Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

Once again, Apple is better than Nokia here. All their devices run the latest firmware, even if it means less features. For example, the 3G and 2G can't shoot video.

This is basically what mer is.

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

apple dont change the OS they just do firmware upgrades what has new features and then market it as a new OS when in fact the OS dont change they jusy add new features.
nokia 100% support the exact same thing across all there symbian and Maemo range, but as far as going from one OS to another nobody knows if this will happen from 5 to 6

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

We'll see how long they will be able to carry that baggage before it becomes a burden ('cause that it certainly will become, sooner or later). The biggest problem of the N8x0 is probably the lack of powervr drivers. Without them, the backporting of the whole dashboard-taskswitcher-launcher paradigm of Maemo 5 would IMHO be an excercise in futility.

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

Since we dont know if the n900 can run M6 I think its a little early to be calling Apple better yet.

Also You wouldnt run windows Vista on 5 year old machine. there is a law of diminishing returns for running new OS's on older hardware. The only thing that allows Apple to do so is the fact that none of the iphone HW is more than 2+ years old.

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

What interests me is why Nokia won't implement these drivers in Maemo 4 and offer it as an OS upgrade? Since those are the same PowerVR processors in both Omap2 and Omap3, it shouldn't be an issue. The only reason could be some sort of licensing deal.

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

Next year is going to be interesting for iPhone OS upgrades:

1. iPhone 2G and 3G will be past their supported period (2 years contract).
2. They will have 2 1st gen phones (arm11?) and 2 2nd gen phones (cortex a8 or above, which is powerful enough to multitask).

I think that's when they'll release their own multitasking flavor in the new OS and either: stop or split support for the older phones.

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

No, not same PoverVR. MBX vs SGX. That said, there is work being done from Nokia's side to get the community MBX drivers.

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

Yeah, I should have googled better before saying something like that. Just realized myself that these two are not the same...

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

You hit the nail on the head - it's a licensing issue (as the drivers are closed, much like nvidia et al). There used to be a page in the wiki about the effort of getting these drivers 'to the people' but I can't find it...

Re: 5 to 6 upgrade path
 

True, but that's just a red herring. The visual effects are eye candy for the 30" demo, and thankfully Nokia have acknowledged that even N900 users will want to turn them off after the novelty wears off and provided the means to do so.

Other than that I don't see anything important in Fremantle that couldn't run on N8x0. Obviously there would be no bouncing ball games and the lack of certain peripheral devices like accelerometers, cellular modem and camera mean certain features wouldn't work, but no real showstoppers. One may argue about available RAM and CPU power, but if Diablo could be made usable on the 770 then a Fremantle based system could surely run adequately on the N8x0s. IMHO it's just a matter of available resources and all the other arguments are just handwaving.

On the other hand, it seems that every time I turn around I find out that a feature I'd been using has been dropped from Fremantle (today's example: Jabber MUC) so I'm starting to become less and less excited about running Fremantle on any device and pinning my hopes on Diablo community updates taking off at some point instead.