Well, considering that the same chipset (APQ8060) was also used in some variants of Galaxy S II, I really don't think so that Touchpad hardware was that bad.

And the fact that after installing Android 4.0.4 on it, it feels like whole new machine (speed-wise) - I really blame webOS here.

Fx OS on the SGS2 runs BLAZING fast compared to the device in the video. The reason why we don't shout about that? Because we're not launching with that device and it's not right to raise expectations in that way.

FWIW, I agree with masklinn that it's a little weird not to mention WebOS in the article. In particular when you wrote "In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!" I let that sink in back in 2009 when they announced WebOS. I was pretty excited about it. The way it crashed and burned from internal wrangling, delays, buggy releases and odd marketing was really sad. This is like you're showing up a year after the Hindenburg crashed and saying "Just let this sink in -- we've invented a rigid lighter-than-air flying machine!" That's not where we are in the conversation.

The rest of the article is really exciting, and I really hope you can launch and get some traction. I agree that Mozilla is important in this space for exactly the same reasons Firefox was important when it launched. I just think it would be kind to tip your hat to WebOS along the way.

WebOS was targeted as an Android/iOS alternative on higher-end devices using proprietary APIs. It was also being developed by a company with shareholders who were purely focused on the bottom line.

I am not trying to criticize them but there are inherit differences between the two projects. I am thinking Mozilla is also partly betting its reputation of protecting user information while being developer friendly.

The free market will decide of course but at least initially that free market won't be North America.

Are we going to be able to load Fx OS onto our own SGS2s when it's released?

AFAIK you can do it right this minute, if you'd like. Here's a guide for dual-booting B2G and Android on SGS2 (though I have no idea how up-to-date it is):

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gec...

Wow, thanks. I might give this a go.

Be warned that it doesn't work on all GS2 devices though.

Do you know if it works on an original Desire?

No idea. If the Desire is a SGS2 device then it probably works. Actually, best way to find out is to see if Cyanogen supports the phone because B2G uses the Cyanogen code to pull drivers. Last time I tried (April), the T-Mobile SGS2 wasn't supported by Cyanogen (or B2G) because it significantly different internals.

I have a Touchpad that dual-boots into WebOS or Android ICS. I love WebOS but I find Android to be much smoother and snappier. The memory management of Android is also much better.

Off Topic

@gcb.

Just curious gcb, you know you are hell banned but keep on posting - why is that? Have you tried appealing?

Of course I can only see you because I keep "show dead" on.

Seems like he was hell-banned for this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253243

WebOS was written in C++, eventually with a lot of Qt (the window manager, the dock, system dialogs, etc). The apps were written as web pages, though.

FxOS is all web pages (even the IME!) though currently has the same basic PalmOS launcher model that iOS and Android have; no multitasking window manager.

A core set of the apps were written in HTML+JS using the Enyo framework, but apps can also be written quite easily in C++, too.

Enyo2 was released recently and is being incorporated into Open WebOS: http://enyojs.com/

How anyone can stand to use javascript for anything significant is beyond me, but Enyo, and hopefully whatever FxOS uses, can have substantial parts of an app's logic written in something like Coffeescript or Clojurescript.