There was a really good writeup about the decision process in the early iPhones where Steve Jobs ordered the UI in its own process so that the user gets instant feedback on interactions even if the feedback is a simple loading spinner. It gives the perception of speed even if a modern android phone is timed to load the same application faster. There are ways to try and achieve this in web apps but Apple's early decision to use that approach was certainly brilliant. If you call a bank and a human answers immediately...telling you to please hold...it would be a far better experience than the current press 1 for English.

> Considering that even my desktop computer with a quad-core processor and top of the line graphics card can't render common HTML5 web apps at a smooth 60 frames per second, how is a $25 smartphone going to be up to the task?

Of course you wont play crysis on these phones. these phones are not tailored for those triple-A games full of 3D stuff but they are pretty good for 2D casual gaming if the developer knows what it is doing.

HTML5 is not a magic bullet. It doesn't solve everything. Of course there are domains that are better suited for other languages. The fact is that HTML5 is the only toolkit that gets us from computers to mobile platforms, smarttvs, videogames, smartwatches and more. Basically its the most common runtime everywhere and its also the easiest. Don't think of Firefox OS as "just a mobile platform" like Android. Think of it as a champion or an extension of the world wide web ecosystem. Its picking what we like from the web and evolving it until it is great on mobile devices as well but without losing the objective of keeping it interoperable with other platforms just like you can open HN on Firefox on Mac OS X or on Midori on Debian/ARM, the interoperable part is key.

The phone with the weakest spec I have here is the Alcatel OT Fire. It has 256mb of RAM, 1x Core and yet I can play games at 60 frame a second in it. This, of course, just work if the developer knows how to code for a hardware with such constraints. If a developer code his app on his i7 with 32gb of RAM and dual graphic card without ever thinking of lower hardware then he or she will probably face difficulties when porting to entry level mobile phones.

HTML5 mobile gaming is still evolving a lot. Check out http://phaser.io for a powerful FOSS framework that is able to deliver great performance on entry level phones.

Achieving 60fps is not possible in all occasions but achieving interoperability is better. I'd rather have a poor person pick a smartphone for the first time, learn just enough HTML to build a little app that helps his community and start changing things then having the same person get into debt to buy the latest iOS thing and then be unable to deliver the app for his community because Apple didn't like it.

I am not talking about games at all. I am talking about simple things like scrolling list views. As touch interfaces are very imprecise by definition, a smooth framerate is absolutely necessary for a usable interface. It's very hard to click or even find the right item in a janky list. And that's what I'm getting at: my desktop computer can't seem to do it in HTML5 apps, so how can a 25$ phone?

It's nice to think about ideals like a common runtime, but this ideology starts to fall apart from multiple directions once you think about it. I already mentioned the performance issue, but what about things like app design?

Interoperability is a bad thing for user interfaces. Unless those mobile phones, smart TV's, video games and watches are all magically going to switch to a Firefox OS monopoly and its interface and guidelines, we're in for a future of switching between apps and finding ourselves having to relearn basic functionality in each one of them.

I don't know about you, but I already face this uncanny valley daily using different web apps in my browser. There's always an unsettling feeling since every app behaves slightly differently. If I right-click this or that, does it show the browser's own context menu or something from the app? If I do this or that, does it behave as I expect it to do?

Using a user interface (be it HTML5 in the browser or a GNOME app in my KDE desktop) that isn't designed for the HIG of the platform I'm using feels like walking through a minefield.

And frankly, normal people don't give a shit about interoperability, openness or any of that stuff we might consider important. They care about a device that is fast, simple to use and provides the apps they want. That's a reality that Firefox OS needs to face.