4 ms·

Nokia had long term plan which looked promising: They bought first Trolltech for QT and after that started doing Meego* (albeit too slowly) but the idea was to

by trm42 11y ago

Nokia had long term plan which looked promising: They bought first Trolltech for QT and after that started doing Meego* (albeit too slowly) but the idea was to have one development platform for all their new and old phone platforms and QT fit the bill really nicely. But in the end the QT plan was really half-assed because getting it into Symbian took too long time and Meego was even slower project. The first Meego phone N9 and it's unpublished sibling N950 (with the best qwerty hardware ever) were better phones than Android phones at that time, but when they released the N9 it was already known that Nokia will switch to Windows Phone and there was no point in buying N9 or developing apps for it. They even had the QT + QT Quick setup working and showing lots of promise for writing javascript apps for different platforms. Sigh. So if they've had the guts to execute the QT plan and Meego as a first priority projects + skipping Elop, the situation could be a lot different. Meego still feels more Linuxy than Android. * Of course creating first Maemo on top of GTK and after that switching to QT sounded weird and with Meego there was other parties like Samsung and Intel meddling around so they lost lot of steam in that transition too.

madeofpalk 11y ago
> Meego still feels more Linuxy than Android. ...is that supposed to be a good thing? Edit: snark aside, I'm not sure how this would be a factor in what makes a mobile platform successful. It feels like the sort of comment that would be made right after saying "year of desktop linux!"
- ryanlol 11y ago
  Definitely. Is androids java mess a good thing?
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    Good enough to get it into the duopoly with iOS, beating everything else.
    - yedpodtrzitko 11y ago
      Isnt it because Google is pumping millions of dollars into it?
      - madeofpalk 11y ago
        Possibly, making any sense of 'linuxy' or quality of Java irrelevant.
      - bsg75 11y ago
        Or because it's the only iOS alternative left?
        madeofpalk 11y ago
        It's the only one left now, but there's plenty of other dead platforms that just didn't make it along the way.
- trm42 11y ago
  Well it was build on top of normal Linux tool chain instead of Java, but it was really easy to use, responsive and had all the smart phone features of that day. Much better than Android 2.2 which was the hot thing then. Quite close to iPhone in terms of responsiveness and ease of use.
zokier 11y ago
> Of course creating first Maemo on top of GTK and after that switching to QT sounded weird and with Meego there was other parties like Samsung and Intel meddling around so they lost lot of steam in that transition too. From my perspective one of the problems was that there wasn't just one major transition, but instead there were two. First was the GTK->Qt transition, and then just as that was stabilizing came new transition from Maemo to Meego which never really succeeded. I think the reason for the latters failure was that while there was a lot of reasons to be exited about Qt (over GTK), there was very little to be exited in Meego (over Maemo).
- trm42 11y ago
  From the end-user perspective both Maemo and Meego phones felt really good but the Meego seemed to have a bit more innovative and more fluid UX. Liked both of them and would've gladly bought them if there would've been any promise of continuity.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  The whole Meego thing was a mess. Maemo had from the early days been Debian based. Then came Intel's Moblin in an attempt at pushing Atom for mobile devices (reason being that Intel had opted to forgo PCI on that variant to save power, and Microsoft balked at doing Windows on a x86 chip without PCI). Mobilin 1.0 was also Debian based. So at that point it seemed sensible for Nokia and Intel to combine their efforts and create Meego. But just as the jointed project was unveiled, Intel finalized Moblin 2.0. And it was RPM based. And Intel was heavily pushing for Meego to be that as well. Never mind that the N9 was really a last gen Maemo with some additions to make it Meego compatible.
threeseed 11y ago
It's hilarious because the problem for Nokia here was that they focused too much on technology and not enough on business. The reverse of what their earlier problem was. By the team Meego was announced, Apple and Android (Google et al) were already pouring their wealth of engineering talent into their platforms. And the strength of iOS' link with OSX and Android's access to Google services meant they were never going to compete. The smart business strategy would've been very early on to switch to Android around the same time Samsung did.
nextos 11y ago
The N9 was one of the best designed phones I've ever seen [1]. It's really frustrating Nokia did not follow the Maemo/Meego path. As a developer I'm not so fond of smartphones because they are not little computers, but locked down devices. Nokia's view was aligned with mine, as the first device of the series was an "Internet Tablet" (N770, released Q2 2005!) Why they followed an erratic path instead of going full steam ahead with their Maemo/Meego platform is quite well described by the article, but does not sound less stupid to an outsider. They had a device that was in some fronts superior to iPhone much earlier, but they got stuck with Symbian first and Microsoft afterwards. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review
- Aoyagi 11y ago
  Well, the last Symbian devices weren't supposed to be locked down. Heck, there's even the Delight fork. http://n8delight.blogspot.co.uk/ http://n8delight.blogspot.co.uk/ At the time of PW 808 the OS was on the level of iOS, but nobody cared then, not even Nokia (the 808 wasn't really advertised, and was hard to get...).
- hobarrera 11y ago
  Have you followed Jolla? Jolla's phone is a true N9 successor, and far from being locked down.
  - trm42 11y ago
    They have done awesome job but the Jolla Phone is old (and was low-end even when it was published compared to its price) and their tablet crowdsourcing project suffered quite badly as they lost some other funding for a moment and their device manufacturers sold the devices elsewhere as Android devices. Basically Jolla has promised to refund the crowdsourcing funds within this year, but still it was big setback for the project. I've tested the tablet and it was surprisingly solid in H/W and S/W sense. Just hoping they'll survive and can get meaningful market share somehow. Kudos to them anyway.
bitL 11y ago
IIRC N9 was banned from being sold in US/UK/Germany etc., all major markets in order to justify killing off Meego later in favor of WP. I remember Germans had to order it in Switzerland. It was clear Elop was playing politics by doing gradual phase out of everything that was Nokia in favor of MS, i.e. first restrict Meego to an unwanted child (yet they still sold more N9s than Lumias with WP7 so that part didn't work out), stop future development, make own factories redundant and later justifying selling off Qt as the only internal platform capable of challenging MS. Please remove your rose tinted glasses, this was a pre-mediated and carefully executed destruction of Nokia.
gramakri 11y ago
As a former trolltech engineer, I am obliged to comment that it is Qt and not QT :)

by trm42 11y ago

madeofpalk 11y ago

> Meego still feels more Linuxy than Android. ...is that supposed to be a good thing? Edit: snark aside, I'm not sure how this would be a factor in what makes a mobile platform successful. It feels like the sort of comment that would be made right after saying "year of desktop linux!"

ryanlol 11y ago
Definitely. Is androids java mess a good thing?
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  Good enough to get it into the duopoly with iOS, beating everything else.
  - yedpodtrzitko 11y ago
    Isnt it because Google is pumping millions of dollars into it?
    - madeofpalk 11y ago
      Possibly, making any sense of 'linuxy' or quality of Java irrelevant.
    - bsg75 11y ago
      Or because it's the only iOS alternative left?
      - madeofpalk 11y ago
        It's the only one left now, but there's plenty of other dead platforms that just didn't make it along the way.
trm42 11y ago
Well it was build on top of normal Linux tool chain instead of Java, but it was really easy to use, responsive and had all the smart phone features of that day. Much better than Android 2.2 which was the hot thing then. Quite close to iPhone in terms of responsiveness and ease of use.

zokier 11y ago

> Of course creating first Maemo on top of GTK and after that switching to QT sounded weird and with Meego there was other parties like Samsung and Intel meddling around so they lost lot of steam in that transition too. From my perspective one of the problems was that there wasn't just one major transition, but instead there were two. First was the GTK->Qt transition, and then just as that was stabilizing came new transition from Maemo to Meego which never really succeeded. I think the reason for the latters failure was that while there was a lot of reasons to be exited about Qt (over GTK), there was very little to be exited in Meego (over Maemo).

trm42 11y ago
From the end-user perspective both Maemo and Meego phones felt really good but the Meego seemed to have a bit more innovative and more fluid UX. Liked both of them and would've gladly bought them if there would've been any promise of continuity.
digi_owl 11y ago
The whole Meego thing was a mess. Maemo had from the early days been Debian based. Then came Intel's Moblin in an attempt at pushing Atom for mobile devices (reason being that Intel had opted to forgo PCI on that variant to save power, and Microsoft balked at doing Windows on a x86 chip without PCI). Mobilin 1.0 was also Debian based. So at that point it seemed sensible for Nokia and Intel to combine their efforts and create Meego. But just as the jointed project was unveiled, Intel finalized Moblin 2.0. And it was RPM based. And Intel was heavily pushing for Meego to be that as well. Never mind that the N9 was really a last gen Maemo with some additions to make it Meego compatible.

threeseed 11y ago

It's hilarious because the problem for Nokia here was that they focused too much on technology and not enough on business. The reverse of what their earlier problem was. By the team Meego was announced, Apple and Android (Google et al) were already pouring their wealth of engineering talent into their platforms. And the strength of iOS' link with OSX and Android's access to Google services meant they were never going to compete. The smart business strategy would've been very early on to switch to Android around the same time Samsung did.

nextos 11y ago

The N9 was one of the best designed phones I've ever seen [1]. It's really frustrating Nokia did not follow the Maemo/Meego path. As a developer I'm not so fond of smartphones because they are not little computers, but locked down devices. Nokia's view was aligned with mine, as the first device of the series was an "Internet Tablet" (N770, released Q2 2005!) Why they followed an erratic path instead of going full steam ahead with their Maemo/Meego platform is quite well described by the article, but does not sound less stupid to an outsider. They had a device that was in some fronts superior to iPhone much earlier, but they got stuck with Symbian first and Microsoft afterwards. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review

Aoyagi 11y ago
Well, the last Symbian devices weren't supposed to be locked down. Heck, there's even the Delight fork. http://n8delight.blogspot.co.uk/ http://n8delight.blogspot.co.uk/ At the time of PW 808 the OS was on the level of iOS, but nobody cared then, not even Nokia (the 808 wasn't really advertised, and was hard to get...).
hobarrera 11y ago
Have you followed Jolla? Jolla's phone is a true N9 successor, and far from being locked down.
- trm42 11y ago
  They have done awesome job but the Jolla Phone is old (and was low-end even when it was published compared to its price) and their tablet crowdsourcing project suffered quite badly as they lost some other funding for a moment and their device manufacturers sold the devices elsewhere as Android devices. Basically Jolla has promised to refund the crowdsourcing funds within this year, but still it was big setback for the project. I've tested the tablet and it was surprisingly solid in H/W and S/W sense. Just hoping they'll survive and can get meaningful market share somehow. Kudos to them anyway.

bitL 11y ago

IIRC N9 was banned from being sold in US/UK/Germany etc., all major markets in order to justify killing off Meego later in favor of WP. I remember Germans had to order it in Switzerland. It was clear Elop was playing politics by doing gradual phase out of everything that was Nokia in favor of MS, i.e. first restrict Meego to an unwanted child (yet they still sold more N9s than Lumias with WP7 so that part didn't work out), stop future development, make own factories redundant and later justifying selling off Qt as the only internal platform capable of challenging MS. Please remove your rose tinted glasses, this was a pre-mediated and carefully executed destruction of Nokia.

gramakri 11y ago

As a former trolltech engineer, I am obliged to comment that it is Qt and not QT :)