Sun Debuts Java 'iPhone' 195
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that this week at the JavaOne Conference, Sun debuted it's answer to the iPhone. While it is still months away from being a reality this phone is set to put them in direct competition with some of the top cellphone vendors. "Java Mobile FX is "a complete desktop-scale environment that puts the network in your hand," said Richard Green, executive vice president of Sun's software group, announcing the product in his keynote address. Sun ported the Savaje code to a Linux kernel and is expanding the applications programming interfaces and set of developer tools that will ship with it. It plans to make the code available on other platforms in the future. Sun has no licensees for Java Mobile FX yet. However, it is in conversations with carriers and handset makers now and hopes to see cellphones using the software ship in early 2008. "
more than a replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe people should just wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe everyone should just hold there horses and see what Apple actually comes out with. I know one thing, this product is hyped beyond belief and Apple didn't have to pay a red cent for that advertising (have you ever heard of a Zune killer before or after that thing came out?)
I see... (Score:4, Insightful)
Evidently, the new Sun is like the old Microsoft.
Re:Maybe people should just wait (Score:2, Insightful)
Really, what's to kill?
It's gotten lukewarm treatment in the press. It's hardly touted as the must-have-thing or anything like that.
It's kind of like saying "We need to compete with broccoli for the hearts and minds of 5 year olds if we want our turnip/brussel sprouts hybrid to become popular".
I agree with you, I'll be curious to see what the phone actually offers. I know someone who spent around $500 for a Sony/Erickson phone because it had a whole raft of features. Apple might actually make some headway on this -- their track record for putting out products people actually like of late is not to be completely discounted. Not everyone is gonna want one, but I bet it's got more of a potential market than we might think.
Cheers
Re:Much like pornography... (Score:2, Insightful)
Behind the shininess and bouncy animation of the iPhone are, from the looks of it, some solid usability principles sorely lacking in the mobile device market today. If this new phone can get that right, it'll be a contender. If all it gets right are shininess and animation, it's dead already.
Re:more than a replacement (Score:3, Insightful)
How is jPhone like iPhone? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA says Sun has "debuted software for a high-end cellphone that looked very similar to the Apple iPhone" but there are no pictures. In fact, I combed the web for more stories about this and none seem to have any pictures.
Does it have a touchscreen or not? What kind of media playback? Visual voicemail? This story [builderau.com.au] says they want to produce phones that can be sold for $30-$50, which pretty much means they'd be unlike the iPhone at all.
I guess what we have here is an iPhone name-drop with no meat to it. Which just adds to the iPhone buzz, really. Meanwhile, Sun's product (whether it's software or a specific phone) grabs a little attention, but goes back to being boring as soon as you're finished reading the article.
I love this... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the same kind of hype that surrounded Java itself at its inception. We were all going to have Java Thin Clients, and Java programming would be so universal and so compatible, that it wouldn't matter what kind of computer you chose to run -- the free OS could run Java, too, so there would never be a need to pay for Windows just so you could run the same amazing Java Apps! Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison were each talking about how Java would change the distribution model of software, so that you never "installed" software again, you just had client libraries that were synced into a cache on disk when you first used a particular feature in some software you obtained, and as necessary thereafter.
Java is slow. Java has had over 10 years to become what it claimed to be. Unless this phone is running compiled Java, either performance or battery life are going to suffer. And if it *is* running on compiled Java, then I just have to ask how that's any better than the iPhone's objective-C, no matter how optimal Sun's compiler settings are?
I love how everything is an 'iPhone killer', too. As if Apple doesn't have skilled engineers and designers, the pundits think that every new product announced to compete with it is already better, while Apple (who have been working on the thing for 2 1/2 years!) aren't yet satisfied with the phone's quality. Everybody remember "The Mythical Man-Month"? Just because Sun, or Oracle, or Microsoft, or any company has 12,000% more developers than the competition, doesn't necessarily mean they can produce a better product. Actually, it's almost invariably the opposite. So calm down. The absolute first moment when there can be an 'iPhone killer' is when there is an iPhone in consumers' hands to be killed. Until then, it's only a battle of proposed specifications.
Re:Reality distortion field (Score:2, Insightful)
Killer app (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want a phone.
I just want to make/take calls.
Get the little things right.
Make it trivial - I mean easy like breathing - to place a call by numbers, voice, contact list, repeat/callback, etc., all mode-less.
Incoming calls should just happen. Dorking around with finding the phone and/or earpiece and determining which one is activated
Get the order of things right. Don't show me "do you want to access voicemail?" before "these people called" - I don't want to waste time dorking around with voicemail when it could have showed me that the calls I missed are ones I don't want to deal with now. Don't display "you missed one call", show me who called.
Memory is cheap. There's no reason for the call history list to end, much less end at just 25 calls. Put that info to work - data-mine it! When scrolling thru contacts, show me the most common contacts first; alphabetical order means I see that entry every time even though I haven't called that number in two years. Help me get to the numbers I want; there's enough processing power, use it smartly. Keep every number incoming and outgoing, and go fetch related data ASAP to tell me more.
Stop teasing me with demo functions. I bought an appliance; don't treat it like the fourth toaster slot only works for 30 days, then I have to pay extra monthly for it.
Stretch that battery life. Cut the cuteness; give me something that works for a long time between charges.
It's not a TV, GPS, IM, etc. - just give me totally smooth PHONE functionality.
And for Pete's sake: show the current time while I'm talking! Why do phones suddenly lose the pocketwatch function right when I'm most likely to need it to make arrangements with someone? I finally had to go back to wearing a watch precisely because the phone wouldn't show the time when most needed, even though it shows time 99.99% of the time?
Re:j-phone, for Java, not i-Phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhere along the way, the concept got derailed. Sun must have seen the iPhone and started worrying about what would happen to J2ME should it take off. So they yanked F3 off the shelf to show how similarly impressive GUIs could be created for cell phones. But before they could announce it, Microsoft jumped in the fray with their Silverlight announcement. (Silverlight being a powerful multimedia technology solution in search of a problem.) Not to be outdone, Sun somehow managed to convince the press that if you throw F3 (nay, JavaFX!) scripts into an Applet, you have a strong competitor to Silverlight. A rather incredible claim, IMHO, as JavaFX is lacking in the streaming video department. Even more telling is the fact that none of the JavaFX examples [java.net] are actually applets!
Thankfully, Sun seems to be hedging their bets. None of the pages on the JavaFX site even mention Silverlight, almost making it look like the entire idea was a press invention. Sun's pages make a few passing references about running the technology in an Applet, but nothing firm.
My verdict? I think that F3/JavaFX is the GUI layout technology that Swing developers have been waiting for. With any luck, the technology will create a new market for Java Desktop Applications. The rest of Sun's claims can be safely ignored.
Re:more than a replacement (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh for God sake, we did live ok without bloody mobiles you know.
Re:Killer app (Score:1, Insightful)
This was the most important point in Jobs' Macworld premiere of the iPhone - he said that the killer app for this was the ability to make phone calls.
Re:more than a replacement (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything serious requires Firefox or Camino. Just go to Google Docs for example. There is Thinkfree.com which allows Safari thanks to Java/Ajax mixed nature of it. Java won't be included in iPhone because it will cause argameddon (!).
A fully functional mobile browser which people even pay for it is: Opera. Heard anything about iPhone from them recently? If they dare to speak about possibility of porting Opera to iPhone Steve Jobs will claim that poor thing can bring down entire west coast because of 404 error.
Keep talking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep talking... The road to consumer envy is paved with geeks like you who think Apple's latest idea (whatever it may be) is "lame." Let's come back to this thread in one year and see how you fare. The product isn't even to market yet, and in your eyes it's already a failure.
You're shorting the stock right? I'm long. Let's see how we do in a year. (I'm up 16% since April 20, btw.)
I find it interesting that it's features are "useless." Really? Then why are people fawning after these features? They've seen what it can do, it's not like it's a mystery. Look if a product is hyped and all you've got is whitepapers and rumors, then yeah that's bullshit. But this product has been seen, reviewed hands-on by some journalists even, and a lengthy demo given.
And don't get me wrong -- I have no plans to buy an iPhone, I like the BlackBerry for now. But I can also see why people are excited about the iPhone. They love iPods. They love phones. They love Apple's designs and user interfaces. Combine those together and you've got a potential consumer juggernaut.
Do you really think this phone will be $500/$600 in a year's time? Hell, I doubt it will cost anyone that much in June.
I know people will buy these devices but not nearly enough to make the market profitable.
Well since Apple makes a profit on every device, I think you are probably WRONG.
Maybe it's just me. I personally hate cell phones and use mine only to talk to my girlfriend and parents or for roadside emergencies. Everyone else can wait till I get home. My 10 years of being on-call in the IT business probably biased me also. Regardless, I don't see the point to these devices.
OK, I get it now