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The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

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Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#81

Post by piva00 »

getlawgdon wrote: post #62
Spooky23 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon was pretty hilarious with denial early on. I recall them coming to talk about what a piece of garbage the iPhone was to our CIO, and how BlackBerry would bury them, etc. Then the CIO pulls out his iPhone and demos it. Lol. One of the reps flipped to AT&T a few weeks later. It’s really a shame actually, the BB was a great device and had an unbeatable security model for enterprises for a long time. iPhone is ju…

iphone is magical; yet I'm replying on pixel3 right now despite recently moving to 12 max pro. I'm now carrying 2 phones around. the iPhone for the camera and the pixel for the superior usability. magical I tell you.

Is it superior usability or superior possibilities to customise the phone?

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#82

Post by pjmlp »

lenkite wrote: post #74
toyg wrote: post #33

I remember building simple PyQT apps on the N900, and then C++/Qt. At one point I was very tempted to start my own business and become a real developer for the platform while it was still "young", but it became apparent very quickly that Nokia was not seriously invested in it, and in any case they were not interested in small devs (getting an account for their joke of a store was a byzantine process, and expensive to…

If the Nokia board had not hired Elop or had fired him in time, Maemo would have been a third mobile platform alternative today - one likely far more open than Android. Elop was a truly successful Nokia saboteur. An illustrative case study of how a single CEO can destroy a company for his self-profit and go out laughing with no legal repercussions.

WRONG!

Elop did exactly what the Nokia board asked him to do.

All anti-Elop bashers should read about what happened before spreading this content.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#83

Post by pjmlp »

whereistimbo wrote: post #68
inglor_cz wrote: post #66

I was a Symbian developer at that time. The fate of N900 is a grim reminder that engineering brilliance will still lose out to managerial incompetence. Seriously, the device was just so attractive both for users and programmers. If Nokia were able to stay the course, they could pull off a bestseller. Their nosedive into the ground under Stephen Elop is a stuff of dark legends.

Not really. Even before Elop, there were multiple layer of management and the culture of CMA (Cover My Arse) was so strong, as I heard from other Nokia ex-employees. Not to mention people from Symbian Inc wasn't good people according to the book about rise and fall of Symbian.

I can confirm it was to some extent like that.

The first maemo tablets did not have radio to avoid competion with Symbian, and devices like S90, for example.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#84

Post by pjmlp »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #5

A family friend worked as an outside something at Nokia HQ around 2007(?) when the iPhone was announced. Apparently there was an ongoing joke inside of the company that every button on these phones was one of the executives. And so you had multiple buttons/ways of doing one thing because consensus. Sounds like they were just bogged down and crippled in a corporate way that so many European companies were between 1990…

Nokia and Sony-Ericson already had touchscreen phones running Symbian on sale in 2002!

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#85

Post by walterbell »

pjmlp wrote: post #82
lenkite wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Nokia board had not hired Elop or had fired him in time, Maemo would have been a third mobile platform alternative today - one likely far more open than Android. Elop was a truly successful Nokia saboteur. An illustrative case study of how a single CEO can destroy a company for his self-profit and go out laughing with no legal repercussions.

WRONG! Elop did exactly what the Nokia board asked him to do. All anti-Elop bashers should read about what happened before spreading this content.

Any recommended links? Did anyone look into which funds shorted Nokia as market cap dropped from 30B?

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#87

Post by pjmlp »

walterbell wrote: post #85
pjmlp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WRONG! Elop did exactly what the Nokia board asked him to do. All anti-Elop bashers should read about what happened before spreading this content.

Any recommended links? Did anyone look into which funds shorted Nokia as market cap dropped from 30B?

Yes, you can start here

> A Finnish newspaper has uncovered information in the SEC filings for Nokia's sale to Microsoft that show former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop had a huge incentive to unload the company in the form of a $25.5 million US bonus that he would get in the event of a "change of control" in the mobile company.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stephen-elop-to-get-25-5m-f...

Followed by Tomi T Ahonen posts,

https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/nokia/

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#88

Post by inglor_cz »

whereistimbo wrote: post #68
inglor_cz wrote: post #66

I was a Symbian developer at that time. The fate of N900 is a grim reminder that engineering brilliance will still lose out to managerial incompetence. Seriously, the device was just so attractive both for users and programmers. If Nokia were able to stay the course, they could pull off a bestseller. Their nosedive into the ground under Stephen Elop is a stuff of dark legends.

Not really. Even before Elop, there were multiple layer of management and the culture of CMA (Cover My Arse) was so strong, as I heard from other Nokia ex-employees. Not to mention people from Symbian Inc wasn't good people according to the book about rise and fall of Symbian.

I know they had leadership problems before, but they weren't doomed. Their sales and relationship with carriers were excellent.

Their fate was by no means foreordained and someone different from Stephen Elop (say, Tim Cook?) would have different results.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#89

Post by butokai »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #63

I still have one in a drawer. I worked at Nokia at the time. These were awesome phones. But they were deliberately crippled by management that preferred other platforms they had. So, several devices originally earmarked for Maemo/Meego (the name changed at some point) actually shipped with Symbian instead. Some fun facts about Maemo: Shipped in 2006 with the N770. Had a tablet UI based on X and GTK, a mozilla based b…

I would be curious to know more about the several devices that were planned to be on Meego but then shipped with Symbian!

I remember seeing Bada phones at the time, but (at least in my country) the "does it run WhatsApp" era was already starting, and the total lack of apps for Bada made it totally unattractive.

All said, I am not sure that polishing and marketing would have been enough to save the situation. I didn't see Palm's Pre and webOS mentioned in the thread so far: that makes for an example of an excellent platform, with good marketing and capabilities, that still didn't manage to affect the rise of the duopoly.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#90

Post by tom_mellior »

pessimizer wrote: post #28

> the touch screen is resistive and requires a stylus. It does not require a stylus, and is superior to capacitive touchscreens in every way.

I wouldn't say "every way", but the lack of multi-touch was sometimes an advantage. I loved the swirl-to-zoom gesture on the N900, pinch-to-zoom on multi-touch screens always feels clunky in comparison. If I wanted to zoom in or out on the N900, I just used the thumb that was already hovering over the screen, of the hand holding a phone. Pinching to zoom needs two hands, one to hold the phone, the other to perform the gesture.
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