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Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

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Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#211

Post by seba_dos1 »

yobbo wrote: post #205
simonh wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d not heard that about Netflix before but it makes a lot of sense. The Apple case is an interesting counterpoint though. They seem to have a pretty solid culture of consensus and collaboration between teams at the top. But then they have an unusual functional organisation structure rather than being organised around product divisions. This means the functional teams have a stake in (basically) all the products, so…

> The Apple case is an interesting counterpoint though Isn't the story that iphone development was a secret project with competing teams, one of which proposed the touch-screen interface?

...and what about the whole story of Jobs' return to the company?

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#212

Post by seba_dos1 »

cycomanic wrote: post #98
eslaught wrote: post #15

I'm not saying this is a great letter, but he wasn't wrong. I owned both Symbian and Maemo devices, and the experience (both to use and develop) really was this bad. That's not to say everything about it was bad, or that there was nothing to like (as HN comments have often pointed out, there was), but it didn't hold a candle to iOS, or even Android. (And Android in those days was pretty hideous.) Now what Nokia did i…

But N9 was not a maemo it was Meego. It was incredibly polished it definitely was on par or better than android and IOS of the time. While some of the assessments in the memo might be correct (it took way too long to get the N9 out for example), shouting this out to the public is incredibly stupid. I mean he is lamenting the fact they only have one top of the line phone out, but then decides to completely axe the sys…

> it took way too long to get the N9 out for example

...which is mostly because of infighting with Symbian team. Nokia N810 was supposed to be a phone already. Nokia N8 was supposed to me a lower end Meego device. Both didn't end up that way because of internal politics.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#213

Post by stuaxo »

theshrike79 wrote: post #183
Nokinside wrote: post #167

Nokia's made institutional mistakes that doomed Nokia phones before hiring Elop. (I was there). In a sense Nokia was (organizationally) victim of its own success. During the dumb phone and feature phone era Nokia did everything better than others. Everything from the supply chain management, to the phone design and manufacturing worked so well. Why would you sideline leaders and organizations who build all that and w…

The teams that did Maemo stuff etc. weren't allowed to ship any features before the Symbian side (which had more political and monetary power) had achieved feature parity...

Aah that's awful.

I remember when Maemo first arrived wanting one, and they never made it mainstream.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#214

Post by seba_dos1 »

oriolid wrote: post #138
varajelle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elop was right about needing to change horses. What was wrong with MeeGo? The memo just states: > at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market. But that's not soo bad considering that they started the platform in 2010. It's not like changing to a different platformbat this point would make things faster anyway.

> What was wrong with MeeGo? The way I remember it was that at the time the management-forced merge of Maemo and Moblin to Meego and the sudden switch from Gtk to Qt were thought to be risky moves and it was well known that Symbian supporters are doing anything they can to sabotage other platforms. Later I was told that N9 was incredibly polished but Meego wasn't that great behind the scenes and would have required m…

> N9 was incredibly polished but Meego wasn't that great behind the scenes and would have required massive rewrites if development had continued

That was probably because N9 didn't really use MeeGo - technically it was still a Maemo based system that was only disguised under MeeGo brand.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#215

Post by stuaxo »

testrun wrote: post #139
oriolid wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Symbian was not the usability but the developer experience. SDK available only for Windows and really awkward to install and use? Check. Pre-11 C++ but without exceptions and something called cleanup stack and ELeave macro instead? Check. Ok, a whole periodic table of string classes instead of std::string (which would still have been terrible because it was before C++11)? Check. GUI API that was desi…

All true, and then there was also the schizophrenic S40 or S60 development too.

And a whole bunch of phoned under that s30

That you couldn't develop for at all.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#216

Post by stuaxo »

toyg wrote: post #113
BossingAround wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N900 was awesome, but it wasn't what the masses wanted. It had a lot of quirks, like UI freezing when someone calls you so you couldn't answer the call and suffering from slowing down over a relatively short period of time while being price competitive with the other high end phones. N900 was a great beta. We never got a 1.0 though.

The 1.0 was the N9. It had excellent reviews. Sadly it was commercially stillborn - Nokia had already publicly switched to Microsoft's bullshit, so it got no commercial push, and nobody wants to buy a dead phone.

Such a shame, I really wanted one but couldn't justify it.

Eventually got a Sailfish Jolla.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#217

Post by grishka »

musesum wrote: post #99

It was somewhat of a 3-body problem: carriers, oems, and developers. Carriers wanted branding and bundling. OEMs wanted to market a distinction design. Developers wanted a platform. Three cooks with competing tastes. For example: the Moto-Q ran Windows, shoe-horned in some AT&T UX junk, and a huge nubin that stuck out in the middle. It pioneered the ever present "pocket dial." Was thinking of developing for it, but a…

Isn't the carrier concern US-only though? In many other countries carriers know nothing about phones. Carriers sell cell service, electronics stores sell unlocked phones.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#218

Post by jrootabega »

With all this talk of tech and business, am I the only one who's wondering about safety measures on oil rigs? Can you climb up the legs to stay away from sharks? Do they have life rafts and emergency supplies on the bottom of the legs so you can wait for rescue?

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#219

Post by nextos »

theshrike79 wrote: post #183
Nokinside wrote: post #167

Nokia's made institutional mistakes that doomed Nokia phones before hiring Elop. (I was there). In a sense Nokia was (organizationally) victim of its own success. During the dumb phone and feature phone era Nokia did everything better than others. Everything from the supply chain management, to the phone design and manufacturing worked so well. Why would you sideline leaders and organizations who build all that and w…

The teams that did Maemo stuff etc. weren't allowed to ship any features before the Symbian side (which had more political and monetary power) had achieved feature parity...

I never understood this memo. All they had to do was to switch to MeeGo. There was no burning platform.

Hardware was great and software was great, but needed a bit more polish. MeeGo was more advanced than iOS in many ways at the time of this memo, and Maemo had been released way before the iPhone. The 770 was released in late 2005 and it was totally futuristic.

However, Elop had no interest in going this route. When MeeGo was released they dumped the project publicly shortly afterwards and then N9 was sold with no advertising. Despite this, it had a phenomenal demand.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#220

Post by trelane »

Nokinside wrote: post #167

Nokia's made institutional mistakes that doomed Nokia phones before hiring Elop. (I was there). In a sense Nokia was (organizationally) victim of its own success. During the dumb phone and feature phone era Nokia did everything better than others. Everything from the supply chain management, to the phone design and manufacturing worked so well. Why would you sideline leaders and organizations who build all that and w…

Sounds like classic Innovator's Dilemma: The money was in the old tech, the market was moving to new tech. They listened to where they money was instead of where it was going.

I had an early Nokia Linux tablet (770, I think?), and I really liked it. I was very sad when Elop turned over the keys to Microsoft. Not surprised, though.

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