RIP Nokia

Nokia, the Finnish giant, that started out making tires and now supplies more mobile phones to the world than everyone else combined, signed their soul to the devil today and took a big step closer to the corporate grave!

Today, Nokia announced they would adopting the Windows operating system as the basis for their smart phones.

Of course there’s still the question of what will happen to all their Symbian based feature-phones, the Symbian smart phones already in development or close to the production, and the promises of a Meego based smart phone this year.

I guess it was obvious this is what Nokia would do given their current CEO comes to them from Microsoft (plus a couple other hints). But with Nokia’s exerpience in Linux (via Meego), they’re experience open-sourcing Symbian, and their past-CEO’s comment comparing adopting some else’s OS to peeing in your pants to stay warm it’s a bit of a slap in the face for those of us expecting something more from Nokia to combat the onslaught of Apple and Google powered devices.

I guess we were hoping they would either take the covers of something Meego powered that look like it came out of a Star Trek episode (with Wil Wheaton as spokesperson). Or a hardware platform that screamed eat my dust Motorola/Samsung/HTC. Or at worst just a concession that Android was the platform of choice these days any they were going to throw their considerable experience and talent behind it.

Of course the winner in all this is Microsoft. With the pedigree of Nokia’s name they can finally claim that Windows Phone 7 is a legitimate contender in the smart phone race. Of course the driver who goes one lap and then spends the rest of the race in the pits trying keep his tires from falling off could also claim he was in the race but it wouldn’t really matter.

And so today, we bid adieu to Nokia from the smart phone world. I will always admire the Nokia phones I owned; but I don’t think I’ll buying any more.

UPDATE Feb 14, 2011: There’s a great interview with Nokia’s Stephen Elop over at BGR – good, straight-forward (sounding at least) answers. And I love the shot at RIM around minute 13!

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at RIP Nokia

Analogy was a German and Italian psychedelic rock, progressive rock band

Bandwidth is not electricity or gas! So please stop your inane comparisons and suggestions that we “rip-out the electricity meters” or “give gas away for free!”

Nothing is black and white, so no analogy is perfect, but comparing bandwidth to a consumable resource is very imperfect!

Bandwidth is more like a park. When you have the park to yourself you can do whatever you want, swing on the swings, go down the slide backwards, climb up the slide, dig holes in the sand, etc. But as more people arrive at the park your activities get more limited – you can still to them, just not was easily. Bandwidth is like that – you can do whatever you want when you have the line to yourself, but as more people join you on the line you have to share it, and you have to share it nicely, no hogging!

Bandwidth is also like a road. Alone on the highway you can zoom-zoom along at 412 mph if you so desire. But as more people get onto the road you have to slow down and respect the rules. At some point you end-up with so many people on the road you need to limit access – i.e.: express and collector lanes or timed on ramps (yes they exist, not here, but I’ve seen them in quite few states). In the same way you need to do some quality of service on your bandwidth, you need to set-up CDN’s (content distribution networks), you need to do caching.

I realise parks and roads need maintenance. I realise equipment needs to be replaced. As I said, it’s not a perfect analogy; but if you’re going to insist on making analogies at least try to come-up with honest ones – not self-serving ones!

But in the case of gasoline or electricity once I consume the resource you can’t! It’s gone! We can’t share electricity or gasoline like we can share bandwidth.

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at Analogy was a German and Italian psychedelic rock, progressive rock band