A video has been floating around on the internet showing what appears to be Nokia’s custom interface to the Linux based MeeGo operating system. It’s flashy, it’s clean, it’s … total bullshit. During my 1.5 years at Nokia I saw many of these concept videos shown. They’re made by pixel pushers as a goal, an ideal, of what the company wants to achieve. The reality is that these dreams rarely, more like never, make the transition into the real world.
While I can’t comment about a similar internal video that was made to showcase what the Nokia N97 was going to look like, let me just say that the final Nokia N97 looked absolutely nothing like what was being sold to product managers internally.
Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog did an excellent job breaking the video down, scene by scene, and if half of the elements from this concept appear in the final product then I’ll donate my first born child to cannibals in Africa.
Judge products, not concepts. Judge products, not promises. Judge products, not commercials.
Final. Retail. Hardware. Everything else is marketing bullshit or some designer’s wet dream.
Remember this video?
Exactly.
Update: To the people I’ve offended who assumed I meant all people living on the continent of Africa are cannibals, you misread what I wrote. What I said was that there are some cannibals living on the continent of Africa. Wikipedia has my back on this one.