Nokia’s Hail Mary
One of the stories in the current issue of Wired is Nokia’s Last Stand: Can the 147-Year-Old Company Design Its Way Back?
With a former Microsoft exec at the helm (and their first non-Finn, a very unusual move for a company that could function as an embassy of Finnish culture) and a partnership with Microsoft that includes boatloads of funding, going with Windows Phone as their flagship OS is a “bet the farm” approach. Windows Phone and Nokia remind me of Laurence Fishburne’s and Stephen Baldwin’s characters from the 1996 film Fled, in which they escape from jail while shackled together, with the notable difference that I’d bet on the film’s characters meeting a happy ending.
“Dev City Kid”, a.k.a. The Nokia Lumia Rap
What happens when you take Tyga’s Rack City and change the lyrics so that they’re about Nokia Lumia 900 phones (“Nine hunnids”), Windows Phone, the Metro interface and a lot of wishful thinking (“Steve Ballma loves me / You know how it is” and “Hacking code on them apps and I’m getting cheques”)? This.
Other Mobile Dev News
- Intel-based Windows 8 tablets are expected to hit retail stores in November. Windows Phone came out about three years after the iPhone; Windows 8 tablets are shortening that gap to about two and a half. Some of the tablets will be iPad-style, while others will be “hybrids” — tablets that can transform into laptops. They won’t be hampered by the half-assed way that the telcos have been selling Windows Phones, but will vendors like Best Buy give them the push they need?
- LinkedIn releases its Windows Phone app. If you’re a Windows Phone developer, you should get this app, go over it with a fine-toothed comb and treat it as an object lesson in how to make great use of the Metro UI.
- The new 15″ MacBook Pro looks pretty intriguing. I know that all the cool developers are switching to the Air, but I like being able to go up to 8GB RAM (useful for audio/video editing), playing games (it has a better graphics card than the Air) and I walk around with an accordion, meaning that laptop weight isn’t as big a deal to me.