As the Apple faithful gather in San Francisco on Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Symbian, the world's largest mobile operating system vendor, is prowling the streets outside Moscone with a tantalizing proposition for iPhone developers: make more money by reaching more consumers with Symbian:
Starting at 7:30 AM PDT, Symbian will start handing out invitations to join Symbian at Jillian's for a Symbian Hack-a-thon (1:00 - 4:00 PDT, with happy hour kicking in at 5:00 and running until 7:00). Jillian's is located directly across the street from the conference at the Sony Metreon.
The invitations come with a rubber duck, but Symbian is also trying to wake up Apple's attendees with free coffee at the nearby Starbucks. Starbucks expects to serve 600 developers before the keynote starts, and Symbian wants to reach every one of them.
The group isn't just promising long-term success, either: hack-a-thon attendees, who will be able to code for Web runtime, Python (S60), or Flash Lite, will be given a free Nokia 5800 for their troubles, following Google's giveaway of an Android-based G1 phone at Google I/O.
Symbian has posted very strong numbers in mobile data consumption and market share. Even so, the open-source foundation has struggled to get its brand out into the market, as CNET reports, and is now playing catch-up with Apple's iPhone.
The newfound aggression bodes well for Symbian's ability to compete with Apple and other mobile platforms. Apple has made the market care about mobile operating systems, which means it's no longer sufficient for Symbian to be big but anonymous. If it wants to remain a big player in mobile, it must lose the anonymity.
Attendees at Monday's WWDC are about to learn about Symbian, perhaps for the first time. Let competition ring.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
I spent the weekend using Ubuntu 9.04 almost exclusively. Blame it on Apple.
Seven years ago I didn't know any better than to use Windows, but in 2002 I switched to the Mac and have never looked back. Between my Mac and my iPhone, I've lived a completely Windows-free existence for so long that I actually don't remember "the Windows way."
Which, I think, is why it has been so easy to pick up Ubuntu, Moblin, and other variants of Linux. But for the Mac, I don't think I'd be so willing to try a new operating system.
Linux has its problems: some things that should be easy still require too much user intervention. I spent far too much of my weekend just trying to get Flash to work so that I could check blog statistics and watch a video on Vimeo. I still can't get it to work.
That's the downside. The upside is that, generally speaking, the Linux user experience has been wonderful: clean, powerful, and approachable.
Though Moblin emulates much that is great about the Mac experience, Ubuntu seems to be trying to make things easy on Windows hold-outs. In both cases, however, it is the Mac and iPhone that, by example, make the switch possible.
Apple has taught an ever larger percentage of the computing public to think outside the Windows box. While many who jump from Windows to the Mac won't look back, this shift has created a heterogeneous computing environment that no longer depends upon a Windows monopoly. Users are beginning to consider and even to expect alternatives to Windows.
In fact, Windows is no longer the default computing experience for mobile. This opens up new vistas for Apple, of course, but it's also a great opportunity for the Linux vendors.
As Apple persists in resisting the Netbook urge, Linux variants like Moblin, Ubuntu Remix for Netbooks, and others will have the opportunity to serve consumers, consumers trained by Apple to "think different" and to think beyond Windows.
Apple reportedly considered Linux to power the iPhone. Instead, it is the iPhone (and Mac) that may well power the Linux industry. Next time you boot up your Linux machine you may want to thank Steve Jobs and the Apple crew.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
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