A Walk On The Other Side – S60 & Linux, Exploring The Dark Corners
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is no software produced by Nokia and aimed at helping S60’s interaction with any Linux OS. And by “no software”, we mean NONE, ZERO, NADA. Heh, Mac owners can smile now, at least they got something! As for Linux users, well, maybe Nokia was trying no to invest its resources there, but rely on the community to come up with solutions.
I am not a Linux user, and as a matter of fact, the only time I touched a Linux computer, I was totally lost. But there are a few Linux gurus out there, and some of them are ready to make it their job to easily explain to others how to create an efficient interaction between an S60 handset and a Linux computer. One of these gurus is Filip Bulovic, whom I have known for a while thanks to his past employment at RedFiveLabs.
Filip’s site, entitled 2010Solutions, is aimed at making easy tutorials for first-time S60 or Linux users. He focuses on Ubuntu as the Linux OS (apparently, there are different ones). His first tutorials explained the basic question of browsing and transfering files from an S60 device to Ubuntu using USB and Bluetooth. Then he tackled more difficult issues, like sending SMS from the computer, using the phone’s connection to surf on the computer, downloading YouTube videos and converting them to play on S60, and so on. In other words, if I decide to try Ubuntu one day, this is the site I will be exploring the most. Even though Filip only tackles easy issues by choice, I personally hope he does some more hacker-grade tutorials, in order to provide an all-in-one reference site for all S60 owners and Ubuntu users.
And to conclude the Walk On The Other Side series,
There’s no reason for Nokia not to hire a few developers for Mac and others for Linux to port all their existing software, and make life easier for everyone. But Nokia probably still considers PC owners as their main audience, and Mac and Linux owners as a small userbase: an error for 2 reasons. The first one is what Ricky likes to say: Nseries and Macs target the same market, the creative, hip and features-conscious (obviously, this is not exclusive). The same thought applies to Linux and S60 which both target the user that likes tinkering and personalizing, and this common audience will be a lot more palpable when S60 becomes an Open-Source platform. The second reason is that if you want to dominate on the software and service front, you need to cater to everyone, and not just the majority.
[Image for this post and the series banner courtesy of Gilad's DeviantArt]
Give us linux users some cred though. We’re a technical bunch, thorough with bug reports/testing, and a lot of us are developing stuff so targeting us in some ways is always good for development.
On a side note, loving the E71 and it’s working well with my Ubuntu machine. Tethering “just works” with the new beta Intrepid.
Pheewwww.. I mean – you have to be analytical and not just make statements like:
“There’s no reason for Nokia not to hire a few developers for Mac and others for Linux to port all their existing software, and make life easier for everyone.”
OF COURSE there may be, and apparently their anylysis is that there IS a reason not to do it. I think its relatively safe to assume that Nokia has better market analysis and capacity to make strategy analysis and strategic decisions than any of us on these blogs. Their cost/benefit analysis shows that its not worth the cost and effort. There is ALWAYS a cost (monetary and opportunity cost) involved.
“if you want to dominate on the software and service front, you need to cater to everyone, and not just the majority”
Can you back that statement up? WHY would you need to cater to everyone to dominate? Noone is catering to everyone. There may be many strategic reasons, but also in pure cost terms the law of diminishing returns quickly comes to play. To gain 1% more market share at the marging becomes more and more difficult and expensive. At some point it just doesn’t make sense anymore. On the software side, it is probably more strategic for them to try to get their offering together and running well where the VAST majority of the market is. And we all know Nokia has still a lot of work to do there.
Finally, in current economic and financial times, even huger corps (and perhaps them in particular) have to thread carefully and not take a shotgun approach, in particular in a business are where they are still in stages of their efforts to gain hold.
Well put, Viipottaja.
On another note, Mac USED to be the platform for the hip, creative, and feature conscious, but that changed long ago. The best content creation tools are now PC centric, with Mac support secondary. The Windows desktop platform is more upgradeable, faster, more configurable, and today’s content creator’s choice.
As a music producer, I saw this shift first hand, and think Nokia is wise to focus on Windows. I think its a mistake to not at least put more focus on Ubuntu and Maemo, though. I think Nokia should always focus on the elite tinkering developers, and Linux is a hotbed for them.
Actually Nokia is putting a lot of effort into Linux mobile OS/UI platforms as you all probably/obviously know – just thought to note that. Nokia has been, AFAIK, in the last couple of years probably most systematic about support to open source among the mobile vendors (i.e. Maemo and IT Tablets) – until Android came along (although, from the little I’ve read on it, its apparently not quite community driven as initially though). On that note, is Moto still pursuing Linux on phones? They have seem to been a bit all over the place when it comes to OS on their smarter phones.
Desktop support for Linux is obviously a different story.
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