Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device

At Mobile World Congress, which begins in three days, Mozilla will finally take the wraps off the Mozilla Marketplace and allow developers to submit their open web technology (HTML5, JavaScript, CSS) apps. While the Marketplace will play an important role in keeping Firefox in step with Chrome, these apps will actually play a far more important role: Boot to Gecko (B2G), Mozilla’s upcoming smartphone and tablet OS, will also use the Marketplace.

For Boot to Gecko to succeed it must have apps, and to create apps you need developers. That’s why, at MWC — according to a source close to the matter — Mozilla will also be announcing that it has partnered up with LG to make a developer-oriented mobile device. Our source couldn’t confirm the specs or the price, but with MWC around the corner we should know soon. Availability-wise, it’s possible that the LG device will go on sale next week, but considering how nascent B2G is — it will probably be usable by the middle of 2012 — it’s important to stress that this is very much a developer device.

Consumers will get their first taste of the Marketplace in Firefox 13, which will feature an app launcher as part of the long-waited Home Tab app launcher. Firefox 13 will be released at the beginning of June, giving developers plenty of time to build apps for both the ‘Fox and B2G.

Now the LG partnership is pretty extraordinary in itself, but that’s not all. Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and the Chief Technology Officer of Mozilla, says that there will be partners, plural, at MWC. Unfortunately our inside source couldn’t give us any information on who these partners might be, but we can make an educated guess: Carriers; carriers like AT&T, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, and many others who have registered their distaste for the proprietary, walled gardens that Apple and Google have been building around their mobile operating systems.

Basically, Apple and Google have so much control over the smartphone landscape that carriers have effectively become nothing more than retailers. Worse than that, their infrastructures have been reduced to that of a dumb pipe, where it is Apple and Google who ultimately decide how the network will be used.

With Boot to Gecko, carriers would have an open operating system, based on an open browser and framework, with a truly open Marketplace. Carriers could create their own Open Web Marketplace and populate it with their own apps, and create their own rules. They could brand the OS and load it up with as much or as little bloatware as they like. With B2G, carriers would once again be in control.

That’s just a tiny, very-zoomed-in glimpse of the future, though. The bigger picture is even more exciting. Basically, B2G is just a cut-down version of Linux that automatically loads Firefox; basically, it’s likeChrome OS, but lower tech. Underneath B2G, however, are Web APIswhich allow HTML5 and JavaScript to talk directly to your computer’s hardware. In the case of B2G, a Web API lets you make a call using an HTML web page, or access the camera to upload a new photo to Facebook. Web APIs are part of Firefox, however, not B2G. These same Web APIs will exist in Firefox for Android and Firefox for desktop, and because they’re an open spec they could even be implemented by Google in Chrome. Ultimately, the LG coup is big news, but Mozilla has much bigger fish to fry: It’s trying to turn every browser into an operating system.

Read more at Mozilla, or read more about Boot to Gecko

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Windows 8 on ARM kills the Windows software ecosystem

Microsoft has given its users an unprecedented view into the development of Windows 8 but nothing matches the scope of the latest unveil. Steven Sinofksy himself has descended from his lofty throne and taken up pen and paper to describe Windows on ARM (WOA) in great detail. The full article is available at the Building Windows 8 Blog, though calling the 8,000+ word treatise a “post” stretches the definition of the word like Rosie O’Donnell slipping in to one of Kate Moss’s bikinis.

Redmond intends to ship WOA and Windows 8 x86/64 simultaneously, with strong channel support for both products. One significant difference between the two platforms is the degree of control MS is wielding. WOA systems, for example, will ship with desktop versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Microsoft has ad-supported versions of Excel and Word that it distributes to OEMs in the PC space, but you’ll never see the company say “All Dell and HP systems will ship with Office.”

Contrary to prior reports, WOA users will have access to the conventional Windows desktop — but there won’t be much for them to do with it. Sinofsky writes: “WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps. Code that uses only system or OS services from WinRT can be used within an app and distributed through the Windows Store for both WOA and x86/64.Consumers obtain all [WOA] software, including device drivers, through the Windows Store and Microsoft Update or Windows Update. (Emphasis added)

It’s hard to underemphasize just how huge a change that is. It’s one thing to say that ARM CPUs won’t support x86 emulation; something else entirely to split software delivery and installation. Up until now, one of the biggest differences between desktop and mobile operating systems has been the ability to install software. It’s true that Microsoft’s decision to wall off unapproved software installation is similar to the approach of Android and iOS — but iOS isn’t the same thing as OS X. Combining both of these decisions under the “Windows” brand could be disastrous, not because Microsoft is evil, but because it creates two entirely different user experiences on the basis of which ISA your CPU supports. What’s even more schizophrenic is that the entire point of WinRT was supposedly to eliminate the need to support multiple architectures and recompile code. This change doesn’t impact the programming model, but it undercuts the idea of a unified Windows.

Using Windows means being able to download a program from SourceForge, Download.com, MajorGeeks, or Microsoft’s own web page. Now, x86 developers who might want to recompile software to target ARM won’t be able to do so without going through the Microsoft store. The simple portability that’s defined Windows to such a degree that no one even thinks about it is gone. Sure, if you rely exclusively on things like Microsoft cloud services, or Office, you won’t notice. What about everyone else?

Even if we don’t see them straight away, there are going to be x86 tablets and ARM notebooks. If you own an x86 chip, you’ll be able to do all the things you do now, plus take advantage of the new UI. If you buy an ARM product, you get something that looks very much like a conventional tablet experience. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it’s not what people think of when they think “Windows.” Microsoft claims that users won’t confuse x86 and ARM devices, but it’s not clear how the company plans to address the problem.

Up until now, Windows 8 has straddled the gaps between its disparate platforms remarkably well, but this could seriously harm the operating system’s uptake. It’s not that the App Store model ismorally evil, but that the Windows brand is going to be split between two families of devices. Microsoft might well have been better off calling its ARM effort “Windows Tablet” or even moving it to Windows Phone — WOA devices aren’t going to be Windows products in some of the ways the term has traditionally been applied. That’s not good for the brand, or for users, and it blurs one of the most important distinction between a device that’s essentially a toy and one that people can use for both work and creation. It’s possible that Microsoft will include the ability to load unapproved apps, similar to the way that unsigned drivers can be loaded in a 64-bit OS, but the company’s previous decision to force UEFI Secure Boot on ARM devices make this seem unlikely.

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