Re:Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago
by webmobdev on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @12:40AM
(#28206295)
Coincidentally, I was just reading something related to this debacle here - https://workplace.stackexchange.com/a/177611 - too. And I do wonder how Nokia's future would have been different if they had fully focused on Meego / Sailfish OS instead of adopting Windows Mobile Platform. (Sailfish OS was developed by ex-Nokia developers).
Re:Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago
by wbertberw on Monday August 16, 2021 @12:37PM
(#28199987)
> not only meant Nokia had to rewrite its proprietary UI and repackage everything
this is half-correct. Maemo->Meego did shift from GTK to QT, but they kept the Debian packaging on the N9 (the only device to ship with Meego)
Re:Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago
by senko on Monday August 16, 2021 @01:29PM
(#28200618)
You're right, tho I believe that was only intended as a halfway step (so even more breakage, yay!).
Nokia spectaculary blew its own foot with deprecating Maemo after only a few months - either the stupidest move in history or result of internal power struggles - and force-marrying it with Intel's Moblin (itself a decent mobile OS) to create unholy mess that was Meego.
The book (btw awesome find, gonna read it at the first chance I get!) agrees with my recollection of the events:
> The operating system was named Maemo. As soon as it was permitted to be fitted on a phone, that first Maemo smartphone was a reasonable success. It attracted a community of open source developers who created Maemo apps. With 12,000 members, this was the largest mobile developer community in the world. Then Nokia did something remarkable. It partnered with the chip manufacturer Intel, and the two companies renamed Maemo to MeeGo.
Consider Maemo was Debian-based, using GTK, and Moblin was RedHat-based, using QT. It not only meant Nokia had to rewrite its proprietary UI and repackage everything, it also threw all the thriving dev community under the bus.