I’m sure that you’ve already seen plenty of products getting cancelled for one thing or another. In this thread I’d like to discuss the ones you think were the top ones, the ones that had most potential!
For me, one of the projects that was a real bummer to have cancelled was the Lumia McLaren - Microsoft scrapped the smartphone but 3D touch and exploding tiles would be simply great.
Remember also that these ideas could be used for Eve to build these scrapped projects
I think that’s it so let’s talk!
Edit: Feel free to refer to concepts or prototypes any project that was promising but didn’t get released has a place here!
Maemo from Nokia was a version on Linux that they were putting on their N devices. Had their n900 phone and it was pretty amazing for the time that you had a full productivity device with a fully featured OS.
Pretty much any serious open source mobile OS to challenge Android or iOS (Ubuntu Touch, Firefox OS, Sailfish, etc). Would have been nice to see one of them mature and at least capture a little market share like Linux does with desktops.
Without going much into the detail (for reasons) they weren’t - they were completely ass and don’t work anywhere near to what they sound like on paper (or rather, on display as it is here)
This is kind of the point. Almost no one does. Yes these projects still exist, but none have really built any momentum the way iOS and Android did when they were younger. And we cannot say it’s just harder for these projects without a company the size of Google or Apple behind them. Os’s supported by major companies (Windows Phone, Palm) have failed while open source projects in other areas (Firefox, Linux) have gone on to major success.
So as someone who likes to have a variety of choices in my tech and particularly an open source option, it has been disappointing to see these projects not be able to even put a small dent in the duopoly Android and iOS has in the mobile market. Probably the single biggest reason for this is app availability, and for developers it makes sense to develop for those platforms. But I do hope that someone can find a way to break the stranglehold.
BTW, I do not mean to say that Android or iOS aren’t good OSs. They are. Both are mature, have fairly fluid, well designed interfaces and a thriving app ecosystem. But I would like to see some more variety, ideally a legitimate open source option.
