Thread: Maybe the unpleasant truth is that MeeGo really was too late and/or not good enough?
View Single Post
trbs is offline trbs
2011-02-14 , 00:29
Posts: 25 | Thanked: 27 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Amsterdam
#49
Originally Posted by pxa270 View Post
I know it's popular at the moment to lay all the blame at Elop or at Nokia management (current or past). But maybe the truth is really that MeeGo was just to late and not good enough?

The impression that I get from various threads here and elsewhere is that at the moment MeeGo is still nowhere near ready, and an end-user ready release is at least another 6 months away. Now in the alternative world were Nokia did decide to ride it out with MeeGo, by the time it's finally market ready (autumn? winter?), was it actually going to be better for mass market end users than the iPhone 5 or the Samsung and HTC Android 3.x devices it would be competing against? Somehow I doubt it.

Of course, I don't believe that Nokia WP7 devices are anywhere near ready yet, and they may take even longer to get on the market. So it's not like I'm endorsing this move. All I'm saying is, maybe Nokia's fate was already sealed a long time ago. Maybe the only way they could have turned the tide was if they had reacted faster, developed faster, delivered faster than they could.
Yes I agree....

Meego will not produce a good phone before it dies.. there just not enough power/traction behind it... (aka there should have been one or two early adopters devices by now, to get close to competing in the market)

Even it they released the planned Meego phone Q4-2010 it would have still been a steep uphill battle.

Specially given how Nokia went with Maemo. I mean the N900 is a great great phone... and I'll probably use mine until it dies. Hopefully by that time some other free/oss phone is out there... otherwise I'll guess I'll have to sell my soul to HP/WebOS.

But Nokia never really worked with a good plan for Maemo as far as I could see.

Given that they let there base-os fall into the slums of decay, never rebased on current Debians and did not actively let the community contribute to the core os... (Felt more like a OpenSolaris type of development then PostGreSQL or Debian)

It would have taken a long time before there would have been consumer ready Maemo phones. But there could have been one by now!! with another one at Q2 or Q3 2011, really settling Maemo into the market..

No; there became Meego... basically throwing Maemo out of the window entirely... (sure sure it was a 'merger'... personally I have not seen much 'merging', I've seen a lot of Moblin turning into Meego)

There where hopes for Meego but to my eyes basically the same thing happened as with Maemo...

Somehow.. I have never felt much love for the platforms from Nokia after the N800....

Yes the N900 is great (and I'll say it a thousands times more) but even during the Nokia/Maemo/N900 Amsterdam event, I felt engaged... not empowered by Nokia..

Given the track record in the past the never gave me the feeling that they where actually committed... committed in more then just words and some money... With the N900 all previous devices again died in Nokia's eyes... Now I can understand this given the history... but it should not have to been that way... with proper setup of Maemo it should have been possible to keep the older devices up to date... let the community take over the roles of maintaining the devices... but i guess more coorperate issues like patents, copyrights, licenses and backroom deals where in the way of realizing that...

My hopes now are with the CSSU

I would really love to see US working together to rebase Maemo on Debian 6 (Squeeze) or 7 (Wheezy) trying to create a firmware that will completely blow away Maemo 5.

Maybe visually something like combining an updated userland with Canola like interface. (could be QT, could be something else)

And with development board like the Beagle and Panda board powering anything from our N900 to Tables to Cars and Home devices like thermostats, automation and whatever you can think of..

Well... guess this rambling just shows that I still love the potential of what was (is?) Maemo...

I just would have loved to see Nokia put there enormous knowledge from the like of Symbian into the Linux kernel and help create lightweight versions of some of the things bogging down Linux on small devices now...

Then we should not need to run Java (oeps I mean Dalvak) to get a Linux powered device to make phone calls with, listen to shoutcast and browse the web....

In some sense Apple already show us that this is possible right ? how much different in effect is an iPhone ? it's just a Unix kernel, with Mac userland, Obj-C and apples gui on top right ?.. sure lots of development and Q&A to make it all work nicely together, but isn't this just where Maemo and Meego failed ? Something more then a hand full of contracted developers to code up individual parts of the OS ?

But this is all so many years overdue now that I must agree with your sentiment that for a company like Nokia that needs to compete right now; it just isn't ready... and by the time it is, given the current conditions and management of it it will be many (3+) years to late.

They should have realized a year ago....