A eulogy for Maemo and MeeGo

I managed to have a play with a friends N9 on the weekend. Frankly I wasn't expecting very much, but the N9 and MeeGo really impressed me. Everything responded quickly and easily to touch, the hardware was nice and the OS very slick. There were a number of innovative features I haven't seen in other smartphone OS's. For example, swiping from outside the screen is picked up by the OS to perform actions, such as task switching, while swipes the originate inside the screen are sent through to the running application. Thanks to this the N9 manages to get away with no OS level 'home' or 'back' buttons, either physical or on screen.<p>I came away from using the N9 feeling more than a little sad. As a consumer competition and innovation are good. As a programmer its great to see new ideas blooming and another platform that will further drive innovation.<p>We are all a little poorer for MeeGo being cancelled. For some reason the words of John Donne seem strangely appropriate: "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. "

It's not often that I get worked up over failed platforms but Nokia's botching of Maemo really makes me angry.<p>The N9 shows they had a viable, potentially world beating platform. Not only have they thrown it under a bus but, with its passing, so goes any hope of a true linux based smartphone (and accompanying ecosystem) ever achieving mass market exposure. It's tragic.

I just got my N9 yesterday. It's kind of amazing how natural it is to use. While MeeGo is 'dead', Qt will stay alive and grow. Good thing is that MeeGo apps are really hardware-agnostic because they don't need any physical buttons which makes porting to different devices pretty straightforward. If the Qt ecosystem will live, it leaves door open for every kind of Linux smartphones in the future. Hopefully more Android developers would pick up Qt when there's more official way to target it.

MeeGo was a huge chance for everyone. However that which was featured on the N9 wasn't so much the MeeGo experience as it was the Nokia experience. It's a shame, a huge shame as I would like to see a free and open mobile operating system stand up tall against the likes of Apple and the advertising company that is Google.

If there is anything Maemo was to be shot for, is that it continued to support the horrible disaster which is the X Windows System. That horrible, horrible excuse for a graphic system should be taken out and shot, the sooner the better (and no, I'm not bitter. Just a little bit tangy, perhaps.)

I think that MeeGo may have some advantages over android, but I don't see how X is one of them. X is the single most broken piece of technology on any *nix box today.

This sadly also applies to Windows; Win Mobile was just Windows-on-the-phone, Win Phone is a crazy Silverlight slideshow. Thank you, Apple, for showing the market that dumb smartphones sell better than the real ones )-:

Nice Maemorial.<p>(edit) Hacker News: Don't try any punny stuff

Adios, AmigaOS.