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Symbian Blasts Google's Phone Initiative
nowhere.elysium writes "Symbian has suggested that Google is not experienced enough or capable of fully developing a workable mobile platform. Symbian's vice president, John Forsyth inferred that Google's interest in the field will also wane due to it being 'deeply unsexy', and that development is not likely for such a platform because "You have [...] a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed."
In the same series of statements, Linux is likened to the common cold: "About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It's a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business.""
I'm glad there's no cure for the common cold. Is this guy just completely missing the fact that some of the brightest young developers in the world work for Google? They don't need external developers in order to be a success. Any third-party dev is just icing on the cake.
Except. Everybody is all excited about... Well at this point nothing.
What no screen shots? No docs? Not even a pretty phone to look at? I mean who really cares until they show SOMETHING!
The Iphone is a nice IPod+browser+phone but until I can add real apps it isn't what I consider a smart phone.
I still have not seen this SDK apple said was coming.
Yea I have high hopes but I can understand those that are more than just a little annoyed at the hype.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Maemo devices work, and work really well. Are Linux based and are very hackable, which make them very appealing for the gadget lover. Don't know about OpenMoko, but probably is a good platform, too.
If Nokia tablets don't include a phone its probably because Nokia doesn't want to compete with their own NSeries. Why couldn't Google build something similar? They have the money, the best smart guys the money and reputation can buy, and don't need to compete with another device builders. Their are in another business. They only need to provide the middleware to access their web apps.
Because symbian sucks? The comment about developers is rather funny, considering that symbian is downright hostile environment for developers.
Nokia did a "internet tablet" some years back with linux, and were surprised to find that tons of people are porting software for it (or writing new stuff) - much more than for any of their symbian platforms.
It's not always about revenue. The only platform that I know of that is more hostile towards developers than symbian is brew. Go and check the hoops you have to jump through to get your program published on their horribly broken platform.
(anon for a reason)
I think that's a vast oversight of the creature comforts offered by XP- I used to feel the same way, until I started to take advantage of XP's excellent media/device features- cd burning, media, etc.. Most of the benefits are geared towards the consumer market.
I think at this point, the DRM debate is really not about the companies vs. the consumers- just look at the WGA strike. Writers are demanding a very complex set of royalties for new media online play, etc- their demands are beginning to underline a real need for DRM.
DRM makes new media real to people working in entertainment and production- people who rely on very accurate tracking of views/sales to make their bread. If you are pro linux desktop, you need to be supporting an open DRM option as opposed to no DRM at all- and I mean option. We should encourage open media whenever possible, but allow for DRM in cases where its necessary for artist/production payment schemes.
Linux is about choice, right? If you want to see a version of the linux world that is not compatible with the consumer market, look at Stallman and the FSF. The elimination of the market is not a market viable option.
I don't see how linux operates without company constraints. It is far more constrained in that it is reliant on multiple-company "coalitions" to get any major change done. Apple or Microsoft can simply say "you know, screw our former base" and create a more modern vision for their system in a single generation- they have total platform control with a hierarchy of talent and experience. That's real organization.
There is life outside of unix, you know. There are better ways to do things- some would argue that open standards are incapable of innovation- that's not the point. Their point is to equalize the market after every push forward- they add accessibility, give people non-commercial alternatives. They're the generic pharmaceuticals.
I think the real frustration open source people face with Microsoft and Apple is how much work it is to constantly catch up with them- it's an endless uphill battle- and the companies that profit off of it are not paying their employee base.
I'll eat my words when I see open source solutions that are both A) Not corporate and B) not alternatives.
Did you actually try to develop anything for Symbian?
Well, I did. And let me tell you this: Windows APIs, complete with their haphazard organization and historical baggage, lunatic bugs and arcane undocumented extensions are an example of Reason and Logic, when compared to this positive 10 day old vomit which is Symbian. Any ole Linux API is like an Extatic Symphony of Cosimic Joy, Eternal Purity and All-Encompassing Sanity, next to this 10 day old vomit which is Symbian.
Hell, I am being unfair to 10 day old vomit.
You gotta be a masochist to develop for this thing, downloadable "api" or not.
The toolchain is fucked up beyond belief.
The API is a convoluted mess of overcomplicated certinisms, wheels reinvented to be square and with an offset axis, said square "wheels" within other square "wheels", and all existing only so that Symbian "alliance" can have NDAs, Patents and what not on this shit, which otherwise has been done a million times before, some 900 thousand times of which done much better.
Great majority of it is undocumented or laughably documented (they want you to pay big money for access to the "real" stuff). Most of what is documented you do not want go near.
The OS itself was designed by a brain-damaged monkey, its like a retarded dwarf cousin of Windows, complete with moronic "drive letters" and whole bunch of other truly imbecillic "features" from the early days of DOS, which even Microsoft doesn't want anymore.
You gotta pay money for application certs.
On and and on and on.
Or and did I mention that there is like 6 mutually incompatible versions of the thing in the wild, and about 8 different, mutually incompatible of course, versions of the "ui" deployed on various phones?
One way to gauge of the levels of insanity is the fact that there are a grand total of 4 (to my knowledge) languages ported to this thing, NONE of which has anything resembling something like a useful set of bindings to the Symbian API (Java, which is the only remotely usable one, has a very limited MIDP profile). Ponder that!
In short: do pay good coin for those downloadable Symbian-specific apps if you need them, because their developers have all been through Hell several times to make them.
What really kills me though is how arrogant and pompous the "designer" of this pile of pig manure about this monumental "achievment". Another, mind boggling observation is that there actually cell phone manufacturers using it.
Ah, another deeply scarred veteran of Symbian development. Seriously, I'd rather do any kind of development over Symbian development. I've been offered great money for it, but I'm not touching it again if I can help it with a 10 foot pole. I always love to read other people's rants about Symbian -- it gives me a sense of justification hearing my own rants echoed by others. But like Frankenstein's monster the damn thing just won't do the decent thing and DIE!
Here's a developer discussing forthcoming signing options, which he views as friendlier to developers. All of them are gated. Installation on more than one device requires payment. Some capabilities require payment; some also require permission from the device manufacturer.
More developer discussion. Even "passive content" has to be signed.
Another developer. The current process is "very painful". The new process has "no real plan" for freeware and FOSS.
So, I have been using Symbian phones for several years now. I think they are the best phones on the market(*): there is lots of useful built-in functionality, lots of add-ons, the multitasking works, they have good browsers, and are generally quite powerful.
But the fact that they are "the best" also indicates in what poor shape the mobile OS market is: Symbian is hard to develop for, it's sluggish, it has a dozen different and incompatible user interface versions, networking configuration is a mess, even simple operations require expensive and flaky shareware add-ons, there's no command line.
The worst part is, though, that Symbian's problems just don't get fixed. Symbian right now is where Palm was a few years ago: they have a large market share, but they are so arrogant that they don't see how troubled their OS actually is.
As for Google's experience, it appears that they hired a number of people from other mobile software companies, and in addition, Google has plenty of experience developing mobile applications for Blackberry, Java, Symbian, and iPhone. I suspect, overall, Google probably has many more man-years experience with mobile development than Symbian's entire staff.
(*) Internally, iPhone is actually better, with its UNIX-like kernel and real window system, but the fact that it limits what you can install and do makes it overall less useful than Symbian.