Depressive Video Review

[david.boddie]

@amosbatto

Sadly, a lot of stuff got thrown away between the N900 in 2009 and the N9 in 2011. The Nokia N900 used Maemo 5 (which was based on Debian) with the Hildon interface (which was based on GTK2 and some GNOME libraries).

Yes, it’s a real shame that so much was dropped, though maintaining a fork of GTK was probably not the best strategy even for a multinational.

@amosbatto

Then, Nokia bought TrollTech and decided to switch everything to Qt. Then, Nokia decided to merge its Maemo with Intel’s Moblin (which was based on Red Hat) to create Meego (which used rpm packages and a Qt interface). Nokia created a bunch of new stuff for Meego, like the Maliit keyboard and oFono telephony library. Nokia also started creating a new interface, which it threw out, and then started working on another, which it also threw out. Finally, on its third attempt, it created its proprietary Swipe interface, which was entirely gesture based. By the time the N9 finally came out, Nokia had already switched to Microsoft Windows, and Nokia abandoned Meego not long after that.

Nokia bought Trolltech (not TrollTech) for reasons related to their services division, apparently. I heard that it was supposed to be used for their PC Suite product. Standardizing on Qt across the company came later. I guess it shows that standardization for its own sake, rather than interoperability, is fraught with problems. Why they switched to a RedHat-related distro instead of sticking with a Debian-based one is something I’ve never seen explained properly. And who knows why they felt the need to repeatedly throw out user interface designs and implementation. Nokia was a dysfunctional company with rival fiefdoms vying to compete to be the next big thing.

@amosbatto

What annoys me about the video is the fact that the guy is comparing the Librem 5 with PureOS/Phosh to the N900 with Maemo 5, as if that is at all a fair comparison. Nokia developed Maemo between early 2005 and early 2011, and Maemo 5 was developed from 2008-5 and 2011-02, so he is looking a system that had 2.8 years of software development and polish from the biggest phone company in the world, which had unlimited resources, plus 900 apps were developed for the Maemo 5.

I don’t remember how the N900 was received when it was launched, though it was seen as a fairly niche product compared to the Symbian-based phones launched around the same time, but it was expected to have a Nokia level of build quality.

The point is that things have moved on. People expect that anything that is made now has either built upon whatever came before or learned the lessons from it, if they consider those things at all.

@amosbatto

He complains about the high price of the Librem 5, but doesn’t bother to explain that the price of the phone includes the cost of developing the software, whereas the PinePhone’s price doesn’t include the cost of developing the software and two thirds of PinePhone users are using Phosh, which was developed for the Librem 5.

The problem is that nobody cares about the cost of developing software (or hardware). As an end user receiving a product, the nuances of how it was made are lost if it doesn’t function in the way you expect.

@amosbatto

Honestly, I don’t know if the guy is just clueless, or simply isn’t interested in doing a fair evaluation of the Librem 5.

I don’t think that’s fair. I think it’s calmly-stated, matter-of-fact criticism from someone who seems genuinely disappointed with their phone. I don’t think it’s a reasonable response to assume bad faith just because the message contains something you don’t want to hear.

It’s an opportunity to learn – there will be people receiving this phone (and people who have already received it) who don’t have the technical skills to fix out-of-the-box issues. It’s important to recognize problems with the initial setup experience and general usage so that the next wave of devices don’t receive the same response from their users.