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Symbian Won

shkspr.mobi

41–50 of 290 posts

Re: Symbian Won

#41
> Because, as it turns out, a Libertarian free-for-all doesn’t work. It requires rational people to have an educated understanding of the risks they face. Millions of people installed dodgy apps, saw the one-time prompt, and lost control of their data.

Doesn't the premise of the article disprove this statement? There's been no regulatory movement forcing the "Symbian" granular permission approach.

I'd argue the pseudo-regulated app stores were a bigger source of the problem, not the "libertarian free-for-all". That is, having an app store with Apple or Google's name on it is what encouraged users to let their guard down and trust all the apps on it. If you had to download the "battery charger" app from Bob's Phone Tools' site instead of the Google Play store, you'd maybe be a little more skeptical of that permissions list.

Re: Symbian Won

#42
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...

[deleted]

Re: Symbian Won

#43
post #34

> 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.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210999

Re: Symbian Won

#44
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I _think_ it mostly was, with the exception of binary driver blobs. At least a few years ago it still had very active dev community at maemo.org, so it is not inconceivable for it to be revived. Alas, the neo900 project died.

No idea if neo900 officially died, but unofficially the timeline on the bottom and lack of news on the website [1] say as much.

I believe right now you're best off with /e/ in combination with a Fairphone 3.

[1] https://neo900.org

Re: Symbian Won

#47
post #18
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.

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…

I used Symbian. It was annoying.

Easy of use and better UX is a very valuable "innovation".

Re: Symbian Won

#48
post #36

> 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

The page you have linked to won't even open. I have witnessed a number of attempts to replicate LittleSnitch on Linux, none of them went far enough to anything near a usable product quality.

You need to implement at least some functionality on the kernel level (what LitleSnitch does with a kernel extension) for this, most of the people who care about desktop apps on Linux (me included) lack kernel developer skills.

Re: Symbian Won

#49
post #23
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not completely correct. My NEC smartphones didn't. Nor did the early BlackBerrys that I used.

I guess that's why NEC and Blackberry never took off in Europe, as the data usage would financially ruin you. With prices of about 5 euro per megabyte you lived in constant fear of accidentally using data.

BBM absolutely did take off with youngsters for a while - I sold a lot of blackberries to teenagers in the U.K. in 06.

Blackberry failed for much same reason it failed everywhere else - much better phone platforms came out very quickly etc.

Re: Symbian Won

#50
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_distribut…

Maemo Leste is a fork of the original Maemo bits. It's still maintained, at least to some extent.
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