My biggest question for Mark would be if he regrets not going his own way earlier. IMO, Ubuntu stuck with some dead-end upstream projects for far too long. Ubuntu should have gone the mobile/phone/tablet much sooner. Ubuntu SHOULD have been what Android is now.
1. Lots of it is ugly. I don't mean the core OS, but lots of the apps don't fit the main theme.
2. It runs on diverse hardware so performance varies.
3. OS version segmentation. This is made worse by manufactures putting their own lipstick on the vanilla OS.
4. It's not proper FOSS. Yes, you can read the source at some point later, but chances of someone that's not Google, Motorola, Samsung, or HTC having their commit actually show up in the upstream are slim to none.
5. Phones and tablets are of varying quality and come with various levels of support. The manufacturer may back it, or they may drop support as soon as they can. Flagship phones become crap phones all the time.
Ubuntu may play their cards right and provide an integrated platform a la Apple's iOS devices, where software and hardware play nicely together. If they then insist on high quality apps, they may be able to get a foothold in the market. The question is, how long can the "crowd" support the right way of doing things before some exec somewhere says "We need it to have our own distinct UI"?
Points 1-3: If you have an proper, FOSS system, you can't keep people from doing all those things, which they will do if it gets get any kind of meaningful traction.
Point 5: You can't force manufacturers to provide support at a certain level. You can probably avoid "TIVO-ization" with licensing, but as soon as you're venturing out of "supported" territory, there's only so much you can do for regular users.
Allowing core application code to be written in the languages we would chose to use for desktop applications (rarely java) would be a major advantage itself.
The second sentence doesn't support the first. FOSS isn't about whether you can get your commit accepted, its about your freedom to modify the source and use and share your modifications.
FOSS and cathedral/bazaar development models are nearly orthogonal (they are logically orthogonal, though non-OSS bazaar is pretty rare and has some pragmatic difficulties.) Cathedral-style development model isn't "improper" FOSS.
If I were him, I would regret that Ubuntu is still slow to get a real, permanent toehold in the PC/laptop/tablet market - where vendors consistently and regularly include an option to have Ubuntu installed instead of Windows. I would regret that there is no Ubuntu tablet out there at all. You can't really use Ubuntu on any of the new Windows tablets (I've tried installing it on several). I've been using Ubuntu as my primary OS for over 6 years now, and what I want is a hybrid/convertible tablet that runs Ubuntu, and isn't as slow or limited or buggy as it would be if I installed Ubuntu on an android tablet. I'm not blaming Ubuntu for these problems - Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers chose to use Clovertrail and UEFI and all this other nonsense.
1) There's no way they could've turned Ubuntu into a phone OS that quickly back then. Google owned Android, a mobile OS that already existed, since 2005. They were already planning to launch it around the iPhone time, or a bit later after that. But then the iPhone appeared, and they only needed to add the more touch-friendly interface to it, and then launched it in 2008. But the OS was already mostly done.
2) Google has much bigger funds, and it was much easier to get partners. If it would've been this easy for Canonical to get partners for their OS, I think we would've seen it by now.
3) Google had a much bigger fan base - which translates into many people willing to buy phones with their OS.
That being said, I agree the 2014 is way too late than it should've been. Canonical should've started working on this since at least the time Android launched. Let's say 2009. And they might've been able to launch in 2011, or even 2012. But they basically started working on this last year.
I'm not saying it won't succeed, because I hope it will, mainly because I want Ubuntu as a serious mainstream alternative to Windows, but they could've tried this a lot earlier.
Android 4.0+ is pretty good. The holo theme is nice and you can see where they can go with it, but it took Android years to get here. Ubuntu is starting out in a much better place with much higher quality design and a much more sophisticated look and interactions. If people lived with Android for the first 3-4 years and could put up with it, I firmly believe people would LOVE Ubuntu.
I do have to wonder if people will give Ubuntu the slack they gave Android, though. I doubt it. I think Ubuntu, in 2014 will be held to a higher standard. A standard, judging by the very much beta versions, I think Ubuntu will hit.
Ubuntu Edge or not, at the end we will have a free open source solution for mobiles running Linux or any other operating system.
I am not "blaming" Ubuntu/Mark for the late start, I am blaming GNU for not pushing hard enough. While they were discussing and criticizing Microsoft's push of a newer boot system the main vendors in the mobile space were closing our freedom to install what we like in our devices. For example, with the slow update cycles of Android on fully capable mobile devices I would rather prefer to install a good Linux distribution there.