That said, I believe Nokia would be better off turning their engineering expertise to producing some Android phones, to take advantage of the enormous app market. They are capable of making a great phone, but their operating systems have been marginalized by the success of Apple and Android.
You are writing this as if there were some problem with finding great phone hardware for Android. While Samsung pulling out another plastic fantastic design for Galaxy S III gives some truth to this, I don't think Android needs Nokia so badly that it would find immediate success with Android devices.
So why not go with one of the winners?
Because it's better to go where the puck may be found when you get there, than chasing where it is now?
Smartphones are not an established market, nobody knows how it will change over the next few years. It's not impossible that a fallout will happen similar to the video game crash in the 1980s: too many vendors trying to cut a slice of a saturated market, flooding it with often poorly made products, while the platform owners had little power to impose some consistent quality, and home computers and PCs offered increasingly viable alternatives. That time, the consumer backlash buried or forced out most of the players in the console gaming market.
For a moment I thought it's about the gracious sport that's called football anywhere except North America. Then I realized there is no need for concern.
S&P and others have finally realized the size of the hole that Nokia has dug itself into over the last 5 years. If they knew shit about mobile technology, they'd give Nokia junk investment status in 2010. But they only seem to react to quarterly reports, which result in a lag.
My time on the internet taught me to interpret "google this" as "I have nothing to back up my claims, but I still want to sound authoritative".
What actually happened is, the board decided to oust Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and install Stephen Elop, because things were going to hell fast. If he is Microsoft's trojan horse as the conspiracy theorists here like to assert, the board should be blamed for not seeing this. But something tells me that they have better grip on the company's prospects than a legion of Slashdot neckbeards.
Hah, I think there's a better airplane analogy: the pilot is trying to control a stalled airplane, while ignorant onlookers are judging his skill by what altitude and the rate of descent the plane has at the moment.
See, just before the wings stalled, the airplane was gaining altitude. People ignorant about flight dynamics may think this means everything was going OK, but the engine thrust was set too low for that angle of attack and the plane was dangerously losing speed. When the stall warning sounded in the cockpit, the captain woke up from his nap and took control from the dumbass co-pilot, but too late: the plane started to plunge uncontrollably. The captain promptly put the stick down (see, he's trying to kill everyone on board!) and increased engine thrust. In the recent minute, the plane has lost another 1000 feet of altitude and still descends; the recovery is uncertain. And it's all captain's fault, because the fall happened while he was in control!
The thing about financial analysts is, they know jack shit about any specific market, especially so in technologically-intensive areas, so all they are left with to make their crystal ball projections are pure financial data. These tell nothing about where things are going, whether the company is gaining or losing mindshare among consumers and developers. In 1997, the financial press spelled doom for Apple and their stock was tumbling below $3.
If it has zune stuff (i.e. software for syncing) then Woz hasn't even seen how horrible that experience can be and why it is something that trumps whatever pluses the phone has.
Zune is only used on Windows; for Mac there is a slim connector app. BTW, I haven't had any problems managing my phone with Zune, and I find it a lot more usable than iTunes. What are your specific issues with it?
That's how we know your world is limited to Verizon. In ours, there are also AT&T and T-Mobile, who have fairly popular Windows Phone models. Not to mention other countries out there because who cares about them anyway.
It may yet come to this with all smartphones: "My 2013 Galaxy totally sucks ass. No, I mean Samsung Galaxy." Instead, now you have to live with a Sensation Glide Extra Lubrication 4G HD.
Somewhat illustratively, one of their best cash cow platforms, Android, is the least tainted by them (still, the drivers... anyone seen the source?). I feel pity for the poor Tizen.
This. Both my Samsung TV and the IPTV set-top box sent by my ADSL provider seem to have been coded by the cheapest monkeys taken off the street, and the development took just enough time to pass a very minimal set of tests. All internal errors are swept under the rug by some very deeply rooted fault handlers, with the result that the menu interface simply freezes for a time whenever it hits an error. Switching the menu language to a less usual choice for the target market leads to a litany of such freezes and other funky effects: apparently, allocation of dynamic buffers (or even sufficiently sized fixed arrays) for l10n strings was beyond their ability.
So this story surprises me, in a way: what, only two vulnerabilities? There must be hundreds of them. I only have faith left in the internet companies who know a thing or two about programming: Apple, Google, Hulu, Netflix, etc.
They aren't setting any sales records, thats for sure.
Neither did Droid, the first Android phone that went big on a major US carrier (took 70 or so days to sell the first million)? It does not have to beat records, it just needs to sell well to keep Nokia (and Microsoft) in the game. And from the user reviews, it looks as though most of the new customers are going to stay with the device/platform, and many "infect" others.
Actually the idea that a smartphone does not need to be a very good phone is very common. Go ask anyone under the age of 45.
Like myself?:) Look, I used to love me my N9, I even had a hand in making some of its software, but after a while the bugs and annoying lag in various places get to you. It's the difference between a fair attempt and a well-finished product. I just need a smartphone that does not make me furious while using it, and does not cause me to miss appointments like the N9 did. Yes, I use that ridiculously old-fashioned communication method of calling people and talking to them (it's mostly my family; when you get yours, you'll understand). No, I don't care much about hacking my phone or performing serious work on it. If it must be anything less versatile than a laptop, I'd rather get a tablet for that.
Anyway, I maintain that Qt ought, at some point have a Metro/.net backend- if not for Skype then for the emerging Windows 8 x86 release.
Oh, I'm sure the WinRT/WPF platform port (not using.NET, but native code APIs) will be delivered if there is enough interest.
Whether that will be useful on Windows Phone 8, no idea: the design/interaction "languages" adopted by Metro and Qt Quick may prove to be too different. OTOH, the whole point of QML is to be able to mix and match UI easily.
Skype works well on your Android phone? Just give them a bit of time and they'll "fix" that problem. Remember Skype is now owned by Microsoft.
Why would they decide to erode their customer base and hence the ROI from those $8 billion they paid for Skype?
It's not like Office for Mac is crippled in any way, besides platform portability issues, is it?
If it does, it hides it really well by static linkage.
So no Maemo bloat, as WP7 doesn't include Qt.
What is this supposed to mean? The Skype stack needs some base layer functionality, and depending on the build, "embedded" Skype engines even link their own libc copy statically.
Which makes me suspicious of the deal Elop signed - MS could have ported the Harmattan version in, more or less, a month if Nokia had been encouraged to port Qt to Metro.
This latter task is of course so easy to do in a year, looking from one's armchair. And no, there is no modern Qt-based Skype port to begin with: the Linux client uses old Qt widgets, not QtQuick. Harmattan stock UIs where Skype is used as one of the backends use neither: theirs is godawful MeegoTouch (one of the causes of MeeGo's demise, but don't get me started on that).
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That said, I believe Nokia would be better off turning their engineering expertise to producing some Android phones, to take advantage of the enormous app market. They are capable of making a great phone, but their operating systems have been marginalized by the success of Apple and Android.
You are writing this as if there were some problem with finding great phone hardware for Android. While Samsung pulling out another plastic fantastic design for Galaxy S III gives some truth to this, I don't think Android needs Nokia so badly that it would find immediate success with Android devices.
So why not go with one of the winners?
Because it's better to go where the puck may be found when you get there, than chasing where it is now?
Smartphones are not an established market, nobody knows how it will change over the next few years. It's not impossible that a fallout will happen similar to the video game crash in the 1980s: too many vendors trying to cut a slice of a saturated market, flooding it with often poorly made products, while the platform owners had little power to impose some consistent quality, and home computers and PCs offered increasingly viable alternatives. That time, the consumer backlash buried or forced out most of the players in the console gaming market.
For a moment I thought it's about the gracious sport that's called football anywhere except North America. Then I realized there is no need for concern.
S&P and others have finally realized the size of the hole that Nokia has dug itself into over the last 5 years. If they knew shit about mobile technology, they'd give Nokia junk investment status in 2010. But they only seem to react to quarterly reports, which result in a lag.
My time on the internet taught me to interpret "google this" as "I have nothing to back up my claims, but I still want to sound authoritative".
What actually happened is, the board decided to oust Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and install Stephen Elop, because things were going to hell fast. If he is Microsoft's trojan horse as the conspiracy theorists here like to assert, the board should be blamed for not seeing this. But something tells me that they have better grip on the company's prospects than a legion of Slashdot neckbeards.
Hah, I think there's a better airplane analogy: the pilot is trying to control a stalled airplane, while ignorant onlookers are judging his skill by what altitude and the rate of descent the plane has at the moment.
See, just before the wings stalled, the airplane was gaining altitude. People ignorant about flight dynamics may think this means everything was going OK, but the engine thrust was set too low for that angle of attack and the plane was dangerously losing speed. When the stall warning sounded in the cockpit, the captain woke up from his nap and took control from the dumbass co-pilot, but too late: the plane started to plunge uncontrollably. The captain promptly put the stick down (see, he's trying to kill everyone on board!) and increased engine thrust. In the recent minute, the plane has lost another 1000 feet of altitude and still descends; the recovery is uncertain. And it's all captain's fault, because the fall happened while he was in control!
The thing about financial analysts is, they know jack shit about any specific market, especially so in technologically-intensive areas, so all they are left with to make their crystal ball projections are pure financial data. These tell nothing about where things are going, whether the company is gaining or losing mindshare among consumers and developers. In 1997, the financial press spelled doom for Apple and their stock was tumbling below $3.
Coincidentally, the largest company is having very public second thoughts about Windows Phone.
If it has zune stuff (i.e. software for syncing) then Woz hasn't even seen how horrible that experience can be and why it is something that trumps whatever pluses the phone has.
Zune is only used on Windows; for Mac there is a slim connector app.
BTW, I haven't had any problems managing my phone with Zune, and I find it a lot more usable than iTunes. What are your specific issues with it?
fuck online storage(for which there are api's), give a _proper_ local storage.
Proper for which use case?
Hi. While you were stuck in 2010, this feature was added in the Mango release.
He did say that Android "is no contest."
Yeah, they are just about the only company making profits on Android.
That's how we know your world is limited to Verizon. In ours, there are also AT&T and T-Mobile, who have fairly popular Windows Phone models. Not to mention other countries out there because who cares about them anyway.
My problem with Unity, as well as Gnome 3 for that matter, is that they let down poer users like me.
What makes me a power user? Well, basically the fact that I like to tweak and script my system.
I wish Gnome Shell was scriptable with some kind of an extension mechanism. Oh wait...
It has the Gnome 2 desktop like God intended.
Remembering all the change hatred around the time GNOME 2 was introduced, I have high hopes for GNOME 3.
You didn't use GNOME 1.4, did you. Ah, the five different clock applets, all buggy in their own ways.
It may yet come to this with all smartphones: "My 2013 Galaxy totally sucks ass. No, I mean Samsung Galaxy."
Instead, now you have to live with a Sensation Glide Extra Lubrication 4G HD.
I'm surprised pumas are not royally fucked by humans.
This is strange. I use GNOME 3 on Fedora 16, and I have no problems whatsoever with performance.
Bjork's into politics?
I just know her for the strange beautiful music. Can't share the snark of the GPP.
Somewhat illustratively, one of their best cash cow platforms, Android, is the least tainted by them (still, the drivers... anyone seen the source?). I feel pity for the poor Tizen.
This. Both my Samsung TV and the IPTV set-top box sent by my ADSL provider seem to have been coded by the cheapest monkeys taken off the street, and the development took just enough time to pass a very minimal set of tests. All internal errors are swept under the rug by some very deeply rooted fault handlers, with the result that the menu interface simply freezes for a time whenever it hits an error. Switching the menu language to a less usual choice for the target market leads to a litany of such freezes and other funky effects: apparently, allocation of dynamic buffers (or even sufficiently sized fixed arrays) for l10n strings was beyond their ability.
So this story surprises me, in a way: what, only two vulnerabilities? There must be hundreds of them. I only have faith left in the internet companies who know a thing or two about programming: Apple, Google, Hulu, Netflix, etc.
They aren't setting any sales records, thats for sure.
Neither did Droid, the first Android phone that went big on a major US carrier (took 70 or so days to sell the first million)? It does not have to beat records, it just needs to sell well to keep Nokia (and Microsoft) in the game. And from the user reviews, it looks as though most of the new customers are going to stay with the device/platform, and many "infect" others.
Actually the idea that a smartphone does not need to be a very good phone is very common. Go ask anyone under the age of 45.
Like myself? :) Look, I used to love me my N9, I even had a hand in making some of its software, but after a while the bugs and annoying lag in various places get to you. It's the difference between a fair attempt and a well-finished product. I just need a smartphone that does not make me furious while using it, and does not cause me to miss appointments like the N9 did. Yes, I use that ridiculously old-fashioned communication method of calling people and talking to them (it's mostly my family; when you get yours, you'll understand). No, I don't care much about hacking my phone or performing serious work on it. If it must be anything less versatile than a laptop, I'd rather get a tablet for that.
Anyway, I maintain that Qt ought, at some point have a Metro/.net backend- if not for Skype then for the emerging Windows 8 x86 release.
Oh, I'm sure the WinRT/WPF platform port (not using .NET, but native code APIs) will be delivered if there is enough interest.
Whether that will be useful on Windows Phone 8, no idea: the design/interaction "languages" adopted by Metro and Qt Quick may prove to be too different. OTOH, the whole point of QML is to be able to mix and match UI easily.
Skype works well on your Android phone? Just give them a bit of time and they'll "fix" that problem. Remember Skype is now owned by Microsoft.
Why would they decide to erode their customer base and hence the ROI from those $8 billion they paid for Skype? It's not like Office for Mac is crippled in any way, besides platform portability issues, is it?
IIRC, the linux port uses Qt.
If it does, it hides it really well by static linkage.
So no Maemo bloat, as WP7 doesn't include Qt.
What is this supposed to mean? The Skype stack needs some base layer functionality, and depending on the build, "embedded" Skype engines even link their own libc copy statically.
Which makes me suspicious of the deal Elop signed - MS could have ported the Harmattan version in, more or less, a month if Nokia had been encouraged to port Qt to Metro.
This latter task is of course so easy to do in a year, looking from one's armchair. And no, there is no modern Qt-based Skype port to begin with: the Linux client uses old Qt widgets, not QtQuick. Harmattan stock UIs where Skype is used as one of the backends use neither: theirs is godawful MeegoTouch (one of the causes of MeeGo's demise, but don't get me started on that).