ubuntu-tablet team mailing list archive

[Chris Billington <billington.chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Alan,
I quite agree there are multiple aspects to this- certainly the ui needs
test and development and we need touch enabled applications working
uniformly. But without a hardware platform with accelerated graphics, sound
and power management we are no further at getting the great work that's
been done into the hands of users.
There are four or five Chinese oems offering Arm Ubuntu tablets, but I
doubt they ever actually shipped one.
I am sure there is a market for a third player after Ios and Android
especially since HP threw away the work done on WebOS. Maybe they were
scared of being sued?
On Feb 20, 2012 4:29 PM, "Alan Pope" <alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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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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