Live data from Hacker News

Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

aaplinvestors.net

221–230 of 314 posts

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#221
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I never understood this memo

I totally understood it as soon as it was leaked. MicroSoft exec joined a phone company as a CEO back when MS was trying to convince manufacturers to adopt Windows Phone. Double bonus: they could kill and incipient Linux competitor in one stroke.

If you've read the Halloween Documents or docs from the Comes case, it's quite clear: classic "love them to death."

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#222
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you never tried a windows phone. They were slow. Really slow. Typing was so slow. Opening the camera app even more so.

This is not true. In fact if you actually go back and read the articles on it, one of the strengths was how responsive it was on hardware that was much weaker then what android needed. It has its problems but you are literally taking it's strength and pretending it was a flaw 0_o

I had one. I know first hand.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#223
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nokia N9 was the best phone I have ever owned. I'll counter with the Nokia N900. > I believe, they should have pushed with Meego. With vendor support their OS could've been a hit. So say we all.

> I'll counter with the Nokia N900. I've never understood this about N900 fans. My experience with the N9 was great, and never left me wishing I could go back to something more like a Sharp Zaurus with modern cell connectivity. What is it that makes the N900 appealing? Is it strictly the physical keyboard? So the N950 would have been the N900 killer? Or was there something else about it?

N900 was also the first phone with a full on browser capable of running any site. Other phones then were not able to run full JS. Also the resolution was higher than other phones.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#224
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we ever going to see anything other than Android or iOS. A third ecosystem wouldn’t be so bad.

My phone runs Debian (PureOS to be exact) and I'm perfectly happy with it.

What device do you use?

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#225

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…

Perhaps, this a silly question but since you are an insider I would love to know why did Nokia not beat Apple to the smart phone punch?

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#226
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

N9 was not "proper" MeeGo, internally it was still mostly Maemo Harmattan, followup to N900, though they had few canceled hardware projects between N9 and N900. MeeGo was suppposed to be co-developed with Intel, but it was never going to go anywhere, because neither Nokia or Intel had no idea what they were doing. Nokia wasn't built to be a software company and Intel has given up on x86 in phones.

Only reason why N9 ever was released is because they simply brutally cut down the scope of the project, e.g. dropping Qualcomm-based variant for US/CDMA markets (that one was repurposed to be their first Windows Phone).

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#227
post #38

Nokia N9 was the best phone I have ever owned. To these days their gesture navigation implementation is the best. And they had Swype keyboard preinstalled. Speaking of apps: Here maps, SoundHound, amazing mail client and calendar... Gosh I miss that phone. I used mine for about 3 years, I think, and sold it for more than a half of its original price in literally a couple of hours (which means my price was too low). B…

How would Meego have succeeded where Windows Phone, which had Microsoft’s backing, failed?

Applications. You can't take an existing Windows app and run it on Windows Phone, because the APIs are not there. You can take an existing Linux app and run it on Meego, because it's just a regular ARM Linux with a custom UI.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The version of the story I was told that the Maemo/Moblin mashup was just as bad as the idea of combining two different frameworks that do essentially the same thing sounds like, nowhere near production ready, and the Harmattan aka MeeGo-branded Maemo with Qt was the only way it could be made to work at all. I haven't heard anyone say that genuine MeeGo would make things better.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#229
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maemo and MeeGo were sandbagged from the beginning because of Gnome and Gtk+, which were simply not fit for the job. IMHO what Nokia should have done was release Qtopia phones from day 1, as an alternative to Symbian, and prepare the migration from Symbian to Qtopia after that. But they did it in reverse: first Symbian, then Symbian to whatever will be new (Maemo, MeeGo, who cares: something new to be developed, so a disadvantage of years), etc. It was stupid.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#230
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I never understood this memo I totally understood it as soon as it was leaked. MicroSoft exec joined a phone company as a CEO back when MS was trying to convince manufacturers to adopt Windows Phone. Double bonus: they could kill and incipient Linux competitor in one stroke. If you've read the Halloween Documents or docs from the Comes case, it's quite clear: classic "love them to death."

>MicroSoft exec joined a phone company as a CEO

One does not just "join" the biggest company in a foreign country as CEO. The board decided to hire him after evaluating all options.

The board's chairman was this guy who was CEO of Nokia for 14 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorma_Ollila

Why would he allow Elop to be hired unless he thought it was in the best interest of Nokia to align with Microsoft?

Not to mention the board could've fired Elop anytime if they thought he was prioritizing MS's interests over Nokia's.

Post reply on HN