161–170 of 173 posts
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> cheating > security How are these two connected? Are you talking about security of companies from the users?
If phones didn't have secure boot nowadays inevitably little Johnny would (unknowingly) install a rootkit on his mom's phone for the promise of free vbucks or some see through walls app.
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> cheating > security How are these two connected? Are you talking about security of companies from the users?
Yes? And users from each other? If you’re so far into the “I buy it, nobody can tell me what to do with it” camp that you think it’s unethical for companies to try to stop cheating in multiplayer games… well, we don’t have much in common.
From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…
Reviewers were nice to it because they knew it was DOA. It did have some good sides but it was in most ways worse than comparable iPhones and androids.
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I don't know why you're coming to the rescue of the iPhone here. Everyone knows it was a successful product, no one said that the iPhone was "unappealing in the market". Quite the opposite, the demand was so high that Apple could set requirements to carriers that were impossible before AND after...
"The way Apple destroyed the competition was by creating so much hype around their product that they could demand concessions from carriers" is very easy to read as people buying iPhones because of hype and not because they were meaningfully better than the competition in ways that many people valued. Is that not what you meant?
No, hype and demand are not exclusive to each other. You can create hype around good or bad products. The key aspect is that hype is not entirely grounded on quantifiable practical values of a product but a demand which is amplified by an emotional desire.
Which is exactly what Apple did, and this move allowed them to make demands towards carriers no other company could.
From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…
> We were so close to having literal plain Linux phones. We had that and we still do. Back in 2008 I was wondering whether I should spend my first-earned money on the first Android phone (HTC Dream, aka T1) or a "plain Linux phone" (Neo Freerunner) and I've chosen the latter. Ultimately it was a good choice, as Android quickly turned out to be not what I wanted and only got worse over time, while the other path had m…
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> We were so close to having literal plain Linux phones. IIRC, the dominant position back then was "Android is Linux". Shuttleworth closed his famous #1 bug on Canonical that was their mission in 2013 because now Android/Linux is more popular than Windows and the future is mobile[1]. Also Google still had a lot of good will in the OSS/Linux community back then so most "Mobile Linux" attempts were met with "Just use A…
Android may be a Linux but it (if we are feeling generous) sure as heck is not the user's. It's someone else's Linux that they let us run some non-Linux apps in in extremely tight sandboxes.
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> We were so close to having literal plain Linux phones. Sad to me. I wonder where this could have gone without Microsoft. Sadly, I strong suspect it would have gone nowhere. Apps became the name of the game and iOS and Android built up strong app libraries quickly. If Microsoft failed to compete I don't think a Nokia Linux phone would have stood a chance at all. Maybe if it added Android compatibility but that would…
Assuming that a plain Linux phone had succeeded early on, once banks, retailers and media companies refused to provide apps because of security concerns, then either the phone would die in the marketplace or it would have developed security solutions similar to those provided by iOS and Android today and no longer be a 'plain Linux phone'.
What a badly written article. How could you leave out the N900 and the development history that came before it? If it wasn't for Elop and Microsoft, Nokia could have dominated and we wouldn't be stuck with mostly proprietary phones. We're still waiting to solve that problem...
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Tivoization should have been strangled in its crib. "Secure boot" as it's used today is the death knell of user freedom.
It’s all tradeoffs. Secure boot sucks for enthusiasts but wow would the phone security / root kit scene be a nightmare without it.