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Symbian Won

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Symbian Won

#31

Post by Nextgrid »

The other problem here is the lack of regulation.

It's reasonable for a non-technical person to assume that any app whose provenance is known (thanks to the App Store's policies and requiring a valid DUNS number or similar) would be investigated & punished if they end up doing something malicious, so as long as traceability can be ensured (which it is) then it must be safe.

I myself used to think that as long as I use apps from a major brand (so like Facebook, Google, etc) I should be safe because there's no way they're going to pull spyware-like tricks and steal personal data... right?

Re: Symbian Won

#32

Post by gravitas »

edent wrote: post #9
rvz wrote: post #4

That's like saying because everyone else has 'pervasive multithreading', BeOS won even when it was a commercial failure. Everyone else did it better. It's not about who invented it first, its about innovating over other inventions. Symbian still failed commercially in the market and couldn't compete or innovate with the other competitors.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. In the marketplace of ideas, both Symbian and BeOS eventually won the argument. They didn't win commercially.

In this era I was into mobile phonery (is that a word?) and in 2006 the Nokia e50 (Symbian 9.1) was such a great phone, it went to many countries that year and I just loved it (it was maybe my 3rd Symbian). Not as a developer but an end user hacker lite, all the flexibility it offered over other choices at the time (most devices were "dumb").

Until the end of 2006 when T-Mobile (US) introduced the BlackBerry Pearl; it was at that point Symbian/S60 died in my life when I realized how limited it was and what it could have been, haven't touched one since (the Pearl being eclipsed by the first Androids after that in 2008). They had a shot and a solid following on HowardForums and just sort of blew it and let the competition outrun them.

Re: Symbian Won

#33

Post by ploek »

Brakenshire wrote: post #16
arpa wrote: post #5

I don't miss symbian. Maemo on the other hand... was a loss. Nokia N900 was absolutely the best smartphone i ever used. Would use it still, but usb port issues forced me to upgrade.

Was Maemo open source, including the shell? I wonder whether anyone will try and revive it now we have mainline kernel Linux phones, like Librem and Pinephone.

It wasn't fully open source, but mostly. It was merged with Intel's Moblin into MeeGo. Once Nokia stopped working on that, MeeGo was forked into the fully open source Mer. Mer is nowadays used by Jolla as a basis for Sailfish OS (which again has non-open source parts at the top of the stack).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moblin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mer_(software_distribution)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS

Re: Symbian Won

#34

Post by messe »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #26

> With the latest releases of Android and iOS, we’re back to where we started. Both now prompt you the first time an app asks for access. Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. Both let you manage access and selectively deny apps. Every OS should do this, desktop OSes included. For the last 2 decades I've been using personal firewalls on Windows to do just this, now I use LittleSnit…

> now I use LittleSnitch on Mac (I just hope it's going to keep working on ARM macs)

It should. Kexts are still allowed, for now. They're almost certainly only a couple of releases away from being deprecated though.

Re: Symbian Won

#35

Post by qwerty456127 »

thepangolino wrote: post #22
arpa wrote: post #5

I don't miss symbian. Maemo on the other hand... was a loss. Nokia N900 was absolutely the best smartphone i ever used. Would use it still, but usb port issues forced me to upgrade.

I really liked the Meego iteration. Its UI was top notch.

There is Tizen and some other derivative I can't remember still actively developed. I would by a Tizen phone if I could be sure there are enough of good apps available for it and if I didn't trust Samsung even less than I trust Google.

Re: Symbian Won

#36

Post by Fnoord »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #26

> With the latest releases of Android and iOS, we’re back to where we started. Both now prompt you the first time an app asks for access. Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. Both let you manage access and selectively deny apps. Every OS should do this, desktop OSes included. For the last 2 decades I've been using personal firewalls on Windows to do just this, now I use LittleSnit…

A personal firewall is nothing more or less than a layer-7 firewall which rules you can (somehow) manage as user you are logged in with, with a nice GUI. There is Open Snitch [1] (plus forks/patches) for Linux, if you're after such.

[1] https://www.opensnitch.io

Re: Symbian Won

#37

Post by unreal37 »

Bud wrote: post #11

This analysis elides the fact that all OSes in the Symbian era had to compulsively ask about accessing the Internet because data usage was at such a premium.

People forget that it was the release of the iPhone that caused AT&T and others to offer "unlimited internet". $60 for unlimited internet in 2007.

That was a revolution. Before that, yes, you could run up a massive phone bill.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/06/26AT-T-and-Apple-Anno...

Re: Symbian Won

#38

Post by mola »

kanox wrote: post #30
mola wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They innovated away privacy and security by relying on the human poor ability of impulse control and hardship with delayed gratification. Basically they made everything shiny and addictive. Is that really innovative? Perhaps 'bad' ui is better when you consider higher order consequences as opposed to concentrating only on first order popularity contest? I'm not saying Nokia and symbian were better BTW. Just noting ho…

This is a ridiculously shallow dismisal. Android and iOS "won" because the phones were vastly more capable.

Dismissal of what? I'm not saying symbian was a better os. I'm saying sometimes innovation and commercial success are not indicators of better solutions. And sometimes moving fast and breaking/distrupting things, is not a good thing.

Re: Symbian Won

#39

Post by belorn »

arpa wrote: post #5

I don't miss symbian. Maemo on the other hand... was a loss. Nokia N900 was absolutely the best smartphone i ever used. Would use it still, but usb port issues forced me to upgrade.

I still use mine. Got a suspicious cheap battery + charger several years ago when the usb broke again. Shipped from china it took 2 months by boat, and the other battery is now extended enough that you can't close the back lid, but dammit, great phone.

Re: Symbian Won

#40

Post by Fnoord »

messe wrote: post #34
qwerty456127 wrote: post #26

> With the latest releases of Android and iOS, we’re back to where we started. Both now prompt you the first time an app asks for access. Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. Both let you manage access and selectively deny apps. Every OS should do this, desktop OSes included. For the last 2 decades I've been using personal firewalls on Windows to do just this, now I use LittleSnit…

> now I use LittleSnitch on Mac (I just hope it's going to keep working on ARM macs) It should. Kexts are still allowed, for now. They're almost certainly only a couple of releases away from being deprecated though.

From the article this HN discussion [1] links to:

"We expect the deprecation to become effective with the next major release of macOS. There’s no official release date from Apple, but based on the release schedule of recent years it will not be before this fall. Little Snitch 4 will then not be loaded by the operating system, but there will still be an option to allow the loading."

Little Snitch 5 (with NKE) requires a new license.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677849

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