Microsoft To Add Yet Another Smartphone OS This Year 179
GMGruman writes "Someone at Microsoft either really loves mobile operating systems or can't make up his mind as to which to use, because Microsoft Thursday announced yet another mobile OS, its fifth. The new Windows Embedded Handheld OS will succeed Windows Mobile 6.5 and run on at least some existing Windows Mobile smartphones. It is not the same mobile OS, known as Windows Phone 7, that Microsoft earlier this year said would replace Windows Mobile and break with it in terms of compatibility so Microsoft could better compete with the iPhone and Google Android OS."
It doesn't quite roll off the tongue (Score:2, Interesting)
So, they'll have Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Windows Embedded Compact 7, Windows Embedded Handheld ... and the only one that sounds okay won't be out until November at the earliest, whereas the 3 others are lame pieces of crap.
Who, by the way, comes up with these names? Can you possibly make Windows Embedded Compact Handheld Mobile Phone 8 or something and combine all of the awesome features into one package... or will we just have to settle for iOS 4.x?
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So, they'll have Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Windows Embedded Compact 7, Windows Embedded Handheld ...
"Me too" attitude (what? let Android be the only one with fragmented market?) ... Nothing new from Microsoft, including the "shoot yourself in the foot... no that foot... the other one. Atta boy!"
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There are very few changes to the various versions of Android, so you can ignore fragmentation and target 1.5 and pretty much everyone will be able to run it. The addition of wifi tethering, apps to sd etc in 2.2 makes no difference at all to users of 2.1,1.6,1.5 etc.
Windows EH and Windows Phone 7 are two (Score:2)
Re:Windows EH and Windows Phone 7 are two (Score:5, Interesting)
So would this be a fair assessment for someone familiar with the current product lineup?
1. WEC7 is a rebranding/retread of Windows CE 6. There will be industrial PDAs using it like the MC55, Psion Ikon, DAPtech etc
2. WEH is basically the Windows Mobile shell on top of WEC7, just as WM6 was the shell on top of CE5. In theory it should be possible to recompile/port existing C++ codebases and will be a useful upgrade path for large corporations who currently run their bespoke stocktaking/delivery/survey applications on top of WM6.
3. Windows Phone 7 is a completely new offering built on the WEC7 kernel. It has a locked-down userland aimed at being flashy for the consumer market which cannot run native code (and is useless if you have 8 years of C++ codebase you want to run on it).
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cannot run native code (and is useless if you have 8 years of C++ codebase you want to run on it)
You're supposed to port your C++ codebase such that all array accesses and pointer accesses go through templates. Then the templates are implemented twice: in terms of pointers on unmanaged platforms (PC, Mac, Apple iOS, Android NDK) and in terms of C++/CLI handles on .NET platforms (WP7, 360).
Windows Mobile 7 not exactly .Net though (Score:2)
Then the templates are implemented twice: in terms of pointers on unmanaged platforms (PC, Mac, Apple iOS, Android NDK) and in terms of C++/CLI handles on .NET platforms (WP7, 360).
From a Windows Mobile 7 Q&A [zdnet.com]
Q: What development languages are supported on Windows Phone 7?
A: Right now, the only development language supported is C#. Developers are also interested in Visual Basic, C++ and other .Net apps, Kindel acknowledged, and Microsoft may add support for these over time. But Microsoft's development str
Re:Windows EH and Windows Phone 7 are two (Score:4, Informative)
So would this be a fair assessment for someone familiar with the current product lineup?
1. WEC7 is a rebranding/retread of Windows CE 6. There will be industrial PDAs using it like the MC55, Psion Ikon, DAPtech etc
2. WEH is basically the Windows Mobile shell on top of WEC7, just as WM6 was the shell on top of CE5. In theory it should be possible to recompile/port existing C++ codebases and will be a useful upgrade path for large corporations who currently run their bespoke stocktaking/delivery/survey applications on top of WM6.
3. Windows Phone 7 is a completely new offering built on the WEC7 kernel. It has a locked-down userland aimed at being flashy for the consumer market which cannot run native code (and is useless if you have 8 years of C++ codebase you want to run on it).
That list also gives one a glimpse of what is wrong with Windows Mobile in general. It is clunky, unintuitive and fragmented. It seems I can't pick up two phones purportedly running the same version of the same Windows Mobile OS and use the same procedure to configure half the things I want to. Some time ago I configured a HTC S620 smartphone to work over a a VPN connection. It took quite a while to figure out the clunky UI and the badly documented process needed to accomplish this (Mostly HTC's fault for writing a crappy manual) but it worked fine in the end. Recently the thing broke down and I was provided with another type of HTC smartphone of the same vintage running the same OS version but the configuration process was totally different. Although it usually ends up working OK if you have the patience to do battle with the UI and read the (often) crappy user manual, I passionately hate setting up and configuring Windows Mobile.
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one that sounds okay won't be out until November at the earliest, whereas the 3 others are lame pieces of crap.
If I were betting, I'd bet the one coming out in Nov will be a lame piece of crap, too. If a roofer does a shitty job on the first three roofs, do you expect him to get the fourth roof right?
Microsoft does sometimes improve, though -- Win 7 is (marginally) better than XP IMO, though they went backwards with search and control panel; both are far less useable. I still prefer Mandrake (yes, from seve
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You mean like they did for the iPod [youtube.com]?
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Microsoft can't come up with - and stick to - a good name to save their life, but that's not the real issue. Despite the shall-we-say limited adoption of their legacy smartphone OS (WinCE/PocketPC/WinMobile), there's a pretty substantial installed base of vertical-market apps and users of those apps. (Even Apple was stuck using it for a while in their stores, before they started making their own handhelds.) MS needs to compete with iOS and Android and WebOS in terms of functionality, and that means somet
Steve Ballmer is an idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously. Steve Ballmer laughed at google on stage at D:8 for having both android and chrome OS and now microsoft has 3 current, all slightly different mobile operating systems. I mean come on.
Heres an Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] link as I can't find the exact video on the all things d site.
Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer also laughed at the iPhone and the Wii. I wouldn't take his advice personally.
Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
this is kinda what I'm getting at. I seriously wonder why nobody on the board at MS is questioning his leadership.
Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
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maybe because they're all complicit in the uselessness? But the staff are questioning the leadership (well, whinging) [blogspot.com]
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Ballmer also laughed at the iPhone and the Wii. I wouldn't take his advice personally.
Sounds like Ballmer laughing at an idea means it will work well.
Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Watch for new videos of/interviews with Steve Ballmer.
2) Note what products he dismisses and/or laughs at.
3) Purchase stock in the makers of those products.
4) PROFIT!!!
I think we've finally nailed down step 3...
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Well the Wii does have a funny name. I'd like to have an iPhone, but the price is so rediculous it's funny.
Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, if you think about it, what he said is right. Google should concentrate on writing one OS at a time. MS didn't come out with 5 or 6 OS, they had one. They have added more over time.
Of course, he is a fool, as he has proved many times over, but don't discount how powerful MS still are.
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He may laugh on stage, but he probably cries himself to sleep at night. Google has made greater headway with Android in the last couple of years than Microsoft ever made in a decade of Windows Mobile.
Can't wait (Score:5, Funny)
"The OS will feature a richer and immersive user experience..."
This can only mean that it's gonna have a 3D display with Kinect-like controls. I can't wait to fly through the keypad snatching at buttons as they rush by!
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Don't forget to pet your phone every night before you go to sleep!
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"The OS will feature a richer and immersive user experience..."
This is marketing speak for "you will have to work pretty hard to get it to do anything"
Why would anyone fall for MS? (Score:2)
But the profit split is neat via the "enterprise" idea.
A low end 'first hit is almost free' idea for the Sidekick generation.
Now you have the enterprise idea of costumer retention via proprietary data storage.
The "reliability and security features" will so protect your data you will have no option but to stay with MS.
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Now you have the enterprise idea of costumer retention via proprietary data storage.
Otherwise known as TBBC, for tailor bondage by backup closing.
It's not a smartphone OS (Score:3, Interesting)
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What did you expect?
It's becoming a Unix world (Score:5, Informative)
...in smartphones and hand held devices in general.
iPhone -- iOS Unix
Android -- Linux
Palm -- Linux
RIM -- Moving to QNX
That leaves Symbian and Windows Mobile as the two non-'nix holdouts.
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Although Nokia also have Maemo, which is Linux :) And note that whilst Symbian isn't Unix, it is open source which I think deserves some credit (not that you ever hear about it on Slashdot - once upon a time, Slashdot would focus on open source even when they were less popular; now, the open source platforms get ignored in place of closed locked down platforms, even when the open source one has vastly more market share).
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And then you'd have to add iOS as "open source" as well, because well, it runs on top of
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Yes, I'm glad to say it seems that way (again). Although it's more a case of "it's becoming an open source, collaborative world", which is even better.
Interesting. I'd only heard about the microkernel and tried photon; didn't realise QNX was unix-like under the hood.
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I remember QNX was once actually "Quantum Unix" but they didn't have the AT&T license and had to remove the explicit "Unix".
RIM bought QNX recently.
Getting nostalgic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Getting nostalgic... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know when that was - it was when the big Unix vendors decided that you had to buy the very expensive kit and software then allowed you to have, if you bought a large support contract and training to manage their overly-expensive bloated stuff. Then this little upstart company was selling PCs that did most of what the big guys were doing but at a significantly lower price and with a lot more flexibility over what you could or could not do with your IT system.
How times have changed!
(Ok, there was a time in the middle when their stuff wasn't that good, but you still wanted it - ad every time an upgrade came out, you knew you had to have it because it would fix a load of problems with the software. Today that time is pretty much gone, unless you've bought sharepoint, so no-one really feels the need to grab the upgrade immediately)
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I think MS lost it with the DRM in Vista and Win 7.
The 360 640p discovery, sidekick ect just keep the sad news flowing with every next generation they enter.
DRM and threats to the emerging digital market where and are real.
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Re:Getting nostalgic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's interesting isn't it. I think it's because it's become clear that the kind of big-ticket software that Microsoft has built itself on just isn't where the real money's going to be in a few years. It's reached a peak complexity-wise, features-wise, and usefulness-wise. Instead, collaborative service software (i.e. Google) will be the way a lot of businesses go, and consumers will go with small, cheap, and cheerful (i.e. the Apple App Store), and social network type stuff (Facebook and its successors). Portability is where it's at, and Microsoft has missed so many beats it can't catch up, especially because it means essentially cannibalising they big-ticket software business.
I'm a little wary of this trend, even though I can definitely see its value. I'm a heavy user of said big-ticket software myself (Adobe products mostly), and I don't want to see it stagnate. That said, I think it's pretty stagnant already, and needs a serious shake-up. Microsoft and Adobe's products are absurdly complex and bloated these days; there simply has to be a simpler way. And a cheaper way too!
Re:Getting nostalgic... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're spot on in your analysis of where the consumer market is heading but when it comes to the business side of things office life is still dominated by standard desktop / laptop computing using big ticket software for most workers. I don't come across many businesses in my line of work where users don't have a desktop or laptop running Windows and Office in addition to one or more big ticket industry specific software applications with the one large noticable exception being the health-care industry where more and more providers are moving to tablets, which for doctors and nurses who aren't stationary makes perfect sense.
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I admit I don't know much about how large businesses are run (never worked for one!), so you might be right. Although, I suspect startups will move to software-as-service, and will stick with it as they get big.
The big now problem seems to be how you collaborate on stuff, and shift information around, not number of features in an office suite. That's gotta hurt Microsoft in the long run (right?).
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I'm not sure there's anything new here.
MS were big in the desktop/PC market - and they still are. They still shift this market.
MS aren't so big in phones - and they never have been (not that I see a problem with that - Apple are happy being number 3 in smartphone OSs and number 6 or so in terms of phones; MS might not be number 1, but neither are Apple here, as long as MS make extra money from it, that's all that matters).
If you mean that Apple get far more hype, well if anything, that's more a change for A
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One of the great things about the success of the iPhone has been that people
Re:Change of name when something goes wrong (Score:2)
This was predictable.. Microsoft learned that it can succeed by changing the product name and look when it fails. Just look at Windows Vista.
[troll]
Is Microsoft going to change its name in the near future?
[/troll]
Re:Getting nostalgic... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your post is indicative of what's holding Microsoft back. The whole ground is shifting, and it's Apple and Google that have managed to move into (or even create) this new world, and Microsoft has not.
Here's what I think a lot of people think the "computing" landscape will look like in a few years: most people will have a phone or iPad-like device instead of a laptop or desktop computer. They will probably dock with a big screen and keyboard for serious work. Most documents will be held in 'the cloud', with local cache. The software to work on them will either be web-based or small and cheap.
This trend will be most noticeable in developing markets, where people will use their phones for what rich countries were using desktop PCs for up until now. For example, in Africa I noticed huge numbers of people have phones (not the latest and greatest, but not old crap either), but virtually no one owned their own PC. They will probably skip the PC step altogether, because in a year or two their phones will do most of what they would find useful in a PC anyway. They will go to Wifi hotspots and use their phones, in much the same way as they go to internet cafes now.
Apple is obviously a major contender (and driver) of this landscape. Google too.
Microsoft will retain its stranglehold on (some) business for quite a while, but that will be seen as a small part of a much larger marketplace. It will continue to exist and make money for a long time to come, but it won't have much pull over the general direction of computing.
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It's not "what is holding Microsoft back, it's "who", as the parent suggests. Ballmer is simply a disaster as a CEO. I'm surprised the board hasn't ended his tenure, which they should have done after the (fortunately for Microsoft) attempt to buy Yahoo. (Jerry Yang has to be one of the worst tech CEOs ever for not taking the deal.)
Look at Apple - A succession of mediocre CEOs after Jobs, then Jobs comes back to create great a great company again. It's not the company, really, its the leadership. Ballmer
Incompatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
If this Microsoft operating system is going to be incompatible with the other Microsoft operating systems, why not just switch to something else now and be done with it? Compatibility is the only advantage Microsoft software has, and that is being thrown out with the bathwater.
Re:Incompatibility (Score:5, Informative)
That's exactly what they did!
Windows Mobile looks like crap, and they know it. They maintained compatibility above all else, and the result is that you can use most of the familiar Windows API on it, and make all your apps look like tiny desktop apps. They worked but weren't very intuitive, especially in the new world of touch. Because of this, "Windows Phone 7" was announced as a completely incompatible OS, supporting only Silverlight apps. It's meant to be the next-gen platform that can compete with the slickness of the iPhone.
The problem is that Windows Mobile had a lot of business users and they weren't too happy with everything they make and use becoming obsolete overnight. That's the void this fills. This "Windows Embedded Handheld" maintains the compatibility platform they bought into.
I suspect the only difference between the two will be that one uses the old shell and one uses the new Silverlight shell -- it's already easy to confirm that Windows Phone 7 uses a similar (if not the same) platform underneath the new UI.
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For a Windows user, there is a LOT you can do with a WinMo 5-6.5 device with little/no effort - no need for custom (and very expensive) vendored products.
For instance, hooking up an RFID scanner to a WinMo phone or PDA, and automagically putting your data into a (desktop) Office-compatible spreadsheet, running totals, adding input, etc. as you go is dead simple (particularly if you've got an older, better non-capacitive screen). You can then just copy the file back over to your desktop, macros and all, and
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For instance, hooking up an RFID scanner to a WinMo phone or PDA, and automagically putting your data into a (desktop) Office-compatible spreadsheet, running totals, adding input, etc. as you go is dead simple (particularly if you've got an older, better non-capacitive screen). You can then just copy the file back over to your desktop, macros and all, and work on it there unchanged.
You might be a happier person if you just used your phone to play angry birds or koi pond instead of whatever it was that you j
Who's the guy in charge of acronyms in MS? (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually, not so forgettable a name. (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, c'mon, WEHOS? WE HOS!
Yeah, I'll certainly remember that -- though probably not the way Microsoft would have wanted...
Cheers,
Not new - continuation of Windows Mobile 6.5 (Score:4, Informative)
"We're starting to see that philosophy play out today with the introduction of Windows Embedded Handheld, which is essentially a warmed-over version of WinMo 6.5.3 with some key UI and enterprise-focused enhancements. Microsoft is specifically calling out an "extended support life-cycle" for the platform, a sign that these phones aren't for the gotta-have-it crowd -- instead, the company intends to push these things through corporate fleets where Windows Mobile has traditionally dominated, places where Windows Phone's flashy stylings and locked-down underpinnings won't have the same draw."
Mostly seems this *is* Windows Mobile 6.5 in all but name.
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so... (Score:2)
to me this reads like microsoft is in the same pickle that palm was in when smartphones first started up.
back then they had the problem that their current palmos (garnet) was running into a brick wall in terms of capabilities. They had a more updated version available (cobalt) but no one wanted it as it was not compatible with the library of third party garnet software that was out there.
basically, 6.5 looks like someone crammed desktop windows onto a phone. Microsoft wants to get a ground up rethink of the
It shall be known as YATMMOSS (Score:2)
Following trends from l33t websites like Freshmeat.net, they have decided that it shall be known as Yet Another Touted Microsoft Mobile OS *spit*
Awesome! (Score:2)
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If they're such pieces of shit, where are the open standard wondrous operating systems?
Oh wait.
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Re:They're all proprietary pieces of shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, maybe in your fantasy world no one would use it. If the OS is good enough, one of the phone device manufacturers will leverage that advantage to make a larger profit over the others.
Unfortunately it isn't.
The Market does decide, why do you think Android and iOS are leading the pack when it comes to growth? Why do you think all the other phone manufacturers are scrambling to keep up?
Besides, Android is fairly open and the iOS is standards compliant.
Compliant != efficient (Score:2)
Besides, Android is fairly open
Agreed.
and the iOS is standards compliant.
"Standards compliant" does not mean "standards efficient". Try to get around iOS Safari's lack of Flash vector animation by making a JavaScript vector animation player that uses HTML5 <canvas>, and you could end up with a slideshow. Does iOS Safari even support data URIs passed to an <audio> element for JavaScript synthesis?
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Yes, as an iPhone user I'm very sad that the annoying animations I see using my regular browser (including the IBM ads on /., which make me want to pay IBM $$$ to thank them) are not available on my phone.
You might think Homestar Runner, Weebl and Bob, and Magical Trevor are annoying, but a lot of other people disagree with you.
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"...and the iOS is standards compliant."
And we all know that "standards compliant" means open, right?
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If the OS is good enough, one of the phone device manufacturers will leverage that advantage to make a larger profit over the others.
That's like saying that the RIAA will be happy to sell music without DRM. It doesn't matter how good the distribution system (ie the OS in this case), they will still want to try and lock it down. Which is exactly what the phone companies do. They try to lock the phones they sell down to stop you tethering or even using SIMs from other Telcos, etc.
This is slowly changing, but don't act like they would jump on an open system just because it was technically proficient and fun to use. They would add in a whole
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Yeah, well the market sorta forced them to sell music without DRM right? Last I checked, none of my iTunes music purchases had DRM on them.
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Like I said, it's changing slowly, but they're going to be dragged kicking and screaming the whole way. You're right that anyone with a decent service and products can make a killing, but like someone else said there's a really high barrier to entry too. It took the iPhone to even make phone designers start trying to design proper touch interfaces despite touch phones being out for years prior. The whole software and services side of the mobile market has been crap for the last 20 years, the only decent imp
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The Market does decide, why do you think Android and iOS are leading the pack when it comes to growth?
Presumably because they're the newest - a platform starting from nothing is going to see larger growth in relative terms. And it's not like there are many platforms in the phone market. For Nokia, they have Symbian at 50% of the market - it's hard to push further when you're already number one.
And remember - when we say Nokia are at 50%, that's not total phones ever shipped, that's still based on current sa
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You're very out of touch, they are scrambling to match the iPhone/Android devices but are falling short. They just downgraded their sales forecasts for the quarter, and most likely for the year. http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/16/nokia-downgrades-sales-forecasts-thanks-to-competitive-environm/ [engadget.com]
Problem is, Nokia is a phone company, they know how to make phones really well. However, smartphones are more computers than phones, that's why companies like Apple and Google are leading th
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As somebody who is getting increasing pressure to support iOS in a (relatively secured) corporate environment, I can tell you that it is anything BUT standards compliant.
Try connecting one to an authenticated proxy. Looks like it works doesn't it? Well it doesn't. Inexplicably half of the outbound packets bypass the proxy and run smack into our firewall. This is for normal port 80 traffic. Or how about how the Youtube app sends a 'Host:' header pointing to gdata.youtube.com, but the requested url is actual
Re:They're all proprietary pieces of shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're such pieces of shit, where are the open standard wondrous operating systems?
Perhaps here [android.com]? Or maybe even here [maemo.org]?
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Fortunately you can buy an Android phone or an iPhone and keep your app purchases between phones and carriers.(Android->Android and iPhone->iPhone obviously)
Which is a blessing compared to the absolute crapfest it used to be.
Re:They're all proprietary pieces of shit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Try a Nokia n900.
It's pretty much straight up Linux with the command line and apt-get ready to go right out of the box.
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As an N900 owner: do NOT try an N900. Nokia are even worse than Microsoft in terms of supporting their products. N900's Maemo OS is already outdated, and the N900 along with it. They must have been planning to do that even before releasing the N900, given the timelines, which is why you get people posting friendly advice to Nokia on how it can avoid death [arcticstartup.com].
Nokia seem to think of their phones and OS's like Casio thinks of watches: a simple, closed-loop device that's done as soon as it hits the shelves. Fo
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N900's Maemo OS is already outdated, and the N900 along with it.
I got an updated version about a month ago.
Re:They're all proprietary pieces of shit. (Score:4, Informative)
No, you got bugfixes that essentially brought it out of beta status months after it was released. On the same day, you saw the first release of Meego, their new system, which Nokia have clearly said that they will NOT properly support on the N900. The work to fix major bugs was essentially just a woefully inadequate fairwell gesture. A full, supported meego release with potential for another 2 years of app compatibility for the N900 might have been a less stupid gesture.
Re:They're all proprietary pieces of shit. (Score:4, Informative)
The only thing Nokia has going for it is Qt, which they bought in from Trolltech (along with TT itself), and they'll probably find a way to kill.
Qt is now their standard development kit for Symbian and Maemo, so to suggest they only bought it to kill it is false. And as a new learner on Symbian, I have to say I'm very impressed. Qt looks to be a very good API. It's also cross-platform, not only meaning the same code will compile for Symbian and Maemo, but also making it easy to develop for Windows, Mac and Linux (so you can pretty much compile for 100% of the desktop market, and 50% of the mobile market). And it means you can use standard C++, where as the old development kit for Symbian apparently used an awkward cut down version.
And as for "only thing Nokia has going for it", there's more to Nokia than Maemo. Like the small matter of their other OS with 50% market share, or the hundreds of millions of phones they sell every year. Never used an N900, but I love my 5800.
In fact your entire post seems to be extrapolating from the single point of "Maemo is discontinued". By all means warn the OP, but your claims about how they therefore kill all their phones, OSs, and SDKs, is just plain ludicrous. Symbian has been around for many years. You might as well claim that because Apple have ditched their Mac OS before (not to mention 68K, PPC), that therefore they're about to ditch OS X or IphoneOS at any moment!
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I didn't suggest that at all. Clearly they bought it with the intent of using it to build a good cross-platform SDK solution for their phones. What I did suggest was that they'll probably kill it anyway, despite their good intentions, because they're completely clueless about what developers and users want from modern smartphone platform.
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If you take the time to read the article and comments I linked to above, you'll see others explaining the same problem, and an ex-nokia staff member explaining that Nokia are aware of the problem, acknowledge it internally, know what they need to do to fix it, but just can't get it done because of company structures.
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Carpetshark says that Nokia products have shit lifespans; because he is talking about the "lifespan" of a hardware product during which it continues to be updated to the latest software features(within the bounds of hardware limitations. For a pricey computer-in-a-cellphone-box like the N900, that isn't at all unreasonable, nor is Nokia's record in the area exactly unblemished.
Mdwh2 disagrees, because Nokia has been(if anyth
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I am also an N900 owner.
While Meego won't be officially supported on the N900, it's worth noting that the N900 remains the reference platform for it. Additionally, the community support for Maemo is unbelievably good; I wouldn't be surprised at all if the N900 port of Meego remains an active community project for years. This is partly because most of the people who own N900s are geeks, and because the N900 is completely open (there are a plethora of custom kernels available for use on it).
tldr: Having a com
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The N900 uses an old type of touch screen that can't do multitouch (properly). Meego uses multitouch as an everyday input method.
Almost. Meego is available for Netbooks, but Nokia released "Meego Core" for the N900, not "Meego". Honestly, individual skilled hackers have released more of android for N900 so far. Nokia have said that they're not supporting N900 because it's not an open hardware
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Now see. I just don't get this. I can totally see the iOS vs Android thing. There is little doubt that both are very usable device operating systems devised for the specific needs of a very small screen and limited input options. I'm currently using an iPhone, but realistically I think I'd be just as happy with an Android phone. My iPhone preference is about half "I find it really usable" and about half "I don't feel like changing carriers and AT&T's Android offerings suck". I've also played a bit
Er what??? Android is 100% open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is 100% open source. Don't like the Market? Replace it. Don't like the keyboard? Replace it. Don't like Google integrations? Remove them.
If you think all of this is somehow difficult or discouraged, I think you should take a closer look at the forums at xda-developers.com, or even at developer.android.com, where you can check out the entire OS source code with git and re-build it from scratch and re-flash your phone, if you want.
All this talk about Jailbreaking Android phones is for people who want root access but *DO NOT* want to re-flash their phone. There is no such problem for people that are comfortable replacing the software. And in fact this is what you have to do with most open source projects running on specialized hardware.
Re:Er what??? Android is 100% open source (Score:5, Informative)
All this talk about Jailbreaking Android phones is for people who want root access but *DO NOT* want to re-flash their phone.
Or who discover, months into a contract, that they have a phone that uses tivoization to block re-flashing with firmware packaged by an individual.
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Because you're on their(The carriers) network and using their limited bandwidth.
The last thing they want is a bot net of Android phones.
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Flashing a rom doesn't make your job as a bot creator easier. You can already write whever you want on an Android phone. And the networks are already in control of bandwidth regardless of the rom. So I don't understand your point.
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If you think all of this is somehow difficult or discouraged, I think you should take a closer look at the forums at xda-developers.com, or even at developer.android.com, where you can check out the entire OS source code with git and re-build it from scratch and re-flash your phone, if you want.
On a practical point of view, Android has made jailbreaking easier than the iPhone. For a developer, that's great, for a joe user the main issues (warranty and contract) are still the same unfortunately.
We only have one half of what make Linux great on the PC. We have a OSS OS, but we lack the har
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... and lose you warranty in the process.
Only on software support. If you brick your phone flashing it you might be SOL. But if you have a hardware fault (like the dead trackball I experienced) they repair it no questions asked.
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No, Android is an open source client for the Android Market. Download a copy of "open source" Android and you'll soon find that you can't actually use it much because Market isn't available in the open source version. Essentially every copy has to be given a key by Google to make it work, and that only happens on approved hardware. It's just software licensing by another name. Otherwise, I'd gladly install it on my Nokia and never look back.
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To replace the market SOFTWARE, you would need access to the market data. Otherwise, you're starting from scratch. But the data is locked down. Often these days, given the lock-in created by having all your friends or apps in one system, open source is a secondary concern, next to open data and openly accessible APIs. Anyone can make a facebook client, even if the source isn't available, but making that facebook client work with facebook without an (un-locked) API, or making a better, more open version
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I hazard a guess that 99% - no, 99.9995% of the Android user base has NO INTEREST in hacking their handset from its factory installed presets.
Apple with their iOS and Palm with their WebOS knew this full well, which is why they designed their UIs to be completely user-friendly from the time the device is first switched on to the time it's given away to a family member as you update your device.
Androids hackability has nothing to do with its market prevalence - it just happens to be installed on loads of dev
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There are disagrees of closedness. I don't really mind the OS itself being proprietary (I probably should, though), I do mind a lot when my content (media and apps) is in a proprietary format, or, worse, DRMed, and when the distribution channels are censored.
you can have DRMed content on an "open" OS.. I'd rather have the contray, but even better, open content on an open OS, indeed. We should not condemn all "closed" things indiscriminately though, there are degrees of closedness.