Hacker News Reader

Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

The wave of amazed astonishment today at Microsoft actually announcing an innovative mobile OS really should be shared with this.

"Fusing" Maemo and Moblin seems about as straightforward a process as merging Android and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Sure, they're both based on a Linux kernel, but... isn't that about all? They have entirely different UIs, different software stacks, and are targeted at different classes of device.

Both Moblin and Maemo have looked very promising on their own, and I hope this is the right decision for both of them. It just seems very strange for Intel and Nokia to attempt this.

View on HN

It makes sense for Intel, because they want to get into the mobile market, which is totally controlled by ARM. So getting Nokia's platform to be not only ARM- but also Atom-compatible might get Intel a chance of entry.

I guess it technically makes less sense for Nokia. Maybe they just need Intel's money, to be able to keep up with the pace of Android development.

For Nokia, I don't think it's anything to do with Android (in the narrow sense) and is about far more than Intel's money. It seems to me that some years back Nokia took the view that phones are just another computing platform. Taking this view, actions like the Trolltech acquisition, Maemo, the Booklet 3G and this announcement can be seen as one cohesive movement towards Nokia offering the full computing stack.

I think Moblin and Maemo 5 are both using quite a few GNOME pieces. Of course Maemo 6 creates a lot of questions (the first one being "why rip up your platform right after you just barely got it working?")

Microsoft actually announcing an innovative mobile OS? where? all I saw was a flashy presentation with lots of eye candy and nothing that resembled a real device running anything.

that was as fake as the moon landing. Aint fooling anyone

So you probably didn't look at all. http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series-ha...

nice. thanks. so, why the hell is everyone linking to that silly movie that shows just a phone rendering?

ah, seeing that on the mobile really feels like it's a windows phone. it only keeps the fliping page interface when launching the main apps. after that is just load time and buffer change. or side scroll. or zooming.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com