More bad news from the cellular front. These 3G networks are so cool, but the carriers are completely fucking it up by being greedy bastards. I guess I'm the fool for hoping it might go some other way.

In any case, the bad news here is about "Symbian Signed" and the trend to lock down Symbian OS devices so that the end user can only install carrier approved software. Symbian and MIcrosoft are the two big OS makers for smartphones (yes, the Treo has a Palm OS, but they are on the way out.) And we know Microsoft is going to try to screw the consumer (or, more gently, we know Microsoft will do whatever their customers - the cellular companies - want,) so the hope was that Symbian would go the other way. But it looks like there is reason to suspect that won't be the case.

I think the cellular industry learned from the "mistakes" of the PC world. If you give the people control of the computer (in the PC world that meant the desktop; in the new world that means your smartphone,) they won't be interested in using it for what you, the carrier, want them to use it for (buying Britney Spears ringtones at $2 a pop, and useless crap like that.) So you have to severely limit what the user can do with her computer in order to lock them into using just the services you are selling.

Crap.
- jim 2-03-2005 6:19 pm




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