maemo.org - Talk - Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

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Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by alcalde (Post 945512)

It's IBM + MS all over again. I don't see how this can be a bad thing in the end.

Ask IBM how that ended up for them.

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rugoz (Post 945469)

Meego was an option. We've seen android, WebOS, QNX from RIM. Do you think Nokia is too stupid to put together a decent OS?

And Apple did not resurge by entering new markets, they just made more desirable products. The iPhone came in 2007, before that Apple was already going strong again.

1. Where's MeeGo, Rugoz? Oh that's right - it doesn't exist in a saleable form. The CEO of Nokia says MeeGo isn't ready and you're simply going to claim it is?

2. Sherlock Holmes said "When all else has been eliminated, whatever else remains, however improbable, must be the answer." If Nokia couldn't whip Maemo/MeeGo/whatever into shape in several years then YES I believe they've lost the ability to put together a decent OS. And YES, Google, Palm and RIM are currently superior to Nokia in software development. And Apple and Microsoft go without saying. They've all delivered new OSes in less time while spending far less. Facts. Don't give me righteous indignation - show me MeeGo. Or even a version of Maemo that could go toe-to-toe with iOs and Android, because the one that was on the N900 didn't succeed at that.

I have facts to back up my assertion that Nokia can't produce a decent OS anymore. Where's the proof that Elop, the board, and the shareholders who elected them are so stupid as to have this wonderful, polished, sexy, non-geeky, intuitive, buzz-worthy, bug-free OS 99.9% ready and they traded it for WP7 instead for no reason or vast conspiratorial ones? Unless you produce proof this OS exists, you can't prove that hypothesis or disprove mine.

3. The iPod (which came in 2001), iPhone, iTunes and iPad did not exist before Jobs returned to Apple. They were NEW MARKETS. Apple did not have music players before the iPod, phones before the iPhone, music sales before iTunes, or tablets before iPad. Do you think the vast majority of Apple's profits today are generated by those or by Mac sales? Steve Jobs led the company from being a personal computer company to a consumer product/entertainment company. He did not come back and take the home computer market from PCs/Windows. (He did introduce the iMac though) Elop is being charged with recapturing the lead in an existing market.

From Wikipedia:
. I

Quote:

n March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs immediately terminated a number of projects such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs' summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company."[52] Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X.

So let's see... Jobs killed several products including the Newton that has a lot in common with MeeGo.

Quote:

The project missed its original goals to reinvent personal computing, and then to rewrite contemporary application programming. The Newton project fell victim to project slippage, scope creep...

I'm sure some Apple fans were crying that it was almost ready to take over the world but the evil sleeper agent of NeXT was planted in Apple to destroy it. In fact, I know it's so, because the article on Newton describes how some fans were always seeing signs that it was going to be revived, produced Newton emulators, and software such as eReaders have been produced for Newton today by diehard afficionados. Some probably still refuse to buy an Apple product.

Steve also terrorized employees with fear of firing in the elevator(Elop could only top this by throwing employees down elevator shafts). He also brought technology with him from the previous company he was a part of and incorporated it into existing products, displacing the existing operating system in the process.

Sounds to me like Jobs shook things up like Elop's doing and neither are afraid to cut anything or anyone that hasn't lived up to expectations. They're also not afraid to use their previous contacts to bolster their company's products. I don't see why Mr. Elop is considered the opposite of Mr. Jobs.

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rugoz (Post 945476)

Zune? lol, even ovi music reaches more people than zune, its likely nokia is gonna provide the music stuff for wp7. XBox live? Nice, does Apple need it for lots of quality games? Nope.

Ngage Arena beats the **** out of Xbox Live.

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texrat (Post 945554)

Ask IBM how that ended up for them.

Rather well, actually, all told. It was the reverse engineering and other loss of control that allowed other manufacturers to make PC clones and undercut IBM. OS/2's another story, but that's not what caused IBM to exit the market. IBM PC-compatible computers running a Microsoft operating system still rule the business and home computer markets. Lenovo bought IBM's laptop computer business and it's still a respected business laptop brand.

I wish the startup I owned 10% of ended up like IBM. 10% of nothing = nothing. :(

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by alcalde (Post 945512)

It's IBM + MS all over again. I don't see how this can be a bad thing in the end.

I think this would be a good sig for you.

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by alcalde (Post 945555)

I don't see why Mr. Elop is considered the opposite of Mr. Jobs.

Did you see Jobs announcing the iPad? Awesome, magic!
Compare that to Elop announcing the new strategy. Awesome, magic?

Hint: Nokia's shares tanked 15% after Elop announced the new strategy.

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Oh guys cmon , Nokia can innovate but they were never good at software . From what I recall their software projects always were failures. Elop did what he had to do, get support from software makers aka Microsoft. Regardless how awesome MeeGo was/is remember that handset UI was primary in Nokia's hands hence FAIL

Lets go back

Download! = first app store = FAIL

N-gage devices = first gaming platform FAIL

Mosh = second app store FAIL

N-gage software = gaming platform for all N- series = FAIL

Ovi services = FAIL

As N8 ad said its not the technology its what you do with it :D

In this case its not the innovation its what you do with it ;) hence iPhone and Android

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Who said Win7 is a smartphone OS?
I'd you're an idiot if you think so.

Define smartphone OS if you can.
These are the list of what Win7 Phone OS doesn't have. Which a must for a smartphone OS, without it then it is not so smart afterall.

* No cut, copy, and paste,
* No full multitasking for 3rd party apps,
* No Adobe Flash.
* Windows Phone 7 supports upgradable storage via an SD Card; however SD card memory is merged with the phone's internal storage, and changing the SD card causes the phone to reset to factory settings.
* Windows Phone 7 does not support connecting to Wi-Fi (wireless) access points which are hidden or have a static IP address, tethering to a computer
* No videocalling,
* No VoIP calling,
* Doesn't support USB mass-storage,
* No universal email inbox,
* No universal search,
* Doesn't have a system-wide file manager,
* Doesn't support Bluetooth file transfers,
* Doesn't support USSD messages,
* Doesn't support custom ringtones.
* only support syncing with Exchange ActiveSync over the network. There is no support for syncing with Exchange ActiveSync using a cable or cradle.

* does not support Office documents with security permissions
* Doesn't support IPsec security,
* No on-device encryption,
* Doesn't support strong passwords,
* No internet sockets.
* No list of past phone calls is now a single list, and cannot be separated into inbound, outbound or missed calls.
* No USB OTG (Host)

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texrat (Post 945553)

Right-- as in, pick MeeGo, run with it.

MeeGo has desktop software to compliment the OS on their phones? A music store, a video store and that all works right now?

Quote:

Elop deserves blame.

As does the board of directors that invited him.

Quote:

If he had wanted, he could have scrambled Nokia into making MeeGo Priority 1, and we WOULD have a device right now. But I'm now convinced he was set against MeeGo from the start, and sabotaged its chances.

Sounds to me that the board of directors yet again don't know what they have in MeeGo, just like Maemo.

Re: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sopwith (Post 945534)

Thank you for this question, patlak, for it catalyzed (or joined ;) an epiphany regarding the situation in my (aching, thick) head.

There are indeed two points of view here -- that of the end consumers, and that of the developers and people professionally involved with Nokia (not discussing the shareholder's position, which is represented by a less vocal group). Your question is from the point of view of the end consumer -- what will the change to WP7 bring to the market, and are we going to want to buy it. The answer is, for most people here, likely NO, we will not want any of it. WP7's philosophy is polarly opposite to that of Maemo/Meego, and if we liked this philosophy we'd be happy with iOS gadgets and not spend time on TMO. So no wonder why many people here are turning to Android (the lesser evil). But we have always been a very small group that barely affects the market.

The other point of view is that of Nokia and those working for / with it. Shrinking market share in the much larger Symbian segment had to be addressed somehow. Qt was a feasible solution, but apparently it wasn't working for Symbian as expected. So the board decided to replace Symbian with WP7, a decision about which I couldn't care less because I have never been interested in Symbian devices anyway.

Now, the conflict arises from the fact that Qt and Meego are incompatible and compete directly with WP7, so when Symbian goes they are canned as well. From the point of view of Nokia this is really unimportant, Meego being just an experimental platform with zero market share. From the point of view of most end users on TMO it is the world.

In the end of the day, for Nokia, it was never about Meego being ready or not. They will get it ready in some form, but they cannot keep it as more than an experiment since it will contradict the move to WP7 in the lower segment. It is simpler to have both lower and higher end phones running on WP7.

I guess I can now leave the conspiracy theories alone, suck it up and move on. Let's hope we get a decent successor to the N900 -- the first and last Meego phone from Nokia, but c'est la vie. If it has a screen larger than 3.5'', I'll buy it.

Thanks for the thorough response to my 2 word question :). I appreciate it.
Your two point of views are correct and I agree.
My question is certainly from the consumer side and isn't that what Nokia is more interested in now? They want to grab the attention of the consumer and channel his view to their future strategy which will be long overdue and something that is currently on offer in the market. Nokia had only simple things to do to increase their presence in North America, and in order to achieve that, they should just have listened to American media. Get past the "Symbian is outdated" attacks and absorb the negative attitude towards the browser and social network integration. Browser is easy to do, they could have just ported MicroB which was praised by many. Is it so hard to include a nicely developed youtube, facebook and twitter client? There are already perfect clients available for Twitter (TwimGo) and youtube (CuteTube), only facebook needed. Nothing similar can be developed from Nokia? If they did that and advertised it, phones would sell. UI has familiarity going for it and is quite improved with S^3, attacks are only the remaining ones from the N97 catastrophe.

Only small things were requested from Nokia and they couldn't deliver. Now they have to face the new strategy by adopting an out of house OS with much less features, drop current in house OS projects that are still potentially capable of bringing back Nokia to the top and try to win over consumers yet again, just like they had to 10 years ago.