Posts by The Ignorant Contractor

Lester Haines: RIP

Loved the SPB and always read his articles. Condolences to his family and friends. The slightly sillier stuff he did made a lot of peoples' days just that little bit happier.

How Nokia managed to drive its in-house Linux train off the rails

N810 memories

I worked in Series 40 a few years ago and borrowed an N810 for a play. It was a truly terrible experience. Not just for the resistive screen (great in chilly gloved Finland but bad nearly everywhere else) but mostly for the unbelievably sluggish UI. Having seen a friend's iPhone a few months before it was clear my company was in trouble.

I can still remember one of the devs in a large meeting with management saying something like, "The iPhone will never make it; we'll crush them with our scale". It really was the thinking amongst some of the company back then. The employees truly had no idea how bad our products looked in comparison.

I also had an N900 on the internal testing scheme. That was a phone I loved. Not necessarily the answer to Nokia's problems but it was promising at least. I understand why they abandoned Maemo/Meego but I still think what might have been.