Bullshit, people still need to make things. Make emails, edit videos, edit photos, write documents. These aren't business class activities, but touch screens are insufficient for that function.
I don't see people lugging around a laptop anymore, but I easily see people plugging their phone into a display, throwing a bluetooth or usb keyboard + mouse on, and expecting a productivity environment from that device. The hardware has the power to do that now.
I can do that with my Android tablet. If I were to do that with an Ubuntu phone, though, I'd have access to much more mature productivity software built for the desktop.
Canonical doesnt produce video, photo and document editing software. The market's refusal to port that software to Linux has essentially killed it on the desktop for a majority of users. If they dont want to port, there is absolutely nothing Canonical can do about it. A new player cannot simply enter a new market and without effort get a significant part of it.
The only thing they _can_ do is get foothold in a new market first (mobile), then leverage that to get more influence on the desktop. Like Microsoft is leveraging their desktop monopoly to get foothold in mobile.
Well Canonical doesn't produce those things by default they just bundle whatever the latest and greatest open source offering is. Which sucks compared to the professional choices out there on Mac and Windows _but_ is better than what is available on Android OS perhaps.
So in theory this a good move. In practice though, they have a huge mountain to climb. They have to market the hell out o f this and they have to provide a comparable experience to mature and battle tested mobile OSes.
I am all behind them and support them and this phone is probably something I would love as a developer (as I feel like my hands are tied when using Android) but I am afraid this will end up in a very small and irrelevant niche.
First and foremost is to ask so what major cell carrier is going to support this. If the answer is none then well we know the future of this.
> Canonical doesnt produce video, photo and document editing software.
I think, by that argument, Canonical isn't making any software, not even a GNU/Linux distribution. They might not be much involved in developing non-linear video editing software, but they are involved in the various free software projects for everything else on that list?
> If I were to do that with an Ubuntu phone, though, I'd have access to much more mature productivity software built for the desktop.
Sure you COULD, but serious productivity software is written to make maximal use of input devices. Keyboard shortcut usage is often not optional. That isn't going to translate to a touchscreen, or even a slide-out microkeyboards.
> At the point you're carrying around a keyboard anyway, why not just have a Macbook Air?
Because you _don't have to_ carry around a keyboard and a display if you don't plan on producing content and just want to make phone calls read ebooks.
Can I tear off the screen and keyboard off a Macbook Air and use it as a phone? No? Well then I want a Ubuntu Phone then.
Well at least in theory ...
Another way to look at it, I already have a TV, a laptop, a tablet, and a phone. As mobile hardware gets faster and better, I would eventually just love to have one device -- a phone. I could connect it to my large screen tv, a good keyboard, a smaller LCD display, USB storage and so on.
I thought it would be great to have one device as well, but then I realized that sometimes I want to use my phone while watching TV or using the laptop, so they can't really be one device, unless I wear a wireless headset, which I don't really want to carry around along with my phone (another thing to charge, another thing to lose).
A multi tasking OS with a powerful CPU and wireless video streaming should provide those at least in theory. There is actually Miracast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracast so in theory the bits and pieces are here already they just have to work as a package.
I don't see people lugging around a laptop anymore, but I easily see people plugging their phone into a display, throwing a bluetooth or usb keyboard + mouse on, and expecting a productivity environment from that device. The hardware has the power to do that now.
I can do that with my Android tablet. If I were to do that with an Ubuntu phone, though, I'd have access to much more mature productivity software built for the desktop.