ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Michal Suchanek <hramrach@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 15 October 2013 18:13, Roberto Alsina <roberto.alsina@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Michal Suchanek <hramrach@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On 15 October 2013 17:42, Martin Albisetti <argentina@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Rasmus Eneman <Rasmus@xxxxxxxxx>
>> > wrote:
>> >> What Michal Suchanek tries to say is that he wants a way to install
>> >> click
>> >> apps from the store while not having internet access on the phone (ie.
>> >> download it on a computer with internet access).
>> >>
>> >> A solution to this that I see is to have it possible to install phone
>> >> apps
>> >> to the phone from the software centre on the computer.
>> >> What I mean is:
>> >> Connect the phone to the computer (by usb for example)
>> >> Launch Ubuntu Software Center
>> >> Choose phone in some way (designers needed)
>> >> Now the software centre shows phone apps instead of desktop apps.
>> >> Allow the user to install any app (the apps get installed on the phone,
>> >> not
>> >> the computer)
>> >>
>> >> Could be a great feature actually.
>> >
>> > Right. So while that is a use case, it certainly isn't top use case at
>> > all for the majority of the users. It would be foolish for us to
>> > invest time in something like that at this point.
>>
>> Yes, you invest time into making this use case difficult and then say
>> that's not top use case so will not invest into making it easy.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be easier to just not invest into making the use case
>> difficult in the first place?
>>
>> Noo, then Canonical could not have control over users with One Store
>> To Rule Them All.
>>
>
> I see we are back to sarcasm.
>
>>
>> Oh well. I will see how this pans out but so far it's looking like you
>> will need an actual Touch device or an emulation somehow attached to
>> the net so you can download the click apps directly to the Touch
>> device or fake it somehow - just as sucky as Google store.
>>
>
> Well, you are wrong. You don't need a touch device, you don't need any
> emulation. You do need to be connected to the Internet to download the app.
> You do need a U1 account to download it from the store. But you can
> write a script to download it without a device. It's probably 30 lines of
> code.
>
>>
>> > That said, because authentication is simple (oauth signed request, the
>> > source code to do so is open source), you can implement it yourself.
>> > Write a script that searches the store, signs the URL, downloads it do
>> > the desktop and sends it to the phone. This is what's different from
>> > Android (and certainly iOS), there's no secret to how to authenticate
>> > to the store, it's fully open source.
>> > All our infrastructure on the server and on the phone support this,
>> > anyone's welcome to write such a script to fit their use case.
>>
>> But then for all practical purposes you have connected the phone to
>> the net - there is stuff like the USB Ethernet gadget or adb or ..
>>
>
> No. You need to have had a general computing device capable of running
> software in
> it, connected to some sort of internet access system at some point in the
> past in order
> to download a file.

Yes, just as you need a general computing device capable of running
software in to download Google applications.

> Then you have a click file. Which you can install. From the phone's SD card.
> In the phone. Without any 3rd party apps. Using the terminal. That comes
> with the phone.

But you *DO NEED 3RD PARTY APPS ON THE DEVICE WITH WHICH YOU DOWNLOAD
THE CLICK FILE*. A plain web browser clearly does not suffice.

>
>>
>> But do you have usually such stuff set up on your PC or a PC in an
>> internet cafe or Android device or dumb phone? No.
>> Do those devices manage to download to plain USB thumb drive? Yes.
>> Even my dumb phone can probably do that.
>>
>> But installing click apps from plain storage would just be too simple
>> and useful, right?
>>
>
> It's also possible today. You have not really tried, have you?

I did not even get an app on storage. TBH I do not have a Touch
device. I was considering to try and run Ubuntu on my old tablet but
seeing where the development is directed to I am no longer much
interested.

Thanks for making it clear that Ubuntu Touch is an alternative to
Android and iOS but not an *open* alternative.

Michal