Jolla Confirms MeeGo App Store Is Coming 66
DavidGilbert99 writes "Jolla Mobile's MD, Jussi Hurmola has confirmed that its first smartphone will be backed up by an app store at launch later this year — pointing out that a version of Angry Birds is already available on MeeGo. And really, all you need to make an app store successful is Angry Birds, right?"
The interview from which the article is sourced has more information on Jolla's general strategy, including their plans to become "a major player."
The bad news we've all been dreading (Score:3)
From the article:
"It is true that we have not heard too much from Open Moko for quite some time. But one has to remember that Jolla's main goal is not to create an open source phone. We aim to create a competitive smartphone almost everybody would want for themselves," Hurmola said.
"The phone will be a smartphone for mass market. It will not be a tech phone intended for Linux hackers. Consumers are not able to hack the kernel or flash new software for the device."
And I won't be buying one :-(
Re: (Score:3)
What part of "Consumers are not able to hack the kernel or flash new software for the device" says that it might not be locked?
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He's saying that since the average consumer cannot hack the Linux kernel or flash their own device that their focus is going to be on making the phone user friendly rather than one focused on Linux hackers.
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And the next sentence is the same article is:
"We are however planning on creating a development version of the phone for open source community, those interested in Linux and open systems and for partners."
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Not in the same article, but yes. Let's hope it doesn't suffer the same fate as the N950.
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They lost me at "Jolla’s foundation is on rpm based Mer Linux distribution".
Bring back the Debian, and I'll even invest in the company. Why, oh why, won't RPM just die?
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"It is true that we have not heard too much from Open Moko for quite some time. But one has to remember that Jolla's main goal is not to create an open source phone...
And I won't be buying one :-(
Note the "main goal" qualification. I do hope they backpeddle on the the "no flashing" claim. That might be something they had to say to get a carrier on board.
Are we supposed to be impressed? (Score:2)
Granted, Tetris is probably the only one I ever paid money for.
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Poe's Law [wikipedia.org] achievement unlocked!
Re: Uh.. (Score:1)
deep thinking and engineering prowess
So...copying technologies that are already existing but aren't well known? And applying for bogus patents?
Well, they got at least some of it right...
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No, I think he's just stating the obvious answer to a dumb question.
A teaching moment, necessary but not sufficient. (Score:2)
And really, all you need to make an app store successful is Angry Birds right?
The very definition of the term "Necessary but not Sufficient".
Thanks for the life lesson MeeGo!
Come on, humor!! (Score:1)
How is it NOT funny to note that no platform can succeed without Angry Birds while at the same time hinting that more is required?
Man Slashdot people are so stuck up these days.
Re: (Score:2)
You're pretty "anti-everything-but-apple" so it's hard to see the humor in your posts.
Mistaken (Score:2)
Actually I am FOR quite a lot of stuff, but you are so blinded by hated of Apple you cannot see it. For example, I have been a champion of WebOS and even in fact WP7...
Looser looser gloomy chooser!
I'lll let you have the followup response since you are far less interesting to talk to than a bad Eliza implementation, and don't appear to have functioning memory circuits.
Re: (Score:1)
> WebOS and even in fact WP7
Riffing off Oscar Wilde: supporting one of those is an accident. Supporting both shows poor taste.
Re:A teaching moment, necessary but not sufficient (Score:4, Informative)
As one of the people who developed the MeeGo predecessor Maemo, I feel I have to point out that there are currently 1723 applications on my-meego.com MeeGo Harmattan software catalog. I consider this fairly well for OS where only single phone has been publically released, and has been orphaned since the get-go. Most of them are not fart-generators either, although there's a fairly high number of what are essentially custom RSS feed-readers for private feeds (there's an RSS reader built-in which feeds straight to one of the home screens).
Of course the beautiful thing as far as software ecosystem is concerned is MeeGo is pretty much full featured Linux desktop, so that almost any Linux desktop software (minus high-end games of course) can be ported to MeeGo, usually at most requiring porting the UI to Qt and touch-friendly. (Of course it's nice to see lot more thought put to integrating most apps into the MeeGo system).
Re: (Score:2)
Ooh, a snarky comment! Your car-analogy is bit lacking though, software user-interface is more akin to the "body" or case than the innards, indeed this is what we mean by the logic or computing engine of a program. So this means you'll actually be replacing all the rest while leaving engine, transmission and wheels into your car. Duh.
On a more serious note, I realize this is not always trivial, but as Qt and GTK are the only two Linux UI-frameworks usually considered, much Linux software already has a Qt UI
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As one of the people who developed the MeeGo predecessor Maemo,
Perhaps you could confirm this for me (I hope it's true).
As far as I could tell, Maemo was a fairly standard Linux install, with all the standard Linux goodness. As a result, i'd imagine that it didn't need quite a lot of the silly apps that Android requires (an app is needed to set a static IP address. WTF?)
Would that be correct?
Re:A teaching moment, necessary but not sufficient (Score:4, Informative)
Apps are, of course, preferable way unless you're an unix admin. But on Maemo and MeeGo both, the underlying system is fairly complete "desktop" Linux. My N9's /usr, /usr/bin, /sbin and /usr/sbin directories have 1015 commands total, so I won't list everything that is included. Fully featured busybox build with ifconfig is included though. For N9, "developer mode" comes as standard option you can turn on from configuration menu, which will among other things add a console app to the device, as well as opening VNC or ssh connection to the device over USB or WLAN. What is annoying, and a slight warning for the home-hacker, is that N9 comes with kernel-backed Aegis security system, which means that unless you change the kernel or take other measures, changing ANY system files will brick the device so that a full re-flash over USB is needed. It's possible to disable, and allows installing uncertified apps, but a pain in the ass.
Who cares? (Score:1)
Can we please stop with all the fucking bullshit cell phone articles on slashdot? If I wanted fifty fucking stupid articles about cell phones and cell plans every day, I'd go subscribe to the Gizmodo and Engadget RSS feeds again and get spammed by *them*.
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Cell plans I can support you on, but smartphones is a different matter. This is 100% news for nerds. There is a change going on with a move so that most computing will be taking place on a smartphone. Within the next two years there will be more smartphones in use than computers. Within less than three years, more applications will be run on smartphones than on computers. Some time in that period, probably in a contry in Asia, the first bank will decide that supporting desktop users isn't worth it sinc
Mee, too (Score:2)
Not Compelling (Score:3, Funny)
It isn't a matter of principal, it is a matter of money.
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But the ability to have a prostitute to spend the night with you, if you wanted to, matters; dont you think?
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Saying you've gotten Angry Birds on your platform is kind of like saying you got the prostitute down the street to spend the night with you.
It isn't a matter of principal, it is a matter of money.
True, it would only be a matter of principal if I got one of my students to spend the night with me.
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Agree, this is not remarkable (unless maybe they got the new space one ported too). The N9 already has Angry Birds (not the new space one) so it's probably damn near the same code and so likely only a small effort to bring it to their phone.
So not only is it like spending time with the local prostitute, but she already happened to be in the hotel you booked anyway because she was already hired to service another client there anyway!
Not Different Enough (Score:4, Interesting)
They're right to be going straight for mass market (unlike OpenMoko), but why are they considering these mutually exclusive? What's wrong with letting people flash the device if they want to? The best way to get a new and innovative phone would be to make it truly open.
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I guess the point is to split the market? There's just not enough information and too much he can't reveal, and possibly undecided, to make any concrete statements.
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It's not about the sales to the few people who would flash their phones. However, it's those few people who will innovate and experiment and improve the platform, leading to many more sales down the road to ordinary consumers. We've already got three mobile platforms where the only innovation possible by outside developers is just to develop new apps within the constraints of the platform. A truly "new" phon
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And your proof of more sales comes from where? Your butt?
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Not quite true. There have been a number of small innovations in CyanogenMod, some of which apparently have found their way into AOSP Android (like swiping to remove notifications in ICS, I believe). At least with Android, the possibility for community innovation is there.
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They say they're trying to make something different from iPhone/Android/Windows, but this is disappointingly old and uninnovative thinking:
They're right to be going straight for mass market (unlike OpenMoko), but why are they considering these mutually exclusive? What's wrong with letting people flash the device if they want to? The best way to get a new and innovative phone would be to make it truly open.
sucking operator balls, pretty much. gotta be able to make the simlock stick(even if that has pretty much nothing to do with letting you flash the userland).
and selling sw and deciding who gets to sell the sw to quick setup a wifi hotspot built already in the os? that's standard nokia executive fare you know, why do you think they were considered to be in a bizarre semi black-hole even before elop?
I really hope they're not so stupid that they leave it unrootable and try to cash on petty things like that a
They're not saying you CAN'T flash the phone (Score:3)
It's a start (Score:2)
Just having Angry Birds on their platform isn't that impressive, but it shows that the team behind the platform at least understands that if you want to be successful in today's mobile world, you must have an app store with a competitive number and variety of apps. They've got a hell of a long way to go to compete with the major players, but at least they're not completely delusional... well, at least not in that way. The idea of a small player breaking into the market at this point... well, I'll wish them
I hope they make a nerd phone (Score:1)
If they want to gain a foothold they will be designing a sucessor to the N900, a real nerd phone with a keyboard and xterm as well as every gadget they could stuff into the case.
The N9 was an attempt to make a slim Meego flavored iPhone, still nice but also too conventional to be outstanding.
I want a palm sized computer that I can call people with, being different like that and then marketing it well to actual humans not moble providers will sell phones, there are enough iPhone clones.
If Nokia or Jolla cant
Sure (Score:2)
Remember how well that worked out for the N900?
N900 was a little premature (Score:2)
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What does the fact that the N900 had a more precise screen type and the ability to fully customize it have to do with how Nokia completely ruined any hopes for a commercial app ecosystem?
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Remember how well that worked out for the N900?
Well, N900 was a Nokia op. Their store for their main line of development at that point (Symbian) was a PoS, so it can hardly be expected that their experimental line with a single device gets any better.
I wouldn't dismiss Jolla's potential to become something just yet. To get developers to do the basic apps, all they need to do is to get some sales for the devices, and show commitment to the platform in relatively backward compatible way for a few years -- something Nokia never did.
As for most of Jolla bei
Major player lol (Score:2)
Like Linux on the desktop, major player means, its exists.
At least someone is trying to bring Linux to the mobile world and not just complaining about the size of its code base.
Päivän kasvo (Score:5, Informative)
Here's my quick translation of the Päivän kasvo [areena.yle.fi] clip if you want to know what Jussi said there about a week ago.
---
Miia Lahti: The face of today is Jussi Hurmola, CEO of Jolla.
Jussi Hurmola: Thanks for taking me to the show.
ML: Jussi Hurmola wrote to Twitter in Saturday that MeeGo is not dead. That ignited an avalanche that has kept the CEO more than busy. What this all is about, is that ex-Nokians are continuing developing the MeeGo phone, that being the exact MeeGo which Nokia abandoned from the way of Windows phone. Jussi Hurmola, you probably predicted a follow up to your tweet, but was it a surprise to what it all has lead? Phone is ringing non-stop.
JH: Well, it was a total surprise. We expected some interest to MeeGo from the world, and wanted to say that MeeGo is not dead, as MeeGo was in other news last week. But the response to all this has been amazing. At about 1PM Saturday we put out first one-liner "MeeGo is not dead" and after 15 minutes the first article about it was already written, even though we hadn't done much else with it. Since then we have pretty much followed the others' lead and during Saturday evening just had to reveal something about us. The speculation was rising and people demanded information. There was already an article about us in the Wall Street Journal and you just can't prepare for something like that. I thank about all the positive feedback we have got in Twitter and, really am surprised about this.
ML: So there is a lot of interest outside the borders of Finland?
JH: Absolutely! Almost...well...I'm starting to boast a bit here... English media, Chinese media, Russian media, our little news item has got a really wide coverage.
ML: We all are probably interested about how Nokia has reacted to this.
JH: Yep! As you mention Nokia, and many have been asking, I really have to send a thank you to them. I myself have had a 12 year career at Nokia and I have colleagues that have been 25 years on that path. Currently about half of our group is from Nokia. Nokia had this Bridge project by which we cooperated to make sure people from Nokia don't fall into oblivion but can continue working. Thanks for that! And a little thing we heard from Nokia today was that there is room for both firms. So I am pleased.
ML: Were they aware at Nokia that you were going to continue the development?
JH: Well, it was the project at Nokia to start new companies. We pulled it together and information went both ways. Yet looking forward at the timeline, we didn't expect the huge interest in Saturday and we'll see where we are going next. But we have been open to each other.
ML: So how can a small 50 person company like Jolla be bold enough to begin developing a smartphone?
JH: That's a good question. Just like the name Jolla (dinghy) says, we are navigating a little boat to the open seas. There we are among big players and we can't be small anymore. We try to build big enough base for Jolla to redeem its place within this industry. How I see Jolla's position, we are the company that makes possible in this world time, and its state, and the state of technology, to really create something new and important. That is how I see Jolla. And we are company of 50 for sure, but we have 6,000 followers in Twitter right now. Aside the market situation, the industry has changed in a way that you can buy lots of components off-shelf. Reference implementations for hardware...there's all sorts of Internet services. So you can assemble it together really quickly. Absolutely not are we starting everything from zero.
ML: You said you are about to create something new. Can you uncover any of that?
JH: If we talk about devices, I'm not ready to reveal details about them. Later this year we are going to present the line-up. We are a bit careful, as we want to deliver the things we promise. The new things we are doing here - someone knows MeeGo, some don't - but we are to deliver complet