

MeeGo Preview Shows Why Nokia Embraced WP7 - nl
http://gigaom.com/2011/02/14/meego-preview-shows-why-nokia-embraced-wp7/

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rabidsnail
Shame. Maemo was actually pretty good. I used to have an n770 and it was a
nice, usable little device (if underpowered). It had an app store in 2005
(which was an apt repo with a web interface in front of it), and there was a
decent app selection since it was so easy to port linux desktop software to
it.

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CountSessine
This is what I don't understand. Why drop Maemo for a partnership with Intel
and a long road integrating Maemo and Moblin into Meego? What was Nokia
getting out of it? What could a "strategic partnership" with Intel have that
would ever be worth delaying to market a single Maemo device?

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pavlov
It seems obvious to the HN readership that integrating Maemo and Moblin would
be a difficult and risky task, but I'm not sure whether the Nokia leadership
understood that one year ago.

Basically, none of them were software people. The CEO, Mr Kallasvuo, was a
lawyer who had been at Nokia for decades. He had seen the company's meteoric
rise thanks to a combination of hardware expertise and logistic superiority,
and his actions suggest that he couldn't see any other path to success.

At Nokia, software was at best something extra that enabled specific features
of the hardware, not an integral part of the product.

At the end of 2009, they must have known that there's a problem on the
software side, but didn't know how to go about solving it. For a leadership
team of lawyers and career managers, a "strategic partnership" is a natural
solution. They probably thought that they will solve the integration problem
and accelerate Meego development by simply throwing another few thousand
contractors on it (failing to notice that this approach was meanwhile killing
Symbian).

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neworbit
Did anyone really think this was a surprise? Symbian? Not gonna do it. Nokia
clearly bet the future on Meego, decided that it wasn't going to cut it, and
hedged with WP7 instead of Android (because they weren't going to be
competitive with the rest of the world who had a year's head start on Android
devices).

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goombastic
Progress: plodding on despite your neighbors, commentators, pundits, and
others disparaging you. Changing directions due to group think and not
sticking to plans will kill any project.

Remember that people throw stones only at trees that have mangoes.

~~~
wvenable
Then there's throwing good money after bad, knowing when to fold, and cutting
one's losses. Idioms go both ways.

I find it telling that a smaller company like Palm could take Linux and roll
it into WebOS in an amazingly short time but two massive heavyweights, Intel
and Nokia, haven't managed anything close to the same.

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kajecounterhack
Am I the only one who doesn't really like the name MeeGo? I don't know
anything about it beyond the wikipedia page nor am I making any judgement
regarding it as a platform, but I think the name is kind of goofy. Haha.

~~~
ephermata
The name unfortunately is a homonym for "Mi-Go," who are an extra-terrestrial
race that appear in several stories of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The
Mi-Go are not particularly friendly. For example, in one story they extract a
person's brain from his head, then keep the brain alive in a jar while they
fly with it through space to their base on Yuggoth (Pluto).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi-go>

So if you ever see jokes along the lines of "MeeGo: the phone that extracts
your brain from your head!" or "MeeGo: the phone from Yuggoth" or similar,
that is why. I have not yet seen Charlie Stross reference this in one of the
Laundry stories, but I'm waiting for it. ; )

I would hope this is unintentional on Nokia and Intel's part. I mean, who
would intentionally name their OS after something in Lovecraft?

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joezydeco
That's definitely Qt/QML running on that tablet. I knew QML was a dog, but
that _that_ much of a dog running on current hardware. That's a shame.

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dolphenstein
Embraced like you embrace a smelly alcoholic uncle/aunty in a family
gathering. Sickening but unavoidable.

