ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Florian Will <florian.will@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rick,

Am 27.10.2013 16:25, schrieb Rick Spencer:
> This sounds kind of far fetched. Who would do something like this on
> their phone? 

More than 200k android users who downloaded the app that I described. I
don't think "it's a phone!" is a valid excuse for not allowing any CPU
intensive task in a sane way. Maybe I want to mine bitcoins on my phone
while I'm asleep and it's connected to the charger? (Okay now this is
really hypothetical..)

> I think it's fair to point out apps that simply won't work for users
> (Spotify for example), but we shouldn't optimize for entirely
> hypothetical situations.

I described such an app in my mail from earlier today, and it's in fact
not at all hypthetical, but you can download this app for android if
you'd like to.

To be more clear, the file being parsed by the app I described contains
a history of messages exchanged using an instant messenger app.
Apparently, there's a user base interested in statistics about their
chat history.

I realize this specifc app won't work for at least one other (good)
reason on Ubuntu Touch. The confinement won't allow my app to access
files created by another app without the user's explicit agreement,
which is not required on Android for files on SD. But that is not my
point. I just want to be able to use the CPU in my phone if I ever feel
the need to do so. And I also want to allow others to use any CPU
intensive apps I created if they like it. :-)

I'm fine with restrictive defaults and requiring user effort to allow
"possibly unwanted things going on in the background" for specific apps,
but I don't agree with making those *possibly* unwanted things generally
impossible. I consider my phone to a computing device after all.

Cheers,
Florian