Corporate OEM designs

edwaleni

The most opportunities I can see for UBports is custom OEM buildouts for large corporate.

For example, food retailer Chik-Fil-A goes through hundreds of IPads a year. (overheating)

Panera kiosks are all iPad based.

So look for large markets where a corporate may want a custom label (and secure) tablet front end for order or retail.
Provide the hooks for ecosystem integration (like VMWare AirWatch) would be a great start.

Manchee1017

Unfortunately, this idea is simply not feasible.

First off, UBports is a small, community driven project. There are just not enough resources, developers or time, to devote to custom, potentially one-off, OS builds.

Never in a million years would companies be interested in anything like this. For a company like Chik Fil A or Panera, their utmost priority is functionality. They need a solution that just works, and they will pay vast amounts for the simplicity of it. No corporation wants to put their large budget towards tablets running an admittedly niche OS that is not immediately and intuitively easy for their [very casual tech user] employees to use, not to mention the lack of immediate software support.

Your post overestimates just what corporations actually need. They're not all using iPads because it's one of the very few tablets on the market, it's because an iPad is a perfect choice for their needs. Quite honestly, anything with Ubuntu Touch would not be presentable as a better alternative.

mateo_salta

@edwaleni it would probably be a better fit for snaps on ubuntu core.

Currently we have no "demo" or kiosk mode on ubuntu touch
we have no automatic updates
no app automatic updates, or push to device type of capability

This is one of the main reasons I think canonical is still developing mir however

Moem

@edwaleni Do you feel that the UT interface is intuitive enough for people to be able to use it instantly, if they are handed an iPad that runs UT?
Honestly speaking: I have my doubts. Most of us, when they switched from a different OS, needed a little time to find our feet.

RobTheBold

@moem When I first installed UT, it took me a while to figure out how to answer a call (pull the little button on top of "answer" or "reject"). I just clicked the crap out of the "answer" button. Same with the unlock screen. (If you touch the lock screen, a little "< unlock >" appears at the bottom as a hint, but I didn't initially take the hint.)

And while not a critical feature, it was months before I figured out the significance of the lock screen sunburst pattern w.r.t. the statistic in the middle.

dobey

@mateo_salta said in Corporate OEM designs:

we have no automatic updates

We do actually have automatic download of system update, which really should not be installed automatically (you don't want a kiosk to reboot while in the middle of a transaction for example). However, enabling automatic reboot/install of said updates would also be very easy to add.

no app automatic updates, or push to device type of capability

To clarify, we do have push notifications, but the OpenStore app does not use them, and there is no tracking on the server of which device has which apps installed. However, again, this is pretty straightforward to add.

Rather, one glaring and large definite no for this type of usage regarding UT, is that we do not have any remote administration, lockdown, disk encryption, etc… support. These are much more difficult to implement, and very important for such devices.

And lastly, Square and other such point of sale services, do not provide their apps for UT, and probably can't right now even if they had customers wanting them to, due to our confinement system and lack of extensibility in the system.

dobey

@moem said in Corporate OEM designs:

Do you feel that the UT interface is intuitive enough for people to be able to use it instantly, if they are handed an iPad that runs UT?

Honestly, for the point of sale use case mentioned, this is largely irrelevant. These iPads are used in a locked down configuration where a single app is all that can be used. The same app would be just as intuitive if it were on any device.

RobTheBold

@dobey That's a good point for devices where the native UI should be hidden at (almost) all times from the user and only the POS (or whatever) app should appear in normal use.

edwaleni

@manchee1017

I have been intimately involved in a corporate tablet specification, bake off and decision process, so I am not blind to anything that is required to use tablets in a corporate space.

In the bake off it really came down to the ecosystem surrounding the product. Not the apps running themselves. The apps were developed in house or used off the shelf commercial apps modified for their internal purposes.

I personally pitched an OEM Linux based tablet approach based on the fact that the use of Linux was already universal within the company.

No one would say (and I repeat, no one) would say running RHEL in a datacenter cloud is the same as running tablets in the field, but many of the required knowledge and tools sets are similar. The synergy and interest in career portability was very, very high.

I am not at liberty to share all the details of the decision process, nor can I share who won the bake off, all I can say is that all the low level technical requirements were easily met with a Linux based tab. Many of them were very, very specific that the competitors had to jump through hoops to support.

Everyone has to meet their needs in their own ways, I am only throwing out what examples exist. I am sorry that my 5 sentence post over estimates their needs in your mind, as I didn't expect to write a large justification of it, merely make a thought provoking suggestion.

edwaleni

@mateo_salta

Currently we have no "demo" or kiosk mode on ubuntu touch
we have no automatic updates
no app automatic updates, or push to device type of capability
This is one of the main reasons I think canonical is still developing mir however

That is an interesting suggestion. (Core and snaps).

I will look at that a little closer.

edwaleni

@moem said in Corporate OEM designs:

@edwaleni Do you feel that the UT interface is intuitive enough for people to be able to use it instantly, if they are handed an iPad that runs UT?
Honestly speaking: I have my doubts. Most of us, when they switched from a different OS, needed a little time to find our feet.

I provided a full demo of the original Ubuntu Touch to a group who were tablet gurus in all the others (Android, Windows, IoS) and while they found some parts clunky, they liked the scopes concept and the ability to control the focus with a swipe, but some of these features have caught up in the other products now.

The biggest "clunky" issue they ran into was, Android and IoS goes all out to keep the users away from the things underneath.

Where UT seems to struggle is to know where to find the balance between what is simple Android touch and go VS. providing access to terminal/CLI low level functions. I broke my BQ Ubuntu Edition several times because I accessed areas I was apparently not supposed to go.

My peers seemed to feel the same way on that "touch simple" or "access all" metaphor.