7 ms·

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

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...

Cider9986 3mo ago
GrapheneOS is fully open source.
- fsflover 3mo ago
  Except the proprietary blobs of course.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
no_time 3mo ago
>Nokia could have dominated and we wouldn't be stuck with mostly proprietary phones. In an alternative timeline with Nokia winning, linux would still have GPLv2 which has no answer for proprietary drivers and tivoization. Also, the desire to dominate enduser devices by corporations/governments would still be there.
- ACCount37 3mo ago
  Tivoization should have been strangled in its crib. "Secure boot" as it's used today is the death knell of user freedom.
  - brookst 3mo ago
    It’s all tradeoffs. Secure boot sucks for enthusiasts but wow would the phone security / root kit scene be a nightmare without it.
    - ACCount37 3mo ago
      Would it? A bootkit doesn't give you any more access - only more persistence. At the price of having to tailor a payload to a hardware and software platform very carefully. For most attackers, that's just not worth it. Now, if what you want to "secure" is your ability to gatekeep what software users can and can't install? What sources they can and can't consume media from? What system-level spyware and adware users can and can't remove? What operators users can and can't connect to? Then, suddenly, "secure boot" makes an awful lot of sense. Which is exactly how "secure boot" is treated by vendors nowadays. It's there to "secure" something alright. It's there to chain device software to the device vendor securely. There's a reason why modern "secure boot" originated on gaming consoles and TV boxes.
      - brookst 3mo ago
        > There's a reason why modern "secure boot" originated on gaming consoles and TV boxes. Yes, because hardware is sold at or below cost, and giving away a general purpose computer without reaping the long term upside is a recipe for disaster. But look at the prevalence of cheating on PC games versus console and tell me secure boot does nothing for actual security.
        fsflover 3mo ago
        > cheating > security How are these two connected? Are you talking about security of companies from the users?
        brookst 3mo ago
        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.
        fsflover 3mo ago
        You approach basically makes general-purpose computers/phones impossible in order to save multiplayer games.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  IIRC tivoizing GPLv2 software is illegal in some countries such as Germany. See Steck vs AVM
Frieren 3mo ago
> Microsoft They have fight open source and open standards for so long that it is in their DNA. Open source and standards are the best most efficient solution, but proprietary platforms have the money to buy politicians and create FUD in the development community. A big part of the current political situation is derived from platforms owning the public discourse and profiting from human attention. A world of open standards and open software is a better world.
mehdix 3mo ago
It hurts reading this after just realizing that I can't unlock my Samsung S24's bootloader anymore (to take control of my phone), because Samsung has decided to erase that feature irreversibly using a remote update.
mjg59 3mo ago
The N900 shipped two years after the iPhone while still having a resistive touchscreen. In the story of Nokia resisting Apple and Android it's basically irrelevant - it's part of the history that led to the N9, but it's not until we get to the N9 that there's a meaningful response to the market shift they represented.
- regularfry 3mo ago
  Resistive touchscreens get a lot of criticism but even back then that was partly down to Apple propaganda which caught on because people were used to cheap screens with rubbish resistive sensors. The touchscreen on the N900 was good: high resolution, rigid, fast, accurate, sensitive enough for fingertip use.
  - mjg59 3mo ago
    And no multitouch.
  - ACCount37 3mo ago
    Resistive touchscreens get a lot of criticism, and all of it is deserved. Apple has, correctly, recognized that for a touch-first UI, a resistive touchscreen will always feel worse, wear out worse and perform worse than a glass-integrated capacitive touchscreen. This was a big part of how they got their touch-optimized UI to work and feel this good - which was how they differentiated the first iPhone from the sea of contemporary PDAs. Nokia sticking with the most half-assed touch UI adaptations, Nokia sticking with resistive tech - all of is symptomatic of Nokia either not understanding what Apple's edge was, or being too slow to react to it.
    - mjg59 3mo ago
      The N900 was never really intended to be a mass market device, more something to attract enthusiast excitement and serve as a reasonable developer platform - so in that respect it being kind of half assed isn't too much of a surprise. The problem was it taking another two years until the (in theory) mass-market hardware was ready and also there having been another basically pointless upheaval in dev experience (the shift from Maemo to Meego, which included changing packaging formats), and in that respect the experience was incredibly half assed.
msh 3mo ago
Nokia was already in deep trouble before windows phone. If they did not go windows phone they would have ended up a android OEM (still better for them than what ended up happening) but there was no realistic way for them to "domination" at that point. That would have required them to change strategy years before they first saw the iphone.
- justsomehnguy 3mo ago
  Nokia fanboys would never accept anything other than Elop/MS fault. Even if you shove the sales values in their face and ask to explain why the revenue was dropping for a 3rd year by the time of the Burning Platform memo. https://www.statista.com/statistics/267819/nokias-net-sales-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267819/nokias-net-sales-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones#Annual_sales_by_manufacturer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph... And it's always N900 and 'dEvelOpmeNt hIstoRy'. I'm pretty sure what most of them didn't even read the memo, literally.
  - adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago
    Because they didn’t sell Android phones? More specifically, they didn’t have phones that ran an OS for which all the apps were being built, which practically meant Android since Apple wasn’t licensing iOS. Going to Windows Phone 7 didn’t solve the fundamental problem they needed to solve. The ecosystem, while also eliminating the ability to differentiate or innovate.
    - justsomehnguy 3mo ago
      No, Android has nothing to do with what Nokia did it to itself. They were making a supbar products and did them for quite a years and people moved while Nokia itself didn't. I need re-iterate what by the time of the memo it was already too late. If you want - read my previous thoughts on the topic and don't miss the thing about Ovi in the second link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32699296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32699296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35054778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35054778
alfiedotwtf 3mo ago
N900. So say we all.
roundabout-host 3mo ago
I want a UEFI phone.

Cider9986 3mo ago

GrapheneOS is fully open source.

fsflover 3mo ago
Except the proprietary blobs of course.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]

no_time 3mo ago

>Nokia could have dominated and we wouldn't be stuck with mostly proprietary phones. In an alternative timeline with Nokia winning, linux would still have GPLv2 which has no answer for proprietary drivers and tivoization. Also, the desire to dominate enduser devices by corporations/governments would still be there.

ACCount37 3mo ago
Tivoization should have been strangled in its crib. "Secure boot" as it's used today is the death knell of user freedom.
- brookst 3mo ago
  It’s all tradeoffs. Secure boot sucks for enthusiasts but wow would the phone security / root kit scene be a nightmare without it.
  - ACCount37 3mo ago
    Would it? A bootkit doesn't give you any more access - only more persistence. At the price of having to tailor a payload to a hardware and software platform very carefully. For most attackers, that's just not worth it. Now, if what you want to "secure" is your ability to gatekeep what software users can and can't install? What sources they can and can't consume media from? What system-level spyware and adware users can and can't remove? What operators users can and can't connect to? Then, suddenly, "secure boot" makes an awful lot of sense. Which is exactly how "secure boot" is treated by vendors nowadays. It's there to "secure" something alright. It's there to chain device software to the device vendor securely. There's a reason why modern "secure boot" originated on gaming consoles and TV boxes.
    - brookst 3mo ago
      > There's a reason why modern "secure boot" originated on gaming consoles and TV boxes. Yes, because hardware is sold at or below cost, and giving away a general purpose computer without reaping the long term upside is a recipe for disaster. But look at the prevalence of cheating on PC games versus console and tell me secure boot does nothing for actual security.
      - fsflover 3mo ago
        > cheating > security How are these two connected? Are you talking about security of companies from the users?
        brookst 3mo ago
        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.
        fsflover 3mo ago
        You approach basically makes general-purpose computers/phones impossible in order to save multiplayer games.
inigyou 3mo ago
IIRC tivoizing GPLv2 software is illegal in some countries such as Germany. See Steck vs AVM

Frieren 3mo ago

> Microsoft They have fight open source and open standards for so long that it is in their DNA. Open source and standards are the best most efficient solution, but proprietary platforms have the money to buy politicians and create FUD in the development community. A big part of the current political situation is derived from platforms owning the public discourse and profiting from human attention. A world of open standards and open software is a better world.

mehdix 3mo ago

It hurts reading this after just realizing that I can't unlock my Samsung S24's bootloader anymore (to take control of my phone), because Samsung has decided to erase that feature irreversibly using a remote update.

mjg59 3mo ago

The N900 shipped two years after the iPhone while still having a resistive touchscreen. In the story of Nokia resisting Apple and Android it's basically irrelevant - it's part of the history that led to the N9, but it's not until we get to the N9 that there's a meaningful response to the market shift they represented.

regularfry 3mo ago
Resistive touchscreens get a lot of criticism but even back then that was partly down to Apple propaganda which caught on because people were used to cheap screens with rubbish resistive sensors. The touchscreen on the N900 was good: high resolution, rigid, fast, accurate, sensitive enough for fingertip use.
- mjg59 3mo ago
  And no multitouch.
- ACCount37 3mo ago
  Resistive touchscreens get a lot of criticism, and all of it is deserved. Apple has, correctly, recognized that for a touch-first UI, a resistive touchscreen will always feel worse, wear out worse and perform worse than a glass-integrated capacitive touchscreen. This was a big part of how they got their touch-optimized UI to work and feel this good - which was how they differentiated the first iPhone from the sea of contemporary PDAs. Nokia sticking with the most half-assed touch UI adaptations, Nokia sticking with resistive tech - all of is symptomatic of Nokia either not understanding what Apple's edge was, or being too slow to react to it.
  - mjg59 3mo ago
    The N900 was never really intended to be a mass market device, more something to attract enthusiast excitement and serve as a reasonable developer platform - so in that respect it being kind of half assed isn't too much of a surprise. The problem was it taking another two years until the (in theory) mass-market hardware was ready and also there having been another basically pointless upheaval in dev experience (the shift from Maemo to Meego, which included changing packaging formats), and in that respect the experience was incredibly half assed.

msh 3mo ago

Nokia was already in deep trouble before windows phone. If they did not go windows phone they would have ended up a android OEM (still better for them than what ended up happening) but there was no realistic way for them to "domination" at that point. That would have required them to change strategy years before they first saw the iphone.

justsomehnguy 3mo ago
Nokia fanboys would never accept anything other than Elop/MS fault. Even if you shove the sales values in their face and ask to explain why the revenue was dropping for a 3rd year by the time of the Burning Platform memo. https://www.statista.com/statistics/267819/nokias-net-sales-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267819/nokias-net-sales-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones#Annual_sales_by_manufacturer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph... And it's always N900 and 'dEvelOpmeNt hIstoRy'. I'm pretty sure what most of them didn't even read the memo, literally.
- adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago
  Because they didn’t sell Android phones? More specifically, they didn’t have phones that ran an OS for which all the apps were being built, which practically meant Android since Apple wasn’t licensing iOS. Going to Windows Phone 7 didn’t solve the fundamental problem they needed to solve. The ecosystem, while also eliminating the ability to differentiate or innovate.
  - justsomehnguy 3mo ago
    No, Android has nothing to do with what Nokia did it to itself. They were making a supbar products and did them for quite a years and people moved while Nokia itself didn't. I need re-iterate what by the time of the memo it was already too late. If you want - read my previous thoughts on the topic and don't miss the thing about Ovi in the second link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32699296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32699296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35038979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35054778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35054778

alfiedotwtf 3mo ago

N900. So say we all.

roundabout-host 3mo ago

I want a UEFI phone.