Time for a new operating system (if we didn't already hit that mark with the 2013 NSA leaks).
Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei: they all exist at the pleasure of the state. Please ignore their glitzy PR-laden presentations about protecting people's privacy and upholding human rights. They will sell you out in a second if it's convenient.
On the mobile side of things, we need, at the barest minimum:
- a web based OS with granular permissions for any application that needs to access hardware APIs (just like a web browser)
- a general-purpose mobile SOC that hasn't hitched its wagon to Samsung/Apple/Huawei orders.
- FairPhone style modular, user replaceable parts, and to encourage an interest in self-repair.
- no native-app lock-ins. it's not 2007, the majority of apps people use run fine on a mobile web browser.
- significant efforts to fund tech literacy. More than a billion people have smartphones as their first computing device. They don't have the benefit of past knowledge, so they simply accept the locked-down nature of smartphones without question. Meanwhile in 2011, we could openly port Windows Phone 7, Android OS and the original Windows Mobile 6.5 on the same phone.
Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei: they all exist at the pleasure of the state. Please ignore their glitzy PR-laden presentations about protecting people's privacy and upholding human rights. They will sell you out in a second if it's convenient.
On the mobile side of things, we need, at the barest minimum:
- a web based OS with granular permissions for any application that needs to access hardware APIs (just like a web browser)
- a general-purpose mobile SOC that hasn't hitched its wagon to Samsung/Apple/Huawei orders.
- FairPhone style modular, user replaceable parts, and to encourage an interest in self-repair.
- no native-app lock-ins. it's not 2007, the majority of apps people use run fine on a mobile web browser.
- significant efforts to fund tech literacy. More than a billion people have smartphones as their first computing device. They don't have the benefit of past knowledge, so they simply accept the locked-down nature of smartphones without question. Meanwhile in 2011, we could openly port Windows Phone 7, Android OS and the original Windows Mobile 6.5 on the same phone.