Posts by dogged 4790 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2009
@Khaptain
I seem to recall you stating that you're a native Francophone, so slack is required on spelling. However..
"definately" is an abomination, one you probably picked up from illiterate Anglophones on the internet.
It's "definitely", root word "finite". Pas difficile, parce que c'est comme "fini".
@eulampios -
Once again, you're making one mistake by implying that Nokia should have necessarily chosen only one OS vendor.
I'm not, you know. Once you decide you're outsourcing the OS requirement, Meego/Maemo is no longer an option. Android is crap on low-power handsets. MS are paying big money for Navteq. The options were -
a) keep Navteq but receive minimal revenue because there's no incentive for MS to buy the service,
b) scrap Navteq and make high-end Android handsets as well as WP which implies patent liability against Apple and total loss of Navteq revenue and investment,
c) keep Navteq, scrap Series 40/Asha and make high end WP phones and low end Android phones (which suck) or
d) Make money from Navteq, make high-end WP phones and low-end Asha/S40 phones. Which is what they went for.
You can't outsource OS development and keep Meego alive. The two are mutually exclusive.
@eulampios - I'll take these in order, shall I?
If you're really objective here, explain us why did Nokia put all of its dwindling eggs in one vendor's basket coincidental with the last Elop's employer?
Because they're Nokia, they were (at the time) the biggest player in the world and they weren't happy to be just another OEM. They had services to sell, such as Navteq mapping (which is undeniably better than any other vendor's mapping solution).
So they talked to Google. Would Google buy and use Navteq mapping? No. Would Google allow Nokia to set boundaries and definitions (important for the low-cost market in which Nokia traditionally shifts vast numbers) on the OS's requirements, capabilities and APIs? No. Would they chuck in a big bucket of cash as an incentive to go with them? No.
Microsoft evidently answered "yes" to all the above because that's what they've done. I'm not saying Elop's employment history wouldn't have made this easier - Elop would know who to approach and how to get the best deal out MS. Short of hiring a CEO out of Google, Nokia couldn't get that kind of insider knowledge on that side of the fence.
Regardless, if Nokia had gone Google, Nokia Maps services would be dead. All that money, thrown away. Their low-cost handsets would give the low-cost Android experience (which, unless carefully managed by a user prepared to tinker with their handset and kill battery+cpu munching background apps) sucks buttock. They would not have the transition cash.
Frankly, if Nokia had gone with Android after the MS offer had been finalized, any shareholder performing a decent due diligence check would have been wholly justified in suing the board for commercial negligence. Not such a great start for the new CEO.
Why killing Meego when it was ready?
What's the thing everyone goes on about regarding WP? No apps. Now, in WP's case, this is partly justified because third-parties have been really slow about building WP apps (especially banks and financial services) which is a problem. Oh, and Instagram, for all your sepia-toned crap photo sharing needs. Apart from that, the OS itself does most things. Meego doesn't. And it practically had zero apps. And yes, you could implement Android apps over it but that leaves you with a cut-price Android handset (which sucks) and wastes the OS. And as for gaining support - nobody else was going to use it. It would have been a Nokia-only thing. And it would have meant retaining the OS teams and all the politics, cost and trouble they brought with them because it wasn't finished. No OS is ever finished. You know that.
And let's talk about apps for a moment - Qt is a great way to write C++ but it's still C++ and as such it has a (partly justified) rep for being hard. To the Objective-C app writer, it would have looked like a scary new language (they'd be wrong but then, you have to be a deeply twisted individual to like Objective-C). The Android app-writer works in Java and Java coders are terrified of C++. MS were offering .NET instead - you can write apps in Visual fucking Basic (coding for retards) if you want to! Hell, you can use Python or C# or C++ or whatever you want to write WP apps. The potential pool of contributors to the WP ecosystem is orders of magnitude greater even than the potential pool of Android devs.
That's why they ditched Meego. It was a dead end OS, doomed from the moment that Java coders started to rule the app world.
I'm not saying it wasn't good - it was. But so was Betamax.
@Phil W - the "sudden and total lunge" thing wasn't sudden and wasn't total.
Series 40 and Asha phones are still being made, so scrub "total". As for "sudden", as I recall Nokia were in quite deep talks with both Google and MS before they made a decision. They got better terms from MS because Google didn't need them and weren't shy about saying so.
The thing about Elop is that he may be ex-MS but the emphasis is "ex". He wasn't there very long, he wasn't successful there (although he has been elsewhere), he was an "outsider" and as such, like many other outsiders in MS, never really fitted in and would have been looked at with suspicion by the insiders...
You can love, hate or not care about his decisions but blaming MS for them in the light of his (brief) history there is, I think, bloody stupid.
You know, at the risk (well, certainty really) of being called a shill again, I have to disagree.
Aside - Anyone who cares to disagree is quite free to call me wrong, that's fine, but please don't call me paid to be wrong.
On topic. When Nokia's board hired Elop, Symbian wasn't exactly doing well and Meego/Maemo was a money pit that they'd flung hundreds of millions of euros into for basically nothing except politics and a shonky implementation that had no app support. Article after article said that Nokia was floundering, and badly.
Further aside - Jess will be here shortly to tell me that Symbian is awesome and does all her housework as well having variable vibration controls and a "validate my feelings" function which nods sympathetically and provides free chocolate but the fact remains that it was sinking, if not in the market then certainly in the industry press and every single analyst estimate, and that's what the directors care about.
Elop's call was to outsource the OS and thus most of the software engineering outside the "services" area (basically Navteq and Ovi), consolidate software efforts on providing Nokia's (rebranded) Ovi services and stick what Nokia are justly famous for - quality hardware.
If you leave it at that, it's hard to fault as a decent CEO decision.
What upsets most people here is that Nokia went with MS instead of Google but really, that's just religious hatred which feeds this "trojan horse" confirmation bias. Why MS? Because money. Operating funds and (WP8) a working OS with an easy-to-use flavour. Nokia has historically - pre Symbian - favoured easy-to-use. The 3310, possibly the best-selling phone ever, had an OS so amazingly simple that anyone who could read could use it in less than a minute.
Nokia went with MS because MS gave them loads of cash and an OS that worked with their philosophy in the days when they sold billions of phones.
You can hate this. You can scream in unfulfilled fanboy rage about the lack of a Nokia Android handset if you want. But it's just the way it went.
I have a Motorola V3xx RAZR in my pocket so shill that, bitches.
The issue with PS3 games and not doing 1080p is in the publishers being payed off by microsoft to not allow higher than 720p because you know... xbox360 just doesn't do it.
Mine does 1080i without issue. Anyway, how do you explain PS3 exclusive titles that still don't do 1080p? Is that Microsoft's fault, too?
eeeesh, fanboys.
AC, you're asking the wrong horse. Nobody said it was a WP feature. Just a Nokia feature, since 7.0.
That's eight mentions of Microsoft on the main page .. and three mentions of Windows ...
And all but one of them deeply negative.
Hard to see, for example, how MS offering $Bn as part of a $22Bn buyout can be seen as "stalling" that buyout as the headline suggests and the article tries really hard to justify.
Oh, look an advert for a Chromebook and a Google Nexus at the top ...
Licking the hand that feeds The Register...
It's a bit like putting Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savile in charge of the local creche ("shudder").
While I respect the sentiment, both of those two were said to be interested in teenaged girls (in Glitter's case, with evidence beyond "somebody said so"). It's no less repulsive but at least the creche is safe.
I don't know if you've played with OneNote MX. It's a touch-optimised version of OneNote and it's really rather clever. One could even call it innovative, if one were of a mind to.
Try it. It's a free download from the Windows App Store. (Also runs on normal Win8).
I see no reason why the whole Office suite can't follow along in MX versions.
Oddly, I agree with Gavin pretty much 100%. "Outsiders" don't seem to last long at MS and Kempin wants to sell a book. Ballmer's weaknesses have historically been backing losers rather than Machiavellian plotting. If Sinofsky hadn't bailed (and nobody except he and the MS board really know why), this book would have sunk without a trace due to lack of media interest.
As it is, he'll probably sell a copy to Eadon (it can go on his "erotic fantasy" shelf) but that's about it.
Personally, I'd love to cut off the landline. And to stop paying £15.50/month extortion money for having a landline at all, even if it's never used and is run by a different provider.
What are the odds on Ofcom jumping on THAT little abuse of the customer?
And @j arthur rank - giffgaff seem to attract a great deal of hate, not least from the author of this article (see Reg passim). Personally, I've had no problems with them.
Trans: Our extra fees and the amount the councils will pay us on top of the original quotes if we're late and how much we get to soak the end-users and how many exchanges we plan to write-off as insufficient demand have not yet been approved.
BT's business as usual.
Your posting history reveals a curiously single-tracked mind.
An alt? Or a dungspreader*?
*opposite of an astroturfer
That's a question that's asking for trouble if I ever saw one.
There's people here who'd blame Microsoft for their ingrown toenail. Hell, dear old Barry Shitpeas once blamed MS for a fire in a Sony warehouse during the London Riots.
As I understand it, Google told MS they'd be axing EAS support on free accounts sometime last summer but they didn't say when. Internal MS folks say they repeatedly tried to get a timeframe from Mountain View without success but that's just their story - doubtless the Chocolate Factory would tell a different tale.
So that leaves the final notification of cut-off as the same as the Google press release. Not a great deal of time, really.
Who's to blame? Really?
Probably some accountant at Google trying to reduce the EAS licensing cost and make the year-end figures look better.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
