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Shame. Maemo was actually pretty good. I used to have an n770 and it was a nice, usable little device (if underpowered). It had an app store in 2005 (which was

Shame. Maemo was actually pretty good. I used to have an n770 and it was a nice, usable little device (if underpowered). It had an app store in 2005 (which was an apt repo with a web interface in front of it), and there was a decent app selection since it was so easy to port linux desktop software to it.

CountSessine 16y ago
This is what I don't understand. Why drop Maemo for a partnership with Intel and a long road integrating Maemo and Moblin into Meego? What was Nokia getting out of it? What could a "strategic partnership" with Intel have that would ever be worth delaying to market a single Maemo device?
- pavlov 16y ago
  It seems obvious to the HN readership that integrating Maemo and Moblin would be a difficult and risky task, but I'm not sure whether the Nokia leadership understood that one year ago. Basically, none of them were software people. The CEO, Mr Kallasvuo, was a lawyer who had been at Nokia for decades. He had seen the company's meteoric rise thanks to a combination of hardware expertise and logistic superiority, and his actions suggest that he couldn't see any other path to success. At Nokia, software was at best something extra that enabled specific features of the hardware, not an integral part of the product. At the end of 2009, they must have known that there's a problem on the software side, but didn't know how to go about solving it. For a leadership team of lawyers and career managers, a "strategic partnership" is a natural solution. They probably thought that they will solve the integration problem and accelerate Meego development by simply throwing another few thousand contractors on it (failing to notice that this approach was meanwhile killing Symbian).
kgarten 16y ago
yes, maemo was great. I used the n770 and n810i ... they were my first mobile browsers (before iphone). A bit slow, still worked like a charm. with airsnort, nmap, mutt etc. Cross-compilation with the change root environment damn easy. Loved the apt-get install Sad, sad.

CountSessine 16y ago

This is what I don't understand. Why drop Maemo for a partnership with Intel and a long road integrating Maemo and Moblin into Meego? What was Nokia getting out of it? What could a "strategic partnership" with Intel have that would ever be worth delaying to market a single Maemo device?

pavlov 16y ago
It seems obvious to the HN readership that integrating Maemo and Moblin would be a difficult and risky task, but I'm not sure whether the Nokia leadership understood that one year ago. Basically, none of them were software people. The CEO, Mr Kallasvuo, was a lawyer who had been at Nokia for decades. He had seen the company's meteoric rise thanks to a combination of hardware expertise and logistic superiority, and his actions suggest that he couldn't see any other path to success. At Nokia, software was at best something extra that enabled specific features of the hardware, not an integral part of the product. At the end of 2009, they must have known that there's a problem on the software side, but didn't know how to go about solving it. For a leadership team of lawyers and career managers, a "strategic partnership" is a natural solution. They probably thought that they will solve the integration problem and accelerate Meego development by simply throwing another few thousand contractors on it (failing to notice that this approach was meanwhile killing Symbian).

kgarten 16y ago

yes, maemo was great. I used the n770 and n810i ... they were my first mobile browsers (before iphone). A bit slow, still worked like a charm. with airsnort, nmap, mutt etc. Cross-compilation with the change root environment damn easy. Loved the apt-get install Sad, sad.