Comment by usagisushi 14 days ago
I came across something interesting titled "Apple iPhone was launched, presentation (2007-12-31)"[0]. It mentions Nokia N800 and implicitly implies a lineage of devices (N770 > N800 > N810 > N900 > N9). Sometimes I wonder what Nokia might have been like in a timeline without Jobs and Ballmer.
> Leverage N800 with its touch screen - it competes nearly in the same arena
[0]: https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_926740c7-5165-439a-a0...
N800 and other Open Source Software Operations' devices were not allowed to have cellular connection because of Nokia internal politics. N9 development was also hindred by the Maemo->MeeGo and the GTK->Qt transitions. And it was killed in its infancy in the Microsoft takeover.
There's no denying that Nokia screwed up but it was mostly because of stupid politics, not technology.
Both Maemo and WebOS were better UIs than iPhone and Android, and eventually both iPhone and Android had pretty much adopted a Frankensteined combination of the two. Android's process "card" UI is indistinguishable from WebOS, and I think it was designed by the same person.
Nokia could have competed, they were just internally a mess. So, the board wanted to sell to Microsoft, and brought in a guy whose job was to wreck Nokia and shepherd the deal (and pretend like it wasn't intentional.) The N900 showed too much potential, so I assume part of the wrecking was to force them to rewrite Maemo into Meego for the N9, which would be buried on release.
The resistive touchscreen was amazing on the N900, and I have no earthly idea why people claim to prefer capacitive screens (my guess is a bunch of cheap Chinese products with cheap resistant screens.) They hate being able to point with precision without a special pointer, not having to wear special gloves or to take off your gloves in the cold, and a screen that doesn't shatter?
You had an N900. How was the screen worse than any contemporary (or current) capacitive screen? I still an N900 as an mp3 player daily, and I still don't understand.
I had a N810 and a N900. Had a Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000 before that, and an iRiver H340. The iRiver was fantastic, but heavy (due to HDD), single purpose, and offline. Also, 40 GB ended up being too little but back then it was _huge_. Nowadays, I use Airsonic Advanced [1] on my server with gigabit fiber. Client can be whatever, for example Android smartphone over 5G (won't saturate the gigabit fiber). Caching works well, as does it with other streaming services. I could also use Jellyfin on it. I self-host as much as I can, including agenda, but I cannot be angry at people who to Google, Apple, or Microsoft cloud because it Just Works (tm).
On N810, GPS was meh. The keyboard was OKish although I believe Psion Series 5 devices had the better (bigger keys). If you got small fingers (esp. young people) you may like the smaller keys more or are OK with it. Back then, websites weren't written yet for capacitive touchscreen (responsive started to after iPhone release). As a DAP, I find N-series Maemo lousy. Turns out physical buttons are great on the move. But the beauty of the these Maemo devices as well as Sharp Zaurus was that you could use them for so much. In theory... cause in practice, you did not have 24/7 internet (until N900 or if you tethered). Battery life was meh. Many websites worked badly. Storage was limited.
> The resistive touchscreen was amazing on the N900, and I have no earthly idea why people claim to prefer capacitive screens (my guess is a bunch of cheap Chinese products with cheap resistant screens.) They hate being able to point with precision without a special pointer, not having to wear special gloves or to take off your gloves in the cold, and a screen that doesn't shatter?
Resistive and capacitive each have their pros and cons. On N900, the gestures (like in Fennec) were innovative but still at infancy. N9 was better gesture-based, as is SailfishOS, though I never used either as daily driver. A resistive UI requires a pen, or large UI whereas a capacitive screen can be used at any time with finger (those 'special' gloves and pens are sold everywhere these days, and is only an issue when its cold). What was needed, for the mobile market to massively succeed, was a different UI than desktop: a user-friendly, capacitive UI with larger interface, and gestures.
I had the N770, the N800 and also the N900.
It’s very telling that someone at Nokia thought it’s basically like the iPhone. In fact the N800 was a thick plastic chunk with no cellular, a resistive touchscreen, and a stylus-driven GTK+ user interface. Its most popular software feature among its userbase seemed to be that you can open XTerm.
They did eventually make an iPhone competitor on this same Linux platform (the N9), but it took five years. “Competes nearly in the same arena” indeed — in the same sense that my 8-year-old daughter competes in Simone Biles’s arena because she also likes jumping and takes some gym classes.