
The Story of Nokia MeeGo - zxcdw
http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/nokia-meegon-tarina,10
======
toyg
Well, after reading the whole thing, I don't think there's anything there that
wasn't already known.

Even _I_ knew the Symbian and Maemo/Meego teams were at odds on basically
everything. The way they dismissed each others' choices, it was transparent
that neither org really wanted to have _any conversation_ with the other.
There was incredulity in Symbian circles that Symbian could ever go away,
despite its glaring limitations and '90s architecture. The fact that they
managed to sell a lot of N96, thanks to commercial agreements and huge
marketing and despite the fact that it was a complete lemon of a phone,
blindsided them to the rise of iOS and especially Android.

I used to be mad at Elop, but to be fair, he inherited a terrible state of
things from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who was fundamentally a bean-counter and
exec without a real vision or grasp of modern tech. Elop basically panicked,
and called in his Microsoft friends to sort it out, which wasn't the best idea
but probably not the worst either. When two CEOs in a row act stupidly, it's
usually a symptom that the entire board is bad (see also: HP), so I don't
expect Nokia to get back into shape anytime soon.

~~~
nuje
> I don't think there's anything there that wasn't already known.

You must be a Nokia insider then: the various generations of UI design, types
devices in development (with pictures!) that never made it, etc were new and
fascinating imo.

~~~
toyg
If by insider you mean "someone cursorily involved in the Maemo community",
yeah. Most of those changes and decisions were mentioned in (admittedly niche)
public forums, thanks to the pseudo-opensource development model they adopted
throughout. (I do agree many pics are new though.)

Indeed, the continuous flow of half-assed pseudo-announces and cancellations
were one of the causes I lost interest in the whole thing: at various points
after the N900 was released (late), it was clear that Nokia did not have a
real Maemo/Meego roadmap for the next 6 months, let alone 5 years.

I went to "developer engagement" events and their evangelists were pushing Qt
_for Symbian_ , with Maemo/Meego being a footnote. In a very European way, one
could see how company grassroots weren't really behind the official corporate
line that "our future is Meego", and were doing their own thing instead.

UI libs would change every three months; I wanted to work with Python, so
every time I had to wait for official bindings to be updated, and by the time
they were usable and somewhat documented, when bugs were discussed somebody
would drop by and say "oh, are you still doing _that_? The next phone will
likely use <something different> instead, so your app probably won't work
there". It was almost insulting when they offered us phones for 'development'
activities and at the same time implied these would never see mass release and
even frameworks couldn't be used as a reference for future releases. It was
like Microsoft had tried to sell you a PC with Windows 3.1 for "development
purposes" while preparing to release Windows XP.

Their Maemo evangelists were more like _apologists_ , forced to blatantly spin
"strategic moves" that made no sense. Precious time was lost squabbling about
rules for "community engagement", when developers were hungry for working code
and reliable docs. Compared to how Apple, MS and google foster their 3rd-party
ecosystem, the Maemo world was strictly amateur-hour.

If I sound bitter, it's because I really "wanted to believe" (Python/Qt
development on a fast-selling high-quality phone? OMG!) and felt quite let
down at the time.

------
guylhem
Thanks a lot for this story. Elop decisions, especially considering the
actuals products and this story, might have been the best at the time. As
people say, "to fight the next battle, you must first survive"

I remember feeling uneasy when the Qt move was announced, but this story gives
all the background info, and all the pieces fit it.

Qt might have seemed like a good idea given the proximity of trolltech and the
possibility of joining Symbian and Meego, but it was just a too much - even
for Nokia. They should have killed either one of the projects so that the
other could have survived - preferably Symbian since it might have looked like
another PalmOS-style agony.

Anyway, Nokia seems to be back on track. If the windows phone deal goes sour
and Jolla proves that Qt was a good idea, Nokia can still license it - or try
resurrecting something else like webos.

I sure don't see them going the Android route, where the phones have become a
commodity.

Too bad they didn't keep using GTK. The N900 was not market ready, but with
another couple of iterations it could have been. Trying to add in Qt just
sealed their coffin.

(BTW I deeply love my N900, which I still use.)

~~~
bad_user
Android phones are not a commodity. That a lot of the Android phone models are
cheap, goes to show that there is a really big market for phones that sell for
a few bucks on a 2-year old contract.

However take for instance the Galaxy S phones. Galaxy S III sells for €569
without a contract in my country, and with a subsidised price of €219 for a
€37/month contract.

That's not cheap, and it isn't a commodity. Down here Galaxy S devices have
always been at about the same price as iPhone models. And people still buy
them like crazy, even if the average monthly salary is less than €1000 per
month.

The market is big and only growing. There is enough room for everybody, low-
end or high-end.

It's a little ironic you say that though, because that is how Nokia grew, by
commoditizing phones. They basically created the feature-phone market.

~~~
pjmlp
In Germany you can buy Android based mobiles for €100, granted their quality
and speed leaves a lot to be desired.

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nerdo
This image tells the story of Nokia: <http://i.imgur.com/OWm3O.jpg>

~~~
yk
Quite interesting. Nokia is obviously the Xerox PARC of mobile.

~~~
kalleboo
Except that Nokia marketed everything and made massive profits

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whome001
"On TaskuMuro.com, we have been actively following the development of Nokia’s
smartphones, and also the development of the Linux based Maemo and MeeGo
operating systems.

Because there is so little information publicly available about the history of
MeeGo, we left a message on our MuroBBS discussion forum in the summer of
2012. In the message we asked people involved in the MeeGo development to
share their stories."

------
mutation
Excellent article but it still doesn't explain apparent "hatred" towards N9
and everything related to it. You cannot find it on Nokia support pages, for
example. On the products list it's always on the third or fourth page after a
lot of old Symbian phones (I'm browsing localised version for my country).
It's like they're (current Nokia management) somewhat ashamed of it.

~~~
toyg
Well, they probably are. They spent 6 months badmouthing the entire
Maemo/Meego operation, heralding the Microsoft deal with much fanfare, and
then it turned out the N9 was a peach after all, with a possibly _better_ UI
than the much-celebrated Windows Phone. If the N9 had sold too well, they
would have looked like idiots.

Not that they look much different now...

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MatthewPhillips
Would like to hear more on the relationship between Nokia and Intel. It always
seemed like Intel was only in it half-way whether with Moblin or Meego.

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lucasr
Nice read. I really enjoyed my time in the OSSO (then Maemo) team at Nokia
from the N800 until the beginnings of the N900. The team was incredible with
core hackers from the biggest and coolest open source projects out there
(Linux, X, GStreamer, GNOME, GTK, Telepathy, etc).

It also feels great to know that I left the company at the right time :-)

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pjmlp
It pretty much sums up the way Nokia used to work when I was an employee in
the Networks division.

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cpeterso
Living in California, my instinct to read the company name "Jolla" as _"hoi-
uh"_ (like La Jolla :), but Google Translate pronounces it as _"yo-luh"_.

