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Intel Committed To MeeGo Despite Nokia Defection
CWmike writes "Intel put on a brave face Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, insisting that there is continued strong support from it and many companies for MeeGo, the open source software platform that Nokia last week said it would abandon in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. 'Intel is disappointed at Nokia but life goes on,' said Intel's Renee James. 'Our decision and resolve on MeeGo is only stronger.' She pointed to a long list of companies participating in MeeGo development, including competitors AMD, TI and ST Ericsson; operators including Orange, Telefonica and Sprint; and software companies including Novell and Wind River. Intel expects to see MeeGo tablets shipping this year based on its Atom chip. Handsets will follow, James said. Despite its enthusiasm, however, Intel is sure to be negatively impacted by Nokia's decision."
Let me be the first to say:
Thank you Intel!!!!!
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I have no doubt that Intel can complete MeeGo alone if need be, and even find a company or two to release handsets (MS did, after all). The question is: how do they convince application developers to target it? There are already two well-established players, iOS and Android, which have the critical mass. WP7 was late to the party, and consequently struggles hard for developer attention, but it at least has the advantage of being easiest to develop for. And still, only 8k apps so far there, with many big players notably missing. When MeeGo comes in, say, in a year (and I'm being optimistic here), why would mobile developers care to divert resources from existing well-entrenched platforms?
So we've got several big contenders or those who want to be in the "smart phone" space (an increasingly meaningless term, as even my dumb Symbian phone can do a fair bit). Android and iOS are the biggest, then you've got Blackberry, Win Mobile 7, WebOS, MeeGo, and in the "dumber" category Symbian.
Three of these are Linux-based to one extent or another: Android, WebOS, and MeeGo. WIth the way apps get developed and sold, it's not clear to me that all three can survive on top of their more-closed counterparts (Blackerry and iOS, primarily). I've heard that various platforms are seeking compatibility with Android apps, but I doubt it'll be perfect.
Given that Nokia seems to be giving up on it, MeeGo seems like the obvious candidate to be the one dropped (its technical merits aside). There's plenty of fragmentation within Android alone now. Personally, I think the biggest potential loss is either the dropping or downplaying of Qt by Nokia. It'd be awesome to see Qt become a cross-mobile-platform toolkit to aid developers (on everything but iOS, of course). While I switched away from KDE during the 4.X debacle, it's clear that Qt was superior in many ways. Its commercial underpinnings seemed to really bolster its quality.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Is there anyone out there that really expected Intel to publicly say "Well, we lost Nokia--so we've decided to fold up MeeGo"?
#DeleteChrome
http://nokiaplanb.com/
I say the opposite. Intel doesn't sell operating systems for a living, it sells chips. It only does software to get people to need more chips. It would be entirely in Intel's interest to make this OS as open and free as possible, to get it into as many hands as possible, to create demand for chips that will run it well.
I'm a Nokia employee working at MeeGo now, after last Friday's announcement almost like before. No, I'm not being fired, and none of the important projects have even been cancelled yet (some obviously untenable gunk is being descoped; good riddance). You'd have to wait a bit longer to see the "defection", I suspect.
Oh nozers! The people might have to choose! How can they possibly!
But the people have always been doing that. Really, do you also wonder just how many fast food joints people can handle? That another McD new burger is just going to fragment the market?
How many car makers are there? TV makers? Cloth makers? Drills makers? Lots! And nobody is confused.
But oh nozers, computers/mobile phones are different hence Apple might as well give up and stop selling OSX because nobody wants to have a choice... meanwhile Jobs is not laughing all the way to the bank, the bank comes to him.
The market can support a lot and does. The N900 was a pure linux phone surely of appeal only to geeks and was sold out. More then a million sold for a test phone.
Meego has a unique advantage, it is the only OPEN phone and this DOES matter. Have you ever opened an app store? Everything people want to charge money for. Totally incapable media players and they want money for it. Well Meego got Linux and therefor easy access to open, free and highly capable media players.
Imagine this "Our phone doesn't come with an app store or market. All the software is free." Could that possibly sell?
And if for nothing else, Meego is Intels attempt to get a share of the mobile market. No other mobile OS runs as far as I know on X86. Meego does run on Atom and Intel wants to sell them rather then see Arm control the entire mobile market with the constant risk that one day it might be put on the desktop.
There are far greater concerns here then "I am so confused by having to choose a phone" that exists in your mind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
[the original article wonders why intel hasn't broken into the mobile space, successfully]
Intel's flagship CPU design consumes far too much power, and that really is the end of the matter. I really don't understand why people don't understand this.
The entire x86 architecture is optimised for speed and low latency, whereas ARM processors are optimised for low power, trading that low power for higher latency.
The interesting thing is that the latency trade-offs made in ARM (and MIPS) processor designs becomes... very much less relevant as the CPU geometries go down. 28nm means that ARM CPUs can easily run at 2.5ghz, and MIPS CPUs at somewhere around 2ghz. Combine these CPUs with modern 1066 DDR3 RAM i find it difficult to see how Intel and AMD, with their highly speed-optimised - and bloated - CISC architectures can beat the price-performance and performance-per-watt metrics in the all-important "good enough for most people" bracket.
Sure Intel and AMD's offerings will always be "fastest", but do you really need a Six or Eight Core 4ghz CPU costing $1000 to do a few emails, when a $7 750mhz Dual-Core MIPS will do the exact same job?
So right now, we're witnessing a series of "ship-jumping" moves - the blind leading the blind - in desperate bids to stay afloat, where the sensible companies are sticking with Free Software OSes, based around the Linux Kernel, because it's Free Software and the Linux Kernel that can run on absolutely any platform, and Windows simply can't.
Microsoft cut off the DEC Alpha, PowerPC and MIPS platforms, over 15 years ago in order for Windows NT to compete internally with Windows 95; now they're paying the price and they're going to take down with them anyone else who clings to their coat-tails.
The news is sad. I was stunned at what an amazingly powerful-yet-friendly platform Maemo is, and had high hopes for new Nokia N900-like devices running MeeGo in 2011-12. Instead, it looks like Nokia will be shoveling out devices running some zune-based drm-laden insecure crapware from Redmond. They're not getting my money to be sure, but the big picture is sad.
Let's see the sequence:
- Nokia picks up some executive deadweight cast off from Microsoft.
- He steers Nokia to buying shiny-but-slow crap from his former employer.
- He also dumps Nokia's Linux-based collaboration projects. (Maybe Elop's just a mole, and this was his main task?)
- Nokia commits to releasing the massively-processor-heavy WinMo7 OS on cheaper hardware for developing markets. (**HTC snickers and says "Good luck with that, sucker!!! **)
- Nokia investors recoil. The stock price drops... and keeps dropping.
- Customers shrug.
- Nokia employees assume this is a tacit admission that the company is going bankrupt.
- The employees' Union asks about severance packages.
- Nokia runs more ads for Symbian*3 on the N9... as if the higher-end N900 and its OS never existed.
- Nokia can't easily retreat, having crossed/burned/blown up it's Linux/Maemo/MeeGo/Android-related bridges.
Summary: Burned bridges, impossible commitments, angry employees, a doofus CEO, declining revenues, bewildered customers, a weak economy, and it just got in bed with a company that eats its partners after mating.
This isn't just a bad decision, it's an implosion.
-x
I think not...(*poof*)
You can also dual boot. See this blog http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2010/11/02/setting-dual-boot-netbook-win-7-meego ~Gunjan from Intel.
Wow... you planning on starting a garden, or do you really just love tossing manure around?
Zune is one of many parts of WP7, but "zune-based" is completely inaccurate.
WP7 can play streaming music, which for legal reasons MS can only provide DRMed (though you can also download DRM-free MP3s, and play them / copy them between PCs). I suppose you think any system that has any form of DRM at all is "drm-laden" though... I hope you never buy commercial DVDs.
Anything you can point to that justifies calling the man a "deadweight" executive? A good exec can do a lot for a company. If nothing else, he's frank and articulate, and doesn't try to conceal problems.
Of all the accusations you could level at WP7, you chose "slow" for some reason. That pretty much cripples your credibility. Why not complain about how it launched without HTML5 support, or some actually valid complaint? Running on identical hardware, WP7 performs better than Android (http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-7-vs-android-gingerbread-on-the-htc-hd2/).
The N900 had some good things going on its software for a Linux handheld (bear in mind that the vast majority of the world has no interest in Linux, and neither Android nor WebOS make a big deal out of their choice of kernel in advertising). Its hardware was out of date two years ago, though. Slowish processor, low RAM, and for $DEITY's sake a resistive touchscreen... it was obsolete at release (late 2009).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...