Slashdot Mirror
Jolla Confirms MeeGo App Store Is Coming
DavidGilbert99 writes "Jolla Mobile's MD, Jussi Hurmola has confirmed that its first smartphone will be backed up by an app store at launch later this year — pointing out that a version of Angry Birds is already available on MeeGo. And really, all you need to make an app store successful is Angry Birds, right?"
The interview from which the article is sourced has more information on Jolla's general strategy, including their plans to become "a major player."
"Jolla Mobile's MD, Jussi Hurmola ...
Sorry to hear that it's already ailing.
Even "dumb" phones I've bought have had app stores at launch.
Granted, Tetris is probably the only one I ever paid money for.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
And really, all you need to make an app store successful is Angry Birds right?
The very definition of the term "Necessary but not Sufficient".
Thanks for the life lesson MeeGo!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can we please stop with all the fucking bullshit cell phone articles on slashdot? If I wanted fifty fucking stupid articles about cell phones and cell plans every day, I'd go subscribe to the Gizmodo and Engadget RSS feeds again and get spammed by *them*.
I can confirm that my smartphone with also have an App Store. It will also have Angry Birds. Soon.
Saying you've gotten Angry Birds on your platform is kind of like saying you got the prostitute down the street to spend the night with you.
It isn't a matter of principal, it is a matter of money.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
They're right to be going straight for mass market (unlike OpenMoko), but why are they considering these mutually exclusive? What's wrong with letting people flash the device if they want to? The best way to get a new and innovative phone would be to make it truly open.
Poe's Law achievement unlocked!
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
As one of the people who developed the MeeGo predecessor Maemo, I feel I have to point out that there are currently 1723 applications on my-meego.com MeeGo Harmattan software catalog. I consider this fairly well for OS where only single phone has been publically released, and has been orphaned since the get-go. Most of them are not fart-generators either, although there's a fairly high number of what are essentially custom RSS feed-readers for private feeds (there's an RSS reader built-in which feeds straight to one of the home screens).
Of course the beautiful thing as far as software ecosystem is concerned is MeeGo is pretty much full featured Linux desktop, so that almost any Linux desktop software (minus high-end games of course) can be ported to MeeGo, usually at most requiring porting the UI to Qt and touch-friendly. (Of course it's nice to see lot more thought put to integrating most apps into the MeeGo system).
deep thinking and engineering prowess
So...copying technologies that are already existing but aren't well known? And applying for bogus patents?
Well, they got at least some of it right...
Just having Angry Birds on their platform isn't that impressive, but it shows that the team behind the platform at least understands that if you want to be successful in today's mobile world, you must have an app store with a competitive number and variety of apps. They've got a hell of a long way to go to compete with the major players, but at least they're not completely delusional... well, at least not in that way. The idea of a small player breaking into the market at this point... well, I'll wish them luck, but they have their work cut out for them.
I don't reply to ACs
From the article:
"It is true that we have not heard too much from Open Moko for quite some time. But one has to remember that Jolla's main goal is not to create an open source phone. We aim to create a competitive smartphone almost everybody would want for themselves," Hurmola said.
"The phone will be a smartphone for mass market. It will not be a tech phone intended for Linux hackers. Consumers are not able to hack the kernel or flash new software for the device."
And I won't be buying one :-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If they want to gain a foothold they will be designing a sucessor to the N900, a real nerd phone with a keyboard and xterm as well as every gadget they could stuff into the case.
The N9 was an attempt to make a slim Meego flavored iPhone, still nice but also too conventional to be outstanding.
I want a palm sized computer that I can call people with, being different like that and then marketing it well to actual humans not moble providers will sell phones, there are enough iPhone clones.
If Nokia or Jolla cant pull it off maybe Shuttleworth can build a phone with Ubuntu on it.
I dont discount the games much to Stallmans dissapointment, I like wine HalfLife2 for my laptop and the WebOS games and Angry Birds on my N900 when traveling, but the most important apps are OSS on the Maemo repos.
OK - where can I get a mego tablet that is linux compliant and is not
lock down like a common criminal?
Remember how well that worked out for the N900?
desperate to compete with Apple, but unable to muster the kind of deep thinking and engineering prowess needed to play in the same league.
LOL! Thats was a good one
Jolla, like so many other Linux-based efforts before it, is simply a joke and the people behind it should just give up and go back to doing whatever it was they did before this futile attempt to compete with Apple.
You mean like Android. Yeah totally.
almost any Linux desktop software (minus high-end games of course) can be ported to MeeGo, usually at most requiring porting the UI to Qt and touch-friendly.
Similarly, any car can be turned into a submarine, usually at most requiring replacing the engine, transmission and wheels.
Great job, dude. I had the N900 right up until the USB port fell out. I considered the N9, but got an iPhone 4S instead as an insurance policy against getting ditched as a customer.
With some investment and a "one phone" policy, they just might prove viable competition on this platform. They should provide a platform for Symbian users to move to. It would be nice to have a worthy E7 successor for the masses.
As one of the people who developed the MeeGo predecessor Maemo,
Perhaps you could confirm this for me (I hope it's true).
As far as I could tell, Maemo was a fairly standard Linux install, with all the standard Linux goodness. As a result, i'd imagine that it didn't need quite a lot of the silly apps that Android requires (an app is needed to set a static IP address. WTF?)
Would that be correct?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
How is it NOT funny to note that no platform can succeed without Angry Birds while at the same time hinting that more is required?
Man Slashdot people are so stuck up these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like Linux on the desktop, major player means, its exists.
At least someone is trying to bring Linux to the mobile world and not just complaining about the size of its code base.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Apps are, of course, preferable way unless you're an unix admin. But on Maemo and MeeGo both, the underlying system is fairly complete "desktop" Linux. My N9's /usr, /usr/bin, /sbin and /usr/sbin directories have 1015 commands total, so I won't list everything that is included. Fully featured busybox build with ifconfig is included though. For N9, "developer mode" comes as standard option you can turn on from configuration menu, which will among other things add a console app to the device, as well as opening VNC or ssh connection to the device over USB or WLAN. What is annoying, and a slight warning for the home-hacker, is that N9 comes with kernel-backed Aegis security system, which means that unless you change the kernel or take other measures, changing ANY system files will brick the device so that a full re-flash over USB is needed. It's possible to disable, and allows installing uncertified apps, but a pain in the ass.
Now, wouldn't that be cool, bog standard Java. The phones these days are more than capable of running it. You also get all the ~70,000 existing Java ME apps which are available as well as the Meego ones.
Do a deal with GetJar. Add them as a secondary repo.
Add recent sqlite, perl, python and ruby with QT binding libs as part of a standard install while you're at it.
My wishlist is: HDMI output + bluetooth support for keyboard, stereo audio and mouse built in. buhbye desktop and laptop.
Ooh, a snarky comment! Your car-analogy is bit lacking though, software user-interface is more akin to the "body" or case than the innards, indeed this is what we mean by the logic or computing engine of a program. So this means you'll actually be replacing all the rest while leaving engine, transmission and wheels into your car. Duh.
On a more serious note, I realize this is not always trivial, but as Qt and GTK are the only two Linux UI-frameworks usually considered, much Linux software already has a Qt UI of some sort. The rest, if they are of any value, tend to be programmed so the UI is clearly separated from the engine or backend for maintenance and portability reasons. Even when this is not the case, the UI porting is generally not a hopeless endeavour, though there are considerable advantages from re-designing such an application. In either case we're not talking about something a casual end-user would do over the weekend, of course, but a Linux developer might.
This is also why I'm saying high-end games are an exception, the UI in those tends to be so complex, specialized and tied-in with program logic (not to mention expecting desktop performance) that the effort would most likely be wasted. Of course, the first thing I did when I got hand of the original development hardware and tried to decide where to start was naturally to get Linux-DOOM running on it, using SVGAlib (and no graphics acceleration). It was... almost playable. Didn't play nicely with the windowing system, of course. But with little work they could be swapped between.
think lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits.
The only things wrong with it were the resistive touchscreen and the slow processor, the result of coming out a technology cycle too early.That, and the major design fault that you could remove the telephone icon from the homescreen, which was not clever.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Here's my quick translation of the Päivän kasvo clip if you want to know what Jussi said there about a week ago.
---
Miia Lahti: The face of today is Jussi Hurmola, CEO of Jolla.
Jussi Hurmola: Thanks for taking me to the show.
ML: Jussi Hurmola wrote to Twitter in Saturday that MeeGo is not dead. That ignited an avalanche that has kept the CEO more than busy. What this all is about, is that ex-Nokians are continuing developing the MeeGo phone, that being the exact MeeGo which Nokia abandoned from the way of Windows phone. Jussi Hurmola, you probably predicted a follow up to your tweet, but was it a surprise to what it all has lead? Phone is ringing non-stop.
JH: Well, it was a total surprise. We expected some interest to MeeGo from the world, and wanted to say that MeeGo is not dead, as MeeGo was in other news last week. But the response to all this has been amazing. At about 1PM Saturday we put out first one-liner "MeeGo is not dead" and after 15 minutes the first article about it was already written, even though we hadn't done much else with it. Since then we have pretty much followed the others' lead and during Saturday evening just had to reveal something about us. The speculation was rising and people demanded information. There was already an article about us in the Wall Street Journal and you just can't prepare for something like that. I thank about all the positive feedback we have got in Twitter and, really am surprised about this.
ML: So there is a lot of interest outside the borders of Finland?
JH: Absolutely! Almost...well...I'm starting to boast a bit here... English media, Chinese media, Russian media, our little news item has got a really wide coverage.
ML: We all are probably interested about how Nokia has reacted to this.
JH: Yep! As you mention Nokia, and many have been asking, I really have to send a thank you to them. I myself have had a 12 year career at Nokia and I have colleagues that have been 25 years on that path. Currently about half of our group is from Nokia. Nokia had this Bridge project by which we cooperated to make sure people from Nokia don't fall into oblivion but can continue working. Thanks for that! And a little thing we heard from Nokia today was that there is room for both firms. So I am pleased.
ML: Were they aware at Nokia that you were going to continue the development?
JH: Well, it was the project at Nokia to start new companies. We pulled it together and information went both ways. Yet looking forward at the timeline, we didn't expect the huge interest in Saturday and we'll see where we are going next. But we have been open to each other.
ML: So how can a small 50 person company like Jolla be bold enough to begin developing a smartphone?
JH: That's a good question. Just like the name Jolla (dinghy) says, we are navigating a little boat to the open seas. There we are among big players and we can't be small anymore. We try to build big enough base for Jolla to redeem its place within this industry. How I see Jolla's position, we are the company that makes possible in this world time, and its state, and the state of technology, to really create something new and important. That is how I see Jolla. And we are company of 50 for sure, but we have 6,000 followers in Twitter right now. Aside the market situation, the industry has changed in a way that you can buy lots of components off-shelf. Reference implementations for hardware...there's all sorts of Internet services. So you can assemble it together really quickly. Absolutely not are we starting everything from zero.
ML: You said you are about to create something new. Can you uncover any of that?
JH: If we talk about devices, I'm not ready to reveal details about them. Later this year we are going to present the line-up. We are a bit careful, as we want to deliver the things we promise. The new things we are doing here - someone knows MeeGo, some don't - but we are to deliver complet
I think they're saying consumers won't, i.e. don't want to, flash the phone. If it's a meego phone, i.e. linux, gaining root is simple. And then flash away. Aren't people misunderstanding what Hurmola said?
Actually I am FOR quite a lot of stuff, but you are so blinded by hated of Apple you cannot see it. For example, I have been a champion of WebOS and even in fact WP7...
Looser looser gloomy chooser!
I'lll let you have the followup response since you are far less interesting to talk to than a bad Eliza implementation, and don't appear to have functioning memory circuits.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley