Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hoi 3615 days ago
Actually, Nokia Software was awesome. It was their usability and UX that was dog awful. A lot of SW features that are around today have been around for a decade with Nokia. They had a plan, to move over to Meego, which won awards.. but was torpedoed by Elop.

Elop destroyed Nokia, they had the best distribution network and supply chains. Linking up with Elop instantly killed that and destroyed any goodwill they had with operators and carriers who would have continued to back Nokia. Unfortunately carriers are anti-Microsoft...
1 comments
wvenable 3614 days ago
> Nokia Software was awesome

Symbian, their bread and butter, was awful from beginning to end. The burning platform memo from Elop was entirely right.

Microsoft could have been a strong 3 player but they kept rebooting their platform ever 6 months.

link
robin_reala 3614 days ago
Not from beginning, as the beginnings of Symbian was EPOC which was great.
link
wvenable 3614 days ago
EPOC was designed for far less capable hardware than even pre-iPhone smartphones. It allowed for a lot of capability on those early Psion devices. But in modern hardware it was too fiddly and too alien (non-standard C++).

Microsoft always understood the consequences of Moore's law. Palm killed them early on because Windows Mobile was just too much OS for those early devices. But as hardware improved, Palm was left with a less capable OS and Microsoft was ready. What they weren't ready for was Apple porting their desktop OS to mobile.

link
scottdupoy 3614 days ago
Electronic piece of cheese!

Symbian OS was very capable, full of features, but hard for developers to pick up and work with. I remember when the iPhone first came out and Symbian developers couldn't believe how few features it had ("it doesn't even multi-task!") but it did absolutely nail the user interface which is what most people noticed.

As a friend working at Symbian once said to me, "it was like watching a train crash in slow motion"

link