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Symbian Won

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Symbian Won

#111

Post by einpoklum »

secondcoming wrote: post #86
franze wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My boss at the Austria Press Agency wanted a software to distribute our news to Mobile Phones in 2004 or 5 or so. So I took a deep dive into Symbian with very limited C++ understanding. It took me at least a month to figure that that C++ is not C++ at all. In the end senior engineers, were put on it. Project went nowhere. And then came iPhone and we went down the Mobile Browser Road (years later Apps I think).

They adopted C++ very early on in the language's life. The standard at the time had not even specified how exceptions worked, so Symbian rolled their own (TRAP and User::Leave). But then they were stuck... breaking ABI was forbidden, so more modern C++ features couldn't be used (easily).

C++ was created in 1979 - I doubt Symbian adopted it "very early".

Also, the standard doesn't specify "how exceptions work" even today, in the sense that a lot of what happens when running C++ is implementation dependent.

But I can see what you mean about sticking to pre-C++11 (maybe even pre-C++98 ?) APIs.

Re: Symbian Won

#112

Post by Tade0 »

I witnessed NEC and Sagem and a host of companies launch smartphones and then disappear.

I don't know about Sagem, but NEC is alive and kicking. Its glory days of the 80s are very much over, but they managed to stay on the market.

Re: Symbian Won

#113

Post by einpoklum »

> With the latest releases of Android and iOS ... Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data.

But what about _Google_ or _Apple_ accessing my data? I can't prevent that, and they're some of the dodgiest corporation with the dodgiest apps in terms of privacy - after all, we know they send your data to the NSA.

Re: Symbian Won

#114

Post by jmull »

Fnoord wrote: post #40
messe wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

There is reasonable pricing for upgrades... LS4 bought within a certain time get a free upgrade, older licenses get a reduced price.

Re: Symbian Won

#115

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Symbian Won

#116

Post by smichel17 »

pjmlp wrote: post #79
secondcoming wrote: post #60

I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Net…

From the inside it wasn't that apparent, hence why the first Linux based prototypes did not had any radio support. And as cumbersome as Symbian C++ might have been, Android Studio + NDK + JNI wrappers still make me wish for Carbide + Symbian C++ + PIPS.

Although the NDK is really annoying, it's not required to build an app, which it seems like Symbian C++ was. I think that's critical for getting the app ecosystem off the ground.

Re: Symbian Won

#117

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

c0l0 wrote: post #85
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…

I respectfully disagree. Because it's an EPIC pain, and it's absolutely hostile towards "average" users. Back in the Android 5 (or so) days, I knew what permissions an app I was going to install on my mother's phone was going to ask to be granted _once_, and be done with it. Nowadays, an app might ask for some kind of new permission "on first use", and users on mobile are developing the same habit as users of desktop…

The problem isn't the sandbox, it's inherently the issue with lack of fine grained permissions and being unable to revoke permissions after installation.

Wanna see a real permission model, look at the BB10 Android Player model. After installation, you could revoke permissions and the player would basically act as if the data from that permission was just empty. App asks for contacts, here's an empty contacts list.

Edit: I just did a small hackathon and ended up having to request full BLUETOOTH Access and LOCATION access to connect to a label printer... how is this long term sustainable.

Re: Symbian Won

#118

Post by mempko »

bjarneh wrote: post #66
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 have two Nokia N9's (running Meego) at home still. I used N9 as my daily driver until about 3 years ago. The failure of that magnificent OS, combined with the failure of the successor (Jolla / Sailfish) still annoys me.

Sailfish is still around and is still getting upgrades every quarter with new features and improvements. Android support is actually pretty good and I use it for my daily driver.

It's not a success but it hasn't been a failure IMO.

Re: Symbian Won

#119

Post by canada_dry »

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…

> LittleSnitch on Mac... miss this level of control on Linux

This is such a killer app it's hard to believe that only recently a linux variation has been developed...

https://github.com/gustavo-iniguez-goya/opensnitch (the original by evilsocket seems to have been abandoned).

Re: Symbian Won

#120

Post by pydry »

I don't really understand why setting up permissions for apps are seemingly so hard get right for Android and apple. It's not complicated at all yet they fuck it up endlessly.

It seems screamingly obvious that I might want to give apps access to some of my files but not all of my files. Some of my contacts but not all of my contacts. No such options exist. Many other permissions are also needlessly coarse grained for no particularly good reason.

I probably want to see apps flagged which ask for permissions which are ridiculous given what they do and justifications from developers. Not possible.

These things aren't intrinsically hard at all.

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