ubuntu-tablet team mailing list archive

[Alan Pope <alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Hi Chris,

On 20/02/12 12:10, Chris Billington wrote:
> If we continue to chase the rest of the market by developing for 
> proprietary platforms that are 'owned' by a third party, we will
> be consigned to playing catch-up forever, reverse-engineering and
> perfecting hardware support just in time for the maker to replace
> the platform with a new model.
> 

The focus of your mail seems to be completely on the hardware
enablement of this project, which is indeed interesting but only part
of the issue.

I agree that if we are ever going to get mass market adoption of an
Ubuntu powered tablet device we're going to need to engage with a
hardware manufacturer early on. I don't know what engagement has been
done there on behalf of Canonical.

However there's a whole raft of other things that need doing too and
that stuff is pretty much hardware agnostic. We need to decide on a
widget set, build an SDK, design the tablet-friendly Unity desktop,
refine gestures, evaluate default applications etc. A lot of this
stuff will take a lot of time and effort to do, and doesn't require a
hardware vendor to be onboard at all.

This is one reason I'm so keen on the Transformer as a device for us
to develop _on_ but not specifically _for_. It's not bleeding edge
technology which gives us a few advantages. It's not the most
expensive device being previous (or two) generations behind the
current must-have device. It's also known to be hackable, which makes
it very attractive indeed. Also the addition of a hardware keyboard,
HDMI out, USB ports, dual batteries (including the keyboard dock),
SDHC and microSDHC means we can test lots of user stories out on this
one device.

Of course if people want to play with Ubuntu on other devices, go
right ahead :) I'm just putting out the rationale behind choosing the
Transformer.

All the best,
- -- 
Alan Pope
Engineering Manager

Canonical - Product Strategy
+44 (0) 7973 620 164
alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://ubuntu.com/
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