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Nokia responds to iPhone by Promoting 'Open'
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Oct 01, 2007 09:38 AM
from the well-isn't-that-interesting dept.
from the well-isn't-that-interesting dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has responded instantly to the iPhone update-bricking fiasco by running a series of flyposter ads pointing out its own hardware and software is open. While this is to be applauded, it'd be better if companies like this opened their products because they truly believed in openness, rather than to beat the competition over the head. After all, Apple itself used open source with OS X (kernel, web browser) mainly because they knew it would irritate Microsoft. Since that initial blow, they've been a lot less eager to promote open source."
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Entertainment: Nokia's iPhone, No Seriously 243 comments
Several readers have written to tell us that Engadget has a look at Nokia's visions for the future. "It was presented during Nokia's GoPlay event this morning as a glimpse into the future of Nokia interface design. Oh, and it's due out next year. When pressed during the Q&A about the striking similarity to the little Cupertino device, Anssi Vanjoki — Nokia's Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia — said, 'If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.' Well, ok then."
Submission: Nokia responds to iPhone by promoting "open by Anonymous Coward
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irritating ms (Score:5, Informative)
After all, Apple itself used open source with OS X (kernel, web browser) mainly because they knew it would irritate Microsoft
Really...I don't recall Apple even being involved at the moment that architectural decision was made [wikipedia.org]. Or are you saying that this was the reason Apple acquired NeXT instead of Be? To irritate the Beast of Redmond? So tragic that historical accuracy is just a few clicks away, and still it eludes everybody.
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Re:irritating ms (Score:5, Interesting)
And anyway, Nokia HAS been playing in the Open Source/Free Software world for a few years now. Made some mistakes, true enough but they are learning the ropes. Or has everyone forgotten those cool N770 and N800 tablets already?
The change from closed to open smart phones was already underway, Apple may have unwittingly acellerated the trend to a seachange by giving the world (with a product the press just won't STFU about) an object lesson in just WHY a customer doesn't want a closed smartphone.
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Because if they're doing it for cynical, cutthroat competitive reasons, it's not likely they'll stay true to an open model in the future. Of course it's good that they're doing it now, and it doesn't really matter why right now...But we should remember that just because a particular company is embracing open standards or open source now, it doesn't mean they're our BFF. Most likely, they're just doing what's most profitable for them at the moment, an
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Re:irritating ms (Score:5, Insightful)
Open systems, open standards and open source are important -- but as a platform for innovation, not a pissing match.
Parent
And wrong to boot (Score:3, Informative)
Except for the fact that at WWDC, they announced that the Intel kernel [apple.com] would continue to be open alongside PowerPC [apple.com], as it always had.
Anyone is welcome to see for themselves [apple.com]. At the same time, Apple also launched Mac OS Forge [macosforge.org], Apple's clearinghouse for its open sourc
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When Apple bought NeXT, it was already hosting some limited open source projects, including MkLinux from early 1996. That was a GPL project hosting the Linux kernel + GNU on top of the OSF microkernel (with some sim
true in part (Score:3, Insightful)
they used it because it worked.
So, does this mean they'll all be unlocked? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course not, they'll keep shipping phones that are locked, so this ad campaign means nothing, and might actually backfire if enough people stop and say "Now, waitaminute..."
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Re:So, does this mean they'll all be unlocked? (Score:5, Informative)
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Until Apple came to the party, unlocking of phones to allow use on other networks was pretty much taken for granted. They've now chosen to change this mode of operation, and people are starting to get just a little ticked off.
Unlocking is extremely popular in the UK (obviously, can't comment on the US), with market stall
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Re:So, does this mean they'll all be unlocked? (Score:4, Informative)
Nokia is full of shit, symbian might allow 3rd party apps, though as long as they force the use of their certificate based crap for ALL applications and themes, then the platform is not open at all. They can and have blocked access to new users at symbian signed. Hypocrites is all I have to say.
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On Nokia phones, firmware upgrades have nothing to do with unlocking. If your phone was unlocked before upgrading, it'll stay unlocked afterwards. Likewise, if your phone was locked before upgrading, it'll still be locked afterwards. A firmware upgrade does not mean the phone will return to its locked state or turn into a brick.
In European countries where the network subsidises the phone, customers can ask their network for the unlock code after a year (by which time it's assumed the network will have rec
Companies exist to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of a company is generally to make money, not to crusade for some political stance. The investors want a good return on their investment, not a philosophy. You are living in a dream world if you think the number 1 aim of most companies isn't to maximise their profits. Any kind of 'belief' about open or closed source etc is very much a secondary concern, and always will be. If it wasn't they would quickly find themselves losing market share and customers to the the competition.
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Re:Companies exist to make money (Score:5, Funny)
JOBS: "Yeah, make sure you don't get it mixed up again."
BOTH: [laughing hysterically]
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Nokia development (Score:5, Informative)
It should also be noted that Nokia's openness to development in comparison to the iPhone has been suitably documented [thebestpag...iverse.net] previously.
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Re:Only Symbian OS 9.1, which is discontinued (Score:5, Insightful)
And for all this whining about digital signing, remember that it was a direct response to all the whining about potential viruses that made it mandatory in S60 v3. There are iPhone promoters who will tell you that security is the primary justification for the closed nature of the iPhone, and in their very next breath tell you that the signing model is another drawback to S60, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry. I'm sorry, you can't have it both ways.
Yes, it sucks for the hobbyist, but these three platforms let you generate and install developer certificates freely. And for anyone who does this commercially, the signing expense is really in time, not money. I'm glad they're doing it; what annoys me is that it is dependent on the digital certificate racket run by companies like Verisign, and being abused by carriers to cripple device capabilities.
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Re:Only Symbian OS 9.1, which is discontinued (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what I don't get about Symbian signing: the extra effort of self signing an application for your own phone seems like a complete waste of time and energy to me, as it doesn't really add any security benefits over a "WARNING: You are about to run an unsigned application for the first time" dialog. Why did they bother? The excuse given is that then someone can explicitly revoke that certificate and the phones will magically stop trusting the app, but if you are distributing that development version of the app (as opposed to using it in house), you should be signing it with a development build key anyway, not self signing it with an untrusted key, so that argument just doesn't pass muster with me.
I'm also a little annoyed about the $200 annual fee for the "privilege" of getting to write apps for the platform. That cuts out any possibility of a small business ever making money off of writing apps for the phone. You pretty much have to be able to guarantee $200 with of sales to break even, which either means small apps cost way more than they are worth or they don't get written at all. At least they make an exception for freeware authors, but I find it really hard to consider anything that has mandatory annual fees for developers to be "open". That doesn't meet my definition of "open".
IMHO, the definition of an open platform is one in which anyone can write software for it without fee. Period. If the telecom providers are really so terrified about the stability of their network that they require this level of paranoia, that speaks volumes about how poorly designed their data networks are.... The cell phone manufacturers shouldn't be protecting them with signed applications. They should be exposing the cell providers' incompetence for everyone to see. Maybe then we would get a provider in the picture that actually knows something about designing a robust data network....
Put another way, the first telecom to dispose of the signed application requirement will immediately win me away from AT&T Wireless. Consider that a challenge to all the telcos out there. We don't want excuses. We want a network that works. Give us one, and we'll go there. Keep this crap up, and we'll start our own. Google 700 MHz, here I come.
Parent
Alturnate View (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, companies like Nokia that "open" their products need to be rewarded regardless of their motivations, we can't change certain qualities of for-profit companies in a for-profit world.
Amen. (Score:5, Interesting)
truly believe in openness? (Score:3, Interesting)
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They do trully believe it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporations are amoral amalgamations of many different kinds of people with different goals; they are not the single-minded overlords that so many working folk like to paint them to be. The only thing they agree on is making a profit.
You sure about that? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was under the impression that Apple wanted to dump their aging code base and get a tried-and-proven *nix kernel + HTML/JS engine for free.
Flame me all you want, but I haven't noticed a lot of open-source love (or user-love in general) from Apple, and I'm sure they didn't use Darwin because they wanted to annoy Microsoft. If they wanted to annoy Microsoft, they would have joined the Linux/OpenOffice/Firefox-camp.
No matter how Apple fanboys twist reality, bricking a phone is yet another way how Apple rapes their user base. It goes to show that no matter how you abuse your customers, great PR fixes everything.
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Flame me all you want, but I haven't noticed a lot of open-source love (or user-love in general) from Apple, and I'm sure they didn't use Darwin because they wanted to annoy Microsoft. If they wanted to annoy Microsoft, they would have joined the Linux/OpenOffice/Firefox-camp
I think if you compare Apple, in this instance OS X, to something like Linux it will compare as closed and locked down; as anything compared to Linux (or even more-so BSD) is going to look that way. But if you compare it to Windows, it looks very open, and open source friendly.
OS X is based on open source (I believe this decision was made by engineers at NeXT, way before Apple had anything to do with it), and the user space is BSD, so you can do, basically, anything software-wise, that you can do in BSD.
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You probably haven't been looking?
Ah, you're one of these googler-linkers, where you find a post, pick out tiny things, take 2 minutes to google it, and then post a link, as if to prove a point. A point, I've noticed, you actually didn't even make. Now I assume your point is that Microsoft is just as giving in the development tools area as Apple; a point you're wrong on.
Microsoft gives you a very stripped down version of Visual Studio (Express Edition), which has all sorts of limitations (remember them ordering a MVC to remove a add-on t
Re:You sure about that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me just point out that WebKit, the Apple HTML rendering engine, which is based upon KHTML, the origional KDE HTML rendering engine, has a Subversion repository from which you can download code, that you can submit patches just like you can for Firefox, and that the code is now used by KDE, AtheOS, Apple, and ... wait for it ...
NOKIA.
WebKit [webkit.org]
Ars Technical article about unforking of KHTML and WebKit [arstechnica.com]
Aplications Using WebKit [webkit.org]
Nokia S60 website page for WebKit based web browser [s60.com] (yeah, the registrant for that website is Nokia).
So, you see, things are a lot more complicated than some folks seem to think.
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I don't see anything "complicated" about it: Apple is complying with the KHTML license, that's all. This doesn't make them some shining open source star.
If Apple actually cared about open source, there would be a bunch of things they could do: make an official Gtk+ port, release their Objective C 2.0 runtime open source, open source Cocoa, support ext3, stop badmouthing Linux, etc.
Not Really (Score:3, Insightful)
Although you can download 3rd party applications to my phone (Nokia N80 on Vodafone), that's only to the extent that Vodafone allows.
Nokia might like to think they're open. In reality, it's just not their decision, alas.
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Each phone has a unique number (also known as IMEI). Part of this number is the phone model and manufacturer (similar to the way an Ethernet MAC is tied up to a manufacturer). It is possible to reject a specific phone or specific phone model based on IMEI and the support is there in all GSM networks. While this is rare and not done in anger, it is not impossible to do.
Further to this some of the reject codes a network can give cause a mandatory sh
About time somebody called out Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
People get confused about Apple and open source. Apple is mainly an open-source consumer, what they produce/contribute is basically the bare minimum that they have to.
And this make sense. Apple is not about openness. They are about lock-in. This is part of what lets them provide such a smooth and simple experience (and charge the highest margins in the industry).
So, it's about time that Apple competitors started pointing this out to people.
But, it's an indication of powerful Apple has become that the #1
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Yeah, everyone knows the main factors driving huge tech decisions are what will piss off your opponent the most, never mind software quality, revenue, etc.
Re:About time somebody called out Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
And this make sense. Apple is not about openness. They are about lock-in.
I don't know that that's fair. I mean, I'd agree that Apple isn't "about openness", but not being "about openness" doesn't necessarily mean you're "about lock-in".
It seems to me that Apple is "about" producing the sort of products that Steve Jobs thinks are cool. Sometimes this means being open, sometimes it means being closed. Every once in a blue moon, it means some kind of lock-in, but it's relatively rare.
For example, Apple doesn't really use proprietary file-formats or network protocols. Even when they invent their own, they generally open those new formats and protocols to other developers. The only three things I can think of where they aren't very open are the iPhone, Aqua, and FairPlay DRM. For the iPhone, I expect AT&T is pressuring them to stay closed, for FairPlay we know that the RIAA is pressuring Apple to stay secure. With the UI for OSX, it'd just suck for their business model if all Linux/BSD distros were suddenly able to offer the same GUI.
But it's not as though Apple is engaging in the sort of vendor lock-in that Microsoft is.
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Re:About time somebody called out Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nokia N770,N800 open long before the iPhone (Score:2, Interesting)
Legal restrictions = unhappy market (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm anti-IP completely, but I do understand why people feel there is a basic need for some sort of anti-competition protection. Since I feel the market always provides a great balance between consumers and producers, it is legislation that ends up harming both sides.
Nokia makes a great product. I had the N80 for a few weeks when it came out, but the interface was lacking and it just didn't flow well (too sluggish, IMHO). I still use my HTC Trinity, but even there I'm not 100% happy. There's so much more I'd like to see, a mixup of various interface and software designs from Apple, Nokia, Motorola, HTC and Samsung -- yet this can't happen because it would encroach on whatever patent rights each producer has, leaving us consumer with far-less-than-perfect products, and leaving producers unable to fill what the market desires.
I tried the iPhone for a week, and it also wasn't perfect. The lack of 3G is significant, the locking to a network is ridiculous, and the overall feel of the product was great but just not cohesive enough to be my primary device. I still travel with 6+ devices (I travel at least 2-3 days a week) and I know I could combine everything into 2 devices, had it not been for the ridiculous patent laws we have today.
There's no fix to this, and if anything things will get only worse as the companies merge and bring with them even more power in convincing the State that we need MORE laws to fix a problem that is caused by too many regulations in the first place.
Gotta wonder (Score:2)
Um... what? (Score:4, Informative)
Um, what?
I can't be sure, but I'd make a guess and think that Apple didn't use open source mainly because it would irritate Microsoft. I'm sure they had acutal valid business reasons for doing so. (lower costs?, community esprit-de-core?,massive army of unpaid labor?, time to market?) Even if it would "irritate" Microsoft (which I can't figure out why Microsoft would care about where Apple gets it's source code from--especially in these days of the new Kinder, Gentler Microsoft) it hardly seems like a valid business move.
Thanks for the daily slap-Microsoft-because-you-can though.
*sigh*
Good News, IMHO. (Score:4, Interesting)
FYI: Infoworld article out of date (Score:3, Informative)
WRT to the linked Infoworld article in the post: it's out of date, Apple has since released the source [macworld.com] to the Intel Mac OS X kernel.
Not that this will change anyone's opinion one way or the other.
Apple & OS (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, if Apple *wants* to support "open source" ideas, they can--they just have to choose to make it a company principle and be aggressive about it. They're successful enough that they can make it work. But the reality is, they have no incentive to do so.
Compare the situation with IBM, who is heavily backing FOSS. In fact, doing so has likely saved the company; their proprietary products simply weren't doing well, and the company was a mess in the 90s. AIX, OS/2--really, the company had very little going for it. Nobody was adopting their technologies. So they started investing in technology that people were adopting--Linux, Java, and so forth. Many of which were either open source or OS-friendly (Java).
Apple has no similar motivation to go the OS route. People are buying their technology, in droves. They have no reason to open up the iPod or iPhone API, or stop the DRM implementation in iTunes (though this may change as non-DRM competition gets stronger).
For that to change, either Apple has to adopt a pro-FOSS ideology, or find themselves in a situation where a closed-source viewpoint is hurting their bottom line.
Do you want to know why there's no 3rd party "SDK" (Score:5, Insightful)
Like hell Apple is going to expose those APIs to commoners like us before the big 10.5 release. Developers pay big bucks to have access to that shit before the rest of us and Apple isn't about to kill of that rather lucrative little market. Watch how either XCode 3.0 or XCode 3.1 after Leopard's release supports the iPhone as a target architecture and watch Apple tout it as "So you can write an OS X app? You can write an iPhone app!". Also stay tuned for the retarded Digg post that says "WE WIN! APPLE BOWS DOWN TO THE PRESSURE AND OPENS UP THE IPHONE TO THIRD PARTY APPS!".
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I'd like them to release a fully fledged phone, but using the same platform as the N800 (the N800 requires a bluetooth capable phone to work with).