I came across something interesting titled "Apple iPhone was launched, presentation (2007-12-31)"[0].
It mentions Nokia N800 and implicitly implies a lineage of devices (N770 > N800 > N810 > N900 > N9).
Sometimes I wonder what Nokia might have been like in a timeline without Jobs and Ballmer.
> Leverage N800 with its touch screen - it competes nearly in the same arena
It’s very telling that someone at Nokia thought it’s basically like the iPhone. In fact the N800 was a thick plastic chunk with no cellular, a resistive touchscreen, and a stylus-driven GTK+ user interface. Its most popular software feature among its userbase seemed to be that you can open XTerm.
They did eventually make an iPhone competitor on this same Linux platform (the N9), but it took five years. “Competes nearly in the same arena” indeed — in the same sense that my 8-year-old daughter competes in Simone Biles’s arena because she also likes jumping and takes some gym classes.
N800 and other Open Source Software Operations' devices were not allowed to have cellular connection because of Nokia internal politics. N9 development was also hindred by the Maemo->MeeGo and the GTK->Qt transitions. And it was killed in its infancy in the Microsoft takeover.
There's no denying that Nokia screwed up but it was mostly because of stupid politics, not technology.
Both Maemo and WebOS were better UIs than iPhone and Android, and eventually both iPhone and Android had pretty much adopted a Frankensteined combination of the two. Android's process "card" UI is indistinguishable from WebOS, and I think it was designed by the same person.
Nokia could have competed, they were just internally a mess. So, the board wanted to sell to Microsoft, and brought in a guy whose job was to wreck Nokia and shepherd the deal (and pretend like it wasn't intentional.) The N900 showed too much potential, so I assume part of the wrecking was to force them to rewrite Maemo into Meego for the N9, which would be buried on release.
The resistive touchscreen was amazing on the N900, and I have no earthly idea why people claim to prefer capacitive screens (my guess is a bunch of cheap Chinese products with cheap resistant screens.) They hate being able to point with precision without a special pointer, not having to wear special gloves or to take off your gloves in the cold, and a screen that doesn't shatter?
You had an N900. How was the screen worse than any contemporary (or current) capacitive screen? I still an N900 as an mp3 player daily, and I still don't understand.
It looked like Nokia felt shaken by the iPhone and had the right mindset at the time, but their actions didn't match what was presented, the world would have been different indeed if Nokia had stepped up their game in this time.
I came across something interesting titled "Apple iPhone was launched, presentation (2007-12-31)"[0]. It mentions Nokia N800 and implicitly implies a lineage of devices (N770 > N800 > N810 > N900 > N9). Sometimes I wonder what Nokia might have been like in a timeline without Jobs and Ballmer.
> Leverage N800 with its touch screen - it competes nearly in the same arena
[0]: https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_926740c7-5165-439a-a0...
I had the N770, the N800 and also the N900.
It’s very telling that someone at Nokia thought it’s basically like the iPhone. In fact the N800 was a thick plastic chunk with no cellular, a resistive touchscreen, and a stylus-driven GTK+ user interface. Its most popular software feature among its userbase seemed to be that you can open XTerm.
They did eventually make an iPhone competitor on this same Linux platform (the N9), but it took five years. “Competes nearly in the same arena” indeed — in the same sense that my 8-year-old daughter competes in Simone Biles’s arena because she also likes jumping and takes some gym classes.
N800 and other Open Source Software Operations' devices were not allowed to have cellular connection because of Nokia internal politics. N9 development was also hindred by the Maemo->MeeGo and the GTK->Qt transitions. And it was killed in its infancy in the Microsoft takeover.
There's no denying that Nokia screwed up but it was mostly because of stupid politics, not technology.
Both Maemo and WebOS were better UIs than iPhone and Android, and eventually both iPhone and Android had pretty much adopted a Frankensteined combination of the two. Android's process "card" UI is indistinguishable from WebOS, and I think it was designed by the same person.
Nokia could have competed, they were just internally a mess. So, the board wanted to sell to Microsoft, and brought in a guy whose job was to wreck Nokia and shepherd the deal (and pretend like it wasn't intentional.) The N900 showed too much potential, so I assume part of the wrecking was to force them to rewrite Maemo into Meego for the N9, which would be buried on release.
The resistive touchscreen was amazing on the N900, and I have no earthly idea why people claim to prefer capacitive screens (my guess is a bunch of cheap Chinese products with cheap resistant screens.) They hate being able to point with precision without a special pointer, not having to wear special gloves or to take off your gloves in the cold, and a screen that doesn't shatter?
You had an N900. How was the screen worse than any contemporary (or current) capacitive screen? I still an N900 as an mp3 player daily, and I still don't understand.
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It looked like Nokia felt shaken by the iPhone and had the right mindset at the time, but their actions didn't match what was presented, the world would have been different indeed if Nokia had stepped up their game in this time.
Don't forget Elop! He hitched Nokia's wagon to Microsoft's horses and then rode it straight off a cliff.