of apps.</text></item><item><author>linmob</author><text>IMHO, it does not have to change the duopoly, as long as it creates sustainable options for those who want to escape that duopoly. In that way it‘s already a success.</text></item><item><author>Freak_NL</author><text>Except that it won&amp;#x27;t break the app-store duopoly. At what point will WhatsApp or even Signal consider providing a web-app, or even an open API for others to built clients against? Not doing this is a policy choice, not a technical one.&lt;p&gt;Will banks offer something that doesn&amp;#x27;t require authentication via an app? Governments? App here meaning: Android or IOS.&lt;p&gt;One solution might be to provide a sandbox for Android apps, but you would still be locked into Google&amp;#x27;s app-store and require accepting their terms of use. And while your OS might be open and not user-hostile, all the apps everyone uses will still be the same.&lt;p&gt;I want a phone like this, but I don&amp;#x27;t see it changing the duopoly.</text></item><item><author>wwarner</author><text>I personally think that the effort to create open source phones is the single most important technology project going on out there. We have open source browsers, we have open source social apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of complaining and legal coercion, to one of choices and markets.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danShumway</author><text>I already use Linux with my bank and when I&amp;#x27;m interacting with my government. And unlike on Android, the barrier of entry for &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt; to write apps and set up quick solutions to problems is much lower. I don&amp;#x27;t need to run my code on a completely separate environment with no overlap. Emulation is going to be easier. I don&amp;#x27;t need to install Eclipse or whatever the heck Android devs tolerate now.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s part of the point of using Linux -- not creating an ecosystem from scratch.&lt;p&gt;Virtually all of my computing outside of my phone is already done on Linux devices, and the setup works for day-to-day computing. Support is good enough for me. What makes you think Pinephone going to have worse support than my current Linux desktop?&lt;p&gt;My hope with Pinephone is that a decent influx of Linux phone users will improve the quality of desktop software on Linux as well, since it forces devs to stop ignoring touch screens and to start thinking about responsive design. Ideally, the desktop versions of many apps should scale on interfaces like this without needing to be rewritten. But regardless, I&amp;#x27;m still not particularly worried that my bank website is going to stop working.</text></comment>
<story><title>PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder</title><url>https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-linux-smartphone/?v=0446c16e2e66</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amelius</author><text>The point was: if it doesn&amp;#x27;t change the duopoly then who will write apps for the open platform? Not banks. Not governments. They will keep on developing only for Android and iOS.&lt;p&gt;And people with a pinephone will have a great phone with a great OS, but with a shitty selection of apps.</text></item><item><author>linmob</author><text>IMHO, it does not have to change the duopoly, as long as it creates sustainable options for those who want to escape that duopoly. In that way it‘s already a success.</text></item><item><author>Freak_NL</author><text>Except that it won&amp;#x27;t break the app-store duopoly. At what point will WhatsApp or even Signal consider providing a web-app, or even an open API for others to built clients against? Not doing this is a policy choice, not a technical one.&lt;p&gt;Will banks offer something that doesn&amp;#x27;t require authentication via an app? Governments? App here meaning: Android or IOS.&lt;p&gt;One solution might be to provide a sandbox for Android apps, but you would still be locked into Google&amp;#x27;s app-store and require accepting their terms of use. And while your OS might be open and not user-hostile, all the apps everyone uses will still be the same.&lt;p&gt;I want a phone like this, but I don&amp;#x27;t see it changing the duopoly.</text></item><item><author>wwarner</author><text>I personally think that the effort to create open source phones is the single most important technology project going on out there. We have open source browsers, we have open source social apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of complaining and legal coercion, to one of choices and markets.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mindcrime</author><text>You can still get updated software for CP&amp;#x2F;M, BeOS, DOS and OS&amp;#x2F;2 for crying out loud. Maybe not a lot, but people write &amp;#x2F; maintain that stuff. A relatively modern phone, running Linux? If it gains &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; adoption, I expect that the availability of apps won&amp;#x27;t be a problem. Maybe the ecosystem won&amp;#x27;t be quite as rich as Android or IOS, but it may well be &amp;quot;pretty good&amp;quot; which will be good enough for a lot of people.</text></comment>