What did you expect? They came from Nokia, at least for the most part. That is where they learned how to do things.

You said it, bro

A fellow TMO member once asked me about my Jolla experience to help him decide whether to buy one. Like me, he had an N900 and an N9 before. I just looked up my response, it was sent on 2014-12-17. It is quite long and I am not going to copy it here but I have to say, having re-read it again, it saddens me to see that none of the points I mentioned there have been addressed. For example, the lack of a global copy and paste.

Nevertheless, the gist of that write-up was, "it has some potential but it is not quite there yet", with an implied belief that it would get there eventually. Now, nearly a year on, I would have written a different summary: "The potential was there but has been completely wasted."

Yet I think there is still a chance. But that would require a complete U-turn on Jolla's side. Stop fidgeting with the UI. It is not perfect but it will do as it is. Focus on things people are actually asking for. Fix or implement basic functionality. Fix the truly terrible memory consumption and management. A bare OS, with no Android installed and no apps running, using 69% of the available RAM (gone up to 83% in 1.1.9) is a scandal. Fixing it may take a few months if you put your mind to it but it would be time well spent. That is exactly what Apple (Leopard->Snow Leopard) and Microsoft (Vista->7) did and it worked for them.

Otherwise the future is bleak. More and more peole will move on, leaving behind only those still refusing to accept the reality. As their concentration increases, so will their cognitive dissonance which they will vent by an increasing aggresivity towards the few remaining people with some common sense. Eventually, the only Jolla's users left would be the 1000 or so die-hard yes-men, Jolla will stop receiving any useful feedabck and the system will collapse. A business cannot exist with such a small user base for very long.