Apple, well, just look at what happened to them during the years that Jobs was away from the company. Given the cultish way he runs things, I doubt there's any one being groomed as a successor. His form of authoritarian leadership and focus has brought the company from the brink of disaster in the mid 90s to where it is today- but all bets are off on what happens to it in future. Charismatic leadership will only go as far as the life expectancy of the leader- companies that can institutionalize leadership are the ones that have a better chance of continuing.
As for OpenOffice accessibility, kiss it goodbye on Linux.
Meanwhile, IBM makes available Lotus Symphony for free(also available as a component of Notes 8+). Which fully supports OpenDocument standards, as well as Office 2007. And is also accessibility compliant, as are all other IBM products (due to previously mentioned US govt. standards). And is available on Windows, Ubuntu and Mac OS.
Of course Symphony isn't perfect, it has its drawbacks as well.
But when you buy an Apple product, by definition you are buying into a locked ecosystem, unlike the situations I outlined before. So it pays to be well informed beforehand-are you willing to give up this flexibility in exchange for the looks/ease of use/hipness factor ? I make it a point to mention these things to anyone going in for an iPod.(iPhone's a total flop here in India)
I certainly did not expect Nokia to be first to ship smartphones with a very compatible Linux distribution and root access out of the box.
Why not? Unlike a certain other American company, they have no history of trying to lock in their customers or dictate what their phones can or cannot do. This is the latest step. Until 2006, Nokia, as well as other phone manufacturers, had a proprietary 'Pop Port' interface on their phones, so you had to buy Nokia branded wired headsets, datacables etc. When MP3 playback became popular on phones, they were one of the first to switch to standard audio jacks and miniUSB (The N91 music phone started off with this feature). The current generation also supports charging through USB. If you look at the other hardware specs, all open hardware standards are supported- from microUSB memory cards to USB mass storage to media transfer protocol. Photos can be posted to any online service that supports RSS directly from the camera and gallery. The now discontinued LifeBlog application is a full fledged blogging client, again with XML RSS publishing support for all popular blogs.
Given their history of providing support for common standards and interoperability, it's hardly surprising they've chosen a Linux based open source OS for their next generation of smartphones.
Quake 1, 2 and 3 have already been ported to Symbian, with full OpenGL support. You just need the data files from the original game and you're good to go. The Quake 1 port even includes the original music by Nine Inch Nails in the background- I'm yet to see even a PC updated version that does that. The original game music was in the form of CD tracks, as was Quake 2.
when entities are allowed to act completely in their own self-interest, they do so, to the detriment of others.
Totally agree. Just look at 19th century factories in Europe. Back then there were no workers' rights, no labor laws, or safety regulations. It was partly in response to the abysmal working conditions that Karl Marx proposed his theories on communism and (my conjecture) the fear of losing out to total communism resulted in better laws and regulations. Let companies work in total 'self interest' divorced from regulation and control and we'll go back to that scenario.
I was 15 when Doom was launched. In fact, I fondly remember the times all the classic FPSes (Quake 1/2, Duke 3D, Halflife, Heretic, Hexen) were released, and playing the demos bundled with magazine CDs. The first time I tried multiplayer was in college, around 1998. Friend of mine had 2 PCs at home, and we would play Halflife 1 and Quake 2/3 multiplayer. On weekends, 3 other guys would converge at his place for LAN parties. I ran into him recently, turns out he STILL plays Halflife 1, finding all the new games with activation etc too complicated. We had another game together for old times' sake and it was just as much fun as before. When it comes to single player, I use DosBOX to play . Currently I'm playing Fallout 1. There are still tons of perfectly playable and fun games from a generation ago, if you're not picky about graphics.
Imagine the kids playing today..with all the bullshit activation and servers going down, do you think they'll be able to revisit the games of today 10 or 20 years hence?
Here's one solution, if you like Apple hardware but can't stand the software lockin - RockBox. Opensource firmware for iPods and other mp3 players, that adds many more features than normal.
I recently bought a Canon Powershot A1100IS 12.1mp digital camera. When I plugged it in, Win XP instantly detected it as a camera, and now I can just browse to it via Windows Explorer and copy off the photos I took. No need for any third party software (even though a CD was provided with some Canon software), thanks to the camera supporting PTP. I found myself marveling that an almost decade old operating system could still work with a fairly new piece of hardware like this one, thanks to support for common standards in hardware. The same way, my Nokia N82 supports MTP as well as mass storage mode, so since I already use Winamp, I can use it to manage music on it. For copying larger files, like movies (I got a16 GB microSD card recently), I can set it to USB mass storage mode for faster transfer. And finally, I have a Creative Zen Vision W 60GB media player, which can play Divx/Xvid/mpeg and supports MTP. So again, I can manage music with Winamp or Media Monkey or even Windows Media Player. If I want to share songs or movies with someone, they plug it in and thanks to MTP in Windows, it shows up without requiring any further drivers. Both the Zen and the N82 also support TV out using standard cables, so I've used that to show photos/movies when I visit a friend's place.
THIS, for me, is the real advantage of open standards for hardware. If I lose the accessories, I can easily use another miniUSB/microUSB/TV out cable, and transfer stuff between computers or share files with others. A vanilla iP[od|hone] is all about proprietary hardware and interfaces, and you simply cannot get this kind of flexibility and convenience.
One response to this would be that Microsoft needs s/Ballmer/Jobs/g. But if you think about it, they actually need a Lou Gerstner. IBM was more or less the same way as they are now during the PC/desktop times of the early 90s- stifled by bureaucracy and personal fiefdoms, increasingly irrelevant in the market, to the extent that there was talk of it being broken up. Gerstner transitioned it to focus on software and services as well, changed the corporate culture, and wrote a great book on pirouetting pachyderms about it afterwards.
They (Microsoft) do have talent, as mentioned in the article, but no one will stick on much longer if these issues are not sorted out.
The Nokia N-Gage and its successor N-Gage QD, circa 2002-04. Both ran S60, and by definition supported multitasking, POP/IMAP mail etc. They called it the 'taco' phone because it was shaped like one. Ergonomically suited for gaming, atrocious to hold and carry as a phone. After it flopped, Nokia re-launched the N-Gage brand as a gaming platform for N-series, with the N81 being the first device. The N-Gage service was like Steam for mobile phones- you could sign in and download demos/buy full versions, upload your game stats and even multiplayer. Even this didn't work out well for them and the service was shut down last year.
Here's the retarded part-On 2nd Edition you could 'authorize' a midlet for permissions even if it was unsigned. So if I had the Gmail J2ME app (it didn't exist back in 2005 ^^) I could tell it to be always allowed to access the net. On 3rd edition, the behavior is like Vista- I have seen even *signed* midlets being prompted. If you use any midlet that accesses the net you'll get prompted - first for permission, then for the access point to use!
So it's not possible to write auto-update type applications like yours with J2ME(on Nokia 3rd Edition, I don't know about others)- you'll have to write a native Symbian app to do this.
The certificate is the only point of contact with Symbian- you're free to distribute the app via your own website or other sites like GetJar. At least they don't arbitrarily block applications the way Apple does from its store. Since the topic here is concerned with amateur programming/hacking/tinkering, Symbian does provide OpenSigned certificates for personal use. Since it's linked to your phones' IMEI, it means you can't distribute apps this way.
For commercial deployment, Symbian uses certificates to control what device capabilities can be accessed. You have to buy an annually renewable license whose pricing depends on how many device features your app requires. (and you cannot register for a certificate using a public email provider like gmail or yahoo)
This has helped to greatly reduce mobile malware at least for S60 3rd Edition- unsigned apps will not be installed, (and anyway you will always be prompted before anything gets installed, i.e. no drive by downloads)
One of the root CAs was leaked and there are Chinese websites where you can submit your IMEI number and get a self signing certificate (for installing hacked/cracked symbian apps).
Then again- if you choose to install potential malware after ignoring your phone's prompts, it's not the fault of Symbian.
Bottom line is, they have established a robust system of deploying trusted and verified apps for casual non technical users who won't mess with the device. And this has been around since 2006.
All this without creating a ludicrous single point Appstore with arbitrary rules.
You'd be surprised at the thousands of trivial cross phone J2ME apps that are there. Not every app has to be fancy, over on GetJar.com you'll find lots of J2ME apps that will work with any phone.
After all J2ME developers too would want as wide an audience for their apps as possible without restricting to one vendor/platform!
Yes-I've had a 2nd Edition phone also before, and this was done to reduce the amount of malware that's going around. If you google for Symbian malware, you'll find most of it is for 2nd edition and there's very few 3rd edition malware because all verified apps have to be signed by Symbian.
There are hacks available, using Nemesis Service Suite or other firmware utilities, where you can put in your own self signed cert into the keystore (used mostly for installing self signed pirated apps)
How's Nokia closed? They don't lock down their OS the way Apple does, anyone can download the S60 SDK and write applications for it, or even just use J2ME. Nokia phones have been customizable for ages, even the antediluvian ones like the 3300 or 5100 from around 12-15 years ago allowed you to change ringtones and wallpapers! More hardcore hackers change the region product code in the firmware when they're impatient for a new firmware update that's not yet available for their country/region.
If you ask me, Nokia shows how you can provide a consistent and easy user interface (across all their handsets, not just smartphones) for the technically challenged, yet leave the platform open enough for the power users/hackers/modders etc.
Case in point- I have both Opera Mobile and Skyfire on my N82, even though the built in S60 browser is pretty decent. Whereas Apple blocks any application that competes with or duplicates features they provide, so you can't have a separate browser application written for the iPhone.
Why not Symbian? It's the most widely used mobile platform in the world, which is considerably bigger than the US. And there's no lame restrictions on what can or cannot be done, there's a full Carbide C++ SDK for native apps (for S60) and there's been heaps of apps since 2002 that nobody in the USA has ever heard of.
We keep hearing how IE6 has remained in corporate use because of legacy applications that won't run on anything else. Now considering Google's popularity, all the holdovers will be forced to upgrade if they want to keep using it. Alternately, we may see an increase in use of other search engines like Bing.
The question is whether it is a good investment, when they can rely on the US and Europe -- at least for non-manned access to space.
We don't have to. We've had that capability for about 35 years now, starting with SLV-3 in the 70s, and going upto ASLV, PSLV and now GSLV (look em all up on Wiki). India's first satellite, Aryabhata was launched in 1975. Since then, we've made incremental advances in homegrown launch technology (with the aforementioned vehicles) and India's ISRO now also launches satellites for other countries. Chandrayaan was the first time we sent anything beyond Earth's orbit, and the manned mission follows as the next logical step.
..as long as we're hobbled by the speed of light, we're not going anywhere or receiving any ET signals. What we know of exoplanets is due to mass spectroscopy. We can figure out the gaseous composition at best, not more than that. The fastest manmade object currently is Voyager 1, traveling at 17km/s, or about 0.000056c. Either we break the speed of light or invent warp drive, without that we're just going to be stuck within our system, at best with trips to Mars and Europa (whenever that happens)
Apple should start selling iPhones optionally unlocked, at a higher price if need be. People will STILL queue up to buy it, that's how popular it has become. Those who may have shunned it because of AT&T and who also couldn't be bothered with the jailbreak hassles would return to buy it. And they have no hope in hell of significantly penetrating other more open markets(like mine, India where we've long since been accustomed to buying our phones at full price independent of any operator restrictions) unless they do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple, well, just look at what happened to them during the years that Jobs was away from the company. Given the cultish way he runs things, I doubt there's any one being groomed as a successor. His form of authoritarian leadership and focus has brought the company from the brink of disaster in the mid 90s to where it is today- but all bets are off on what happens to it in future.
Charismatic leadership will only go as far as the life expectancy of the leader- companies that can institutionalize leadership are the ones that have a better chance of continuing.
As for OpenOffice accessibility, kiss it goodbye on Linux.
Meanwhile, IBM makes available Lotus Symphony for free(also available as a component of Notes 8+). Which fully supports OpenDocument standards, as well as Office 2007. And is also accessibility compliant, as are all other IBM products (due to previously mentioned US govt. standards). And is available on Windows, Ubuntu and Mac OS.
Of course Symphony isn't perfect, it has its drawbacks as well.
As well as anything else that might be outside... glass elevators, vermicious knids, etc.
For those who didn't know, that's a Roald Dahl reference, from 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'
But when you buy an Apple product, by definition you are buying into a locked ecosystem, unlike the situations I outlined before.
So it pays to be well informed beforehand-are you willing to give up this flexibility in exchange for the looks/ease of use/hipness factor ?
I make it a point to mention these things to anyone going in for an iPod.(iPhone's a total flop here in India)
I certainly did not expect Nokia to be first to ship smartphones with a very compatible Linux distribution and root access out of the box.
Why not? Unlike a certain other American company, they have no history of trying to lock in their customers or dictate what their phones can or cannot do. This is the latest step. Until 2006, Nokia, as well as other phone manufacturers, had a proprietary 'Pop Port' interface on their phones, so you had to buy Nokia branded wired headsets, datacables etc. When MP3 playback became popular on phones, they were one of the first to switch to standard audio jacks and miniUSB (The N91 music phone started off with this feature).
The current generation also supports charging through USB.
If you look at the other hardware specs, all open hardware standards are supported- from microUSB memory cards to USB mass storage to media transfer protocol. Photos can be posted to any online service that supports RSS directly from the camera and gallery. The now discontinued LifeBlog application is a full fledged blogging client, again with XML RSS publishing support for all popular blogs.
Given their history of providing support for common standards and interoperability, it's hardly surprising they've chosen a Linux based open source OS for their next generation of smartphones.
Quake 1, 2 and 3 have already been ported to Symbian, with full OpenGL support. You just need the data files from the original game and you're good to go. The Quake 1 port even includes the original music by Nine Inch Nails in the background- I'm yet to see even a PC updated version that does that. The original game music was in the form of CD tracks, as was Quake 2.
when entities are allowed to act completely in their own self-interest, they do so, to the detriment of others.
Totally agree. Just look at 19th century factories in Europe. Back then there were no workers' rights, no labor laws, or safety regulations. It was partly in response to the abysmal working conditions that Karl Marx proposed his theories on communism and (my conjecture) the fear of losing out to total communism resulted in better laws and regulations.
Let companies work in total 'self interest' divorced from regulation and control and we'll go back to that scenario.
I was 15 when Doom was launched. In fact, I fondly remember the times all the classic FPSes (Quake 1/2, Duke 3D, Halflife, Heretic, Hexen) were released, and playing the demos bundled with magazine CDs. The first time I tried multiplayer was in college, around 1998. Friend of mine had 2 PCs at home, and we would play Halflife 1 and Quake 2/3 multiplayer. On weekends, 3 other guys would converge at his place for LAN parties. I ran into him recently, turns out he STILL plays Halflife 1, finding all the new games with activation etc too complicated.
We had another game together for old times' sake and it was just as much fun as before.
When it comes to single player, I use DosBOX to play . Currently I'm playing Fallout 1. There are still tons of perfectly playable and fun games from a generation ago, if you're not picky about graphics.
Imagine the kids playing today..with all the bullshit activation and servers going down, do you think they'll be able to revisit the games of today 10 or 20 years hence?
Here's one solution, if you like Apple hardware but can't stand the software lockin - RockBox. Opensource firmware for iPods and other mp3 players, that adds many more features than normal.
I recently bought a Canon Powershot A1100IS 12.1mp digital camera. When I plugged it in, Win XP instantly detected it as a camera,
and now I can just browse to it via Windows Explorer and copy off the photos I took. No need for any third party software (even though a CD was provided with some Canon software), thanks to the camera supporting PTP.
I found myself marveling that an almost decade old operating system could still work with a fairly new piece of hardware like this one, thanks to support for common standards in hardware.
The same way, my Nokia N82 supports MTP as well as mass storage mode, so since I already use Winamp, I can use it to manage music on it. For copying larger files, like movies (I got a16 GB microSD card recently), I can set it to USB mass storage mode for faster transfer.
And finally, I have a Creative Zen Vision W 60GB media player, which can play Divx/Xvid/mpeg and supports MTP. So again, I can manage music with Winamp or Media Monkey or even Windows Media Player. If I want to share songs or movies with someone, they plug it in and thanks to MTP in Windows, it shows up without requiring any further drivers.
Both the Zen and the N82 also support TV out using standard cables, so I've used that to show photos/movies when I visit a friend's place.
THIS, for me, is the real advantage of open standards for hardware. If I lose the accessories, I can easily use another miniUSB/microUSB/TV out cable, and transfer stuff between computers or share files with others. A vanilla iP[od|hone] is all about proprietary hardware and interfaces, and you simply cannot get this kind of flexibility and convenience.
One response to this would be that Microsoft needs s/Ballmer/Jobs/g. But if you think about it, they actually need a Lou Gerstner.
IBM was more or less the same way as they are now during the PC/desktop times of the early 90s- stifled by bureaucracy and personal fiefdoms, increasingly irrelevant in the market, to the extent that there was talk of it being broken up. Gerstner transitioned it to focus on software and services as well, changed the corporate culture, and wrote a great book on pirouetting pachyderms about it afterwards.
They (Microsoft) do have talent, as mentioned in the article, but no one will stick on much longer if these issues are not sorted out.
In AD 2101, war was beginning...
The Nokia N-Gage and its successor N-Gage QD, circa 2002-04. Both ran S60, and by definition supported multitasking, POP/IMAP mail etc.
They called it the 'taco' phone because it was shaped like one. Ergonomically suited for gaming, atrocious to hold and carry as a phone.
After it flopped, Nokia re-launched the N-Gage brand as a gaming platform for N-series, with the N81 being the first device. The N-Gage service was like Steam for mobile phones- you could sign in and download demos/buy full versions, upload your game stats and even multiplayer. Even this didn't work out well for them and the service was shut down last year.
Here's the retarded part-On 2nd Edition you could 'authorize' a midlet for permissions even if it was unsigned. So if I had the Gmail J2ME app (it didn't exist back in 2005 ^^) I could tell it to be always allowed to access the net.
On 3rd edition, the behavior is like Vista- I have seen even *signed* midlets being prompted.
If you use any midlet that accesses the net you'll get prompted - first for permission, then for the access point to use!
So it's not possible to write auto-update type applications like yours with J2ME(on Nokia 3rd Edition, I don't know about others)- you'll have to write a native Symbian app to do this.
The certificate is the only point of contact with Symbian- you're free to distribute the app via your own website or other sites like GetJar. At least they don't arbitrarily block applications the way Apple does from its store.
Since the topic here is concerned with amateur programming/hacking/tinkering, Symbian does provide OpenSigned certificates for personal use.
Since it's linked to your phones' IMEI, it means you can't distribute apps this way.
For commercial deployment, Symbian uses certificates to control what device capabilities can be accessed. You have to buy an annually renewable license whose pricing depends on how many device features your app requires.
(and you cannot register for a certificate using a public email provider like gmail or yahoo)
This has helped to greatly reduce mobile malware
at least for S60 3rd Edition- unsigned apps will not be installed, (and anyway you will always be prompted before anything gets installed, i.e. no drive by downloads)
One of the root CAs was leaked and there are Chinese websites where you can submit your IMEI number and get a self signing certificate (for installing hacked/cracked symbian apps).
Then again- if you choose to install potential malware after ignoring your phone's prompts, it's not the fault of Symbian.
Bottom line is, they have established a robust system of deploying trusted and verified apps for casual non technical users who won't mess with the device. And this has been around since 2006.
All this without creating a ludicrous single point Appstore with arbitrary rules.
You'd be surprised at the thousands of trivial cross phone J2ME apps that are there. Not every app has to be fancy, over on GetJar.com you'll find lots of J2ME apps that will work with any phone.
After all J2ME developers too would want as wide an audience for their apps as possible without restricting to one vendor/platform!
Yes-I've had a 2nd Edition phone also before, and this was done to reduce the amount of malware that's going around.
If you google for Symbian malware, you'll find most of it is for 2nd edition and there's very few 3rd edition malware because all verified apps have to be signed by Symbian.
There are hacks available, using Nemesis Service Suite or other firmware utilities, where you can put in your own self signed cert into
the keystore (used mostly for installing self signed pirated apps)
How's Nokia closed? They don't lock down their OS the way Apple does, anyone can download the S60 SDK and write applications for it, or even just use J2ME.
Nokia phones have been customizable for ages, even the antediluvian ones like the 3300 or 5100 from around 12-15 years ago allowed you to change ringtones and wallpapers!
More hardcore hackers change the region product code in the firmware when they're impatient for a new firmware update that's not yet available for their country/region.
If you ask me, Nokia shows how you can provide a consistent and easy user interface (across all their handsets, not just smartphones) for the technically challenged, yet leave the platform open enough for the power users/hackers/modders etc.
Case in point- I have both Opera Mobile and Skyfire on my N82, even though the built in S60 browser is pretty decent. Whereas Apple blocks any application that competes with or duplicates features they provide, so you can't have a separate browser application written for the iPhone.
Why not Symbian? It's the most widely used mobile platform in the world, which is considerably bigger than the US.
And there's no lame restrictions on what can or cannot be done, there's a full Carbide C++ SDK for native apps (for S60) and there's been heaps of apps since 2002 that nobody in the USA has ever heard of.
TFA says even regular search may not work properly
with IE6 going forward, and that would still be important.
We keep hearing how IE6 has remained in corporate use because of legacy applications that won't run on anything else. Now considering Google's popularity, all the holdovers will be forced to upgrade if they want to keep using it.
Alternately, we may see an increase in use of other search engines like Bing.
The question is whether it is a good investment, when they can rely on the US and Europe -- at least for non-manned access to space.
We don't have to. We've had that capability for about 35 years now, starting with SLV-3 in the 70s, and going upto ASLV, PSLV and now GSLV (look em all up on Wiki).
India's first satellite, Aryabhata was launched in 1975. Since then, we've made incremental advances in homegrown launch technology (with the aforementioned vehicles) and India's ISRO now also launches satellites for other countries.
Chandrayaan was the first time we sent anything beyond Earth's orbit, and the manned mission follows as the next logical step.
..Orbiter, a graphic novel about the cancellation of manned spaceflight after the disappearance of the last Shuttle mission.
..as long as we're hobbled by the speed of light, we're not going anywhere or receiving any ET signals. What we know of exoplanets is due to mass spectroscopy. We can figure out the gaseous composition at best, not more than that.
The fastest manmade object currently is Voyager 1, traveling at 17km/s, or about 0.000056c. Either we break the speed of light or invent warp drive, without that we're just going to be stuck within our system, at best with trips to Mars and Europa (whenever that happens)
Apple should start selling iPhones optionally unlocked, at a higher price if need be. People will STILL queue up to buy it, that's how popular it has become. Those who may have shunned it because of AT&T and who also couldn't be bothered with the jailbreak hassles would return to buy it.
And they have no hope in hell of significantly penetrating other more open markets(like mine, India where we've long since been accustomed to buying our phones at full price independent of any operator restrictions) unless they do so.