I therefore welcome the Motorola initiative to support GrapheneOS, but it would be even better if devices were sold with it, and even better if there were devices for multiple price points.
The first thing the majority of people care about is what the OS will look like on their phone if they install it. There's not a single image of what will appear on my phones screen once I'm running GrapheneOS - that's a huge turnoff for the vast majority of people.
Compare that to apple.com/os/ios where the first thing your eyes rest on is a picture of a phone showing you what the OS looks like. Same deal for the features tab on android.com - they're showing you the features, not just giving you technical documentation for them.
If they do actually want to grow the userbase, there is a lot that needs to change - more than just getting bespoke deals to be supported on $1500+ small marketshare phones.
Regardless, the developers are very experienced and smart, and know that screenshots are often used to advertise a product, so I guess it's a very conscious choice.
Separately, I don't really get why needing videos instead of screenshots changes anything - show the people what it is they might be downloading, especially when there's so much friction in the download/install. Screenshots, videos, whatever - videos are just many screenshots at 30fps.
I want a similar thing for GrapheneOS. I think the current project and website is not just fine, it's more than enough the way it is. Where it needs more energy is reaching users via b2b agreements - like having phone manufacturer support for GrapheneOS, and even better, Graphene preinstall offerings, preferably in a wide price level. Murena, for example, is one that's on the right track with their similar thing. I want this for GrapheneOS as well.
I guess the TL;DR is: they don't need to target the end user better, they need to find businesses as partners.
I would say it's still a bit more of a slower growth approach, but that can be fine. To be clear, I don't really have a dog in the fight, I was just questioning if faster growth is what Graphene wants versus an approach like you're describing. Both can be viable for growing, but even with your linux/Steam example, it's not like linux has taken the world by storm - it's still at ~4% "market share" (and that's even among Steam users). It's still very niche, really only used by gamers and coders.
But I think we're talking past each other, or at least with different assumed goals. My suggestion of showing features and having a more broadly appealing website assumes GrapheneOS wants to some day be on 30%+ of phones in the US (potentially supplanting Android). And I just don't see how you get there with the website as it currently is.
It's also wild, and worth revisiting, that you're OK with installing an OS being more involved than buying a new phone. I can see what an app looks like and install it on my phone all in about 30 seconds. Obviously an OS is different, but that's the download/install experience the average customer is used to, and it would benefit Graphene to get closer to that user experience if they want more users (which was what I was calling into question).
I'm really struggling to understand what your point is here (ironic considering you're saying my criticism is pointless). Are you suggesting that adding screenshots or videos to the website would somehow be a bad thing?
Because the way I see it there's two options here. Either adding more visuals to show off the software would:
1) help or be neutral, in which case my criticism is not pointless, or it would
2 somehow be a negative (I fail to see how) and that's why you're chirping back
Can you help me understand what your point is?
>more than just getting bespoke deals to be supported on $1500+ small marketshare phones.
Oh yeah. We need a wider scale of much cheaper phones as well, for starters. The fundamentals are down - GrapheneOS is SOLID. For the next level, it needs to be a product.
>The first thing the majority of people care about is what the OS will look like on their phone if they install it.
I think this misses the point, because the majority of the people DGAF what's on their phone, as long as it works seamlessly as a phone, by which I mean a tiny computer with fancy software. These are the people GrapheneOS needs to reach in order to stay alive on the longer term, and to not be shut out of the ecosystem over time. The people who are looking for a secure alternative Android are reached well enough.