Why advanced camera is not the default camera app?

Applications
#4

It is an application under GPLv2 license and here is the code:

Are you tell me that they cannot pay the author of that app fro a better UI and implement the missing feature to make it their default camera when they sell Alien Davick license with their SFOS license?

Possibly, the Advanced Camera cannot be inserted into Jolla market because it uses some API which are not allowed or not reviewed yet. Again, the API can be reviewed and for the others can be evaluate an altenative.

It is a kind of work but at the end the default camera app will start to compete with those are available for Android smartphone.

Moreover, @piggz started another application that in the future can be able to replace the defaul news app in SailfishOS as long as he incentivate to work on newsfish. So, it can happen twice that a standard application will move from OpenRepos to Jolla market in order to became the upgrade of the old default app.

#5

And who from the few Jolla employees should maintain the app? In the past Advanced Camera sometimes stopped working for weeks after an OS update, which i don’t see as a problem as long it is a third party app.

1 Like
#6

Few developers means that there is room for more. I have been asked to join them for fun but I have no fun in doing develop anymore (not at my age).

However, you are focusing on the problem (few money, few people). I am focusing on the solution: bringing SFOS to a further level for which the business is profitable and growing and therefore hiring more people will be not a problem. As long as the new people will be added as a part of a strategic and sustainable growth path.

Jolla is selling Ubuntu Touch as alternative for SailFish OS. Many Debian users complains that Ubuntu is too aggressive on the market but in the last reunion they decided to deliver with their installation ISO, the proprietary firmwares as well. Because the market can be hard to please¹ but it is easy to be rebounced by it and strive to survive in a niche.

POST SCRIPTUM

This without using the Anbox approch but another competitive alternative because copycats of another niche are not viable and if they are then the technology behind them is not characterising enough. In fact, as you can read, Anbox has been initially started-up by Canonical.

NOTES

¹ If I would asked my customers what kind of better coach they want, I will never made a single car - Henry Ford

#7

Is there a default news app?

#8

Jolla is not selling anything apart from the os, jolla-devices is a site run by an italian aficionado that decided to sell phones with sailfish preinstalled

2 Likes
#9

No, but it should be. What people are supposed to read on their commute time?

Newspaper? Or they have to buy also a e-ink device for the books / audible?

reading-newspapers3

Then, you go in the Jolla market and search for “news”. You will find just one app with limited features. Nice, clean, but too much limited. Therefore, there is a default app, unless you buy the €49 license for having the Alien Dalvik¹ compatibility layer to install Android apps and/or you are able to cope with one week of IT professional work to setup your smartphone.

it was a week of IT professional work, until a Quick Start Guide will appear… :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

NOTES

¹ in the Jolla market, it is refered as Android App Support but it is based on Alien Dalvik since the beginning of SFOS, as far as I know.

#10

Actually I am quite happy, that my smartphone OS/ attached store/preinstalled news app does not make proposals to me which news I should read

5 Likes
#11

The GPLv2 Newsfish app developed by @piggz does?

Does it suggest you the news you have to read? :smile:

Please guys, keep the focus! :blush:

Post Scriptum

I did not verified that such app will fit all the constrains to be elegible to the “news app by default” for SFOS but it does not change the plot. Every smartphone OS that aims to reach the “advanced users, privacy concerned” market is doomed to choose a “set of default app” to deliver with its installation.

#12

I’m actually quite happy we don’t have a preinstalled news app, i hate the fact that google is proposing me tons of stories i do not absolutely care and that you may trigger with an addictional swipe, or ms is putting them on the feed section while i just want to know the weather

4 Likes
#13

You are you. Market is market. :slightly_smiling_face:

As long as those apps are open-source, customisable by you and can be removed or reset to default factory state, hidden and disabled with chmod -x, I do not see any problem.

After all, we are speaking about Jolla native apps market, not about Google.

Are you trying to convince me that you did not installed PatchManager and Chum at least, and you are living with the bare minimum delivered with the free (as gratis) version of SailFish OS? :wink:

#14

Market is market, in fact ms is removing news from the windows 11 feed page, making them opt-in and not opt-out, and ms news is not preistalled by default anymore, you are right :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
#15

Great! Unfortunately, here we are facing with a different situation: the default app is the only app in the store and it is so limited in its configurability that the censhorship is the last of our problem. :rofl:

I hope there is a “reasonable balance” between being pushed by marketting by default and not having a default news app which can be reasonable customisable. Do you agree?

By the way, default news app does not mean pre-installed, necessarly. However, because the Jolla market is preinstalled and there is a single news app we are just speaking about a single click in one way (install) or another (uninstall).

1 Like
#16

Great! Unfortunately, here we are facing with a different situation: the default app is the only app in the store and it is so limited in its configurability that the censhorship is the last of our problem. :rofl:

I hope there is a “reasonable balance” between being pushed by marketting by default and not having a default news app which can be reasonable customisable. Do you agree?

By the way, default news app does not mean pre-installed, necessarly. However, because the Jolla market is preinstalled and there is a single news app we are just speaking about a single click in one way (install) or another (uninstall).

POST SCRIPTUM

Microsoft has been forced to remove the default RSS feed in Windows 11 because: 1. too many stakeholders were want that space and at the same time 2. anti-trust was investingating supported by the money of those have been left behind in the previous Windows version. Let me tell you, that it is a complete different problem / situation: Jolla is under capitalised to grow and in fact, moved to automotive market to survive while Microsoft so ridiculisously capitalised because the pressure of those want by their next Windows default app/news/etc which sometimes trigger a counter effect like the one you described.

#17

You surely know that Newsfish is a companion app for Owncloud / Nextcloud News, and that most Sailfish users cannot use it all.
Its last update was in 2017, and the app is available for 32bit devices only.
Don’t know why you even mention it.
The recommended Nextcloud News companion app is named Fuoten, is available for 64 bit devices and well maintained.

1 Like
#18

I wrote another post because my editing quota got exausted and I cannot edit nor delete any post anymore… Freedom, freedom and then enforced netiquette and limits everywhre. I love all of this! :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

From a total new user point of view with a pre-installed defautl news app:

  • if it is not preinstalled, it should search for it but probably s/he looking for the one who s/he know in an Android store.
  • if it it is installed, it came without any permissions and it should be configured - do you remember your first installation? :slightly_smiling_face:
  • those who dislike having that news app, can disable it with a simple action.

As long as, it is easier uninstall/disable an app than let people go for an Android version, I do not see the problem.

At the moment, pre-installed apps cannot be disabled. This can change in future.

Are pre-installed apps strictly necessary? I hate the tutorial (not true, just for example) and I cannot remove it. I feel that my freedom is limited, moreover I do not know which permissions has that apps, therefore also my privacy is at risk. May be one night, it will raise against me while I am sleeping… :rofl:

#19

Edit the file
/usr/share/applications/sailfish-tutorial.desktop

Insert the line
NoDisplay=true

after the line
Type=Application
and save the file.

You bought a hackerphone!! Enjoy! :wink:

1 Like
#20

Wonderful! So, we can do that¹ with every pre-installed apps, like a default news app for those the delete action just hide the icon! :wink:

Moreover, I took as example the Tutorial app because I noticed that it can draw over the other apps AND it knows what I am doing in order to suggest me a better way to do it. Therefore, it is spying me! :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

In the same moment, I hide its icon I got three results: 1. a pre-installed (possibly always) running application, 2. with the priviledge to overwrite what I see and to see what I write, 3. without even an icon that rember that it exists… :rofl:

This would be the conclusion following the logic that I saw implemented in this thread. Can you confute this suspect, also? :blush:

** NOTES **

¹ hide and disable pre-installed apps like anticipated here:

#21

What ‘preinstalled apps’ ? I could disable them all at installation time (I did for some). Also it’s possible to deinstall later.

#22

…and probably also “Nextcloud News” is not enough to be the only source from which receive the news. However, the news app was not the topic of this thread, as you can verify by the title. The news has be kept in the scene by @247 because he was opposing the idea of having a better default camera app.

On my side, I followed him/her OT because the fancy logic behind the idea that having a default app (and upgrade it with a better one) would have impaired something valuable. And I am still wonder what the Jolla’s CTO is thinking about delivering minimal functioning app by default installation when developers in the unofficial store - without of a guide and a payroll - are still providing better software.

Finally, as stated I do not care about the news app because:

#23

Sorry, I did not verified this aspect. My Xperia 10 II arrived on May 26th in the morning and in the meantime I had to move from Germany to Italy dealing with the landlord goodbay, a travel full of luggages, all the burocracy of changing the residence and made my appartment in Italy living again.

Moreover, I never played with a smartphone before and never developed an Android app but just used them. Despite this, I have been able to overcome the annoying and absurd USB3 problem about fastboot protocol. In my case, I suspect it was coupled with sleeping USB ill-mode because after the first fastboot command was executed the connection interrupted and phone rebooted, regularly.

For sake of completeness, an Ubuntu LTS pro is running on a refurbished ThinkPad. Thus, I was quite surprised about seeing hardware glitches with fastboot protocol because in the last 15 years no one of my ThinkPad laptop dent my trust in them. Despite my experience in this brand, the last two X-series ThinkPads were behaving strangerly like they were affected by a CPU cache injection bug. Probably, just a unlucky choice twice.

Then, I discovered that my smartphone arrived with Android 12 instead of 11 and in the documentation there is writing that 11 is more suitable than 10 but nobody wrote about about 12+ is wrong. Therefore, I got stuck into GPS fail-over which forced me to use ADB for my first time in life and introduced me in a world in which sudo has another name because the entire architecure is completely different at such a point for which the OEM-installed Android version can make some kind of difference in how the current linux-based SFOS works because the hardware is initialised using Android configurations and also microG affects the native apps behaviour while they are using GPS. In fact, microG preview release solve a bug on Xperia 10 II when GPS is used by native apps.

Just for sake of clarity, I rephrase this concept: the native apps behaviour running on the SFOS depends by the Android image and by the higher software stack that communicate with it. This is not a smartphone, because considering its architecture it more similar to a triple cheesburger in an Esher painting! :rofl:

Finally - after this incredible hacking trip - I realised that a “Quick Start Guide” was missing and I wrote it.

Now, you pop-up revealing me that the relative huge pile of filesystems which I saw are not based on an read-only image. So, all the other stuff is not written on top of that (or mounted in several folders) in such a way that if I press a specific combination of hardware keys the smartphone is reset to the default factory installation and all the user data deleted.

Moreover, you are claiming that pre-installed app can also be deleted at installation time. :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

I have the sensation that we got stuck in a misunderstaning here, with “pre-installed app” definition, I hope… :sweat_smile: