Nokia hopes to fight off Apple iPhone gains with Linux

iPhone debuted in 2007.

With all the confusing hardware and software variations floating around in the smartphone field (including multiple instances of each from the same company!) is it any wonder that Apple is charging ahead with its singular focus on the iPhone/Touch OS?

A competitive analysis chart encompassing the smartphone industry would fill a wall-sized whiteboard.

The N900 is one thing but what about this?

It's a netbook.

[Yawn] Whatever...

They will never reach the ecosystem and tight integration of hard- and software that Apple has. And that is what does it for me.

Maemo is an interesting piece of kit, with a much brighter future than Symbian. But Nokia just doesn't know what it's doing with it. Some times it seems they want to really leverage their own flavor (instead of just using Android) to wring benefits from tighter control.

Other times they shrug and leave annoyances up to the community to fix.

I don't know if it's internal corporate politics or what, but the end result is -not- something that's going to meaningfully challenge the iPhone. Not until they straighten some shit out.

Well there goes another large company! Willing to shoot ones self in the head over linux! ... ~5 years to irrelevance!

KRR

It's a Nokia Netbook from a company that thisfar has concentrated on phone's, aluminium body, glass screen, it reminds me of something but I can't place my finger on it.

The only thing missing is OSX.

This is almost a perfect description of the attitude and state of the Linux community in general though.

Each year brings a new uber-cool "flavour" of Linux which solves many of the problems last years flavour, by establishing more control and more rules over what gets into the distro or not. Then next year there's a new flavour, and those in control of last year's flavour have relinquished some of their control in hopes of getting the community to solve some of it's many problems while this year's version is arguing for more control at the same time.

Rinse, repeat ...

it's Linux! the never-ending, almost-there, coulda-been, shoulda-been king of OS's

Exactly, LInux won't save them! They've missed the boat! The horse is already out of the barn! They rested on their laurels! And Apple/iPhone has snatched the market away from them!

Like MS, Dell, HP, RIM, Adobe, Motorola, Gateway, Sony, Palm, etc., etc., 'unfortunately, more foreskin than foresight!'

Competitors still do not understand why Apple is succeeding among consumers. Apple is the only company in the industry who builds a mobile OS that people actually want. Competitors understand features and eye candy, but not total user experience. They do not understand that software is not just something slapped onto hardware after the fact. Software and the way it works must be designed in lock-step with the hardware from the beginning for total integration.

Look at the companies that are actually making an OS; BB, Android, Palm, WM. The only OS that people actually want is mobile OSX. All others are just a disparate collection of features and eye-candy.

I agree sort of.

The few times I've seen the Pre I've actually been fairly impressed with the OS, and I like the hardware too. They seem to be the competition for Apple now - I agree that the others are not upto much.

I used to own a Maemo-powered N800. It was a decent bit of kit but the software wasn't ready for the prime time.

Still, an interesting device. It's got a desktop web-browser and a screen with enough pixels to make zooming and horizontal scrolling unnecessary.

All OSs have their strengths and weaknesses. Linux is the ultimate webserver in my opinion. Android actually makes a pretty decent phone too, not as good as iPhone but still pretty good. So it is possible for sure. Linux is highly customizable, can run in a tiny memory space, and is open source which makes it a good starting point not having to reinvent the wheel.

People sometimes forget that OS X and iPhone OS get a lot of their strength from unix which is essentially the same code base as Linux. So under the hood they are quite similar, mostly just the GUI is different.

You might want to correct that comment.

Weeks of rumors? Nokia gave details of this device last year.

And they have been selling Maemo devices since 2005

It's a bit too little and a bit too late. Nokia will remain a player but won't command the lead they once had. RIM and Apple will continue to take their marketshare.

I'm always amazed by the Apple critics who dismiss them as nothing but 'cool design'.
When will they understand that design follows function, not visa versa.

Because in the past, design was the primary selling point with regards to the general consumer. Apple has changed that by offering a smart device aimed at the general consumer AND the business person alike, and it has done so with resounding success. High design and functionality is now the norm which is why there are still lines for the iphone.

I understand where you are coming from and I don't dismiss Linux entirely, but in the context of a good consumer friendly OS for something as low-end as a phone, I don't think Linux of any variety is going to succeed.

It's main flaw is the very fact that it's completely open and a work of many hands. This often leads to confusing, overly complex GUI's that never strike out into "unknown territory" and never quite rid themselves of all the bugs and confusion because the preferred method of interaction by those designing the GUI, is actually the command line. This has always worked against it's adoption as a desktop operating system and will only work against it's adoption as a phone OS moreso.

What people are looking for in a portable OS on a minimal device like a phone, is utility and ease of use, not endless complexity. The very fact that it took the iPhone OS for people to start using phones for serious things illuminates that clearly. The absolutely huge growth of the smart-phone market since the iPhone's debut is arguably the most remarkable part of the iPhone's success. So it's not the kernel that's at issue here, but the GUI and the user interaction with the system, which not only has always been Linux's weakest point, but something that arguably cannot be designed by committee.

Android has a chance, only if individual hardware manufacturers get behind their own solid "branded" copy of it that's designed, by actual designers, not Linux-heads.

Also, just to be picky, Linux is "unix-like" but is not "based on Unix" or a Unix variant itself, but rather based on "Minix" which itself is a copy of some of Unix. Mac OS-X on the other hand, *is* Unix, (with a lot of GUI stuff bolted on). Granted, they are both a long way from the original thing that used to be called Unix, but to say Linux has the "same codebase" as Unix is misleading. The whole point of Linux is that it's not the same codebase as Unix.

Pixels are not the reason that the iPhone has zooming and horizontal scrolling, its the size of the screen that is the major limiting factor.

The issues on the desktop are quite different from the issues on phones. On the desktop there is way too much fragmentation and, as a result, inconsistency. The KDE/Gnome war hasn't helped at all. However, things aren't nearly as bad as you suggest. The latest releases of Ubuntu are very slick and usable and it looks as if Ubuntu is going to be the winner in the desktop distribution wars.

However, the main thing keeping Linux from success on the desktop has nothing to do with UI. It is, in one word - Applications. There are way too many popular applications that do not run on Linux. For example, there's no Microsoft Office and for a lot of people, OpenOffice won't cut it; there's no Adobe Photoshop and for a lot of people, GIMP is not a good enough replacement. Desktop Linux is stuck in a Catch-22 situation - software developers will not develop for it unless a lot of people buy it and people will not buy it unless most popular applications are available for it.

The mobile space is quite different. The UI issues are not there - there are several potentially good UIs for Linux in Android, Palm's WebOS and Nokia's Maemo. In each case the whole UI ihas been crreated by one company - no design by committee here. Both Nokia as well as Google have the resources to stay in the game long enough to make a success of their efforts. Palm, I'm not so sure of.


I'm sorry but this is plain wrong. UNIX is nothing more than a trademark of the Open Group which certifies a certain operating system as "Unix" if it adheres to certain specifications. These specifications include standards for APIs and formats for binary and object code files. Every few years the Open Group comes up with an updated specification. There have been 4 specifications so far - Unix 93, Unix 95, Unix 98 and Unix 03.

Any OS can be certified as a "Unix" if it satisfies these standards and the vendor pays a lot of money to the Open Group for compliance testing. The various Unixes out there probably do not share a line of code outside of header files. Not only do they not share any code, they are based on significantly different architectures. For example Solaris is a monolithic kernel OS, while Apple's OS X is based on the Mach microkernel.

Also, Linux has absolutely nothing to do with Minix. This is something that both the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds and the creator of Minix, Andy Tanenbaum have repeatedly said but still this stupid meme refuses to die. In fact, it could be argued that Apple's OS X is closer to Minix than Linux because both operating systems are microkernel-based. Linux, on the other hand has a monolithic kernel which is a lot like Solaris. Getting Unix certification for Linux should not be too difficult a task but it has never been done because Linus Torvalds does not consider it a worthwhile endeavor - therefore it cannot officially be called Unix but instead is given the designation 'Unix-like'. The same holds true for Minix.

Of course, most of the Unix-like OSes share some architectural similarities but even this isn't always the case. For example, IBM's z/OS (which runs on its mainframes) is Unix 95 compliant and an upcoming version could be (so says IBM) Unix 03 compliant. The z/OS architecture is wildly different from that of any other Unix and still it managed to get certified.

That's Unix 101 for you in a nutshell.

- HCE

The smartphone market is turning to be a variation of the Gorilla Game as described by Jeffrey Moore. Apple is definite leader with proprietary disruptive technology, a value added chain with carriers and 60k+ apps... not to mention a superior product. So it is the Gorilla in the jungle. The only reason it is not at the top in market share is because the phone is not offered to all carriers using varying radios like Nokia and RIMM phones.

Apple has reasons for going with this restricted distribution model... mostly standardization leading to economies of scale and most important profits.

acually I'm amazed by the critics who dismiss 'cool design' as somthing that isn't important. it is. in fact I would say that is what gives the iPhone its edge over the rest. the os is slick and smooth on top of being powerful. I think palm is the only one to have finally realized this, yet personally I still prefer the aesthetics of the iPhone.

the problem big visionless companies like Nokia have is this 'cool design' factor is quite hard to quantify... and when a company is run by commitees of engineers with their checklists... well they simply just ignore it because they don't understand it. thus... FAIL.

Considering market share Nokia and RIM are commanding, that is a bit silly statement. At best, premature.

I thought it was because it was so damn expensive

Linux is not UNIX! The development environment (people/attitude) are completely different! Linux seems to be driven by politics as much as a desire to get things working (politics being the primary one). UNIX (BSD) is not encumbered by the GPL which is rotten tomato at the heart of all Linux.

Linux strengths is in the dedicated application arena. Web server, mail server... Where it sucks rocks is in user interface and anything requiring highly polished applications. I have seen many many applications that were almost good enough to use but not quite. The last 10% of the polish is where they all seem to crap out with a couple of notable exceptions, Firefox, Thunderbird, OO...

I have no confidence that the applications or interface of Android will amount to anything but a hill-o-beans.

KRR

Yes, but it's a wheel you don't own which means you gain no competitive advantages in advancing linux...unlike BSD code which is also open source.

This is fine if you are IBM (contributed to Linux because AIX was a non-player and it killed Sun).

This is fine if you are Google (all their core stuff is SAAS and exempt from GPL). Android is a give away.

This is fine if you are Canonical because Shuttleworth spent more money on a road trip to ISS than he spent on Ubuntu.


No, it's not essentially the same code. Linux isn't unix but unix-like. They share almost no code base. The kernel is mach, the userland is from FreeBSD and the rest is proprietary. There are some GPL'd userland stuff (like CUPS) and of course gcc.

Yes, next year will be the year of the Linux desktop!


Or because the Linux desktop is forever chasing MS (for some unholy reason) or Apple. I participated in the Gnome Usability stuff at UMBC and it was interesting but not compelling. Despite Apple's lackadaisical application of its own HIG the user experience is not surprisingly better than in Gnome.


Uh...that's like saying there are three phone distros all with their own UIs.


And both are unixes and linux...isn't. The BSDs, by being BSDs are unix rather than unix-like.


It's a shame that the USL lawsuit killed BSDs for two years. Had 386BSD not been stuck in legal limbo we'd be running unix rather than linux.


Yes and because Linus says so, neither Novell or RedHat sees any competitive advantage in being a full fledged unix despite paying out the wazoo for EAL certs...eh...if SUS compliance was THAT easy they'd have done it. I do wonder why Apple bothered.

Except that in the mobile space, the overwhelming majority of applications do not make low level API calls. They all call higher-level API calls which are different for each distro. So essentially this is more like three different OSes, each of which just happens to be based on Linux. It isn't like the desktop space where applications will run on pretty much any distro. Each of these variants will have its unique ecosystem which won't overlap with the other. If the companies behind them play their cards right they could succeed in becoming a significant presence in the mobile space.



Huh?? Unix is just a trademark, the codebases for the various Unixes are quite different from each other. Granted, the first two Unixes after the original Bell labs version were BSD and System V. However, the two operating systems, while sharing a common ancestor and some source code, have diverged significantly over the years. Your statement implies that somehow BSD, as the result of some legacy Unix code, is Unix and Linux isn't. I frankly don't see why - the two systems diverged over 15 years ago and have changed significantly since. Not to mention the fact, that ever since 1992 when the lawsuit was settled, every other Unix-like OS (Linux included) has been free to incorporate BSD code while BSD itself cannot appropriate code covered by more restrictive licenses (which effectively means that it cannot appropriate any other "Unix" code at all).

Anyway, neither Linux nor any of the BSD variants satisfy the SUS requirements though by all accounts, they are both quite close to it. Another interesting thing is that, in a sense, the closest descendant of the original Unix is SCO's version - which does not conform to the any recent Unix spec (it is stuck at Unix 93). IBM's z/OS is more compliant than SCO Unix. The whole situation is extremely complex and you cannot call one OS "definitely Unix" and the other, a "Unix clone" - they are all, by now, very different from each other and the only thing that makes them "Unix" or "Unix-like" is their degree of compliance with the spec.

Also, in one sense, OS X is the least-Unixy of the lot because it is architecturally quite different from all the other Unixes. It comes from NextStep which was based on the Mach microkernel, which has nothing to do with the original AT&T source code. Everything else has a monolithic kernel like the original Bell Labs version did.



Well, it isn't, as you say, that easy - it is going to require a non-trivial amount of time and effort, not to mention money - but, in the larger scheme of things, it is not terribly hard. I have seen news reports that say that Red Hat and Novell are, regardless, in favor of the idea but the final arbiter of all kernel changes is Linus and he is adamantly against it.

My guess as to why Apple is trying to be Unix-compliant is because they want to break into the server market. Right now Apple's presence there is small and Unix certification does help on the server side. This doesn't apply to Linux as it has a rather large server side presence already. Getting Unix certification isn't going to help them any on the desktop - so I guess I understand the reason for Linus's opposition to the idea.

- HCE

Except for the fact that their market share in smartphones went UP in the last quarter.

That is totally irrational. Of course being limited to a 480x320 screen is going to mean you have to scroll and zoom pages. Having a 800x480 screen means that most of the time you don't.

It has nothing to do with the size (in inches), I can read AppleInsider perfectly fine on my Maemo N810 with its 4" screen at 800x480. The only scrolling I have to do is down the page to read the ridiculous comments.

You would be right except that Maemo is a full Linux distribution in every sense of the word. It is basically Debian compiled for ARM. The GUI toolkit is GTK at the moment, but moving towards QT. You do not have to touch Linux as a user, but if you want there is a full Terminal and it is easy to get root access and totally bork your device if you so wish. Maemo is totally open.

Android is NOT Linux. You do not write applications in C, you do not link against any platform libraries. You write in a Java variant that runs against the Google virtual machine. If you talk really, really nicely to Google they may let you touch the Linux kernel, but in most cases not.

Your ability to read small text is not relevant here. You say 800x480 you wouldn't have to scroll or zoom, but try reading the full page NYT on an iPhone without zooming. Now imagine reading it on any 3.5" or smaller display. Text on the iPhone is fine right now at 150ppi, but the resolution doesn't mean squat if it rendered too small to see. I didnt care if the ppi is one million, it's still a 3.5" display on the iPhone.

I don't see how that invalidates my point. Yes, desktop apps will work on Maemo but Android and WebOS apps will not. The problem with most desktop apps is that they do not offer a good user experience on tiny screens. So, essentially, they aren't of much use on a phone - even if they will run. The apps that will be usable will be the Qt based apps that are made for Maemo - and these apps will not run on Android or WebOS because these "distros" will not have the necessary Qt libraries. So you end up with three distinct ecosystems with incompatible apps each of which use a different set of high-level APIs and don't make low-level OS calls - which is basically what I said in my earlier post.

Also note that even though Maemo ships with an X server now, that may not continue in the future. X may have many advantages but efficiency isn't one of them. Qt does not have to use X on Linux - it can, if needed, write directly to the screen. I can see Nokia, in the interests of efficiency, switching to this version of Qt sometime down the line and ditching X altogether.

Another thought - Nokia is porting Qt to Symbian. Chances are that they will want developers to exclusively program in Qt (or some other Qt-based high-level API) so that their apps can easily be compiled for Symbian-based phones.

- HCE

Nokia is going with Windows 7 on it's netbook. They are trying to get an early lead into that segment if Apple comes up with a tablet. I don't see them doing much innovation on Linux.

As a note, Nokia has too many platforms.

I wouldn't be surprising if Qt appears on S40 as well.

Four platforms (Windows, Maemo, Symbian, S40), one common programming environment. The underlying OS will become less and less important.

Nokia has been selling their tablets for four years, is that what you mean by getting an early lead?

let me see... I guess, that was Motorola's idea, which arose back in 1998-1999, to have ported Linux on a phone platform.
There're no that many real Linux lovers and faithful followers to make this killer solution.

Apple's marketing address completely different feelings and instincts.