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Nokia Abruptly Closes Application Store In China For N9
jppiiroinen writes "It seems that Nokia is slowly killing existing applications for their Linux based N9 mobile phone which are available through their store. As a developer who has published paid (and free) apps, it appears after their final blow of killing the support for paid applications in China, where the main revenue came from, there is not any means to make money, and no reason to maintain apps anymore. What this means also for the end-users: no premium apps, like Angry Birds. There was no heads-up or anything, just a single email without any means to make a complaint. Nokia, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish." Also being discussed at Maemo.org.
It's poor english, and the posts on Maemo are event worse. I'd actually think this was a scam unless someone can post a link to a real news source.
Is this somehow related to Jolla Mobile's strategy to launch Sailfish (MeeGo improved since N9's Harmattan MeeGo) mainly in the chinese market? Don't know, just speculation.
I own an N9 and am absolutely convinced it had the opportunity of being the best smartphone ever. On the other hand, I am getting more convinced that Stephen Elop is the world's most idiot CEO for "selling" Nokia almost completely to Microsoft, his ex-employer.
N9 users in China will have to wait till next year to use Sailfish OS store.
Whether or not this is a legit story, if you've got an N9, you might want to get MeeCatalog just in case as a hedge against Nokia's eventual demise, Store and all. At least you'll have some community support.
I am not a crackpot.
This is why I make sure my devices allow 3rd party application stores. I won't buy any hardware or software that overtly allows the sellers to force obsolescence by pulling the plug on the market to make you to buy the new shiny. I learned my lesson with always-connected-to-internet DRM in games. I don't care if it's an iOS, FPS, or MMORPG. If it doesn't support private servers, I will not buy it.
See also: Closed source OSs ending support for updates, and hardware manufacturers not re-compiling drivers for a new OS (should be open sourced, we buy hardware not drivers), or even UEFI secure boot coded to only work on select OSs by name string... I think it's horrible that software creators are adopting the common engineering practice of purposefully shortening life span of the products.
What do you get when you spell Elop backward?
Racism!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You mispelled "N900". N9 has no keyboard.
An included keyboard is automatic disqualification for best smartphone, since it ads bulk and/or reduces screen size.
You can always add a keyboard to any smartphone for the times when you need one. You can't remove an integrated one when you don't.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First I love QT, Second I hate QT. If I am developing a desktop application tomorrow for anything I am using QT, full stop. The QT people seem to fully understand 50% of my C++ needs. But they fully ignore the other 50%. There are huge massive holes in QT for developers that if filled would have developers flooding to use QT. Two simple ones that would probably take a week to solve is that when I used eclipse on a mac QT was a huge pain to integrate and by huge I mean nearly impossible in that even if I got it working with all the debugging and whatnot functioning there was a risk that when I upgraded eclipse that poof it would all break. The same story for XCode. QT on xcode could be set up but to get full functionality was a pain and the same upgrade risk was omnipresent. You might argue that if developing a desktop application I should be using windows but my personal route is to go with Mac and then port to windows.
The next hole was this whole maemo crap. The only way I was developing for some oddball Nokia thing was as an afterthought to the bigger platforms. So here you have QTs strength that I can develop for the big 3 desktops which is a huge benefit for Linux in that people can develop for Windows and then Linux gets the easy port so why not keep that train of thought going and say we should make QT for iOS and android and get people doing easy porting to Nokia. But no I see more and more maemo and this stupid QML thing and a custom IDE just for QT which must have all been a massive effort for a zillion programmers which could have been, instead, spent porting QT to iOS and android.
So now we have maemo basically dead, I have put QT into my own personal terminal ward, and even Nokia is now in the ditch bleeding out. None of this need have happened.
If I had to guess they made QML because it made for awesome presentations for MBA types. But these same MBA types rejected making it easier to make iPhone apps as a business model. Then the MBA types had no idea the massive effort being wasted on an IDE and didn't understand what the hell QT really was.
I will give one other example of how QT didn't seem to get how off base they were. There are two things I read in QT related question forums over and over. One is "Is there a iOS QT Port?" and the other was "How do I use QT for the command line only?" Creeping in was "Can I use QT for android via the NDK?" I never once read "Wow the QT IDE is the best!" and I basically never saw questions about Maemo. I am not saying they don't exist but that out side of the work-a-day questions about programming details that was the trend. I'll even say that the QT creator wasn't too bad; but it just wasn't the effort that I think they should have prioritized.
Lastly there are other attempts at ports and some claims that QT might support iOS and android in the future. Very cool if they do. But in the context of the original posting of Maemo and generally the Nokia linux effort being a dud the above promises are probably too late. But if QT does pull an iOS and Android support out of their ear I will be first in line to try them out and bye bye Objective-C.