Journalist Ignorance
I came across an article on ZDNet this weekend by Dana Blankenhorn that I can’t help commenting on. I started commenting on the ZDNet site itself but it insisted I register and fill in lots of personal information - so instead, I’ll comment here.
The article says…
"Symbian is a Real Time Operating System for managing telephone functions. It is just a little smarter than a toaster. The phone’s functions are not integrated and the data applications are on the level of tweets."
The article goes on to claim that Symbian can’t be used for basic Internet functions, e-mail, browsing and organizing real file downloads… while Android, LiMo, Blackberry and Windows Mobile can. It also says…
"I don’t think we have time to “train” this toaster into being a Real Boy. I don’t think Nokia had the money to do that, either, which is why they threw it into this open source foundation."
I would have ignored this article if it weren’t published on ZDNet and be so misleading. I’d also like to say I owe no allegiance to Symbian or any OS because I develop for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Java, iPhone and Android.
First of all, Symbian OS is a lot more than a toaster. Just look at the SDK to see the wealth of functionality. Secondly, Symbian is the OS while S60 is the UI layer (which the Dana doesn’t mention at all). Together, they are generally as capable and in some aspects more capable than other operating systems.
Dana Blankenhorn really needs to do more research before publishing misleading information.
