I get the very dis­tinct impres­sion that Micro­No­kia are not set­ting them­sel­ves up to com­pete against Apple, but much rather pri­ma­rily against Google’s Android. Lar­gely, this is because again we’re see­ing a split bet­ween hard­ware and soft­ware com­pa­nies. In split­ting apart those kinds of deve­lop­ment, they are at a disad­van­tage to bring about the same qua­lity of user expe­ri­ence as Apple shows the world as attainable. That’s also why the Play­Book and the new HP Touch­Pad are, to me, more likely to work well – because they are enab­ling them­sel­ves to just focus on what the ent­ire package deli­vers to the user and do not have to com­pro­mise for their tech­no­logy part­ner that they have deci­ded their fate to be lin­ked with.

And, whilst we are at it, I’m idly curious as to whe­ther the fol­ding of the talks bet­ween Google and Nokia was in any way rele­vant to Eric Schmidt giving up the CEO role at Google. Of course, one can envi­sion that the talks bet­ween Google and Nokia were much more one-sided: Google can nego­tiate from a posi­tion of strength in the smart­phone mar­ket; they see no neces­sity to bring on board a ven­dor who has good device know­ledge. After being publi­cly ridi­cu­led for the Kin and never really being suc­cess­ful in the smart­phone mar­ket, was pro­bably more ega­li­ta­rian in the rela­ti­onship. Much as I can under­stand that posi­tion, it also shows the fate the two com­pa­nies do share in the smart­phone arena and it holds little pro­mise to how they might move for­ward toge­ther. That Elop was a Micro­sof­tie and knows the cul­ture of the com­pany well is also some­thing not to be for­got­ten. And I think that after the lack of suc­cess in deli­ve­r­ing a Linux deli­ver­a­ble even though they had been at it for a while (any­body remem­ber the Nokia N700?) might also have been a fac­tor. If you can’t trust your inhouse Linux people to get some­thing relia­ble out the door, why should they be able to do based on some­body else’s Linux-based smart­phone stack?

What I am curious about, now, will be the third-party deve­l­oper stra­tegy – and that’s the very point where the inte­rests of the two tech­no­logy part­ners are not well-aligned. Nokia will want the deve­l­o­pers to have their pro­ducts run exclu­si­vely on Nokia devices, and will pro­bably work hard to have a com­pe­ti­tive advan­tage over other WP7 pro­ducts in User Inter­face and pro­bably other APIs. (They need to – they’ve alre­ady sold out Search, Maps and other key com­ponents to be the same as with the other WP7 ven­dors.) Micro­soft, on the other hand, should have in mind to not let the plat­form frag­ment too much, or else they will also draw bad blood from their deve­lop­ment base. The people who have stuff in the Ovi store these days are burnt any­way, because they need to com­ple­tely write off those invest­ments and, in the worst case, get their eyes set on an ent­i­rely new eco­sys­tem. (Of course, Nokia could be pro­vi­ding tran­si­tio­ning tools, or a HAL that allows for Sym­bian apps to run on WP7, but I’m not sure that the pho­nes will be up to that kind of tasks.) And as Sun lear­ned in the tran­si­tion from SunOS 4 to Sola­ris: Deve­l­o­pers having their apps bro­ken do not respond kindly.

So these will be inte­res­ting times ahead indeed. But I’m scep­tic that the new Nokia Win­dows pho­nes will really get that kind of mar­ket trac­tion that other plat­forms enjoy.

With all the poli­ti­cal and ethi­cal deba­tes about what allo­wed means for intel­li­gence should be or are, a ques­tion recently pop­ped up in my mind:

If a tech­no­logy emer­ged that allo­wed humans to read other peo­p­les thoughts and memo­ries, under what cir­cum­stan­ces should that be a legal way to find out about cri­mes that were or, even more inte­res­ting, are to be com­mit­ted? Not some­thing about pro­ba­bi­li­ties as in Mino­rity Report, but actually some­thing to read emo­ti­ons, memo­ries and thoughts? Where are the bounds in this? Should it be legal in the con­text of inde­scri­bable atro­ci­ties like 9/11? Mur­der? Rape? Theft? Only for cri­mi­nal inves­ti­ga­ti­ons, or also as a means for intel­li­gence before the act?

And to make it more inte­res­ting: What if the act of rea­ding were destruc­tive? If the sub­ject of the inves­ti­ga­tion doesn’t come out like he went in before, but was eit­her irre­pa­ra­bly dama­ged or even dead? Where are the boun­da­ries then?