Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

Untrue. Many of the various Linux distributions could be considered bloatware, but the Linux kernel itself is remarkably trim, even comparing against many of the microkernel competitors that have come up against it over the years. For the variety of services it provides, Linux has held up quite well over the years, and if you want to make a really thin distribution, it is easy to do so...

The real problem, of course, is that companies don't want to distribute devices (like cellphones) with minimal, efficient operating systems; they want to deliver products jam-packed with eye candy and whizz-bang apps. There's a reason why iOS and WP7 have been avoiding multitasking; they've crammed so much unnecessary appware into their OSs, you can't really allow two processes to run without saturating the CPU. :P

:) :) Here's another take: Android is for Apple haters who secretly crave the iPhone, iOS is a toy for people with way way too much money to spend, RIM is an ancient forgotten technology being rediscovered by adolescents who like to text too much (just heard a report on this on the BBC!), WP is the latest failure by an operating systems company suffering under the mistaken belief that it knows how to innovate, Symbian is probably the last holdout from the time when the primary purpose of a cell phone operating system was actually to place phone calls, not run apps, and MeeGo -- well, in my opinion, MeeGo is actually an idea some years ahead of its time. Unix (in a variety of flavors) today dominates the workstation and embedded markets, and is making serious inroads into the supercomputer world. With Linux and OS X, it is beginning to make serious inroads into the personal computer market as well. And, of course, under Android, it is (in a crippled form) working its way swiftly into the cell phone market. The cellular world may still shy away from the full and open version of Unix today, but I think it only makes sense that something like MeeGo will eventually take root here as well.

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

I agree with most of the other stuff you've said, and I think I like you as a person. That said, I have to tell you that the above statement makes me think your head has been in the linux kernel code too long and hasn't been looking at what Microsoft has been doing outside of Windows. Microsoft is surely not OUT-innovating very many companies, but they are most certainly out-executing a lot of their competitors in a lot (not all) of fronts and are at least keeping pace in innovation with all their competitors.

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

Elop ACTUALLY said no such thing. Facts.

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

I love your tin hat, man!
Does it come with a matching metallic parasol??

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

Microsoft sure knew how to out-execute the hell out of their competitiors. Well.. except on PDA's (vs Handspring and Palm in the days of PDA's).. but you can't win 'em all.

...well, yeah okay, they also couldn't out-execute anybody on portable music devices like the iPod and Sansa players and stuff.. okay, TWO.

...okay cellphones. They clearly have and are still failing miserably at competing on cellphones. Fine fine.. they out-execute the hell out of their competition except on those three things.

...and tablets. Those FOUR things. Let's not forget how long they've been touting a Windows tablet.

GODDAMIT!...and servers--Microsoft still seems to be in the small minority in server rooms despite the hard pushes against Sun and Linux.

Alright, let's just get to the point--they can out-execute the hell out of their competition on the gaming and desktop OS market. Two out of... whatever is a LOT of fronts, right? Props to Microsoft! :)

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

Oh, sure, I absolutely agree that Microsoft is out-executing their competitors; there's a reason why the company has been so successful for so long! But, in my opinion, Microsoft has always been at its best when it acquires a system from outside the company and adds that magic "Microsoft touch" to marketing it. From the very beginning, when Gates first purchased that CP/M clone and rebranded it "MS-DOS", to succeeding major products like Powerpoint, Visio, SQL Server, and Internet Explorer, a huge number of Microsoft's best products have been acquired from outside the company.

Microsoft also knows how to successfully poach talent: they managed to nab an entire team of VMS developers away from Digital Equipment Corporation to create Windows NT, the operating system that eventually replaced the Windows 9X line and still forms the core of the Windows personal computer OS today. (I seriously doubt that DEC could have ever successfully penetrated the personal computer market in anything like the way Microsoft did, even if they had been given the exact same product from those developers...)

Honestly, Microsoft has been at its most spectacular when applying its marketing know-how to creative products acquired externally, and suffered its worst defeats when attempting to build products entirely in-house. So yeah, I do believe that Microsoft has some sort of a problem with technological innovation; at the very least, the true talent in the company lies elsewhere.

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

You seem quite sure that they didn't acquire their market dominance through NDA's, threats of pulling stock from shelves, strangling contracts and inventing clever legal maneuvers and loopholes to exploit over the years--which, ironically, seem to me to be backfiring lately? Weren't they kind of famous for that through most of the 80's and 90's?

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

Microsoft lol soo you think they just spoiled the plans about cloudcomputing ;)

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

Wow, you just named Internet Explorer as one of Microsoft's best products....

While you are correct in saying that their best products were acquired from someone else, I'd have to say the product was most likely better before MS got a hold of them. I know IE was.

More on topic...

I honestly don't know why they'd choose either. Elop is an idiot. There really are only two explanations for this 'deal'. Elop is a mole, like a lot of people say. win32.elop.trojan as a rather witty person said.

Or this is simply a panic move. MeeGo wasn't going as fast as they wanted it to, they had already decided that Maemo wasn't good enough, and that Symbian (even with Qt) is just too old. That's all bull crap. Seriously, if he had half a brain he would have just had Nokia create a N9 with Maemo, supported it for another year while MeeGo became 100% ready to unleash upon the world.

Personally, I think he lost a poker game to Ballmer.

slaapliedje

Re: NOKIA Rejected Android in Favor of M$ - Eric Schmidt
 

Hmmm. Interesting take. This is why I have, for years, been able to take a machine that no longer had the specs for the current incarnation of Windows, throw a modern Linux on it and get years more useful service out of it. Like the PII/233 with a 5GB hard drive and 192MB of RAM that I ran until mid-2008...

If Symbian were to be modernized, and efficient, it would wind up looking a lot like Maemo. MS has never been the hallmark for efficient software. Windows mobile 5 and 6 were failures for a reason. I didn't have one, but I knew enough people who loathed them (including the MS faithful) because they were always crashy and unstable.

--vr