"Now that the dust has settled after Stephen Elop's big announcement on the 11th February 2011, many have come to realise that actually Nokia's move towards a a new Ecosystem is not as bad as what they thought. [...] But what does all this mean for the Nokia Developers? When the proposed partnership with Microsoft was announced, many felt betrayed and worried about their future, but after having heard and assisted a number of workshops at the Nokia Developer Day at this years Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, earlier this month, their outlook towards the new ecosystem has taken a 180 degree turn and are now looking at the proposed partnership with a lot more enthusiasm, recognising the potential it will bring them in the coming months."
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Member since:2005-11-29
Member since:2009-12-07
Elop made a decision in the best interest of Elop, not Nokia shareholders. There is little short-term or mid-term gain for Nokia's profitability. The complete incompetence shown by Elop and his team announcing this partnership ("all-in") has basically prematurely ended the revenue stream of existing Nokia devices on the market in exchange for creating 0/zero/none excitement about a non-existent future product. No one will buy a new gadget that is known to be end-of-life. They f*cked that up royally and took down those of us who invested many years in Nokia ecosystem.
Long-term success of WP7 is even a riskier proposition than Meego ever was. No one who is thinking of buying a new smartphone will consider a WP7 phone over an iOS/Android/Blackberry device for at least several product iterations if ever.
The next shareholder's meeting is going to be pretty fun. Directors are going to either be shown the door, invited to resign, or Nokia as a EU technology company ceases to exist. Pretty much the bottom line.
Member since:2007-04-18
Tough call, I must agree, and I'm not disputing that Elop did what's best for Nokia, only time will tell. However I don't think that there are only 3 choices: MeeGo, WP7 and Android. I'd personally vote for a fourth: revive Maemo and upgrade it. Maemo is and was for a long time a finished product. The framework stack is sufficiently similar to allow a gradual transition to MeeGo, Qt can be incorporated as a second toolkit, and when the transition to MeeGo starts, Gtk can still be ported to MeeGo for backwards compatibility. Heck, no need to even port it yourself - keep both projects open and the community will gladly do it for you. Don't keep a tight grip on every aspect of your platform, let people take it where they want to see it. Maemo had (and still partly has) a very vibrant community of interested and skilled individuals. Even though Google plays the open source tune, they are still a pretty much closed-source shop. At least Microsoft and Apple don't pretend. Dropping this kind of bombshell announcement would whip up interest around your platform like crazy.
Member since:2005-07-06
If Elop couldn't get the company into shape with it's own platform he shouldn't have been given the job.
Given that they'll be waiting around twiddling their thumbs for over a year while Windows phones appear they're already dead.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Member since:
2007-04-18
Nokia's principal problem was horrendous mismanagement of their software. They had a working next-gen OS (Maemo) long before Google or Apple did - sure it was flaky, but they had almost 2 years before the first iPhone even came out (remember the Nokia 770 came out in November 2005). The Nokia N900 was a great phone for its time in 2009. And instead of incremental upgrades on it (by developing MeeGo on the side and using Maemo as the main OS, possibly incorporating backported Qt support from MeeGo to Maemo - not that hard to do) they decided to go the software revolution route, which works out in the rarest of cases. WP7 is one of those revolutions and we still have to see it succeed. I'm not claiming it won't, eventually - Microsoft has always used its enormous reserves to allow them to try multiple times over, until they get it right.
The "open" aspect isn't what the end user will care about. What they will, however, care about, is having the power of a full PC in their pocket (needs proper marketing, of course). Android, iOS and WP7 are all specialized phone operating systems. They use specialized toolkits, specialized development environments and provide only a limited set of tools. If your idea doesn't fit in their development paradigm, though luck. The power of full operating systems is that they don't provide too many assumptions - you can do anything you like with them.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and provide my personal idea of what Maemo could have become using its more "open" nature than Android. Since it's much easier to port desktop software to it (than to, say, Android), why not build a Maemo device capable of Bluetooth peripheral attachments and HDMI (or possibly wireless) video output. You no longer have to drag that netbook around - it's just shrunk to the size of your pocket.
Here's where crappy middle management gets you - pour as many resources into a project as you like, with bad management you might as well have burned the money in a furnace.